đ§ Thoughts
I have created an interactive version of this article - if you are on your computer, do me a favor and read it here rather than in boring Substack layout.
But donât forget to come back afterwards for some curated reading recommendations & inspiration.
Meta 0
In 1800 the majority of people worked as farmers. In the U.S. it was more than 80% of the overall population. Everyday lives of these people very much resembled one another.
The typical 19th century farmer would wake up when the sun started to rise and spend most of his day out on the fields, seeding or harvesting, depending on the time of the year. When the sun went down heâd go home, eat some yummy bean stew from his very own acre and potentially have a glass of home-brewed whiskey (or more likely two). The next day heâd start all over again (except if it were a Sunday).
Life as a farmer was simple and itâs easy to nail down the motivation for work: Feeding yourself and your loved ones.
Meta 1
The industrial revolution changed worklife for many. Productivity increased and one farmer was now able to produce more food than her family would need to survive. Therefore, some people put down plow and sickle for good and went to work in industries. Eventually the western world moved to a state where industry and not agriculture was the driving force of economic growth. By 1880, it was less than half of U.S. citizens who were employed in the agricultural sector.
Working in industry meant that the purpose of your job was somehow related to manufacturing physical goods that people would use to either (1) grow & harvest more food on less land and in a shorter time, (2) produce other goods or (3) use in their daily life to increase their living standard.
Meta 2
Over time productivity also increased in the industrial sector. Humans engineered ever more cool machines that would make it easier and faster to produce goods. In consequence, more people became available to work in the service sector. Already by 1930, the majority of the U.S. population earned a living as âservice providersâ.
By offering services to others, your goal would be to either (1) help other people to produce food or goods more efficiently, (2) enable other service providers to offer better services or (3) make everyday life more enjoyable for consumers.
Maybe you already see where this is heading.
Meta 3
Thanks to software automation, many services which used to be taken care of by humans are performed by computers these days. Therefore less people are needed in the service industry, which gives rise to the guild of online creation. I call this the digital sector but you could also think of it as the information economy, online business or remote workers. Currently, in the U.S. 18% of the workforce are working remote full-time (a number which has risen by 173% between 2005 and 2018).
As an online creator you aim to either (1) make digital products that serve the agricultural, industrial or service sector, (2) provide tools to enable other creators or (3) cater to a psychological need of humans on one of the higher levels of Maslowâs Pyramid.
Why is all of this relevant?
In essence what I have just written down here is nothing new, the âthree sector model of economicsâ has been developed ages ago and also the concept of knowledge workers and/or the creator economy is buzzing around our newsfeeds almost on a daily basis (especially since the pandemic propelled a shift to more remote work). Nevertheless, I thought that itâs worth telling this story once more and emphasizing what Iâd call the progression of âmetanessâ throughout this development.
Every one of these sectors, from agriculture to digital, adds on an additional meta level to the existing economy. This allows us to increase our societyâs standard of living but also makes the structure of our economy more complex. While farming work has a clear purpose, namely the feeding of humans and animals, the meaning and impact of work becomes harder to summarize in one sentence as we progress through the different sectors. Jobs that are more âmetaâ tend to create value by either providing some kind of assistance to one of the lower levels or addressing increasingly sophisticated human needs. I hope my little graphic helps to convey what exactly I mean by that and makes this explanation a bit less meta (pun intended):
To clarify, I donât believe that jobs in more meta industries are superior in any way. Or the other way round. I just think jobs on a higher meta level cater to increasingly higher located needs in the Maslow pyramid or ultimately support one of the lower meta level industries. The notion of higher/lower has a purely explanatory purpose.
The difference between quality & bullsh*t
One of the consequences of metaness is, that it becomes harder to tell the difference between quality work and bullsh*t. I donât know if you too used to play the âWhy Gameâ as a kid, but it is essentially just that. You ask a person why she is doing something and then, ask again for the why in her answer. And again. And again. Until you managed to nail down the final purpose. The higher we progress on the ladder of metaness, the more âWhyâs you need to ask and the easier it becomes for scammers to hide a lack in value between the levels. To give you an example, Iâd say itâs quite easy to judge whether food is good or bad. But it is much harder to judge the value of a consultantâs work. As a consequence, youâll find more bullsh*t jobs and workers that only provide very little value to overall society on the higher levels.
However, with that I donât mean that meta work in itself is worthless. I just think there exists a comparatively high percentage of people in âhigh metanessâ professions that just want your money but are not willing to provide much value. These individuals are also one of the reasons why knowledge work often gets devalued as ânot real workâ or ânot providing valueâ.
Becoming an influencer is legit
In the past years, the number of online creators has increased massively. Likewise, there exist tons of resources that advertise with the slogan that âeveryone can build their own brand and earn a living as an online influencer/podcaster/software developer/writer etc.â if just following âThe complete guide to earning $10k+ as a XXXâ. I personally often thought that this must be scam, because in the end someone needs to pay the creators. And I still have this opinion (because a world full of just influencers would starve) but I think there might be more truth to it, than often thought.
