I’ve been sharing this set of notes more and more as time goes by. I suppose you could say most people care too much about what most people think. I don’t expect to be able to change most people’s minds on this. But I’m interested in getting to know the people who really manage to understand this dynamic, and more importantly, unshackle themselves from it. The unshackling requires courage more than it requires intelligence.
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Moses Maimonides, The Guide For The Perplexed, published ~1190: “When I have a difficult subject before me – when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools – I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude; I prefer to extricate that intelligent man from his embarrassment and show him the cause of his perplexity, so that he may attain perfection and be at peace.”
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Les Brown: “Most people have done all that they’re ever going to do. They raise a family, they earn a living and then they die. Most people don’t work on their dreams; why? One is because of fear — the fear of failure. What if things don’t work out? And the fear of success: What if they do and I can’t handle it? Most people get comfortable. They stop growing, they stop working on themselves, they stop stretching. They stop pushing themselves and they end up becoming very cynical about life and they throw in the towel on themselves, on their families and on their dreams.”
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Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
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Periodic reminder (more for myself than for you) that I write for 0.1% outliers in optimism, thoughtfulness, creativity, kindness, competence, ambition, drive, curiosity. All are welcome to read and hang out, but I won’t dilute my writing trying to be “more accessible”.
A recurring class of feedback I get from people is along the lines of “what you’re talking about doesn’t work in most cases, for most people, etc”. this is correct. I am not interested in most people. I assume the people who follow me are exceptional, A-tier, friendly ambitious nerds, and I write for them.
I don’t encounter Devil’s Advocates very often (good filters) but I do often encounter Most People’s Advocates, where people say “oh but Most People won’t be able to do this”. And I have to be like, yeah, I don’t write for Most People.
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A thing that my ex-boss tried to teach me (and he was very skilful about it, over 100s of conversations over 5+ years) was the idea that you should focus on whatever is best, whatever is most important, and not worry about what “Most People” think.
I actually resisted this for a long time. As a writer, shouldn’t I care about the bulk of my audience? But I slowly flipped even on this. I’ve come to believe that you should make your writing clear and accessible, yes, but then you should focus on persuading the smartest, most thoughtful people there are.
You’d particularly want to persuade people who think very clearly for themselves. not by being persuasive with rhetoric (it wouldn’t work much on them anyway) but by being correct, and rigorously so.
“Most People” is a chaotic entity in a kind of recursive loop. It doesn’t even really know itself, or what it wants. It flits, and fluctuates, and you can’t depend on it. You can only do what you think is right, and brace yourself when the megamind comes for you.
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”Most companies wouldn’t… most women are like this… most men are like that…”
Who cares? You’re not going to work for Most companies. you not going to marry Most People. Find the most exceptional fit for you that you can find. Most People (ha!) search too little and give up too easily.
You can never get “Most People”’s attention at random. But you can get a very specific person’s attention if you have a very specific solution to his very specific problem. Once you have one person’s attention, you can get another’s. Sic parvis magna. Greatness from small beginnings.
Raise your standards. Aspire to greatness. Don’t just try to impress the average of your friends, strive to impress God himself. Seek the company of immortals. (Yes, this isn’t for everyone, but again, I’m not writing for everyone. I update blogposts like this one every time I find it necessary to share it with someone. Someone tweeted at me that it’s irresponsible to talk about cultivating genius in the public sphere, because self-absorbed, ego-stroking non-geniuses might read it and then use it to justify their own bullshit. Look, people who are looking to justify their own bullshit will always find a way to do so.)
Most People will never know who you are. The correct response to “Most People”, in aggregate, as a concept, is to face them with the same indifference they give you- and then focus hard on serving the minority of excellent people that you want in your life.
If you’re John Lennon, you don’t want to impress Most People. You want to impress Paul McCartney.
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People who care about truth are always shocked to discover over and over again that Most People don’t care.
“how can you go about your day every day not knowing what THE TRUTH is?”
“idk man i just wake up and go to work and stuff, I got a lot on my plate at the moment, idk why you’re so annoying about this”
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Saw someone argue that Most People don’t know how to use their free time well and so Most People are well served by mainstream/conventional working hours.
