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E.g. many shooting games are based on the core skill of moving your mouse onto a target but this gets boring very quickly so it's not something most people improve at despite using computers all day.https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1330031504563597315 …

So while insight *can* be used to deepen an already deep groove, it can also deepen a shallow scratch into an actual groove.

I suspect with social media and amazon prime providing instant gratification, the desire for insight is more this latter even though mentally it has the same "eureka high" as the former breakthrough type of insight.

Getting past a plateau is often about finding an "insight" that makes practice feel "new". The old repetition of practice becomes robotic and therefore non-deliberate. No matter how much you practice you don't improve b/c from the POV of your brain you're doing the same thing.

Often times difficulty or scarcity of resources is the push required. E.g. with exercise or creativity. (This might explain why the "jock" stereotype is usually considered dumb. Adding on additional weight is formulaic vs finding the equivalent mental leap.)

Though if you believe that "The sculpture is already complete within the marble block .... I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”. then perhaps this sandstorm that chisels away and reveals is also a useful step.

That would make "porn" the equivalent of a rapid exploration of passions. It's a way of quickly "becoming". (as long as addiction to distraction is avoided.)

Another way to say it is that "porn" (hustle, dopamine, sexual, etc...) is virtuous only as a way of figuring out what *doesn't* turn you on. It pulls the contrast slider on your life all the way to the right, creating an ugly picture but teasing out subtlety.

The trouble starts when something that *shouldn't* turn you on does so because it's overly "pornified" by artificially jacking up its attractiveness. By this definition, money would be the most pornographic thing.

Most interactions mediated by money don't feel very good b/c by definition they cannot be things that are done just for their own sake. Money "lubricates", allowing an experience that would otherwise not be possible. A mini "rape" of the present moment, forcing it be what u want.

It allows you do things that actively harm your soul by pulling you into situations you normally wouldn't be in. This can even lead to forms of self delusion as you pretend to care about things you don't only out of fear.https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1336552720010862592 …

"hustle porn" is particularly egregious. "hustle" itself is not virtuous in-of itself, only as a pointer to ambition(wealth/power/status). (The word "hard work" on the other hand is intrinsically virtuous in some religious contexts. e.g. protestant work ethic)

(Which is ironically why the phrase itself is so fun. It points to the core depravity of of something that is trying to pass itself off as a virtue)

put everything together and what emerges is sth like "working for money is the fastest way find out what you want to do by truly feeling what you *don't* want to do.

Or as a heuristic: if an insight doesn't prompt you into action, it wasn't meant for you.

And as an actionable time saver: no action prompt, no need to remember/store-in-2nd-brain, just let it go. it will come back if it needs to.