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

Tweets

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 9 Nov 2019
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      Can you imagine a civilization that knows how to build rockets and spacecraft and has mastered orbital mechanics, but holds a consensus belief in astrological interpretations of the universe? Ie they can get to Mars, but their reason to go there is to meet the god of war?

      22 replies 21 retweets 137 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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      This seems absurd to me. A civilization that has mastered such an advanced means must necessarily have abandoned primitive ends along the way (at least among the principals involved in both the what and how if missions). Means-ends impedance mismatch.

      6 replies 1 retweet 18 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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      Either your means will stall at the limit of your primitive ends (you’ll pray to the war god) or belief on the primitive end will fail as your means evolve (Mars gets demoted from war god to dirt ball)

      3 replies 1 retweet 10 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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      But mismatch has to be very severe, and both means and ends have to be at similar levels of abstraction. One way to mitigate the dissonance is to make one more abstract. Like imagine war god being merely an ineffable presence around dirt ball rather than a guy in a palace there.

      8:37 AM - 9 Nov 2019
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      • stupid twitt account «Sam•Forsythe» Nemets Adele Dewey-Lopez Fredrik Matheson Drake E. (he/him) Rahul Ramchandani Jonathan Parker kangaroo shoulders
      2 replies 1 retweet 8 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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          Often both get abstracted away. The Hindu ritual to launch projects (from new factories to space missions) is to crack a coconut as an offering to Ganesha in his role as obstacle-remover god (Vighneshvara). It’s a nonspecific prayer that can later be used to explain good luck.

          2 replies 1 retweet 15 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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          Reason I’m thinking about this is that under digital modernity, since ~2000, our means have vastly expanded. There’s a vast ecosystem of how-to instrumental education around everything from SEO and blogging to machine learning and startups. But our ends-thinking hasn’t budged.

          2 replies 3 retweets 20 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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          We approach the potential of the internet like a spacefaring culture of literalist astrologers. Where space missions are planned seriously at the level of “Crewed Dragon mission launched by a Falcon Heavy with 5 mission specialists and one cult-of-Mars priest”

          2 replies 3 retweets 18 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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          Eg. What should you do: “follow your passion!” How should you do it: “Learn how to build websites, run Kickstarter campaigns, fine-tune conversion funnels, and use agile methods to iterate quickly, testing rigorously along the way” See an impedance mismatch there?

          3 replies 7 retweets 32 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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          Much of internet tech is a means to access inner space. You can become more kinds of very different person. If your life were a space mission, with different destinations being different possible versions of future you, you should probably construct better maps of becoming.

          2 replies 8 retweets 30 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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          Currently possibility space for future you are described by the following “planets”, each with a better-than random playbook for heading there, but Mercury: god of follow-your-passion Venus: god of fuck-you-money Mars: god of Medium-post spiritual journeys

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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          Asteroid belt: god of Waldenponding Jupiter: god of gig-economy Saturn: god of reach and freeze peach Uranus: god of awokening Neptune: god of gonzo shitposting Pluto: god of nerddom and nerdsniping Kuiper belt: chadvirginstacy

          2 replies 2 retweets 15 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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          These goal-gods who induce ends to match overpowered means are kinda silly but they are better than nothing if they get you moving. Superstition is a symptom of grasp exceeding reach (cf “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for” which is backwards)

          2 replies 1 retweet 7 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 9 Nov 2019
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          Having any reason to go to Neptune is better than no reason, but a good reason is better than a nonsensical one, and more likely to catalyze success by a meaningful means-ends chicken egg virtuous feedback. Having an accurate sense of ends helps refine the means and vice versa

          4 replies 1 retweet 8 likes
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        11. End of conversation
        1. Dr. 𝕭𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖉𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖞 𝕾𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖊‏ @smart_intellecc 10 Nov 2019
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          Replying to @vgr

          Isn't it like saying a civilization that can make socks should not have lucky socks? I don't see anything paradoxical if the pentagon some day chooses to put an administrative base on Mars for cultural resonance reasons when technology is so advanced that- why not?

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