I never quite know where to begin when addressing other people’s terminally low standards. I shouldn’t, I think. I should continue to focus my time and energy on the minority of people who dare to dream of better things.
Broadly I believe that the best way to persuade a large group of people of something is to start with yourself, and then persuade a tiny group of excellent people to achieve massive success. Then, suddenly, everybody else is interested. To paraphrase Margaret Mead, it’s the only thing that’s ever worked.
“Most people don’t care about personal computers, guitar music, bwooong sounds in movies, rap as an artistic medium” – Fuck most people! Find the exceptions! Build scenes. Invent the future.
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Most People ignore most of what Most People say.
This is sensible: Most People aren’t very serious about most of what they say. so most things most people say is noise.
You can cut through this noise by picking your talking points thoughtfully, then repeating them iteratively for 10 years.
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Generally speaking Most People live about 50 years in the past. William Gibson: “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
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Most People’s utterances are inert, society is built on polite fictions and little lies and misdirection. if you are precise about meaning exactly what you say, your utterances accumulate power. every day I hear from people who feel powerless you can accumulate power by being very precise with your thoughts. precise thoughts creates knowledge, which is power.
You will endure some amount of weird looks for being careful to mean exactly what you say. But a few weird looks here and there are a small price to pay to avoid 99% of the absolute bunglesome social fuckery that Most People walk right into.
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Here’s part of my understanding of how the world works, and it’s actually quite “fair” & “right” if you think about it:
1. there’s a lot of noise from a lot of people starting things
2. Most People ignore most noise from most newly-started things
3. the rewards show up at 10 yrs
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why is competence rare? my theory: status regulation → social homeostasis. Unless you’re lucky enough to be born/chance into circumstances where competence is encouraged, or truly seek it, for most people, developing real competence is antisocial
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The trick to *incredibly* hot sex with your spouse is to be radically honest with them emotionally. Most people are cowards and don’t dare go the distance with this. The fear of being disliked, of upsetting others, of being judged by others, etc continues to trap people in social stasis.
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it’s a painful truth that most people won’t care until you teach them + show them how to care. this is part of the struggle of anybody who makes things. Some people do inherit networks and conditions that make it easier for them but it’s still always a struggle
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Most people compartmentalize, it’s pretty normal and human. Seeking integration across the spheres of your life is something uncommon, and to lots of people it will seem outright alien and antisocial.
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the tragedy is that most people don’t even learn to appreciate anything interesting about math
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most people aren’t really going to notice or care until it becomes necessary, and often only when it’s too late
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I used to think people were that ignorant because they didn’t know better, but lately I’ve begun to suspect that most people choose ignorance because it’s what they actually prefer. I remain optimistic about a minority of people, but I do wonder if ignorance and incompetence might be a sort of shield for lots of people. Knowledge is power, and with great power comes great responsibility. So with ignorance comes less responsibility.
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(original thread) it’s sort of recursive how loads of people really struggle with the idea that someone might be focused on a precise outcome that’s only interesting to a few. over the years I’ve increasingly bumped into something I’m tempted to call the tyranny of mass appeal/approval.
in marriage for eg you only need one person to be into you. one person out of billions. that person could be the most extreme outlier, the most deviant, the most inexplicable. you could still have a deliriously joyous life together while being incomprehensible to everyone else
“surely you want to sell more product? surely you want a larger audience? surely you want more $$$? surely you want to be more beautiful, more attractive, more fuckable to the masses?” I’m not so sure! we don’t have to go along with this. we really don’t. not unquestioningly
I’m still not quite addressing what I perceive to be the core driving anxiety about this, which is something like, “it will be bad if someone expresses disapproval, disgust, confusion, dislike of me. my whole day will be ruined. fuck”
and the interesting sort of paradox or tension is, anybody who actually does become successful along any of the popular dimensions (has a large audience or whatever) *necessarily* has to encounter that much more disapproval and dislike etc. with 10x popularity comes ~40x haters
so like, many people are all twisted up because they inherit this default where they’re supposed to want something, in pursuit of The Good Thing, hoping to avoid The Bad Thing. But some part of them knows you actually get More Bad Thing…
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tbc this is a ongoing set of notes, may some day coalesce into a proper essay