Annotations (18)
“Story works in 3 layers. One, there's the external mechanics of how the character interacts in the world, and you can substitute character for product. That's a requirement. And in the case of technology, it's technical. You got to have something that works. And then there are 2 more layers, which is a subjective layer of why is this series of events important to me and what does it mean to me personally? And then there is a philosophical layer.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
3 layers: external, personal, philosophical
“Raymond Loewy, the designer, had a similar rule around 80/20. The most tolerable element of new before it's rejected by the human mind is incomprehensible. With the idea of originality and creativity, there's a tension. Originality is highly prized and there's this belief that only the very new is truly novel. And with storytelling especially, but I even think in business or innovation, the new is really just the obvious uncovered through systematic trial and error over a certain period of time.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Creativity & Innovation · Psychology & Behavior · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
80% familiar, 20% new is maximum tolerable novelty
“All society is communication, and that because of its complexity, communication breaks down into buckets of specialty. It's in essence being a master communicator of an almost infinite amount of buckets and knowing to context switch between them and understanding the language games that each one of these buckets plays, but never forgetting the core principles underneath all this. Some of it is unspoken. I've observed, especially one person that I admire enormously, doing a massive turnaround.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior · Operations & Execution
DUR_ENDURING
Fixed philosophy, adaptive emotional framing per audience
“The questions are something like: How should the world be in a general sense? How do I believe the world should be? The good life? The second layer is why am I doing this? What is it about my specific story that maps back onto that? And the third is what are we doing about it?”— Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Leadership & Management · Philosophy & Reasoning · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
How world should be, why me, what now
“Don Rosenthal had this wonderful way of repeating back to you the absurdity of your beliefs. And laughing at them. So you would be laughing at these absurd constructs, that these stories that you've come up with and believe to be fundamentally true, mainly because you hadn't done the work of just saying, well, what do you really believe? Once you do that, it's your ultimate concern and it's your bedrock.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Expose absurd beliefs to find bedrock truth
“Robert Towne, who was a great screenwriter and wrote Chinatown, said this to me at lunch years ago when I was a young executive. He said, stories are either desires fulfilled or anxieties purged. And I think he's right. These are great minds who've made great films and it's never left me. I think it has to do with overcoming basic human condition.”— Robert Towne
Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning · Creativity & Innovation
DUR_ENDURING
Stories: desires fulfilled or anxieties purged
“Someone called me, hadn't heard from them in a while, and they said, we realized we've been selling to the wrong level. We have to sell to C-level as opposed to frontline manager level. And the sales pitch didn't work to the C-level. It was because they had not changed the framework, this objective personal philosophy. The C-level has a very different worldview of what's happening in company than the line manager. And we worked on it and it was like magic.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Business & Entrepreneurship · Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Match narrative to buyer's worldview
“Everyone believes this, I believe that. When this is steel-manned, this is really helpful. So this is on a global level about how the world works. And then you do the same for the personal as well. So you can do it for a customer, you can do it for a person you're selling to. How do they believe things should be done? And you juxtapose that with what you think should be done.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Strategy & Decision Making · Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Steelman their worldview then position yours
“Character in action through action. This is the great discovery of the pragmatists, which I think is a huge reason for why the American experiment has been so successful, is that people do a lot of doing happening. You cannot have a good narrative without an active character. There's no one that sits around and thinks their way through problems.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Action reveals subconscious, pragmatism wins
“Originality, I have this specific view I think very often successful people, when they do something great, somehow it was entirely original so as to aggrandize their achievement. And it's entirely possible that they felt that this was the case. I think very often it's much more derivative. And I think we should be much kinder to the notion of derivative. And I think we should understand perhaps that originality is just another form of derivation.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Creativity & Innovation · Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
Originality is derivative done differently
