Probability Vs Possibility Quotes

My mom is all about risk vs. reward. So for example, if I were to go out on a date and have unprotected sex, the risk/reward would be possible STD for me vs. possible grandchild for her. Duh! Bring on the grandchildren!


At this point I feel I would be remiss to not mention the prevalence of a specific kind of person who enters the field of book publishing. This is the English lit major who never should have left academia, a genius who has read all of V.S. Naipaul but can’t photocopy title pages right side up. This person is very thin, possibly vegan, probably Ivy League. He or she feels as if answering the phone in a chipper voice is a form of legalized prostitution. He or she has a single quirky fashion piece, usually red or black, and waxes poetic about typewriters and the British, having never truly known either. Regardless of sex, they all want to be David Foster Wallace when they grow up.

The Spotlight Framework 1. User Experience Issues ​● ​ How do I ...? ​● ​ What happens when ...? ​● ​ I tried to … 2. Product Marketing Issues ​● ​ Can you/I ...? ​● ​ How do you compare to ...? ​● ​ How are you different than ...? ​● ​ Why should I use you for/to ...? 3. Positioning Issues ​● ​ I'm probably not your target customer … ​● ​ I'm sure I'm wrong but I thought ... Using this framework, we can see that a question like “How do I integrate this with Trello?” fits into the user experience category. Because clearly the customer already knows that the integration is possible. It’s not a discoverability thing. They’re not asking if it’s possible, they know that it’s possible, they expect that it’s possible, but they just don’t know how to get it done. In contrast, customers could be asking, “Hey, can you guys integrate with Trello?” or “Can I integrate this part of your app with Trello?” Once again, the important part to focus on here is not the Trello part, it’s the “Can you ...?” or “Can I ...?” And what that tells you is that you have some level of product marketing issue. Because if you can integrate with Trello, the fact they’re asking you that and that they don’t know means that they weren’t educated properly along some part of the sign-up or getting-started path. (It could’ve been a features page on the website where it wasn’t clear, or it could be that you need to do a better job of calling it out inside of the product.) So that’s how I think about user experience issues vs. product marketing issues. But there’s also a third category in my framework: Positioning. Positioning issues are when someone gives you feedback, and they’re usually trying to be nice, and they’ll say something like, “I’m probably not your target customer, but ...” Now, if you know that person is your target customer, there’s probably something wrong in your positioning that’s leading them to believe they’re not a good fit.

The choice is not laissez-faire vs. the status quo, because we cannot possibly keep the status quo anyway. Tremendous socioeconomic forces, set in motion long ago by governmental plundering and power-grabbing, are sweeping the present order out from under our feet. We can only choose whether we will allow ourselves to be pushed into economic chaos and political tyranny or whether we will resist the bureaucratic tyrants and looters and work to set up a free society where each man can live his own life and “do his own thing.” Whichever we choose, the road ahead will probably be rough; but the important question is, “What kind of society do we want to arrive at in the end?