Many tragicomic paths begin with the hope that life is meaningful enough that surrendering agency and doubt is a metaphysically smart thing to do. Hence the focus on surrender and submission in all religions.
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Not that it can’t lead to brilliantly wrong metaphysics. Leibniz was a risk-taking royal-ass-kissing, solipsistic hustler, but also seemed to be genuinely religious in exactly this sense. He believed the universe was fractally optimal at every instant down to the last monad.
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Leibniz was possibly the ultimate “too clever for his own good” guy. So clever he invented calculus and computers and for an encore fooled himself into believing Spinoza was wrong with an intricately wonderful bullshit-vitalist metaphysics (monadology)
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Probably a good bit of commencement speech type advice for kids would be: pick one useless thing you’re neither going to get clever with, nor let others dictate how you pursue, and design life around reserving your peak hours for that.
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Get as clever as you like in adjacent things. Take risky shortcuts etc to pay the bills in other areas. But the one core thing. Keep it off limits for cleverness, external incentives, and surrendering of control.
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“Center your purest hobby in your most free hours every day Luke”
I guess I accidentally approximately did that. Except writing would probably not have been the thing I’d have picked if I’d actually given this idea serious thought at say 22.
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Purest = least susceptible to external incentives, most deeply entangled with who you are
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Since a few people are asking what I'd have chosen at age 21 instead of writing if I'd consciously thought of it this way... I've been answering 'parkour'. It's partly a joke, but also partly hindsight wisdom. I'm way overindexed on life of mind over life of body, with high cost.
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I'm not particularly athletic, but not particularly unathletic either, and there was a time when I could have, at relatively low but patient effort, set myself up for a far more healthy future. Now it would take 100x the effort and I'm like "just accept progressive decrepitude"
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It's not as bad as that... I do work out and put some effort into staying in shape, but it's mostly damage mitigation and stop-loss levels. The decades of underinvestment can't be reversed.
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And I did used to actually enjoy several physical activities enough, and was unterrible enough at them, that they were real options 20 years ago... ultimate frisbee, swimming, running, hiking. I just didn't choose to ever invest at more than casual level.
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I have a feeling that would have been an investment that would have floated all boats (including mental) in middle age.
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Just realized that what I mean here is roughly what Douglas Hofstandter means by a "strange loop" ... activities that are entangled enough with identity all the way down
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“Center your purest hobby in your most free hours every day Luke”
I guess I accidentally approximately did that. Except writing would probably not have been the thing I’d have picked if I’d actually given this idea serious thought at say 22.
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I like to swim and hike, and am currently debating whether to move much closer to an area with lakes and a very big state park, or stay “closer to civilization” where those things are a 1-1.5 hour drive away
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It’s a very hard decision because on the one hand those hobbies (plus maybe amateur astronomy, with darker skies) are things I really want to optimize for, but on the other hand, being closer to extended family, less driving and urban serendipity are too!

