- Openness is advantageous in the beginning, but maladaptive later on
- In the beginning, you have no brand to lose
- OpenPhil, OpenAI are much less open than they used to be
- In the beginning, you have less stuff to share so it’s easier to share all of it
- Manifold codebase and Notion are super messy now
- The ability to navigate an internal mess is a kind of power
- Search, outlines, summaries, charts are a kind of openness
- It’s easier to be open about yourself and data that you “control”; harder for data that other people have given you, or data about other people
- Privacy is a harmful meme; the idea of privacy makes people think “hey, you shouldn’t be able to say that about me”
- Private pieces of Manifold mostly are “because of other people”
- Manifold aims for openness on:
- Our source code
- Our data
- The knowledge of our meetings
- Our financials (including salary, cap table)
- Paragons of openness:
- Blogging on the internet (Holden, Jeff & Julia)
- APIs
- Our World In Data
Counterpoints
- Selective shared vulnerability might be a cornerstone of a relationship? If you’re as open about your thoughts with everyone as with your partner, what’s special about a partnership?
- E.g. love letters, naked photos, sexual activity are valuable because they’re extremely exclusive
Misc
- If Manifold is open on our codebase/data/processes, where is its value?
- Brand — people know about Manifold and trust it to be a good experience and providing useful knowledge
- Team — both the individuals working on the team, and the relationships between them. The team can make changes on its existing codebase & data much much better than anyone else
- Money — the team still controls where we spend money, who we hire (aka whose time we rent to further add to the Manifold platform)