Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 13, 2021, 6:50 am

On the thread,
Increasing Engagement and Contribution

I don't have much to add.
I have learnt much about Lucio's idea of the culture of the forum.
Thanks to John for motivating the discussion on the nature of the forum as well.

Actually, I'm very happy to keep speaking to the few, regular members of this forum as well.
No need for having large swaths of posts like on Reddit.
I am enjoying the easy-going, asynchronous culture.

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on February 13, 2021, 5:49 am

I need to preface this saying that I personally see the forum functioning quite well so far.

It's generating good strategies, advancing power dynamics knowledge, and even functioning as an advanced self-development tool -plus the "social function" you mentioned.

And it does so at a pace that I can control and read.
More threads than this, I'd struggle to keep up -and much of that time would come away from other areas of improving the rest of the website-.

Also, I'm not personally a big believer of enticing people to do things.
It's also a power dynamics thing: the more you need to promote, to lower the bar, the more you're investing, and the more you're chasing.

Instead, you do your thing, and those who like it and see the benefit in it, can come along -on their own volition-.
The advantage of this "strategy" is that it's low investment, and win in any case: if some people write, great. If not, great, more time to do something else.

Thanks a lot for expanding on this.
I learnt more about your thoughts on how you intend this forum to function.

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on February 13, 2021, 5:49 am

It's generating good strategies, advancing power dynamics knowledge, and even functioning as an advanced self-development tool -plus the "social function" you mentioned.

The main priority of this forum.
I am also enjoying this aspect with the growing body of knowledge.

My Thoughts

I like lean and small as well.
No clunky corporate PR.
Also less need for management and planning over-head.

I like ex-CEO of Cisco, John Chamber's vision of small businesses of 1-4 people all inter-linking together in a society.
I think it's very possible for society to run in a very decentralised way.
Then we only leave the tough engineering-heavy projects like launching satellites by forming larger teams of people together.

Quote from John Freeman on February 13, 2021, 9:09 am

Well, I’m glad it’s helpful. I’m grateful to be able to exchange on these topics with you guys.

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 14, 2021, 6:53 am

Loved the discussion on understanding the nature of ThePowerMoves growing body of knowledge on power dynamics by comparing it to Stratechery.
The type of knowledge matters a lot when building knowledge and concept-based businesses.
I think people don't think that deeply sometimes when building a blog by considering the nature of their content.

For timeless content, the depth matters most.
We see how many social skill courses that don't really help people much.

For trendy content, depth is definitely still important.
But the timeliness of your content becomes an additional consideration.

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 14, 2021, 7:05 am

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on February 13, 2021, 5:05 pm from this thread.

MINDSETS & WRONG FOCUS

My point of view is also personal on the topic: I met several people who over-worry about their privacy, and it feels to me like it's a lot of focus on the negatives of life, a defensive mindset, and that it takes away effort from pleasure, and self-development.

Need more time to think about privacy.
So putting down my thoughts here first.

I have 2 areas which I think we should separate when talking about privacy:

• The way society is going about in protecting people's privacy or entity for that matter
• Mindsets when it comes to privacy

On the mindset, I am on the same page as over-worrying.
It is not good.
Like over-worrying that people pull power moves on you.

That being said, I do look out for people who deliberately try to invade my privacy to gain value-taking leverage though.
Like John's example of Israel selling personal data to get access to the vaccine.
I would put my data somewhere else other than Israel now that I know of this news.

There is also the Times Opinion Privacy Project where they talk about privacy.
The most interesting article to me is this one:
Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy

They identified people solely based on the geolocation information given out from their phones.
Donald Trump was identified via his whereabouts in the White House, going to his country club and playing golf.

I think people may gain value-taking leverage over you if they know too much about your whereabouts.

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 14, 2021, 10:42 am

Working with women all day, I can confirm you once more that they’re very power-aware.

Maybe we should discuss a bit on this. We may have different interesting perspectives on this. And also potentially some misunderstandings.

Lucio and I were discussing which environments men and women understand the power dynamics better. Not necessarily which gender is better than the other on average.

Quote from John Freeman on February 18, 2021, 12:23 am

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 14, 2021, 10:42 am

Working with women all day, I can confirm you once more that they’re very power-aware.

Maybe we should discuss a bit on this. We may have different interesting perspectives on this. And also potentially some misunderstandings.

Lucio and I were discussing which environments men and women understand the power dynamics better. Not necessarily which gender is better than the other on average.

Yes, it could be a misunderstanding.

Actually, I came here to congratulate you Matthew for your reaction after the feed-back and clarifications episode. It seems that you are willing to look at yourself and accept new and different ideas. Hats off from me. It takes a lot of guts to do that (if I perceived correctly what you are currently doing). Anyway, I already noticed you doing that in the past. Stopping and reflecting. I believe that is the only way to change the loops that are currently built in our heads. It's only by changing the neuronal circuitries (the loops) in our brains that we will be able to change our behaviors. We could call them less than effective/undesirable/negative/destructive behaviors.

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on February 18, 2021, 1:54 am

Yeah, +1, Matthew is really good at that and an example.

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 18, 2021, 3:26 am

I thought what you shared took a lot of courage as well.
Toast ? to both of us.

My primary motivation was to move towards resolution.
And learning certainly played a huge portion in that.
I appreciate keeping a good relationship.

We may still not be completely aligned.
We have not met in person as you say John, so that's completely understandable.

Certainly, our discussion helped a lot.
Thank you for sitting with me to straighten this out.
I really mean it.

I am open to any clarification at any time. (the beauty of asynchronous communication)
Like, if you think that I'm not being clear, a one-liner here or on the feedbacks thread would be welcome on my side.
Not saying that it's needed, just saying that it's welcome.

---

I learnt the format from Lucio a few seconds ago.
But that doesn't take away that I mean any less of what I say.

And thanks to Lucio for sharing about how to do this effectively.

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on February 26, 2021, 4:05 am

Matthew, thank you for creating new threads when something interesting and worthwhile emerges.

Many of those are golden, and deserve their own threads.

Plus, the way you quote it with the first message is perfect, including a link to the original thread as a quote. Genius.

The last example was the "life & death decisions, and values".

Thanks!