“Fear is present, but it's a fear of potential of all that could be. So you think fearing greatness is like the ultimate fear? I think fearing greatness, as long as we define greatness as a manifold of flourishing of life. So in all its forms, not just a great engineer or a great company builder. If we believe that storytelling is thousands of years of myth-making, that we have thoroughly enjoyed people realizing potential in the world, that there is an inner drive to reach one's potential.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Fear of greatness: potential too big to bear
“Doing the thing is so difficult and complex that the idea of having to frame this now on top of everything else in some sort of philosophical way is overwhelming and doesn't even seem necessary at times. Of course, it's always present and people just are not conscious of it. When the predicate understanding of what is actually happening is made conscious and is communicated in a way that doesn't quite name the thing, but is able to metaphorically describe it, it can be extremely inspiring becaus...”— Wolfgang Hammer
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
Conscious philosophy communicated metaphorically inspires deeply
“Story is character and action. Things don't happen to you. You act against obstacles. And as you do require knowledge, with knowledge comes power to then affect the outcome. It's also interesting to see that this is never done alone. There are always surrogates, people who give you knowledge and people who aid you in the quest, whatever the quest may be.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Leadership & Management · Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Agency plus knowledge equals power; never alone
“Money stores potentiality. The mind can imagine anything. So it's the ultimate story in some sense where both all your desires and fantasies can be fulfilled and all your anxieties can be purged to such a degree maybe that the money project is a denial of death project. The more you accrue of that, it allows itself to be imprinted with any vision that you want. The more you accrue of it, the more it gives the illusion that you're not going to have to leave your consciousness.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior · Economics & Markets
DUR_ENDURING
Money as stored potentiality, death denial
“I ran these mid-sized places. I think it has to do with being able to communicate in different worlds, which is actually quite difficult because you have to speak the language of filmmakers who live in their own world, and then you have to speak the language of corporate because there are reporting requirements, business requirements. You have to speak the language of marketing and sales. You're in these different worlds.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Leadership & Management · Operations & Execution · Business & Entrepreneurship
DUR_ENDURING
Leadership is translation between different worlds
“Someone has an ability to be a Greek hero, which means to live and espouse a worldview that is universally disliked. That's iconic. I'm really interested on this pure narrative level in what Elon Musk is doing because it's so unconcerned with the traditional hero trajectory. It's almost Greek. And this idea of breaking societal rules, if you will, that you get to some Platonic ideal that is worth more than acceptance.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Philosophy & Reasoning · Leadership & Management · Culture & Society
DUR_CONTEXTUAL
Greek hero: universally disliked worldview toward Platonic ideal
“I was at Stanford when the turnaround for Apple in its second inning. This was a man who had a philosophy, a personal worldview, and knew exactly what he was fighting against at all times, and then acted accordingly with unbelievable discipline and courage and created something that was a work of art in many ways. He literally wanted to make business art, and he kind of did.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Leadership & Management · Philosophy & Reasoning · Creativity & Innovation
DUR_ENDURING
Clear worldview plus disciplined action creates art
“All stories have in common the idea of resilience, that the character will overcome these obstacles and things are not working and there isn't enough knowledge and enough power to go where one must go or one has impelled or has been impelled to go and keep going anyways. This idea of resilience and to keep going anyways, even though the obstacles are getting enormous, inspires that begrudging admiration.”— Wolfgang Hammer
Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
Resilience despite growing obstacles is universal story core
Frameworks (1)
The Three-Layer Narrative Framework
External, Emotional, Philosophical
A structured approach to communicating any initiative (product, company, leadership decision) by addressing three essential layers: the external mechanics (what you're doing), the emotional layer (why it matters personally), and the philosophical layer (how your worldview differs from the dominant paradigm). The framework requires steel-manning the opposing worldview before positioning your own, creating both intellectual credibility and emotional resonance.
Components
- Define the External Layer
- Identify the Emotional Layer
- Articulate the Philosophical Layer
- Adapt Emotional Layer by Audience
Mental Models (2)
Inversion: Steel-Manning
Decision MakingThe practice of constructing the strongest possible version of an opposing argument before refuting it, rather than attacking a weak or simplified version (straw-manning). Steel-manning requires intellectual honesty and deep understanding of why reasonable people hold contrary views. It strengthens your own position by forcing you to address the best counterarguments, and it builds credibility with audiences who may initially disagree. The model applies to strategy (understanding true competitive threats), leadership (understanding why people resist your vision), and persuasion (winning over skeptics by showing you understand their legitimate concerns).
