The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 42 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Collison: Tech workers moving to low-cost regions will be less productive
“Because of the sort of the collision of ideas and people in cities makes them more productive than if they were elsewhere. If you believe that to be the case, and there's like pretty good empirical data that it is, then it, you can't just move elsewhere. You c…”
Collison: Making twice as many decisions at half precision is often better
“If you can make, like, if you can make twice as many decisions at half the, kind of half the precision, that's actually often better. And then given the fact that sort of the rate of improvement of decision making with additional time almost necessarily tends …”
Collison: Discrete organizational decision-making is overrated compared to continuous systems
“I'm inclined to say, I don't know if I actually believe this, but I'm inclined to say in response to that question that decision making in organizations is slightly overrated in that organizations are not like investment entities or funds or managers in that o…”
Collison: Making twice as many decisions at half precision is often better
“If you can make, like, if you can make twice as many decisions at half the, kind of half the precision, that's actually often better. And then given the fact that sort of the rate of improvement of decision making with additional time almost necessarily tends …”
Collison: A CEO being forced to decide indicates broken organizational architecture
“There are some decisions where if I'm making it or if I have to make it, that probably suggests that something else organizationally or institutionally has broken. And I think the need for a decision from anyone, not just from me is often like only a sort of a…”
Collison: Sequoia is the only VC firm in top three for four decades
“And Sequoia has been, you know, the top firm or in the top three firms, obviously it's a subjective ranking, but call it, you know, a top, unquestionably a top three firm for essentially its entire existence. And there was no other VC firm that has been a top …”
Collison: Silicon Valley is the greatest geographic wealth concentration in history
“Silicon Valley is the sort of, Greatest concentration of wealth creation that I think has ever existed in the US on a per square mile basis, potentially that has existed ever in the world, right?”
Collison: John and I own an SF house and hope its value declines
“I'm a landowner in San Francisco. John and I own a house together, and I hope its value declines”
Collison: Persistent organizational friction comes from latent disagreement over goals
“I think the more troubling ones and the ones that tend to cause more kind of persistent friction in an organization are where sort of there is latent disagreement in what you're actually optimizing for but that's kind of never explicitly surfaced and uncovered…”
Collison: Progress in physics slowed down substantially by 2010
“Progress in physics really felt like it had sort of slowed down pretty substantially compared to the, you know, The sort of, the period in which so much of what, you know, we were learning about you know, that, that, that's a broader period of discovery I felt…”
Collison: Post-2004 EU Immigration to Ireland Brought No Material Social Strife
“Well, it's interesting too, from a cultural standpoint, where Ireland has had very high rates of immigration, particularly post the expansion of the EU in 2004 a very large number of Eastern European immigrants moved to Ireland when those countries acceded to …”
Collison: Many organizations prioritize cohesion over intellectual correctness
“I think so many organizations prize sort of Smoothness and smoothness of sort of interactions and trying to reduce, minimize the number of sort of ruffled feathers. And they kind of at least sort of inadvertently, if not deliberately prefer cohesion over corre…”
Collison: Startup uncertainty is frustrating because time prevents gathering available info
“I think it's a more frustrating kind of uncertainty where it's actually not necessary, but the thing that's sort of limited is your, is essentially the cost of obtaining further information, reducing that uncertainty. And so you're left in this sort of dissati…”
Collison: Latent disagreement on optimization targets causes persistent organizational friction
“I think disagreement over sort of instrumental efficacy, you know, well, that's rarely that problematic a disagreement because, well, if you're right, then we'll soon learn that. If you're wrong, reality will probably sort of make that pretty clear in short or…”
Collison: Berkshire Hathaway and Koch Industries prioritize applied epistemology and structured doubt
“It's very striking to me how Warren and Charlie at Berkshire and how the folks at Koch Industries are so into a kind of epistemology and structuring of doubt and accounting for biases and mechanisms for clarity of thinking like to a very striking degree.”
Collison: 60% of Atlas Companies Say They Wouldn't Exist Otherwise
“When we survey companies started with Atlas, 60% of them tell us they would not exist if not for Atlas.”
Collison: Tokyo kept housing costs stable through minimal supply restrictions
“Tokyo has over the last couple of decades, been an improbable, well, not especially improbable, but has been such an enormous economic success story. And, you know, you had the boom and the bust and the supposed stagnation of Japan in the kind of early ninetie…”
Collison: Cheaper land in top US regions would vastly outweigh landowner losses
“I think it is very clear that on a marginal basis, the social returns of cheaper land in the most production, productive region of the country would vastly outweigh the reduction wealth cut, you know, to existing landowners.”
Collison: Escalated CEO decisions usually signal an underlying organizational breakdown
“There are some decisions where if I'm making it or if I have to make it, that probably suggests that something else organizationally or institutionally has broken. And I think the need for a decision from anyone, not just from me, is often like only a sort of …”
Collison: China's Special Economic Zones Were Inspired by Western Ireland
“One of the world's first special economic zones was created in Shannon, which was very close to, you know, maybe 10, 15 miles from where I was born. Deng Xiaoping visited it and found this quite inspiring, and so decided to set up special economic zones in Chi…”
Collison: A startup's default outcome is non-existence and survival is unnatural
“Especially for a startup, like the default outcome is your relatively near term non-existence. Like the default outcome is that you do not survive to survive over the medium or, you know, even with even more difficulty over the long term. That is, that's like …”
Collison: OCC stopped issuing new banking charters post-financial crisis
“And the second reason is, ah, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is the entity that, ah, sort of issues federal banking charters, ah, had, had basically stopped issuing new banking charters post-financial crisis.”
