I wrote up a longer, conceptual review. But I also did a brief data collection, which I'll post here as others might like to build on or go through a similar exercise. 

In 2019 YC released a list of their top 100 portfolio companies ranked by valuation and exit size, where applicable.

So I went through the top 50 companies on this list, and gave each company a ranking ranging from -2 for "Very approval-extracting" to 2 for "Very production-oriented".  

To decide on that number, I asked myself questions like "Would growth of this company seem cancero... (read more)

I'm trying out making some polls about posts for the Review (using the predictions feature). You can answer by hovering over the scale and clicking a number to indicate your agreement with the claim. 

Making more land out of the about 50mi^2 shallow water in the San Francisco Bay, South of the Dumbarton Bridge, would... 

For the Review, I'm experimenting with using the predictions feature to poll users for their opinions about claims made in posts. 

The first two cites Scott almost verbatim, but for the third I tried to specify further. 

Feel free to add your predictions above, and let me know if you have any questions about the experienc... (read more)

I experimented with extracting some of the core claims from this post into polls: 

Personally, I find that answering polls like these make me more of a "quest participant" than a passive reader. They provide a nice "think for yourself" prompt, that then makes me look at the essay with a more active mindset. But others might have different experiences, feel free to provide feedback on how it worked for... (read more)

Author here: I think this post could use a bunch of improvements. It spends a bunch of time on tangential things (e.g. the discussion of Inadequacy and why this doesn't come through in textbooks, spending a while initially setting up a view to then tear down). 

But really what would be nice is to have it do a much better job at delivering the core insight. This is currently just done in two bullets + one exercise for the reader. 

Even more important would be to include JenniferRM's comment which adds a core mechanism (something like "cultural learn... (read more)

(You can find a list of all review poll questions here.)

(You can find a list of all 2019 Review poll questions here.)

(You can find a list of all review poll questions here.)

I made some prediction questions for this, and as of January 9th, there interestingly seems to be some disagreement with the author on these. 

Would definitely be curious for some discussion between Matthew and some of the people with low-ish predictions. Or perhaps for Matthew to clarify the argument made on these points, and see if that changes people's minds.

I took some liberties in operationalising what seemed to me a core thesis underlying the post. Let me know if you think it doesn't really capture the important stuff!

(You can find a list of all review poll questions here.)