Just read an article on ribbonfarm called On Freedomspotting and I loved it- it set things clear for me. I would’ve taken a lot longer to visualise such insight through thought alone. So i steal thankfully from the minds and thoughts of others. Accelerated learning. I think it reveals the obvious value of reading identifiably good materials, on top of keeping one’s individual thoughts running. I was thinking about this while reading Adapt too, with concepts like Galapagos being used outside of biological evolution. You need solitude to develop your thoughts (which would otherwise get squashed by constant interruptions and conversations), yet you never know when a book or blogpost or conversation is going to give you a shortcut insight and save you significant time and energy.
But it’s important to pick the right materials. Reading paul graham and ribbonfarm (and conversations with the boss) makes me realise that most of what’s “out there” is full of shit. All talk. I was and still am a contributor to that steaming pile of turd, and I even started getting a little good at it, too… which is a troubling thought.
I return to one of my earliest assertions, when I was a teenage dirtbag. Most people are lame, stupid and full of shit. Here’s what I missed out on, and what I’ve realized between then and now: THAT INCLUDES ME. I was and still am full of shit, and arguably the main reason why the shittiness of others bothers me is that it subconsciously alerts me to my own. Nobody’s as good as you when it comes to bullshitting you. Sitting around talking about how shitty people are is itself a shitty thing to do, because it achieves nothing but pointless commiseration. It’s a waste of time and a weak attempt to gain points by pretending you don’t care about points.
Unfortunately almost all of us care about points, unless you’re that reclusive mathematician who won that million dollar prize and couldn’t be bothered to claim it- or you’re a solitary ascetic in the mountain with no intention of ever returning to human society. Even as I’m off Facebook a part of me thinks golly gee I can’t wait to get back on Facebook someday and tell everyone how awesome it was to be free from Facebook. So this trap is really hard to escape. Lots of attachment there. (dec2024: well I no longer think about Facebook, but I do think about Twitter. But now it feels like I’m starting to get tired of Twitter as well. It’s the circle of life…)
So… most people are full of shit and that includes me. I once had a thought at a tech conference that might be a little unpalatable- I don’t have the fuck-you money or authority or track record to say this, but I figure the people reading this know I’m not out to sensationalize anything. .. so here goes: most tech/startup journalism is shit, because if you care so much about startups and tech and do all that research and reading… why wouldn’t you simply start your own instead? It’s especially strange considering the nature of startups.
Writing like Paul Graham’s is “the simplicity on the other side of complexity”- he’s walked the walk, so he’s reasonably trustworthy (though there’s always the rewarded-by-randomness possibility). I guess my point is… a person working in a job spending time interviewing others about startups is kind of like seeing a fat journalist at a muscle/fitness convention, or worse, work for such a magazine. I wonder who the most unhealthy people are at men’s health magazine? I bet you some of them smoke. Who decides who’s an authority, anyway?
This isn’t an indictment on anybody, I’m an irresponsible and unreliable person myself and I graciously accept all the insults you might hurl at me. But if you’re thinking of taking time to do that, you should surely ask yourself- don’t you have better things to do than to occupy yourself with writing comments on the blog of someone you’ve realized is incompetent? I’m guilty of this, I get involved in discussions on reddit and tumblr sometimes (I’m off Facebook thankfully at last) and I feel like my opinion matters, like I could make a difference. And for the most part it doesnt. Or more accurately, for the most part, I could work on something that’s useful to many more people over an indefinite period of time (blog, or build/create something useful and lasting). Getting embroiled in petty arguments and discussions is rarely worth it if you know what you ought to be working on. (dec2024: I should link to something Introspect-related here.) This isn’t a new problem, I believe Newton talked about how frustrating it was to spend his time defending himself instead of doing more work. Ultimately there’s no right and wrong here, but I think we owe it to ourselves to identify what we ought to be doing- by our own measure- and do that.
Two things came together very nicely for me. Or three or more. In the book The User Illusion it is describes how Maxwell, the gut who unified electricity and magnetism, felt that it wasn’t him who did it- it was something greater than himself within him. Sportsmen often relate to this, when they perform magically they tend to say they didn’t think, they just did, they witnessed themselves being magical. When they fuck up, it’s the opposite- they had too much time to think. A concert pianist wanted to outlaw applause because he felt he didn’t deserve it- he was never there when performing, he was only there before and after the performance. Church musicians tend to say “god was using me” or some variant. A few days ago I participated in a discussion on reddit and someone responded to me saying he felt like there was something holding him back from something greater… and it was him. He suppressed that which was greater than himself within him.
I think both me and my wife and millions of procrastinators around the world relate to this. I’m not sure what to do if you genuinely think you’re worthless (well- first of all you’re not, second of all go for a walk with a bottle of water even if you don’t want to, then read some books and try things… maybe that won’t work, but you should really try it). But I’m more interested in people who KNOW that they have something inside them to share with the world, but they aren’t doing it nearly as much as they ought to.
okay, i’m at work and i’ve crossed 1k words so seeya maybe on the train ride home