Conversation

Older people are not shy about telling you about how you’ll physically slow down and degenerate in a 100 little ways as you age, but they’re very coy about admitting that you also get mentally slower, duller, and less imaginative. Some mix of denial and genuine fear I suppose.
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One of the best reasons to specialize in something deep is that it’s a way to beat the mental aging process at least locally. You’ll still lose the war against time in the end, but you’ll win a battle or two on one front at least.
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The most annoying thing about mental aging is that things get slowly more boring. Like 1% YoY. It takes youthfully sharp cognitive faculties to keep things truly interesting. So memories become more important in keeping yourself entertained. They’re like precompiled binaries.
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That’s why deep expertise is an anti-aging serum. You’re collecting more precompiled binaries along the way. Of course the downside there is becoming close-minded within the narrow anti-aging zone. Expert tunnel vision as a time tomb.
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You could also engage with your immediate surroundings more, giving up some internal focus. It seems likely that a lot of the imaginative, youthful thought is directed at modifying schemas—but at a certain point it's better to go use them rather than endlessly tweaking.
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Life moves through three eras - priest, king, and prophet. Priest: do what you are told (like a child); King: use your training and strength to run the household; Prophet: sit and divulge the wisdom of your experience.
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Things get boring because we become stupid but also because things become familiar. Radical change in focus, into unfamiliar domains, renews interest. So why don’t people change focus? Social, material, and identity commitments — greater gains from being bored & expert.
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