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I think I was a much freer, braver thinker in my early 20s, really boldly just ran into philosophical musings. now im exposed to both much smarter people and also a mean internet, which has made it slightly less fun to think about things that i might then end up wanting to say.

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Aella

@Aella_Girl

and some of it's probably growing wiser/humble, but I think a lot of it is actually some contraction due to fear

9:27 PM · Dec 29, 2022

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This is how it goes. Dark side of the moon, etc were written by youngsters- then there's Milton

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Fear of what exactly?

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Fear but also "why bother"?

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I've experienced the same. Time+internet exposed me to so many people who've thought longer and harder about any given subtopic than I have as well as how messy the real world is. I used to put a lot of weight on first principles, now I put much more on research.

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Fear isn't unreasonable. Around 2017 I started discovering that people I knew were doing deep dives for Wrong Think in their friends' Facebook likes and attempting to dole out 'consequences' in the form of call outs and social sanction. We are living in the Panopticon.

@_NoNahNope_

Dec 29, 2022

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@Aella_Girl

The older you get the more bound by reality and you become.

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Tbh this is why I think having some degree of aloofness/anonymity is valuable. See how people react to ideas when they aren't associated with your image. And stay away from others for a substantial amount of time to see how your thoughts flow then.

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I think consequences just become easier to see curtailing potential musings before you invest too much

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SAME, I also think the internet got meaner and scarier (though maybe we just got bigger audiences?)

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Some day you'll likely redo some of these surveys, then you'll have some real wisdom to share. Fun fades a little with age but other great things replace it.