Apple veteran once described executive success culture there as 2 rules: do the right thing, keep Steve happy. Not a polarity but the sort of orthogonality tension that makes for good 2x2s. Ones that resolve via actual creative solutions rather than collapse into a zen degen Mu.
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Zen degens are the worst
Anyone who ever says Mu should be sent to live with cows
Anyway
Wonder if this is why I like 2x2s 🤔
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Been thinking of my own orthogonality rule
I think it is: do the sublime thing, make money
Very unstable quadrant. You constantly risk slipping on one or both.
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Sublime + run out of money = interesting art
Not sublime + makes money = selling vitamins online
Not sublime + does not make money = identity expression art
Sublime + make money = lucky art
Art that brings luck is my preferred mode
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Speaking of zen degens, I read a good book that said good characters are expressible as paradoxes
Like: “Kid born poor wants to be rich BUT keep all his childhood friends”
Good book, though the recipe is hard to follow in an imaginative way
Replying to
The more literary the story the more you get a tragic zen degen character with an unsolvable dilemma. The more it’s a genre story, the more you get a solvable 2x2, though at the risk of cliche solutions to cliche character paradoxes
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Good one. Zemblanity = certain doom/unsurprisingly unlucky
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Replying to @vgr
Non-degen resolution may be "crisis arrival"
Crisis from Foundation: "As long as more than one course of action is possible, the crisis has not been reached"
Arrival as in the movie / Story of Your Life (Chiang) – you abide until the future is simply something you have to enact
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