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For advice to work for everybody all the time, it would have to include so many caveats and exceptions that it would vastly exceed the giver’s bandwidth of expression as well as the receiver’s bandwidth of acquisition
So all advice-giving, and really, all communication, is a good-faith act of compression, with the hope that the receiver of the message will take the set of magic symbols and use it to generate a useful model of the world. All models are wrong, some are useful
The magic of art is the mysterious phenomenon of transcending bandwidth limitations in communication. A poet somehow manages to use a few words to convey the whole universe. She can do this because she has developed a deep understanding of herself, you, and the space between
Even then, the fact that any human can understand any other human, that we can communicate at all well enough to coordinate & function - is astounding. Some air pushed out the mouth and parsed through the ear, some squiggles on paper or pixel, and we **read each other’s minds** https://t.co/bwjEDhAjrZ
Of course, most people spend most of their time focused on the mistakes caused by lossy communication. When Prometheus stole fire from the Gods, the comments section was surely unimpressed. And they probably burned him at the stake for it, with the very fire that he provided 🔥
IMO our problem is less that “communication is lossy” and more that we *fail to appreciate* that communication is lossy. If we truly appreciated this, we would all give each other a lot more time and space to revise our statements. but we don’t, because https://t.co/hIeYVTuxX4
Going back to the poet - obviously no poet is *actually* omniscient. Rather, the creative process of trial and error allows her to occasionally stumble upon magic. All a creative can really do is get good at stumbling, recognise magic when it happens, and get out of the way
(In fact, believing that the resonance of your art makes you a superior class of human is probably the beginning of the end of joy and play in your creative work. It’s a trap! Beware) https://t.co/fVpqDXyLhX
1. Develop your taste 2. Produce a large volume of work, non-judgementally, with the intent of having fun and pursuing your curiosity rather than trying to be smart 3. Edit 2 based on 1 4. Congrats, now people think you’re smart 5. Don’t let 4 get to your head!! Repeat 1-2-3
Anyway so then the meta-advice about advice would have to be... examine the contexts. Of the advice giver, of the advice seeker, of the moment of exchange. Of everything. Once you understand contexts, you drop 80% of your senseless nitpicking, and ask 80% better questions
On #StrugglePorn https://t.co/No8K1yVmif
good conversation started here with Nat & Gary I'm not personally a fan of Gary's overall brand, but I appreciate his willingness to engage and listen I think part of the mess is– there's no generalizable advice that works for everyone; different people need different things https://t.co/yFJ8QAm3oq
Constant vigilance https://t.co/eygBYvdBOR
survivor bias https://t.co/MOB53OIV73
Speaking at conferences: should you do it? It depends https://t.co/psZt0BFJyH
@visakanv Related: https://t.co/GrmlYNohRg