Tuesday Night Thoughts
/** Been busy with a few things but sharing some casual thoughts below. Am still very behind.
Sam Altman’s writeup on “How To Be Successful” (here) has been reposted a few times on Twitter. Very few articles warrant a re-read every so often because like good books, they keep on giving, and I think this is one of them. And of course, my second post I made down below is a top 5 Youtube video for good reason.
Double-clicking on this…
What careers are like this? Ones that you should avoid or that, in a sense, are anti-compounding?
/ Enjoyed reading this substack post here from ansonyuu, twtr here, very original and unique post that compiles a few thoughts about what makes people “magnets.”
I’d say I know about 4 people (within 5 seconds of thinking) that share essentially no commonalities on the surface yet are effectively “people magnets” and have been for multiple years. It is more than just “vibes,” almost like something in the ether that they have this energy.
You could say they lean more extroverted, sure, but it isn’t a strict criterion I’d say, since I’d classify one of the individuals as an ambivert, and they would agree, but they still have that magnetic field around them. In fact, now that I think about it, one of them actually leans to be more introverted, and they’d say they are introverted (I’d guess 50% would say they are intro-, 50% would say they are ambiverts), yet they still have this energy. But this is more rare, I think?
/ Let’s talk about feelings.
Along the same lines as this tweet here from Twitter user startingfromnix (profile here).
I was watching a few Youtube reels (I know) and after a few clips I thought to myself…
“It is difficult but important as we grow from children to adults to cultivate the ability to be happy for others.”
…which is in the same arena as envy, jealousy, spite, feeling superior/inferior, and other similar emotions.
A good thought experiment I messed around with a bit is to take an acquaintance you may have, and let’s say they are the same age that you are. Better if they have lived a similar life to you (very generally as in maybe the same ethnicity/culture, same geographic location). Then, go through the different scenarios where something happens to that specific person and how you’d imagine you would feel about it but allow yourself to feel brutally honest about that. It’s fine to feel the whole spectrum of emotions. You are allowed to think and feel the entire spectrum of thoughts and feelings when you are alone because there is no external judgment or validation or criticism…it really is a space and place for you to just think.
For example, I wouldn’t be reaching “out of bounds” to say that everyone HAS felt some degree of jealousy/envy, especially as kids.
Someone else has a toy, you want the toy, they won’t let you have it. Uh oh.
Many people continue to feel this to varying degrees their entire lives. Some life-hack it and really minimize this feeling (through a number of different things which is a whole other discussion that I actually believe is extremely valuable but need to be discussed in a different context), but it isn’t an unfamiliar feeling. The point I’m making is that it is a difficult but important self-exercise to think about how you truly feel about other people and I’d hope one would be motivated to lean more optimistically as much as possible.
This has something to do with your current situation, of course, which cannot be discounted. But it is still a worthy exercise regardless of what shoes you are currently in.
/ The more I read the more I realize a lot of insights/thoughts/advice/axiom-like statements are commonly recycled and rephrased. It’s like a set of key truths have been discovered decades+ ago and people learn/realize them over time (through reading, experience, both…).
One takeaway: original content (OC) is rare. I think.
A similar thought process is in a system, what % of public information is actively known (if you ask people about it they will say they know/remember it), internalized (generally understood), and applied (implemented into day-to-day).
If this system is efficient, one can assume all public information is known, internalized, and applied. This is very rare?
So more likely, in an inefficient system, you’d have:
- some % of information being known and some % of information not known…
- with a smaller subset having internalized this in the “right” way (for example, let us say there is a right way to interpret it)…
- and the smallest subset having applied it (but we can assume there are multiple ways to implement the same level and “quality” of understanding).
This inefficiency/chaos means that there will be an unlimited supply of mistakes, non-obvious and non-trivial conclusions, and plenty of opportunity. This is meant to be a vague and abstract thought.
This is along the same vein of asking the question “what is already arbitraged (arb’d) away”, or what edge/valuable information has already been discovered/known and implemented into the system, or in other words, what “edge” has been competed away.
If you are the only 1 of 10 100m runners who discovered that tying your shoelaces in a special way makes you run faster…over some time that edge will be recognized and copied and by definition no longer be an “edge”. It’s been competed away or “arb’d” away.
The takeaway here is for me, recognizing that
a) discovery of novel and valuable axioms is not common
b) edge is constantly being competed away
c) inefficiency —> opportunity?
tl;dr:
1. What careers don’t have compounding (i.e., someone w/2 yrs exp. can be as good as someone w/20 yrs exp)?
2. Constantly thinking of how/why some people are organically “people magnets”
(hint: I don’t think it is just high extroversion and sociability)
3. How people learn how to be happy for other people?
4. Ideal efficient systems vs. real inefficient systems.
Cheers,
Vish
Published on May 2, 2023.