And we invited the people who comment on Join—which uses the same design: no reply button, you can like, you can unlike, there’s two columns, one for the best supporting argument, one for the best contra argument—and then we invite the people who post the best of those two ideas to an in-person conversation. And it turned out they agreed far more than they disagreed. Because we showed them, on a matter-of-fact level, how much it would cost to impose such a time zone change, both one-time and recurring. And then we start brainstorming: If we’re about to spend this much money, are there better ways to achieve your common value? Turns out their common value is to let Taiwan be seen as more unique in the world. But forcing someone to change their clock… okay, I guess it’s somewhat unique, but it gets old very quickly.

Keyboard shortcuts

j previous speech k next speech