🧵 View Thread
🧵 Thread (34 tweets)
previously on askyatharth https://t.co/G59ZfqGdvO
was thinking about this last night feels like ive always coasted (even though i was type A and worked very hard). somehow feels like ive never done anything truly difficult (even though others would look at me and say i did) is this relatable? https://t.co/Tk3Ut7qERi
was thinking about this last night @natural_hazard does parkour, etc. what thing have i spent the time to consistently develop skill at? feels in a way like nothing i tell employers and clients i have lots of skills, and i do; none of it really feels skillful
did i ever develop taste? https://t.co/nHHVDHTTvW
but what he ends up producing gets micro-calibrated to what other people think is good so he’s stuck floundering, without a sense of the real https://t.co/eDN1Nk4JTv
hey does that sound like me https://t.co/nHHVDHTTvW
i was thinking about this last night: the coolest thing it felt like i had done, perhaps the only cool thing i had done, was leave university and fly to south africa. on a somewhat epic 2-year hiatus that turned out to be a ride that decision felt like me. it felt like me
@vgr made this somewhat cryptic tweet that’s been making a home inside my head maybe all this is what he means https://t.co/baB4OmD47a
If you don’t switch to hard mode by 35, life switches to impossible mode for you by 45. Middle-class privilege + mediocre intelligence + decent strategic thinking = incentives are heavily loaded in favor of getting addicted to playing in easy mode by like 19
"excellence" is a vgr term. it means perfectly being able to give the system what it's looking for (e.g. perfect startup founder to invest in. perfect scores) "mediocre" is just barely surviving or barely being able to make the system work for you
easy mode is coasting on the system with excellence it might be hard work, but in a way, the system streamlines the path for you. like catching a jet stream hard mode is making the system work for you it's paddling & creating value systems that don’t necessarily exist
but like authenticity, you have to be true before you can be a bit usefully fake you have to be bad at giving the system what it wants before you can usefully use it https://t.co/roEL61Z2Bw
hard mode is not giving the system what it wants (and accepting the generous rewards!!), but getting what you want from the system https://t.co/Vwcf3aNJaU
for that, as i think @natural_hazard has been pointing to in a lot of his threads, one can start cultivating taste https://t.co/pX5jOVMs2f
its developing a new sense organ a different way of cutting through the world than what other people think vs being hyper-attuned to other people’s image https://t.co/ELHcfs178L
The ability to want/value/care/like is an ability that needs to be practiced and developed. I think of Taste as developing a sensitivity to your own experience of the world. A literal sense organ that thru attention and practice you can increase the resolution of
all this also explains why i resonated so much with narcissism https://t.co/o8xRZFMOqu
Now you live in a narcissistic hellscape where it is literally the case that image (i.e what other people decide to praise you for) is the only thing you can care about. I think a key piece of fighting this is @visakanv "cultivate taste" https://t.co/2aqvVw3wcx
so in the end, maybe that’s where a lot of non-coercion comes from https://t.co/E6k1FzBjim
right, so a big part of "non-coercion" for me was trying to figure out what there even was inside me that could push/pull/power/move me in some direction i realized at some point i *couldn't* FEEL what i wanted, it freaked me the fuck out https://t.co/WC0SrBrjZi
getting my voices to sound louder like a quiet crackle taking to a fire https://t.co/Wi6CXD9Pyc https://t.co/XcQUWyggCP
you heard it, run free and explore pathologies https://t.co/q2sFpp8AUj
interesting connection between the s. africa thing and the follow your pathologies advice i came up with a similar version of it, while retrospecting on the gap year decision and figuring out why it worked and how it might guide future decisions https://t.co/p9vXyDi3VA
“overtrain” as a verb https://t.co/uJ4E4xe5GO
@AskYatharth children have taste, they know what they want. this is where all the riffs of “genius is just allowing your childself to survive intact into adulthood” come from. the problem is that people get inside their own heads, internalize social bullshit from others https://t.co/OAvUZWT8Zl
@AskYatharth https://t.co/3nRWastkFU
“By middle/high school, the average student has learned how normal people talk. The resulting language is underwhelming and predictable - the safe regurgitations of a thoroughly socialized consciousness.” https://t.co/5evo3vYThl https://t.co/qfpwv2A94k
