2. (continued) Because the young and the old find themselves in competition rather than cooperation, they benefit from obscuring information from each other. Rate of change of society is exaggerated. What has plummeted is rate of transmission of social information. 7/5
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Replying to @SamoBurja
I've often regretted not having more healthy relationships with people of my parents' generation. Starting in college or so, I expected that older people I admired would judge me harshly, so I avoided talking to them. I'd have made a lot more progress if I didn't.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SamoBurja
Partly, I think, "coming of age on Internet 2.0" I came to be much more open about myself than older generations, and I assumed that they all *were* as risk-averse and full of gravitas as their public personas.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SamoBurja
George Washington, in real life, had an explosive bad temper; his "sober statesman" demeanor was a calculated facade. It's not uncommon for "great men" (and women) to have human flaws and quirks in private life.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SamoBurja
Somehow I got the impression growing up that "real scientists" never had premarital sex, used recreational drugs, or speculated about politics or philosophy or human nature; to be a scientist you had to be a "worker bee" who never engaged in such "frivolity".
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SamoBurja
But if you grow up assuming that everybody who's not as compulsive about self-disclosure as you is *actually* free of uncertainties, wild ideas, personal flaws, or embarrassing decisions, you're going to assume there's no common ground between you.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SamoBurja
Also. Being not quite a young person myself any more, I now think I was confused as to what "older people advising younger people" is supposed to mean.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SamoBurja
Young people have more energy and time, and less knowledge, than old people. They do more things, and make more mistakes, and are better able to absorb the consequences of those mistakes. This is normal and as it should be.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SamoBurja
When old people tell young people "you're doing something unwise", ideally that's *just* information transfer that this particular thing is unwise.
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Advice that sounds like "You, young person, should have an old person's caution and priorities; you are bad for being young" is either the old person being unreasonable or the young person misreading the old person's intent.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
This matches my own experience! I internalized the wrong message of old people like risk aversion 15-23. Very lucky I managed to course corrected 23-27.
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