hey i really loved this article! thanks for sharing - definitely relate to the sentiment of struggling to feel like anything is novel anymore after getting into a groove of life. however there's always adventure to be found in the nuances of the boring, and that's what i'm striving towards. anyway, appreciate the thoughts!
fwiw - i have these same thoughts and i live in nyc. i will say the diversity of human you find in new york is crazy. and if you think further, beyond the death exterior, you will find very intriguing and fascinating individuals, with some concerted effort :)
thanks for article. this "death" is a good thing to notice maybe. i found that i did like the intention behind this but i did find that it was a bit...off wrt how i think that i approach my own life, particularly this quote:
> it quickly became apparent that i was not encountering new ideas at a rate fast enough to sustain the kind of work i wanted to do; i needed to consume more and consume better.
i think that its cool to look outward, to explore, to try, to see, to share, to react, to listen. there is so so so much that is out there that it makes sense to do this, and to vary it and do it consistently. but i think that this is actually potentially pernicious. i think that there is an important part about being a human (at least ime) that is about looking inwards. this may be taken in a way that i may not intend, so hear me out and let me elaborate first. i think that looking inwards is not about shutting out the outside world. no, its rather about noticing how the interface one has with the external world is an interface that feeds inputs into a part of the system that is me, this human body that is colocated with my emotions, feelings, and thoughts. when i say that people should look inward, i mean to say that i think that its important to notice how one is, to see what you are feeding your body/brain/"soul" with these inputs (eg scifi, hci arxiv, public transport, and other things like thoughts about yourself) and notice *what* it does to your body/brain/soul. i think that this is easy to overlook and seems potentially trivial. but id like to urge you to not just seek without but also to seek within. i think its potentially easy to get lost when you dont know yourself. searching for more and more and more externally...well, that's one way to get new things...but what happens when its hard to generate a new thing to try? what if you're just tired of it? these are also valid experiences, and they can be better or worse depending on what's going on inside the brain/body/soul. i wish you the best and hope that your explorations yield many good things :)
for me, i think that looking inward can take many forms and that perhaps there are ways to do it that are a bit different from how you may have done this prior. not to say you are wrong or that you didnt do it right, just that this was my experience and that "looking inward" is a very broad range of things that includes not just reflecting or even thinking
upon some reflection and random experiences i realize that i may have been a bit single-minded (and therefore grating/quite disagreeable). i think that there is definitely a good, dynamic balance of internal and external exploration that probably should happen for Good Things to follow, and honestly i am still figuring out how to do this mix myself. i think that my thoughts were based on how i hadn't treated myself in the past as i would treat myself now, and being ignorant of that for the years prior brought unnecessary(?) suffering i think...all to say that i hadn't done much of the "right"/"better" inner exploration that i did eventually gain value from. i am still "figuring 'it' out" as they say, but stasis/"silent death"/etc seems likely to happen without a "healthy" mix of both internal and external Things. anyways, best and godspeed
so true vincent!! i feel the same about ideas. i've found my fiction suffers when i don't have a vibrant reading practice -- i feel like creativity actually springs from difference / disagreement. so exposing yourself to fiction, philosophy, and social theory when you're not writing inside an institution offers more surface area for that disagreement and therefore new ideas. fwiw it's pretty easy to sink into a "death" grove in nyc, as it is anywhere
do you not recall the last time you genuinely changed your mind about something? » i was not describing myself in that paragraph (hence the 2nd person usage) :P
how do you not have an endless list of ideas » maybe this wasn't clear enough - there was a specific kind of writing tool i wanted to build and then when i actually sat down to start building it i realized i didn't actually have novel ideas. the idea list is long in other domains
i think the mode collapse analogy fits pretty well here, though it also suggests the problem is not just in choosing diverse sources.
as you know, traditionally in GANs the generator finds a way to cheat reward in the discriminator and is incentivized to produce more and more of the same thing. which means if we want to avoid death spirals what may be more important than injecting noise (via sci fi or bus rides) is what the audience/project/your values ultimately filters for! and this might be even harder to architect because we tend to attract the same features in people (especially writing on the internet), and society rewards us to work on projects we're already good at.
