From the Desk of Eric Ries 

Late Summer Edition

"Constructive doubt creates curiosity. It compels exploration. It’s easy to tell if you’re on the right path: constructive doubt means you don’t care who’s right."Questions about how to move forward--both my own and the ones directed at me--are a huge part of my life as a founder and entrepreneur. But none of them are ever fueled by misgivings about the larger goal. They come from the desire, as this piece by designer Matthew Ström puts it above, to know more. The whole post is a great read about how to use the Socratic Method to foster dialogue when questions come up, as well as the Scientific Method--the foundation of Lean Startup--to get information. As he writes, "At its best, doubt doesn’t increase uncertainty, or cast an idea in a negative light." As always, if you have thoughts or feedback to share on anything I've included, send them to: [email protected] [Hiring]Caffeine is building a new social broadcasting platform for television. They're creating teams that prioritize delighting their community of viewers and broadcasters, work with intention, take ownership of their commitments, and act with resilience and determination. It's looking for a:Principal Engineer / ArchitectLTSE is looking for team players who are committed, flexible, grounded, and embrace working with the culture of both coasts. We are particularly interested in championing women and underrepresented candidates for these roles:Senior Regulatory Compliance Officer / Counsel [Exchange]Member Operations Lead [Exchange]Principal Platform EngineerSenior Techops EngineerSenior Backend EngineerFull-stack EngineerProduct Management -- please contact us[Conversations and Coverage]CII backs long-term focus of new exchange's rulesBelow the Line: Eric Ries -- Changing the Way Startups Are Built (podcast)Vox Editor-at-Large Ezra Klein and Eric Ries at the 2019 Code Conference (video)CNN's Julia Chatterly and Eric Ries Discuss the LTSE (video)The Tech World is Building A Better Stock Exchange with a TwistThe 25 Best Leadership Books of All-TimeRead Like A CEO: Anne Boden, Starling BankCo-working Space Zora's House a social, professional anchor for women of color[Readings] Metaphors we believe by: the pantheon of 2019"The more I learn, the more I suspect that rationalists only managed to kill a very narrow and anthropomorphic conception of God. People who study complex systems started using new words to talk about god-like phenomena — metaphors that are more palatable to secular minds. I believe these new words can help scientifically-minded people better understand what it actually felt like to believe in God before science became a Thing."How Mosquitoes Changed Everything"In total, Winegard estimates that mosquitoes have killed more people than any other single cause—fifty-two billion of us, nearly half of all humans who have ever lived. He calls them 'our apex predator,' 'the destroyer of worlds,' and 'the ultimate agent of historical change.'" The Flawed Reasoning Behind the Replication Crisis"We must change the way we quantify and manage uncertainty in science. In its long history, probability has been misused to support bad reasoning in a wide variety of settings, from sports to medicine, economics, and the law."Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain"Labour was two hours shorter when art was present, while levels of the stress hormone cortisol and feelings of depression dropped by a third for those having chemotherapy. For those having surgery, less anaesthetic was needed, hospital stays were an average of one day shorter, and levels of cortisol nearly halved."Free Solo and Economic Growth"I think that in studying economic growth, we (and especially we in the Silicon Valley) focus way too much on gadgets, and too little on the simple fact of human knowledge of how to do things. Southwest Airlines' ability to turn an airplane around in 20 minutes, compared to the hour or so it took in the 1970s, and still does at many larger airlines, is just as much an increase in productivity as installing the latest gadget. Growth is about the knowledge of how to do things, only sometimes embodied in machines. Free solo is a great example of the pure advance of ability, from a pure advance of knowledge, completely untethered from machines."  The Comeback of the Century: Why the book endures, even in an era of disposable digital culture"Storytelling, Steve Jobs may have forgotten, will never die. And the best format for grand and sweeping narratives remains one of the oldest and most durable...When people go on a digital cleanse, detoxing from the poison of too much screen time, one of the first things they do is bury themselves in a book — that is, one to have and to hold, to remind the senses of touching “Pat the Bunny” in infancy, a book to chew on."Software, the Tough Tomato Principle, and the Great Weirdening of the World "In the beginning, new form factors fit existing workflows. Then, workflows fit the new form factors.This is a powerful effect, and I find it strange that there is no name for it apart from the misunderstood “the medium is the message.” So I’ll just go ahead and call it the Tough Tomato Principle: we make tools so they accommodate the world; until the world remolds itself so it accommodates our tools."