I don’t mean doing it with excellence. Excellence only applies to non-free things. It’s a point on a price performance curve. True free things (not free samples or loss leaders or freemium or charity) don’t belong on that curve. Nerd-OCD = qualitatively absurd level of caring.
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Anybody who would only do something comparable for money should react like “I wouldn’t put that much effort into this if I were being paid a million dollars” Money cannot but nerd-OCD levels of caring about a thing. In fact it will discourage it. You’d be caring too much.
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Note that we’re NOT talking talent, genius, or exceptional intelligence being inputs. Only demented, quixotic levels of caring, and irrationally absurd levels of time/attention investment but with perfectly ordinary abilities.
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This is why most examples are from things like fan theories or hobby projects. Domains where talent is not expected, ROI-logic is suspended by default, and the work is its own reward. Labor of love stuff, but love is the wrong word.
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Psychologically what’s going on is that you’ve triggered a network effect in your head that generates seemingly limitless reserves of attention and engagement with the subject. That’s nerd-OCD. You become a perpetual motion machine of sorts.
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The Greeks called it “nerdos” and feared it. It’s where we get the word “nerd.”
They feared it because they knew it was more powerful than “thymos” and will-to-power
That’s why they tried to ban it. Nerdos was viewed as devil energy in the Middle Ages.Show this thread -
That’s why we have sayings like “the devil hides in the details” or “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” Religious fear of ocd-nerd energy that trashes ROI formulas, the concept of money, and the supposed value of striving for recognition in thymos contests.
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Because it’s not really unshackled from ROI thinking — you’re paying in opportunity cost, which increases with time spent I kind of hate myself rn for going with the economist’s take but hey I’ll try anything once
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That creates a paywall, and the only ones who jump over it are the ones equipped with the capacity to do that mental network-effect compounding, which pays them back in direct experiential satisfaction
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