The hottest Tradeoffs Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Less Utilitarian Than Thou

Astral Codex Ten • 14522 implied HN points • 28 Feb 24
📖 Philosophy Ethics Utilitarianism Morality Tradeoffs Society
  1. Some actions considered acceptable by many are questioned by those who identify as utilitarian or consequentialist, highlighting differing moral perspectives.
  2. Utilitarians may advocate for policies that involve sacrificing or compromising certain ethical norms for the greater good, whereas non-utilitarians may not view these actions in the same light.
  3. The perception of utilitarians being more willing to do harm for the greater good may stem from the discomfort with the idea of calculating morality and the juxtaposition of sacred values with utilitarian reasoning.

What does it look like to be successful here? How is my performance evaluated?

Creating Value from Nothing • 79 implied HN points • 14 Mar 24
💼 Business Culture Metrics Tradeoffs
  1. Evaluation of performance in the Product organization focuses on inputs like quality of thinking over outputs.
  2. Avoiding using output targets to evaluate performance is important to maintain a customer-centric culture, prevent tunnel vision, and discourage risk aversion.
  3. While metrics are essential, team members are rewarded for excellent inputs rather than just meeting success criteria, emphasizing the priority of creating value for customers.

A word on incubators

Sam’s Newsletter • 58 implied HN points • 05 Oct 23
💼 Business Tradeoffs Criticism
  1. Incubators combine ideas, people, and money to create new companies.
  2. Different models of incubators have clear trade-offs to consider.
  3. Common criticisms of incubators include ownership stakes, founder loyalty, and the track record of big successes.
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Understanding the CAP theorem [Math Mondays]

Technology Made Simple • 99 implied HN points • 10 Jan 23
🕹 Technology Systems Tradeoffs Consistency
  1. The CAP theorem states that in a distributed system, you can only guarantee 2 out of 3 desirable traits: Consistency, Availability, and Partition Tolerance.
  2. Consistency in the CAP theorem ensures that all nodes in a network have the same data at the same time.
  3. Availability means that every read or write request will either succeed or receive an error message, with every node responding in a reasonable time.