Joe Edelman (@edelwax), philosopher, social scientist, designer, and founder of Human Systems, joins Erik on this episode.

They discuss:

- Why the internet didn’t achieve its promise of connecting people on a deeper level.

- Why we’ve become very good at shopping and networking around goals and preferences but not around values, and how this manifests in the differences between Couchsurfing and Airbnb.

- Why he says that philosophers and micro-economists have the best ability to figure out how people make choices, and why their approach is better than that of psychology or neuroscience.

- How a “meaning economy” or “wisdom economy” could work.

- His explanation for what values mean to him, and how his have changed over time.

- How he would change Twitter, Facebook, and Tinder, if he was in charge of product at those companies.

- Why people who break down all their decisions in complicated spreadsheets are fooling themselves into thinking they’ve made a better decision.

- How metrics and values interact, and how to think about metrics in your personal life.

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Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.