We are still experiencing a long-term GDP/capita growth (putting COVID aside for a moment), which shows that productivity is increasing and in turn the standard of living is rising. This means people are moving their focus to needs located closer to the top of the Maslowâs pyramid and at the same time less people are needed in Meta 0-2. Thus, this is (and probably will be for some time) an expanding industry, where more jobs are created and workers in this industry serve some of humans (admittedly high level) needs. And while not everyone can work on Meta 3 (and most likely also not everyone wants to), chances are many more people will actually be able to support themselves as an independent online creator (although it probably takes a bit more than just following the steps of a single âHow-toâ guide).
Getting too meta is a risk
And while it is probably (easily) possible to earn a living on Meta 3, I think any digital value creator would be well advised to not put all his eggs into one basket but diversify his earnings and/or savings. The higher you climb up the pyramid the more fragile your daily income is. If you farm corn, you can be quite sure that there will be some demand throughout the next years. If you produce videos, a change in whatâs regarded as trendy can take you from a substantial monthly income to $0 earnings in almost no time.Â
Becoming too meta is also a risk, for society as a whole. Comparing to the 1800s where daily life was almost the same for over 80% of the population, todayâs landscape of existing lifestyles is much more fragmented. This makes it harder for us to communicate with people outside of our very own bubble (or decrease the size of our bubble, however you want to view it) - often realities of âoutsidersâ are so different that it makes it seemingly very hard to convey a message. One way that we are noticing this is increasing polarization. Another one is the growth in all types of specialised sub-communities. Becoming more and more meta (potentially progressing to a Meta 4 at some point?) is thus risky for a society, as its members have a harder time relating to each other and identify with a shared set of values.
I have caught myself multiple times, assuming somehow implicitly that people around me wake up to a somewhat similar reality than I do. This here is the manifestation of my pledge to keep reminding myself that this is simply not the case.
With all that being said, I am going to close my laptop now and do some garden work. You know, maybe Iâll have to survive on those home-grown carrots at some point.
đ Curated Recommendations
Horsepox synthesis: A case of the unilateralistâs curse?
An interesting discussion why (not) scientists should be allowed to work on creating or reverse engineering harmful diseasesImagine that 100 scientists are individually deciding whether it would be a good idea to synthesize horsepox. All of them act impartially and in good faith: They would only conduct this work if they really thought it was on balance good for humankind. Each of them independently weighs up the risks and benefits of synthesizing horsepox, decides whether it is wise to do so, and acts accordingly.
The unilateralistâs curseâan idea proposed by Nick Bostrom and colleagues at Oxfordâarises from the fact that, if synthesis of horsepox is not to occur, all 100 scientists must independently decide not to pursue it; while if any of the scientists judges the benefits to outweigh the risks, he or she acts unilaterally to synthesize horsepox. Thus there is an âaction biasâ: Horsepox synthesis is more likely to occur when scientists act independently than when they agree to a decision as a group.
Men Clamming Up
A timely observation of the downsides that â#metooâ and similar movements had for female founders (despite all the good things that it certainly achieved as well)
One worrying trend Iâve observed among my male investor friends is that theyâre much more wary of giving candid advice to women founders than they used to be. They are afraid of saying anything that a female founder might misinterpret as sexism. So, when giving feedback to a woman they donât know well enough to trust, they talk with less candor than they would with a male founder.š When this happens, women are missing out on potentially valuable advice.âIâll Finish It This Weekâ And Other Lies
A âpaperâ written by PhD students on what they learned about productivity by keeping note of their planned & realized workHow many times have you sworn that this is the week you finally fix that bug in your code? How many times have you promised that this is the month you finally finish that paper draft? And how many times does it actually happen? I am like you. I lie to myself constantly and copy-paste my to do list from one week to the next. But in the summer of 2020, a small group of postdocs, graduate students(including myself), and undergraduates came together to motivate and support each other on their weekly goals. The idea was simple: a weekly check-in where we share the tasks we plan to do that week and how long we expect each of them to take. Then, we report back on how long the tasks actually take. Without intending, we created a data set contrasting our expectations and our realities.
⨠Random
Compare your skills as a soccer referee against an AI agent
A grizzly bear walking on a treadmill for the sake of science
A new paper suggests that being good at memorizing things is not related to general intelligence
Have an old game boy at home? You can use it to mine bitcoin
Find out what makes a really good wine (and learn about machine learning while doing so)
Growth and Structural Transformationâ Handbook of Economic Growth Vol. 2B, Our World in Date (Nicolas Lippolis). 2020.
Maddison style estimates of the evolution of the world economy. A new 2020 update, Bolt, Jutta and Jan Luiten van Zanden. 2020.
Patreon Creators Statistics, Graphtreon. 2020.