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

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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      A good way to go wrong in a complex system is “focus on the basics” There are no basics. There’s only intertwingled, entangled weirdness. Of those who focus on basics, a few get lucky, succeed, get religion, and start sermonizing. You don’t hear sage advice from the failures.

      8 replies 49 retweets 250 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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      The reward for opposite of “focus on basics” is something like “sparring with weirdness”. Median outcome there is basic survival and perhaps an interesting life. You learn nothing that is simple enough to preach to an enthralled audience willfully unaware of survivorship bias.

      1 reply 9 retweets 65 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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      “Basics —> success” people are exhausting. They turn an aggressively stupid typical mind fallacy into a typical life conclusion. Their primary motive, if it isn’t a tedious grift of some sort, is to protect their own psyches by finding a way to feel superior and deserving.

      10:22 AM - 26 Jan 2020
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      • 67 Likes
      • Kate Yemelyanov InTheGames foo Wheeler I n n ø. Visakan Veerasamy Brett Williams __, (25 second attention span) SIFF Capital
      5 replies 10 retweets 67 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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          Dude, you won, go enjoy your winnings. Resist the urge to spin theories out of your outcomes to explain away others outcomes as consequences of vices and yours as results of virtues. It may not be all luck, but neither is it that simple. Primum non nocere.

          3 replies 6 retweets 57 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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          If you applied replication-crisis level skeptical scrutiny to Basic Theories of Success narratives youd have to declare a disaster. Some epistemic humility is warranted around your life outcomes. Shit happens. Expect to go to your grave never fully knowing why.

          4 replies 12 retweets 62 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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          I suppose one of background questions in the last few years has been: how do you deploy your intelligence into a complex system in a way that a) takes care of your needs b) doesn’t screw things up for others c) has a shot at helping level up the system

          2 replies 4 retweets 37 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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          My “Against Waldenponding” model is a baseline attempt at an answer, or rather, a rejection of a class of answers, which include Basic Success Theories that are built on individual virtue as the foundation.https://breakingsmart.substack.com/p/against-waldenponding …

          2 replies 4 retweets 43 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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          Becoming a billionaire and preaching your 7 Simple Rules of Success is basically the same impulse as an ordinary schmoe retreating to do “deep work”. Both are waldenponding. The on,y difference is how many times the Medium article is shared.

          2 replies 7 retweets 43 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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          There are no formulas. Take your shots. Enjoy your successes. Be kind to yourself and others for failed shots and failures to take shots. None of us really understands everything about what’s going on. Be humble about the correctness and significance of the bits you think you do.

          1 reply 20 retweets 68 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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          10 years ago, Basic Success Knights (BSKs) and their mooks were an annoying but ignorable sideshow. You could take a tip or two from them here and there,and get on with figuring out your own shit. Now, as mainstream normie-ness collapses, they are rushing into the vacuum.

          1 reply 4 retweets 28 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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          This might have been one of the best features of normie world pre-2016. The normie script was so obviously a banal, not-serious placeholder for "figure your own shit out or you get stuck with THIS" it wasn't an epistemic hazard. It just blocked the BSKs from narrative dominance.

          1 reply 1 retweet 22 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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          Now it's relentless BSK sermonizing all the time. Every damn day is Sunday, every medium is a church, and it's always 9 AM service, time to listen to the nearest person who has figured it out (and discovered that it's Really Simple, Just Do X)

          3 replies 6 retweets 31 likes
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        11. End of conversation
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 26
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          Replying to @illiteralworst

          No I think I have it right. Sparring with weirdness people are almost never, in my experience, “successes” in any obvious big way.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. End of conversation

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