Collison: Scaling a business is straightforward yet extremely hard
“Scaling a business is both relatively straightforward and extremely hard. I mean, it's relatively straightforward in the sense that it's usually not that difficult to see what the problems are.”
Collison: Stripe invests roughly 70-80% on core optimization and 20% on speculative bets
“Roughly speaking, we invest most of our effort, we don't have a precise number on it, but let's just say 70 or 80% in optimizing that which we already have, that which we already know is producing, which Turns that which there's a sort of roughly clear line of…”
Collison: Differing organizational time horizons cause a fundamental collaboration mismatch
“If an organization with a really long time horizon is working with one that's sort of rapidly updating and sort of rethinking there's just like a fundamental kind of impedance mismatch.”
Collison: Sociological Mindsets Impede Big Bets More Than Downside Costs
“It feels to me that actually the reasons that organizations don't take, don't tend to make more of these or make more good ones is It's more kind of sociological, more institutional, and less that it's fundamentally too costly, because in most cases, the downs…”
Collison: Rigorous thinking requires enjoying finding where one's beliefs fail
“I think that sort of getting that kind of rigor and clarity of thought requires sort of a joy of discovery at like, ah, this thing I believe, this rule that I thought existed, like it's actually not good in this place. And having that be an enjoyable discovery…”
Collison: Organizations should optimize feedback loops over binary decisions
“I think the things to optimize are the incentive structures and the,
Mindsets, and the definitions of the goals, and the feedback mechanisms from the outcomes to the inputs, and the work, and the operations themselves, and all of those things, and less the bin…”
Collison: Koch Industries scaled from $20M to $100B without a single breakthrough driver
“Coke Industries in that, you know, Charles is, of course, or Charles and David are most famous for their political activities, but if you just look at the company that has kind of compounded from twenty million in annual revenue to now, according to public est…”
Collison: Life is too short to read un-enjoyable books
“There's a set of great books that are really worth reading, right? And there's a subset of those books that that are really enjoyable to read. Maybe it's like 10 or 20% of them, say. And the subset, the intersection of really worth reading and really enjoyable…”
Collison: Always discard your current book for a better one
“At every moment you should be reading the best book you know of in the world. I mean, I don't mean kind of the absolute best for everyone, but sort of The best book for you. But like as soon as you discover something that that seems more interesting or more im…”
Collison: Most Causally Influential Books Are Often Not the Best Ones
“What I've often found is I think the books that perhaps did in fact influence me the most in a causal sense are often not necessarily that good, right? And that maybe I'll read a book that sort of triggers a realization or some idea or something, and that, tha…”
Collison: Over 90% of Brazilian Credit Cards Fail Outside Brazil
“We have had commerce in the internet for decades at this point, but it's still like, 90 plus percent of Brazilian credit cards do not work online outside of Brazil.”
Collison: San Francisco has one-third the density of Greenwich Village
“San Francisco of today, recognizing that it is of approximately a third of the density of even just Greenwich Village in New York, right? We're not you know, the sort of, the other extreme is not Hong Kong. You can triple San Francisco and get to Greenwich.”
Collison: Stripe prioritizes rigor, determination, and warmth when hiring
“I think the three that kind of really stand out to me are this kind of rigor and clarity of thought, this sort of hunger, appetite, willfulness, determination and this, again, Warmth and desire to make people around them better off.”
Collison: Checking versus savings account friction is legally mandated
“And so, for example, the difference between a checking account and a savings account, which might seem sort of quite unfriendly from a consumer's standpoint, that's actually kind of essentially mandated by law, and so it's kind of not
[1211] Patrick Collison: …”
Collison: Only ~2% of global consumer spending was online when Stripe began
“And when we thought about it and just like looked at the kind of macro figures, we saw that, you know, about at the time, two percent of all consumer spending in the world happened on the internet.”
Collison: I finish one to two books each week
“I maybe You know, start half the books I get, and I probably finish a third of the books I start and that works out to you know, finishing one to two books a week”
Collison: Hosted a 2011 Bitcoin meetup but bought no Bitcoin
“I actually invited him to a Bitcoin meetup that I held in 2011. And I did not, however, buy any Bitcoin, but I invited him to that meetup and he replied and, you know, apologized that he couldn't make it.”
Collison: Cold outreach to admired thinkers is highly asymmetric
“And, you know, when you reach out to these people, yeah, half the time they don't respond but, you know, half the time they do, and, you know, it's asymmetric. It doesn't really cost you much when they don't, and it can be incredibly rewarding when they do.”
Patrick Collison: I formally graduated from high school rather than dropping out
“Well, I didn't technically speaking drop out, although I sort of practically speaking did. But you know, given my lack of education credentials elsewhere, I do I should, for the sake of my parents insist that I do in fact, or did in fact formally speaking grad…”
Patrick Collison: I self-studied British exams to enter MIT early
“I decided to see if there was some way that I could just go to college in the U.S. The subsequent year, and it was sort of a long story, but I eventually figured out that I could not do it if I did the standard Irish, kind of followed the standard Irish educat…”