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Scott Stevenson's avatar

Excellent read. I was thinking about similar feelings when I wrote Lego Mindset vs. Woodworking Mindset (https://scottstevenson.substack.com/p/lego-mindset-vs-woodworking-mindset)--but never considered the tolerance stacking angle.

Wholeheartedly that the post-ZIRP game is totally different. It's refreshing though, for real builders. I think it's where they will excel. I think we'll be seeing a lot of lego houses collapsing in the next 12-18 months.

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Rajeev Ram's avatar

Good post. Had to read through 2-3 times to get some of the finer points. Will have to re-read some more times to really get it.

At the end of the day, this is just a somewhat fancy dressing of the 'Good Men > Good Times > Bad Men > Bad Times' meme. Although, you didn't explicitly claim that the four regimes go in a cycle, and they probably don't always.

There are some parallels from this analogy (finance/interest rates as applied to knowledge) and to processes in evolution; variation and selection correspond to design and constitutive knowledge. The first creates all sorts of pure possibilities; the second winnows them down to 'successful models' due to contact with particular ecology.

Punctuated equilibrium is a theory that describes how certain types of evolutionary pathways engage in stasis for long periods, interrupted by short & intense bursts of variation/selection.

Also, I also enjoy playing with Meccano sets!

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