so moving to ny as you said could really help break out of convergence not mainly because of different ideas (i think there's lots of perspectives anywhere you go) but because the people there [worship different metrics from sf](https://paulgraham.com/cities.html)
btw your writing is actually what’s helped increase the variance in my media diet so thanks haha
both bc i used to just consume technical novelty maxxing mainstream content like 3b1b, ged, dwarkesh podcast, textbooks/knzhou handouts, etc
not much self reflections or meta-level life things
ur substack was among the first in introduction to network of these personal corners of internet like andrewwu and nate soares and cj that have unearthed background processes in my behavior i can monitor now! instead of spending years unknowingly enslaved to (ur recent Box metaphor comes to mind)
ig just general better awareness; very helpful :)
EDIT: yay i found it; https://andrewwu.substack.com/p/six-selections-on-self-defense this one's another interesting example. especially the ideas on identity and (math) communities and considering rationality/ea as memes were so fundamental i almost automatically take them as assumptions atp
i fear i can't pass up the chance to prosletyze for nyc a lil -- one of my favorite things about my [very specific] life here is that i feel like i'm letting things in and letting things go at a comfortable, but considerable rate. ofc nyc is not the only place where you can do this though
I agree that it's really easy to fall into closed loops during adult life — I also realized that I was only talking to the same people for weeks at a time. But I think trying new things is a good way to combat that. It doesn't even have to be big things, like you mentioned taking the bus allowed you to enter a more vibrant state. Even just walking a different path home or trying the new cafe that opened a couple blocks down is enough. You never know what could happen :^)
While i share the sentiment of not wanting to stay immersed in one culture / city during my 20s, and it *feels* unhealthy to me, i can’t imagine this is actually the case. There are definitely ways to thrive without ever leaving a city
hey i really loved this article! thanks for sharing - definitely relate to the sentiment of struggling to feel like anything is novel anymore after getting into a groove of life. however there's always adventure to be found in the nuances of the boring, and that's what i'm striving towards. anyway, appreciate the thoughts!
fwiw - i have these same thoughts and i live in nyc. i will say the diversity of human you find in new york is crazy. and if you think further, beyond the death exterior, you will find very intriguing and fascinating individuals, with some concerted effort :)
yep, i agree!
thanks for article. this "death" is a good thing to notice maybe. i found that i did like the intention behind this but i did find that it was a bit...off wrt how i think that i approach my own life, particularly this quote:
> it quickly became apparent that i was not encountering new ideas at a rate fast enough to sustain the kind of work i wanted to do; i needed to consume more and consume better.
i think that its cool to look outward, to explore, to try, to see, to share, to react, to listen. there is so so so much that is out there that it makes sense to do this, and to vary it and do it consistently. but i think that this is actually potentially pernicious. i think that there is an important part about being a human (at least ime) that is about looking inwards. this may be taken in a way that i may not intend, so hear me out and let me elaborate first. i think that looking inwards is not about shutting out the outside world. no, its rather about noticing how the interface one has with the external world is an interface that feeds inputs into a part of the system that is me, this human body that is colocated with my emotions, feelings, and thoughts. when i say that people should look inward, i mean to say that i think that its important to notice how one is, to see what you are feeding your body/brain/"soul" with these inputs (eg scifi, hci arxiv, public transport, and other things like thoughts about yourself) and notice *what* it does to your body/brain/soul. i think that this is easy to overlook and seems potentially trivial. but id like to urge you to not just seek without but also to seek within. i think its potentially easy to get lost when you dont know yourself. searching for more and more and more externally...well, that's one way to get new things...but what happens when its hard to generate a new thing to try? what if you're just tired of it? these are also valid experiences, and they can be better or worse depending on what's going on inside the brain/body/soul. i wish you the best and hope that your explorations yield many good things :)
this makes a lot of sense!
i do think that historically i spend too much time looking inwards, which is why the thing i wrote makes sense for me, but yes i agree
fair enough. glad that you are trying new things!
