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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

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Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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      In math, when you go from 3 to 4 dimensions, there is a sharp switch from visual geometric intuitions to symbol-rewriting intuitions, where your right brain gets trained on patterns in how the symbols move around rather than the underlying shapes

      5 replies 16 retweets 126 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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      when this happens, you quickly lose a sense for the forest over the trees, assembling bigger jigsaw pictures becomes dramatically harder because the space is larger than your visual intuitions can cover... this happens with words too

      1 reply 3 retweets 29 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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      when a topic gets sufficiently complex, your big picture intuitions collapse fairly rapidly, and you have to rely on aphorisms and other micro-level thoughts that you then have to grope around and weave together almost blind, because the dimensionality of the idea is too high

      1 reply 4 retweets 54 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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      You can try all you want to get big picture intuitions, with mind-maps, weird metaphors, or whatever, but there's a fundamental hardness to the big picture thinking needed that you cannot finesse away

      1:12 PM - 2 Sep 2019
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      • @simpolism Max 🌐🏛️🐍 geistbuster «Sam•Forsythe» Jules Pitt c h r x n Boris Mann Bandeauxx. Tim Beiko | timbeiko.eth
      3 replies 2 retweets 27 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          as in math, there's 3 basic strategies 1. Give up and stick to symbol level (map literacy) 2. Work with "3d projections" -- a set of partial slices you CAN big-picture grok 3. Work with "patches" -- a sort of differential geometric approach where you get good at quilting

          2 replies 4 retweets 47 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          Broadly, these map to 3 intellectual stances: textualism, ideology, and pointillism

          4 replies 0 retweets 23 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          There is a reason ambitious thinkers like Taleb, after a great opening act, often resort to generating piles of aphoristic rubble for their act 2 (and in his case, kinda retreat to increasingly refined 3d-projective repetitions of their Act 1 as their Act 3 elder game/late style)

          1 reply 2 retweets 27 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          I'm no exception of course. Twitter is just easier for me right now than longer forms. It's easier to scurry around like a rat in the darkness, or a worm slithering around underground, generating 280 characters worth of thought at a time

          1 reply 1 retweet 24 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          You have to deconvolve aging effects of course, output = (aging brain)*(higher dimensional interests)

          1 reply 1 retweet 15 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          There IS an alternative, which is to get increasingly idiosyncratic, convincing yourself you are discovering deep, vast hyperdimensional truths, and that you're "merely" having trouble articulating them for the benefit of others. No, it's not a "mere" compilation problem.

          2 replies 3 retweets 29 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          You are doing what I call vanishing past your own event horizon. Or to use a more evocative everyday phrase, your solution to the problem is to become part of the problem. Congrats, you are now as obscure as the problem you were trying to investigate.

          2 replies 2 retweets 32 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          I've been thinking about late styles/elder games/Act 2 for a year now, and all the supposed good news is feel-good fake news. If it looks like somebody is doing very interesting things past 40 or so, look again. It's always tricks with mirrors or harvesting stuff done before 40.

          3 replies 2 retweets 20 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          In The Science of Discworld, the authors talk a lot about "lies to children" ie how popular understanding of science is layers upon layers of wilfully crafted misunderstandings to give people a false sense of comprehension. Our culture is equally full of "lies to the middle aged"

          2 replies 2 retweets 31 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          US culture is particularly full of this shit. It annoys me. It gets in the way of actually having a generative, alive Act 2. It fetishes the affordances of youth. It blinds you to the affordances of maturity. It accumulates a debt of reality shock that hits you eventually.

          1 reply 1 retweet 26 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          Yeah, this is far more true than anyone will let you admit. It's one of the deepest taboos in modernity to admit that aging is NOT a bed of roses or a graceful ascent to the peaks of wisdom and insight.pic.twitter.com/kHtDlvm7hc

          3 replies 3 retweets 39 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 2 Sep 2019
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          The first step to solving your problem, past 40, is to gracefully accept becoming part of the problem :D

          3 replies 1 retweet 25 likes
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        14. End of conversation

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