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Visa ✈️ SF (Aug 2-14)
@visakanv
this class of tweet reliably brings out my shadow ragemonster lol. "oh no our most ambitious people have been brainwashed by their employers... oh no our best minds are spoiled by trivial games..." these are just quite simply not our best minds. it's cope and cowardice i'm sorry
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Amanda Askell
@AmandaAskell
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I sometimes worry that the world’s best minds are hooked on what are essentially glorified crossword puzzles, since the interestingness of problems scales with features not very correlated with their importance. If there’s not a term for such problems, maybe “intelligence traps”?
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Visa ✈️ SF (Aug 2-14)
@visakanv
to be clear: if a playful mind enjoys goofing off and having fun, that's excellent! feynman piddled with plates. jobs and wozniak were pranksters who hacked telephone infrastructure for fun. that's *fantastic* and I highly encourage it
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Visa ✈️ SF (Aug 2-14)
@visakanv
but if people are anxiously, neurotically trapped doing a thing that's basically some equivalent of self-soothing displacement behavior – I grew up with some of these folks, tormented by a sense of having to live up to some potential, hating themselves for getting nerdsniped...
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Visa ✈️ SF (Aug 2-14)
@visakanv
then like, i'm sorry friend but the problem is very likely not what you think it is. it's not actually an intelligence trap or a brain trap. that's a misframe, a misdiagnosis that will leave you picking at a phantom scab indefinitely with no relief
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Visa ✈️ SF (Aug 2-14)
@visakanv
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you can’t think your way out of a courage deficit
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