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

Tweets

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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    Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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    long-term thinking makes people unhappy because it almost necessarily means they’re thinking about big problems the only future thing you can be fairly sure about is that the big problems of today won’t go away miraculously and will last as long as you expect, probably longer

    6:53 PM - 23 Oct 2020
    • 24 Retweets
    • 224 Likes
    • Blurry Electron Sam WoodIsGood self-cancelling sommelier de burrice yoshiki Shruti Saran Ian Shakil Marvin “Polymath but really Just Generalist” Liao
    4 replies 24 retweets 224 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        almost every problem people were worried about in the 80s when I was first taught to worry professionally like an adult is still there and has gotten worse exactly as predicted - overpopulation - water scarcity - global warming only exception is ozone hole which may come back

        14 replies 2 retweets 40 likes
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      3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        people do “happy” long-term thinking by building positive potential in the form of very general capabilities, like the internet downside is general potentialities never solve specific big problems, merely reshape them sometimes the reshaping makes them harder, sometimes easier

        1 reply 0 retweets 28 likes
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      4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Bret Pettichord

        nuclear proliferation is still a problem, just a bigger, more chaotic onehttps://twitter.com/bpettichord/status/1319820994870169601 …

        Venkatesh Rao added,

        Bret Pettichord @bpettichord
        Replying to @vgr
        what about nuclear winter?
        2 replies 1 retweet 17 likes
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      5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        the leap of faith people make about working in generic capabilities rather than solutions to real problems (notice I *didn’t* scare-quote real) is that on average they’ll reshape more problems to be easier than harder, and so faster than more problems get added to the stack

        1 reply 0 retweets 16 likes
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      6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        so if in 1980 there were 10 level 4 problems the hope is a general capability will bump 7 of them down to level 3 and bump 3 of them up to level 5 problem load reduction: 4*10-3*7-3*5=40-21-15=4 but then another level 4 problem might have been added in the meantime

        1 reply 0 retweets 14 likes
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      7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Persist

        update it’s back 🤣 I hadn’t checked latelyhttps://twitter.com/RaqWinchester/status/1319826561944739840 …

        Venkatesh Rao added,

        Persist @RaqWinchester
        Replying to @vgr
        Well, actually.... (sorry) https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/world/antarctic-ozone-hole-scn-trnd/index.html …
        1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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      8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Varun Adibhatla

        roslingism isn’t wrong, it’s just misconstrued, it shows that problems are in fact being reshaped and mitigated due to new potentialities, so indeterminate optimism is warranted the problem is rolling the dice may not solve problem in the priority order we think is necessaryhttps://twitter.com/vr00n/status/1319822543944110080 …

        Venkatesh Rao added,

        Varun Adibhatla @vr00n
        Replying to @vgr
        what about all of this? pic.twitter.com/shewFGq6d0
        2 replies 0 retweets 14 likes
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      9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        roslingism is popular with free market types because it works well with markets everything will be fixed once the price is right the problem is the price and time may not be right at the same time

        1 reply 0 retweets 22 likes
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      10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        the market is just 1 mechanism in play, possibly the only one, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary or sufficient for any given problem to get solved right at the right time, so that’s where i part ways with market fetishists who won’t entertain the possibility of alt mechanisms

        1 reply 2 retweets 23 likes
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      11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        other mechanisms, including state action and nonprofit action also reshape problems in unexpected ways, but it’s harder to make the leap of faith that on balance they’ll have a net positive effect that doesn’t mean they’re off the table, just more subject to hostile scrutiny

        1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
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      12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        the big problem with state and nonprofit mechanisms is that their fans won’t admit that they have as much or worse indeterminacy and externalities built into their operation there is an illusion of determinate agency around them the stronger the illusion, the worse the effects

        2 replies 1 retweet 23 likes
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      13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        the older I get, the less of a stake I feel in big problems because the likelier it is they’ll stay stable/slowly degrading in my lifetime, and the easier it is to focus on my own narrower interests, and at most concern myself with general potentialities over specific mechanisms

        2 replies 2 retweets 18 likes
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      14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        one way I like to reduce this to individual mediocre human scale is to ask what’s at the intersection of effectiveness and non-misery at every life-stage? unlike Chosen Ones™ mediocre humans can’t be effective while miserable (though they needn’t be actually happy)

        2 replies 0 retweets 15 likes
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      15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        more to the point why bother? non-misery gives mediocre people something to fight to protect, giving them a reason to be part of the solution rather than the problem, and without coercion

        2 replies 1 retweet 14 likes
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      16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        Chosen Ones™ are different for whatever reason maybe they are geniuses, or were bullied as kids, it doesn’t matter... you can model them as psychohistorical mules, random anomalous events that seed positive or negative potentialities that reshape the Big Problems Stack™

        2 replies 1 retweet 25 likes
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      17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        mediocre people I think should simply try to keep personal misery at bay, but in a broad-minded way, and differently at every life stage, reflecting the stakes of every stage, because if you’re miserable and not a Chosen One™ you’re almost certainly part of the problem

        1 reply 1 retweet 23 likes
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      18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        0-18 your best bet is probably skills development 19-35 probably long-term thinking because you have the positivity of youth to overcome the the negativity burden 36-50 probably support/catalyze positive potentials that are developing in your lifetime 50+... ask me after 2024.

        6 replies 1 retweet 34 likes
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      19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        turning 46 in a few weeks, definitely on the leeward slope of life in my head, almost certainly more life behind me than in front of me neither a part of the problem nor part of the solution to anything, but hopefully a net non-negative presence in the world

        4 replies 1 retweet 20 likes
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      20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        to bring it back around, I can’t really think in time horizons any more, short or long, but I do think in terms of temporal textures like lucky/unlucky timelines, and in terms of transforming bad textures into good ones, or poisonous moods into non-poisonous ones

        1 reply 0 retweets 16 likes
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      21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        maybe mood alchemy is the capability that interests me

        2 replies 0 retweets 8 likes
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      22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Skyler adams

        Gen X appears 10 years younger than it is because our prime decade fell through the cracks between the death of old media and the rise of social media. 1995-2005, the missing life decade.https://twitter.com/skyler__adams/status/1319845329550725120?s=21 …

        Venkatesh Rao added,

        Skyler adams @skyler__adams
        Replying to @vgr
        I thought you were ~35
        5 replies 4 retweets 32 likes
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      23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        We are the undocumented digital migrants 🤣

        2 replies 1 retweet 18 likes
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      24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Oct 23
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        Though I totally coasted through that decade doing absolutely nothing worthwhile so it’s fair to edit it out

        0 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
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      25. End of conversation

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