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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 Jul 7
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      I think the more correct, or at least more precise statement is: "reality has a surprising amount of _surprising and boring detail_" Being a reality nerd is about making that boring part interesting for yourself.

      1 reply 0 retweets 22 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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      When you go down a tvtropes or fandom wiki site bunnytrail, there is an endless amount of detail to master, but it is also endlessly interesting AND not entirely surprising (like looking up the details of a minor and obscure superhero's superpowers is never truly surprising).

      2 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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      But if (for eg) you do what Salvatier recommends and look into the surprising amount of detail in "boiling water", it's both surprising how complex it is, and kinda boring unless you find a way to get interested in say convection physics and heat transfer in uneven metal plates.

      2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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      Salvatier's post is well-paired with the "effort shock" articlehttps://www.cracked.com/article_18544_how-the-karate-kid-ruined-modern-world.html …

      2 replies 0 retweets 12 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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      Wong's point in that article is that effort shock is a result of miscalibrating the surprising amount of detail in reality due to the conditioning effects of karate-kid style sports montages that make it look easy, quick, and fun, with a nice soundtrack.

      2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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      As an 80s kid I have definitely been ruined by the karate kid, and "avoiding effort shock" (= avoiding reality = structured escapism) explains a lot of my life choices. Learning curves invariably turn out to be longer than I'm prepared to handle.

      1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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      Was talking to @niftynei about it in the @scorpioseasontv recording we just did on the letter R. This came up around the topic of "repair" which we talk about in the last 5-10 minutes (it'll be out in a week or two).

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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      In terms of effort shock severity/reality-detail-encounter, the order is: words < math < programming < hardware skills of any sort. Topic came up because Lisa is teaching herself car repair.

      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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      Though I started my adult life as a mechanical engineer, I can safely say I have very little patience, and not much aptitude, for operating on levels of closeness to reality that have a lot of detail, and therefore have long-duration high-effort-shock learning curves.

      1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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      It's not quite the same as not being detail oriented. I'm quite detail oriented in narrow ways when I want to be. It's being detail oriented when the details are *time-consuming* to master and deal with.

      1 reply 1 retweet 6 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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      "Watching paint dry" is a good metaphor for this. You could say much of being reality-oriented is being willing to sit around "watching reality dry." Activities that fit this (passivities?) include debugging computer programs, which we talk about on the show.

      12:28 PM - 7 Jul 2020
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      • micah.fyi Divia Eden Gradient Assent Made in Cosmos 💫 Kerry @snappercayt Salvator R. Tarnmoor
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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          What defeats me about debugging is the sheer disconnect between a) what seems wrong b) what turns out to be wrong c) the consequences of things being wrong. The only way to be a goo debugger is to develop the patience for troubleshooting. Watching reality dry.

          1 reply 2 retweets 12 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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          Another way to think about it: being reality oriented means both being patient, and letting illusions of agency (which are strong at the level of words) drop away so you realize how little control you actually have over reality once you get down to literal nuts and bolts.

          1 reply 2 retweets 12 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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          Reality doesn't care whether a missing comma means millions in lost revenue because a website is down, or no-big-deal because it's an obscure site nobody visits. Reality doesn't care whether a bug manifests to you as a mystery taking 10 hours, or obvious 2 second fix.

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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          All it cares about is: you eventually get to adding that missing comma whether you get there in 2 seconds via luckily happening to notice it, or in 10 hours after spending hours and thousands of dollars exploring the wrong troubleshooting branch. It doesn't care if you're 8 or 80

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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          And this isn't even the hardest case since debugging in programming still means working within the minds of other humans who wrote the compilers and operating systems. It is possible to get weirdly efficient at debugging code. Not so much reality as in atoms stuff.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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          Unlike code, nuts-and-bolts stuff has properties, features, and behaviors that weren't explicitly designed in by someone. So troubleshooting it is basically science. Leave your efficiency/productivity expectations based on delusions behind.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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          Note... not always true. There have been cases of weird software bugs in history that arise from strange hardware/software coupling effects. Especially at scale, when for eg. you're dealing with hundreds of hard-disks.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        9. End of conversation

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