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There’s people who seem to feel humiliated by having to reveal that they learned something they. Ie they feel humiliated to say “I learned this” not just “I don’t know” When they do learn something they go to great lengths to pretend they never didn’t know it 🤔
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As usual Trump is Exhibit A. “Everything I need to know about science I learned in my genes by having an uncle who was an MIT professor”
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My suspicion is that it has to do with the credibility of honor-based power a la homo ludens. In an honor society, power correlates to being seen as blessed by the gods for victory. “There’s no use opposing me because the heavens are aligned behind me, knowledge is irrelevant.”
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To reveal a real learning curve with evidence of failures is to admit you’re not the chosen one. The honor society learning curve is trials of chosen-ness, and the Straussian presence of an already-blessed teacher/mentor to sign off on having passed with signs of divine grace.
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Chosen by the gods means you’re going to ace the learning curve eventually in all possible worlds. There are none in which you didn’t make it. And most importantly, your learning is in the distant past, and your teacher is old or dead and sainted, so no direct competition.
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I don’t like this framework but it’s the best I can teach for right now. There’s something I’m missing here... ignorance and power paradox of some sort
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Ah! key is to secretly get to god-like optics and erase your learning human past. The gods by definition are changeless because they have no need to learn. If you can sustain a changeless image, you get treated as a god. The gods chose you to *join them*
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In a way being an awful honor society person is our default state. It takes facing you to vast arbitrariness of the universe to actually enjoy learning things without feeling like you’re losing face. In a vast, arbitrary universe nobody is looking at you. twitter.com/vgr/status/124
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