Ok partly kidding, but it’s really being consistently path of least resistance. Sometimes it takes self-awareness to notice when conventional path is high-energy for somebody else’s benefit and do easier thing for your own. Being sufficiently low energy can look like strategy.
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This sounds right to me! And yeah, I wasn’t thinking about it, but “low vs. high resistance” is an interesting axis here. Seems like low-resistance unconventionality is driven by weirdness + self-awareness. Wonder what drives the high-resistance version... ambition?
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Narcissistic wounds I’d guess. Deep-seated ones. But even that’s really least resistance in disguise: looking inward and processing trauma is too hard intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. So you take easier path of busting through the world.
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Did you ever write about this? It pattern-matches to “dent in the universe” but I’m not sure I actually read that one (just familiar with the title)
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I think I had a version of the argument long ago in Be Slightly Evil as commentary on Boyd and also a version in Calculus of Grit. It’s gotten highly simplified since them to the self belief “my superpower is sheer laziness”
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The narcissistic wound stuff I think I’ve mentioned in passing in a few breaking smart issues. It’s sort of a gestalt theme with me, but not a very original one.
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There’s a related thing about recognizing what’s valuable about things that are generally valued, “the important thing about important things” so to speak. Often the valuable part is cheap and all the cost is attached to low-value parts for signaling reasons.
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For example:
Learning to code well is cheaper and more valuable than getting a CS degree.
Building an audience is cheaper and more valuable than getting published by the publishing industry
Etc
Signaling assets are often more expensive than related primary assets
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Thanks I needed the concrete examples.
While agreeing with the basic point, I wonder: when does one (or you in particular) choose to invest in a signalling asset?
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When you can’t avoid signaling *something* no matter what you do (clothes, car, TV...)?
Some can be hidden (guilty pleasure TV), others can’t (drive a car out of band for your class and it’s a signal. Non-consumption is a signal too.
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Can’t think of non-coerced skilled decisions like this though. Tiger parents might force Asian kid to learn piano I suppose, but that’s proxy parent choice.
Other things being equal I’d probably pick a “branded” over no-name job. Xerox, Cornell on CV still open doors for me


