New study offers clues about what makes someone cool

The first rule of cool is don't care about cool. The second (for experts) is that you can care if you don't show it. The third is that you can read research about cool and yet not care (God level cool)

That said, I think coolness research can help uncool people fight uncool shit like this

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44478115

well, you said "minimal", so not strictly empty right? ;)

"""

But Bezos was dissatisfied with that simplistic conclusion and applied his usual analytical sensibility to parse out why some companies were loved and others feared.

Rudeness is not cool. Defeating tiny guys is not cool. Close-following is not cool. Young is cool. Risk taking is cool. Winning is cool. Polite is cool. Defeating bigger, unsympathetic guys is cool. Inventing is cool. Explorers are cool. Conquerors are not cool. Obsessing over competitors is not cool. Empowering others is cool. Capturing all the value only for the company is not cool. Leadership is cool. Conviction is cool. Straightforwardness is cool. Pandering to the crowd is not cool. Hypocrisy is not cool. Authenticity is cool. Thinking big is cool. The unexpected is cool. Missionaries are cool. Mercenaries are not cool.

On an attached spreadsheet, Bezos listed seventeen attributes, including polite, reliable, risk taking, and thinks big, and he ranked a dozen companies on each particular characteristic. His methodology was highly subjective, he conceded, but his conclusions, laid out at the end of the Amazon.love memo were aimed at increasing Amazon's odds of standing out among the loved companies. Being polite and reliable or customer-obsessed was not sufficient. Being perceived as inventive, as an explorer rather than a conqueror, was critically important. "I actually believe the four 'unloved' companies are inventive as a matter of substance. But they are not perceived as inventors and pioneers. It is not enough to be inventive-that pioneering spirit must also come across and be perceivable by the customer base," he wrote.

"I propose that one outcome from this offsite could be to assign a more thorough analysis of this topic to a thoughtful VP," Bezos concluded. "We may be able to find actionable tasks that will increase our odds of being a stand out in that first group of companies. Sounds worthy to me!"

"""

from B. Stone. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. Little, Brown & Co., 2013.

Cool cannot be described or quantified, so they're just milking some funders for sweet, sweet grants.

According to my experience, cool people put in an absolutely inordinate amount of research, time and effort in order to appear as if they don't even have to try.

Case study clip from The Young Pope

("Hyperbole in reverse")

https://youtu.be/hY8C3cIMR4o

This makes a ton of evolutionary sense. Success begets success. Those that don't need outside help are successful; those that cooperate and build on it are more successful. Unfortunately, it also leads to local maxima- those that are good at gathering from neighbors and happen to have good neighbors reach highest success, regardless of their own intrinsic ability.

Neither "Attempt to split success equally so everyone gets the same results" nor "Give all the resources to those that have the most" are good ways to run a society, or good long term evolutionary strategies.

Guardian, fact-checking the paper with known cool people, suggests that they missed a key trait: "low-key"

https://archive.fo/cmP3O

(I disagree with their lists at the end of their article tho ;)

Subtract hedonistic and powerful.

I would say that adventurous, open and autonomous are three qualities that make a person interesting, as opposed to boring. They likely have entertaining stories and an approach to life that repels dullness.

And extroversion, though it doesn't have much bearing on being interesting, makes it a little more likely that I'd encounter them and get to know the three other qualities.

I noticed there's no word such as smart, bright, clever or wise mentioned in the sentence above.

Just an observation, nothing else.

This is 100% something Martin Prince or Professor Frink (or both) would study

Scientifically analyzing a phenomenon to break down its underlying principles and optimize it is a sign of capability, the one attribute found to be equally cool and good. And can be quite cool in some contexts.

I think the term for this would be "poser", the not cool sub segment of the cool kids.

Smelling like cancerous ass is not cool though

dry humor had to be invented to beat The Rock

That's a strange comparison! I guess this is where the ultimate caricature of cool comes from, though: Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll -> Hedonistic, powerful and adventurous. Crank those up enough, and you end up with a trashed hotel room or maybe a drumstick up someone's butt.

This seems predicated on a false dichotomy of "cool" and "good" -- surely some are both.