Category Design Hides In Plain Site, New Category of Xmas Tree, From Effective Altruism to Defective Elitism, & Scooby Snacks

Nov 27, 2023

Thanks for reading.

Welcome to Different.

The (de-platformed, then re-platformed on LinkedIn 🤔) newsletter for entrepreneurs, creators, marketing leaders & category designers.

With a different mind.

🏴‍☠️

How Category Design Hides In Plain Site

Category Design is a new lens on business.

It’s something that (yes) you learn. But it’s more something you “get”.

(it requires a lot of unlearning & that’s too much for most people)

Once you get it, you see categories everywhere.

And the fun begins.

Because category design the greatest superpower in business.

And most people will never (even) hear about category design, never mind see through the lens 😎

👇

Let’s unpack this sign.

(Through the category design lens)

DENTIST.

Largest font on the sign.

It’s the only part in red.

First thing you notice.

At the top.

“General Family”.

A small tooth 🦷

Mid-sized font.

Victoria Pedoeem DDS

At the bottom.

Phone number.

Dr. Victoria is an intuitive category designer (whether she knows it or not).

“DENTIST” is the primary category.

“General Family” is the niche down category, in the bigger dentist mega-category.

Victoria Pedoeem DDS is the brand name.

Now.

Notice how the sign is laid out. (think for a second while you look at the sign….. 🤔….pay attention to the words….)

Everything on this sign, is on purpose.

Notice. It does not say.

“Victoria Pedoeem DDS in big font. In red.”

Dr. Victoria knows, no one cares about her. They care about themselves. And people who care about their healthcare, often care about their mouthcare.

She’s looking for patients who already know they need/want a dentist.

Dr. Victoria also wants to focus (niche down) on a certain type of patients. Kids/families.

(She’s playing a demand capture game, with a clear category differentiation strategy)

Dr. Victoria is doing what category designers do. Force a choice.

Not a comparison. She’s telling you who she’s for and who she’s not for.

If you’re a family (meaning kids) I’m your specialized dentist. If not, find a different dentist.

She’s also communicating directly to her potential superconsumers (top- 8-10% of customers that drive all markets). She wants families with lot’s of kids, who care lots about teeth. Because they are more likely to be dental superconsumers. Need check ups, braces, wisdom teeth out… over many years.

So, Dr. Victoria is being radically explicit about who her supers are.

She’s not leaving her revenue growth to chance.

Attracting who she wants. Repelling who she does not.

This dentist knows more about category-led growth than (most) S&P 500 CEOs and Harvard MBA teachers.

Now you do too.

😎

🏴‍☠️

New Category of Xmas Tree

Once you “get” the category design lens, you see categories everywhere. He’s the newest one I’ve heard of.

“Pre-lit Xmas Trees”.

How legendary is that!

Notice how Costco didn’t call them:

-Fake trees with lights

-Plastic trees with lights

-Inauthentic trees with lights 😆

They re-framed the Christmas tree category, by re-framing the problem.

Some people find it a pain in the ass to put lights on the tree.

If you’re one of those people… poof!

Problem solved.

They identified a different Christmas tree problem. Putting on lights. And with one phrase, frame the problem and become the solution.

“Pre-lit Xmas Trees”.

Category Design genius.

😎🎄

🏴‍☠️

From Effective Altruism

To Defective Elitism

There is a new movement that started (primarily) within millennial academia.

It destroyed billions in crypto value.

It almost cost the U.S. the lead in A.I.

And it’s coming for you.

And your company too.

“In an effort to shape a new social equilibrium…” 36 year old Scottish Oxford philosopher Will MacAskill has created the Effective Altruism movement.

“Effective altruism, which used to be a loose, Internet-enabled affiliation of the like-minded, is now a broadly influential faction, especially in Silicon Valley, and controls philanthropic resources on the order of thirty billion dollars.”

They think they are better, smarter and most important
Ethically superior to you, me and everyone else
And they think they should decide the future of AI

Oxford Prof & Effective Altruism Champion, Will MacAskill

On the surface, what they preach sounds great.

Make gobs of money.
Give away gobs of money to worthy causes.
Consider the impact of our actions on the world.
Consider future generations in our current day actions.

But.