for me, i think that looking inward can take many forms and that perhaps there are ways to do it that are a bit different from how you may have done this prior. not to say you are wrong or that you didnt do it right, just that this was my experience and that "looking inward" is a very broad range of things that includes not just reflecting or even thinking
upon some reflection and random experiences i realize that i may have been a bit single-minded (and therefore grating/quite disagreeable). i think that there is definitely a good, dynamic balance of internal and external exploration that probably should happen for Good Things to follow, and honestly i am still figuring out how to do this mix myself. i think that my thoughts were based on how i hadn't treated myself in the past as i would treat myself now, and being ignorant of that for the years prior brought unnecessary(?) suffering i think...all to say that i hadn't done much of the "right"/"better" inner exploration that i did eventually gain value from. i am still "figuring 'it' out" as they say, but stasis/"silent death"/etc seems likely to happen without a "healthy" mix of both internal and external Things. anyways, best and godspeed
no worries, i appreciated your comment! would be interested in hearing more about what kinds of internal exploration were / weren't helpful for you
so true vincent!! i feel the same about ideas. i've found my fiction suffers when i don't have a vibrant reading practice -- i feel like creativity actually springs from difference / disagreement. so exposing yourself to fiction, philosophy, and social theory when you're not writing inside an institution offers more surface area for that disagreement and therefore new ideas. fwiw it's pretty easy to sink into a "death" grove in nyc, as it is anywhere
the first section made me feel existential for a sec
receiving genuinely new information » do you not recall the last time you genuinely changed your mind about something? because mine was last weekend
i ran into a blank wall » how… how do you not have an endless list of ideas in your drawer that you are excited to simply pick up and work on
do you not recall the last time you genuinely changed your mind about something? » i was not describing myself in that paragraph (hence the 2nd person usage) :P
how do you not have an endless list of ideas » maybe this wasn't clear enough - there was a specific kind of writing tool i wanted to build and then when i actually sat down to start building it i realized i didn't actually have novel ideas. the idea list is long in other domains
i love this alot, so glad to have discovered your page
i think the mode collapse analogy fits pretty well here, though it also suggests the problem is not just in choosing diverse sources.
as you know, traditionally in GANs the generator finds a way to cheat reward in the discriminator and is incentivized to produce more and more of the same thing. which means if we want to avoid death spirals what may be more important than injecting noise (via sci fi or bus rides) is what the audience/project/your values ultimately filters for! and this might be even harder to architect because we tend to attract the same features in people (especially writing on the internet), and society rewards us to work on projects we're already good at.
so moving to ny as you said could really help break out of convergence not mainly because of different ideas (i think there's lots of perspectives anywhere you go) but because the people there [worship different metrics from sf](https://paulgraham.com/cities.html)
btw your writing is actually what’s helped increase the variance in my media diet so thanks haha
great post! as usual
makes us think
mm yeah the values point is very interesting
re "helped increase the variance in my media diet": huh do you mostly mean the content on this substack or when i link to external stuff?
both bc i used to just consume technical novelty maxxing mainstream content like 3b1b, ged, dwarkesh podcast, textbooks/knzhou handouts, etc
not much self reflections or meta-level life things
ur substack was among the first in introduction to network of these personal corners of internet like andrewwu and nate soares and cj that have unearthed background processes in my behavior i can monitor now! instead of spending years unknowingly enslaved to (ur recent Box metaphor comes to mind)
ig just general better awareness; very helpful :)
EDIT: yay i found it; https://andrewwu.substack.com/p/six-selections-on-self-defense this one's another interesting example. especially the ideas on identity and (math) communities and considering rationality/ea as memes were so fundamental i almost automatically take them as assumptions atp
i fear i can't pass up the chance to prosletyze for nyc a lil -- one of my favorite things about my [very specific] life here is that i feel like i'm letting things in and letting things go at a comfortable, but considerable rate. ofc nyc is not the only place where you can do this though
(also i am pretty sure you've read this post but i enjoyed specifically the sentiment of "being surrounded by people who are so fundamentally different[ly free] from you gives you permission to go all in on being your idiosyncratic self" https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/11/05/dont-surround-yourself-with-smarter-people/)
HAHA yes i will spend more time in ny moving forward (have been avoiding it for the last 2y for silly reasons)
yesssss wed love to have you
I agree that it's really easy to fall into closed loops during adult life — I also realized that I was only talking to the same people for weeks at a time. But I think trying new things is a good way to combat that. It doesn't even have to be big things, like you mentioned taking the bus allowed you to enter a more vibrant state. Even just walking a different path home or trying the new cafe that opened a couple blocks down is enough. You never know what could happen :^)
While i share the sentiment of not wanting to stay immersed in one culture / city during my 20s, and it *feels* unhealthy to me, i can’t imagine this is actually the case. There are definitely ways to thrive without ever leaving a city
first section hit hard 😱🙏
Reading this made me realize that I never ever want my existence to remind someone of death
This makes me wonder if I'm dead? Will you think of death when you meet me? Fuck
SORRY