Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

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Prisoner's Dilemma

Mental models

The canonical case where individually rational defection produces a worse outcome for both than mutual cooperation would. Repeated play changes everything: reciprocity strategies win tournaments, and reputation becomes the mechanism that makes cooperation rational. Industries with few players and long memories behave very differently from those without.

Books 7Experts 2Recommenders 16Resources 4

Start here

  1. Prisoner's DilemmaWilliam Poundstone, 1992
  2. Thinking StrategicallyAvinash K. Dixit, Barry J. Nalebuff, 1991
  3. The Evolution of CooperationRobert Axelrod, 1984
The Selfish GeneThe Selfish Gene
T1 The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins · 1976
Open LibraryGoodreads

Selection acts on genes; bodies are vehicles that genes build to copy themselves.

Recommended by: Balaji S. Srinivasan, Charlie Munger and 10 others

The Evolution of CooperationThe Evolution of Cooperation
T1 The Evolution of Cooperation
Robert Axelrod · 1984
Open LibraryGoodreads

Computer tournaments of the prisoner's dilemma show why tit-for-tat wins.

Recommended by: Patrick Collison, Naval Ravikant

Thinking StrategicallyThinking Strategically
T1 Thinking Strategically
Avinash K. Dixit, Barry J. Nalebuff · 1991
Open LibraryGoodreads

Game theory without maths: look forward, reason back, and make threats credible.

Prisoner's DilemmaPrisoner's Dilemma
T2 Prisoner's Dilemma
William Poundstone · 1992
Open LibraryGoodreads

Von Neumann, game theory and the prisoner's dilemma in nuclear strategy.

The Art of StrategyThe Art of Strategy
T2 The Art of Strategy
Avinash K. Dixit, Barry J. Nalebuff · 2008
Open LibraryGoodreads

Game theory without maths, with new examples: commitment, signals, bargaining.

The Origins of VirtueThe Origins of Virtue
T3 The Origins of Virtue
Matt Ridley · 1996
Open LibraryGoodreads

How cooperation and morality evolved from self-interest, via the prisoner's dilemma.

“I really highly, highly recommend picking up Genome, The Red Queen, Origins of Virtue, The Rational Optimist, and The Evolution of Everything.” — Naval Ravikant

Source: The Tim Ferriss Show — Naval Ravikant Q&A, full transcript

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Naval Ravikant, Ryan Holiday

NonzeroNonzero
T3 Nonzero
Robert Wright · 2000
Open LibraryGoodreads

History read as an expanding series of non-zero-sum games

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Ev Williams, Nick Thompson and 1 other

More mental models

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