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
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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
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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
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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
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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)
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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
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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™
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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 …
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Though I totally coasted through that decade doing absolutely nothing worthwhile so it’s fair to edit it out
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End of conversation
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I hadn’t checked lately