When I got interested in non-STEM topics, I was coming off 15y in the STEM world, exiting with 3 mediocre degrees, mediocre track record (including a deadpooled product, 6 meh patents, and a dozen meh publications), and a small but secure identity/confidence. No Elon Musk but ok.
Conversation
I was never a STEM supremacist because I didn’t win enough to get an inflated sense of myself that way. But I won enough that it was enough to immunize me against the intimidation and contempt defenses against dirty barbarian STEMmie attention on lofty humanist questions.
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Interestingly there is nothing like wog epistemology (“brown sahib” Indian —> European going native) for STEM —> HSS. I’ve never met a STEMMie so in awe of critical theory that they accept access to HSS discourses with deferential gratitude and abandonment of subversive impulses.
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So, tldr of my 2 immigration stories: I never self-essentialized as Indian or wog-Westerner, or as STEMMie doerist or HSS critical-theory supremacist.
This has been the reward for a spectacularly mediocre 22-year adult career along all conventional vectors of accomplishment.
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The consolation of mediocre success at life’s games around big prizes is an identity too small to obscure your view of where and how your feet are on the ground.
Immigration story #1 makes me incapable of ethnonationalist sentiment on *any* side that might accept me as a member.
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I don't get it. I've achieved less success than you, yet I don't have a worldview that idealizes mediocrity, *and* I'm not horribly sad about my failures. Success is actually hard! It's possible to admit you're not the best and also that it would be great if you were!
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I have no problem with that. I admire success, recognize that it is hard, recognize that it creates dark consequences/has a cost too.
I don’t idealize mediocrity. I just recognize it as a condition worth inhabiting as much as success. In fact, I think I prefer it to “success”.
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“Success” solves for impact, material rewards and historic significance. “Mediocrity” solves for a deeper, less judgmental appreciation of all of existence, including the success that a minority of smarter/harder-working/luckier people may achieve.
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Mediocrity aims to bear witness to the human condition
Mediocrity is perhaps about *not* idealizing success rather than idealizing itself.
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Yeah, it's the "solves for" aspect that puzzles me. Why assume you're "solving for" anything exactly (i.e. acting optimally)? Is this a guy thing?
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The exact opposite. Solving is NOT the same as optimizing. And it’s more hindsight reconstruction of the tendencies latent in revealed behavior than forward-looking intentionality. I wrote a thing about mediocritization vs optimization in my series ribbonfarm.com/2019/04/15/med
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ooh, this is a lot like "mild optimization"
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“Mediocrity by another name would smell sorta the same.” — Chuck Shakespeare, William’s less-known brother who reportedly wrote some mediocre forgotten plays.
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