When Effective Altruism moved from the realm of philosophical discussion, into the real world….

It metastasized into a bizarre, moralistic, anti-individualism, pseudo-socialist, equality of outcome, ivory tower — we’re smarter than you — ethical and intellectual superiority complex.

(say that three times fast 😎)

Legendary entrepreneur/VC

Marc Andreessen

and

Garry Tan

CEO of YCombinator, both criticize this “thinking”.

Tan called it an insubstantial “virtue signal philosophy” that should be abandoned to “solve real problems that create human abundance.”

First venture investor in OpenAI Vinod Khosla says,

“The best companies are those whose visions are led and executed by their founding entrepreneurs, the people who put everything on the line to challenge the status quo—founders like Sam Altman—who face risk head on, and who are focused—so totally—on making the world a better place.

Things can go wrong, and abuse happens, but the benefits of good founders far outweigh the risks of bad ones.”

And….

“OpenAI’s board members’ religion of ‘effective altruism’ and its misapplication could have set back the world’s path to the tremendous benefits of artificial intelligence.”

If the reports are right, effective altruism practitioners came within inches of destroying

•$90B in OpenAI value

•the future of AI

•and (arguably) the greatest tech startup ever

OAI board director Helen Toner and other believers in Effective Altruism share radically broken mental scaffolding.

An entrepreneurial business can’t be ethical
Ivory-tower non-profit elitists are ethical

Source WSJ

This thinking is ridiculous on its face.

Obviously people in all parts of society do legendary. And evil things.

In the western world academic/public/private partnerships often drive big breakthroughs.

The U.S. military creates Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). Then academia, engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs build the public Internet.

People from around the world study this interconnected ecosystem in Silicon Valley and work to replicate it.

Effective altruists shun this interdependent, entrepreneurial, self organizing approach to creating the future. They claim it is them (the people who are smarter and more righteous than the rest of us) who should decide what the future should be.

This academic “movement” is a bowel movement.

Effective Altruism poster boy Sam Bankman-Fraud.

It turns out, these bastards knew Sam Bankman-Fried was a criminal, years.

And did nothing.

“Leaders of the Effective Altruism movement were repeatedly warned beginning in 2018 that Sam Bankman-Fried was unethical, duplicitous, and negligent..”

“They apparently dismissed those warnings, sources say, before taking tens of millions of dollars from Bankman-Fried’s charitable fund for effective altruist causes.”

Oxford moral philosopher and ivory tower intellectual Will MacAskill is the co-founder of the Centre for Effective Altruism.

Moral philosopher.

“By the end of 2018, Bankman-Fried’s behavior was such an open secret that EA leaders were debating Bankman-Fried’s presence on the board of the Centre for Effective Altruism.”

Moral philosopher.

Will MacAskill is an Oxford Professor moral philosopher.

(you can’t make this shit up)

These superior twisted fucks turned out to be liars, cheats and robbers.

“Why did the braintrust of a social movement dedicated to virtuous impact apparently fail to heed repeated warnings about one of their own, while continuing to promote him publicly as a force for good? “

For a group of philosophers who had spent their lives contemplating moral tradeoffs and weighing existential risks, the warnings about Bankman-Fried may have presented a choice between embracing a big donor with questionable ethics or foregoing millions of dollars they believed could boost their nascent movement to help save the future of humanity.”

And then, there are these two.

Paragons of virtue.

Joseph Bankman (SBF’s father) is professor at Stanford Law School who has written extensively on legal ethics.

His work has focused on topics like ethics of insider trading, the role of lawyers in corporate governance, and the moral responsibility of law schools.

Barbara Fried (SBF’s mother) is a philosophy professor at Stanford University who has written on a wide range of ethical topics, including the ethics of war, the ethics of capitalism, and the ethics of artificial intelligence.

The corrupt evil fucks preached moral responsibility and ethics of capitalism at Stanford.

(read that three times)

Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried defend their son.

SBF is "a very thoughtful, ethical person" who is "always thinking about how he can use his resources to help others."

These people are smugly superior condescending evil elites.

Who peach ethics.

No one has ever been more full of shit.

💩

Effective Altruism to Defective Elitism.

The OAI board room coup has been positioned as do-gooders saving us from AI evil vs. the evil capitalists monetizing AI.

