Funny things you notice when you write for a long time. Reading motives for essays are cyclical.
Ten years ago people read mostly for “how” questions.
Five years ago they read for “why” questions.
Now they read for “what” questions.
We’ll be back to “how” by 2024.
Conversation
“How” is intelligence. You want to master difficult skills, challenge yourself.
“Why” is curiosity. You want to know why things are the way they are, the meaning and significance behind the how.
“What” is ontological doubt. You don’t know what you’re looking at.
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My natural sweet spot is “what” with reasonable ability to cover the “why” beat and sucking at the “how”. My kind of writing felt very countercyclical 10 years ago. Now it feels kinda mainstream. If I were the ambitious type now would be the right time to double down on stuff.
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Fortunately for those who are already sick of me, I’m not very ambitious.
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Tim Ferris would probably not have been able to launch the kind of “how” based career he did today. The GFC years were a how-to boom because so many unprecedented tools were emerging simultaneously.
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“Why” is a good question for insight porn and understanding a TINA world. When it seems like There Is No Alternative, it is useful to ask why things are the way they are. And good answers deliver a nice little dopamine hit of recognition relief. Ambiguity resolves into certainty.
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“What” doesn’t deliver as much by way of aha insight porn payoff. It is a synthetic, constructionist question. There is no TINA way the world necessarily is, and many soft ways it could be. Satisfaction moves from analytical insight to synthetic success. You see what must be done
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This is one of the most interesting ways I’ve seen of framing these cycles. I think I’m strongly how, why only on an instrumental level, and leave out the what so much that ppl often don’t know what I’m talking about. Probably why we’re good complements
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I feel a strong how wave coming on though, but not the usual how-to topics. Ppl went guidance on more multidimensional, synthetic endeavors that can’t be found watching a YouTube video. One reason online courses are doing so well
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But do you think we just cycle through those 3 in order or each phase shift is triggered by something?
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I think it's driven by the business cycle and tech cycle together, so there's no simple causal factor. But all theories are kinda garbage during the great weirding, since so many much longer-term cycles are driving things besides business as usual.
Replying to
Interesting. One thing I’m really trying to figure out is which cycle the second brain concept is most relevant to. There cycles at multiple scales, but a book has to find the right one to be selling just as well 10 yes from now
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