In Practice: Hammer explicitly uses 'steel-man' as a verb when describing how to articulate the philosophical layer of narrative positioning
Demonstrated by Leg-hf-001
Status Games: Matched Status
PsychologyThe principle that every interaction involves a status dynamic, and effective communication requires matching your status presentation to the other party. Overplaying your status (acting superior) generates resentment; underplaying your status (excessive deference) generates dismissal; matching status (peer-to-peer interaction based on mutual respect for each person's domain expertise) generates productive exchange. The model explains why certain people can 'ask for anything' while others struggle to gain traction. It applies to fundraising, negotiation, sales, and leadership communication. The challenge is accurate status perception: you must understand both your true status and the other party's perception of their status.
In Practice: Hammer tells story of British actor who learned that matching status gets results, while over- or under-playing status fails. Used in context of explaining why sales pitches must adapt to buyer hierarchy level.
Demonstrated by Leg-hf-001
Connective Tissue (2)
Kierkegaard phrase: humans are gods who shit
Kierkegaard formulation captures the fundamental human contradiction: beings capable of abstract thought yet trapped in mortal bodies.
Hammer references this phrase when discussing why all stories ultimately grapple with mortality
Greek tragic hero: espousing worldview that is universally disliked but pursuing Platonic ideal regardless
The Greek tragic hero archetype embodies the pattern of holding and acting on a worldview that runs counter to prevailing social norms.
Hammer uses Greek heroism to explain why certain leaders deliberately hold unpopular positions
Key Figures (4)
Steve Jobs
1 mentionsCo-founder and CEO of Apple
Raymond Loewy
1 mentionsIndustrial designer
Robert Towne
1 mentionsScreenwriter (Chinatown)
Don Rosenthal
1 mentionsMentor/Teacher
Glossary (4)
steelman
DOMAIN_JARGONTo construct the strongest possible version of an opposing argument before refuting it
“When this is steel-manned, this is really helpful.”
predicate understanding
DOMAIN_JARGONFoundational assumption or belief that underlies subsequent reasoning
“When the predicate understanding of what is actually happening is made conscious and is communicated in a way that doesn't quite name the thing.”
language games
DOMAIN_JARGONSystems of communication specific to particular contexts or domains; from Wittgenstein
“Understanding the language games that each one of these buckets plays, but never forgetting the core principles underneath all this.”
Platonic ideal
LITERARY_ALLUSIONPerfect, eternal form or concept that exists beyond physical reality; from Plato's theory of Forms
“This idea of breaking societal rules, if you will, that you get to some Platonic ideal that is worth more than acceptance.”
Key People (4)
Raymond Loewy
(1893–1986)French-American industrial designer who formulated 80/20 rule of tolerable novelty
Steve Jobs
(1955–2011)Co-founder of Apple who led company turnaround with philosophy-driven approach
Robert Towne
(1934–2024)Oscar-winning screenwriter of Chinatown; stories are desires fulfilled or anxieties purged
Don Rosenthal
Teacher who helped Hammer discover bedrock beliefs through reflecting back absurdity
Concepts (2)
Platonic ideal
CL_PHILOSOPHYPerfect, transcendent form or concept that exists beyond physical reality; pursuit of truth over social acceptance
Pragmatism
CL_PHILOSOPHYAmerican philosophical tradition emphasizing action and practical consequences as central to truth and meaning
Synthesis
Dominant Themes
- Narrative structure as universal framework for communication
- Three-layer approach to storytelling
- Counter-positioning as philosophical stance against dominant worldview
Unexpected Discoveries
- Money as stored potentiality and death-denial project
- Greek heroism as model for iconoclastic leadership
- 80/20 rule of tolerable novelty applies to business innovation
Cross-Source Questions
- How does Hammer's three-layer framework apply to Rockefeller's rebate system positioning?
Processing Notes
Exceptionally high-quality philosophical content on narrative, communication, and leadership.
Synthesis
Exceptionally high-quality philosophical content on narrative, communication, and leadership.