With the creation of AGI (artificial general intelligence) seeming to be in the headlights, this is a time for great care.

Broad discussion, debate and authentic dialogue. Between businesses, governments, academics and the public at large.

AI is a no joke, massive, breakthrough technology.

That has advanced a lot faster than (just about) anyone predicted.

We all need to be paying attention.

And, insinuating that well run, profit seeking entrepreneurial businesses are inferior stewards of ethics and Defective Elitists are superior is….

In a word.

Fuckin’ Nuts.

There is a purity in business.

Everyone in business knows what job one is.

This clarity of purpose is absent in government and academia.

And leaders like Mark Benioff, founder of Salesforce have shown how to build a legendary business and make a giant difference at the same time.

(Without creating a destructive elitist religion)

Now that Defective Elitists have been exposed, they are back peddling.

OpenAI CoFouner Ilya Sutskever

“One of the most prominent backers of the “effective altruism” movement at the heart of the ongoing turmoil at OpenAI, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, told Semafor he is now questioning the merits of running companies based on the philosophy.

“The OpenAI governance crisis highlights the fragility of voluntary EA-motivated governance schemes,” said Tallinn, who has poured millions into effective altruism-linked nonprofits and AI startups. “So the world should not rely on such governance working as intended.””

-Semafor

Now of course there must be radical transparency in AI (like we have for drug cos), collective involvement of business, government and academic worlds.

We also need extraordinary tough new laws and meaningful new material punishments for AI criminals.

And.

We must never forget.

The luddites are always wrong.

Imagine if Helen Toner & Ilya Sutskever won.

OpenAI would be gone.

Now think about China or Russia winning the AI race

🤔

"AI is a fundamental technology that will determine the future of society. - Vladimir Putin, 2019.

Don't kid yourself.

This is a real battle for the future of (not just of tech) humanity.

Who would do you trust.

Sam Altman, Greg Brockman & Satya Nadella, or Helen Toner & Ilya Sutskever?

“The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist.”

- The Usual Suspects

There is no way to know what’s truly in a person’s heart.

Maybe the Effective Altruists started in a good place. And they can’t see they’ve metastasized into Defective Elitists.

Or maybe they always had evil intent.

Regardless.

The facts on the ground are clear.

Defective Elitists destroyed $600B in crypto (FTX) and AI (OAI) value in one year. (thankfully OAI was saved)

Defective Elitists set the two biggest new mega tech categories back.

The Defective Elitists did that.

Those with a sworn mission to be ethical stewards of the future.

Fucked the future.

🤔

Now, before I take my leave.

I ask you to pay close attention.

There ~~might be~~ are Defective Elitists around you, your company, your university, and your government. Right now.

They will happily destroy valuable things with their “ethical” superiority.

Unless we all (you) stop them.

Shalom my Pirate friend,

Christopher Lochhead

😎 🏴☠️

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Public notice & Legal Warnings

All Different Newsletters contain nuts.

The creator of this Different Newsletter was likely consuming libations, is lucky enough to enough to have multiple learning differences, enjoys Mary Jane and Rock ‘n Roll, was thrown out of school at 18, does not possess a GED, has been fired more times than he can remember and can’t find his belt.

As a result, there are Different ideas and insights in here that can't be found elsewhere.

Lochhead is a member of “business writing band” Category Pirates with the legendary Eddie Yoon & Kartina Kirsch.

Many of the ideas (& some of the writing) are lifted directly from Category Pirates .

Lochhead’s work has been called “worthless” and “horrible” and The Economist calls him “off-putting to some”.

There are (random) strategically placed spelling, grammar and formatting mistakes in this newsletter.

If you believe that Q✶ is Qanon AI built by Qcoders at OpenAI to take over the deep state with antonymous LLMs that will run the government on their own, these purposeful mistakes are a secret code.

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There’s no stoppin’ the cretins from hoppin’

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Never forget.

In category after category, one companies earns 76% of the total value created.

Don’t compete in other people's markets. Category design your own.

If you're not enjoying this you might get a qweezy feeling in your belly if you consumed our books, paid newsletter, and/or podcasts.

Ps. Check out our new #1 Bestseller (in Marketing & Startups) “The 22 Laws of Category Design”