I feel the same too. I feel my direct circle is too small. There are a lot of interesting people out there.
I was thinking about creating a platform similar to clubhouse, but asynchronous .
So like an audio version hackernews.
why audio based? because producing audio content/conversation is easier than writing/blogging? And being asynchronous makes topic mining and content based recommendation possible.
Just connecting people wouldn't be enough, you need some context to help them turn these individual relationships into a real peer group, something to give people the confidence to engage fully and not just perform or consume
We use Marco Polo as a closed group thing, so content mining and recommendations aren't really relevant to our use case. Turning it into an open social media platform seems like it would basically be TikTok with different content.
As for liking it... I've always preferred text over audio or video, but some members of the group are much more likely to participate this way, so it's a compromise.
This hits pretty close to home. Some of the best conversations in my life have been with humanities grad students who are smart and still deeply interested in their subject, but I lost touch with those kind of people. It seems harder to converse about engineering topics though working together on problems kind of hits the same spot.
This is funny. Yes, some engineers (and I’m an engineer, so it’s fair game) seem only comfortable talking about engineering. You can try to go outside the zone but things only pick up when you get back to DevOps. My best friend is a studio artist (but his parents were engineers).
I think the problem is mental diet. Even though many engineers have a history of interest in humanities, our mental diet doesn’t situate us for regular conversations about it. Or not being in a class together, we’re not all thinking about the same things. We might read the same books but with months or years between so hard to talk about.
I think he's getting at something important. I started writing for the same reason basically. But wish there was a way to network my writings with other people's writings.
Maybe I just need to build a social media following (probably on Twitter)?
I miss the community of bloggers in the old days... there was these groups of people often cross-referencing and reacting to each other in the form of essays. No particular hierarchy, just an amorphous conversation
Yeah, I prefer the discussions via essay format as well. Instead of the quick meme reactions. I guess it's good for comedy and being edgy, but not really for high quality ideas. I vaguely recall seeing a Show HN of a discovery tool for personal blogs, but don't think it really took off. Sad to see.
Props to the author for making excuses to leave early. I’m more likely to drink in excess and resort to indifference, abandon all intellectual drive, and feel like a normal human for a night.
Well it wasn’t dr house doing it, it was one of his patients. Some super smart guy just constantly drunk all of the time to handle living with his normal wife.
I didn’t mean to come off as pretentious. In fact on HN i often feel inadequate! I’m not lonely at all - I’ve built a huge support community over the years and have friends all over the world.
I don’t think I’m beyond everyone’s mental capacity, but I’m certainly beyond most people in terms of curiosity and fascination for subjects beyond general conversation. I’ve gotten better at driving conversation to deeper places, and surrounding myself with people who enjoy doing the same. But it’s often easier at social events to drink and stop caring.
The solution is to be good teacher and learner - there's so many fascinating interests these days and things i don't know about. And I want to share things from my niche too.
I took a ten year break from reading books. Instead I programmed, read blog posts, followed the news, and had a few good talks with friends here and there.
When I started reading again my world caught on fire. A good book is vastly, unimaginably better than doom scrolling, and the wealth of ideas and history and inspiration that starts to accumulate as you read more is life changing. For example, I learned how to properly build habits, how my childhood in a cult came about and what other people who left have done to come to terms with it, and endless interesting facts about lifelong hobbies and interests. Reading is great.
That’s interesting! I have interests in history and fiction as well so the surface area probably feels much larger to me. I’m also a slow reader — sadly, though my siblings can read hundreds of pages an hour, I’m more like ‘hours per hundred page.’
Ah but how do you know if a book is good until you’ve read it? I’m an avid reader and I’ve yet to run out of new books to read, going on 25 years of reading novels at this point.
Same way that you won’t know whether drugs are really that bad unless you’ve personally tried them, which doesn’t mean you must try them. You build a taste for books, skim through it, read reviews from people you trust... I suppose everyone has their own way of measuring a book before diving into it, and one can of course quit in the middle of it should one make the wrong decision.
Bad analogy. The entire premise of that hypothetical situation with trying drugs is that the potential risk of trying the bad ones is high (potentially your health or life).
In contrast, what’s the price of reading a book and realizing it is awful? Literally nothing except the time you spent reading it. Hardly life-ruining.
If your problem is just the metaphor, just replace it with someone's momma's cooking that everyone raves about. You can taste a bit of it and you don't have to eat the whole thing, neither do you have to try it. The point stands. And honestly the concern is rather petty.
Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy does all of those and is worth a read. Mostly you want to read each story template roughly once, hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is pretty unique and touches on a lot of story templates so is efficient.
But I do think that simple stories are also worth a read if you haven't read those kinds yet. There is a reason for kids to read simple stories, if you didn't read them before it might be worth to read them even as an adult to fill a hole. So basically if it looks like you have already read the story then there is no need to read it again.
Btw, I didn't downvote you, I never up/downvote people. I do like responding to downvoted people though.
> Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.
The second paragraph back there does start "Together, this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by...", but IMO the Hitchhiker's Guide doesn't really fit the proposed pattern very well: There's a lot more to it than just the bland stock phrases.
I put down at least 1/4 to 1/3 of the books that I start. I have very limited time to read (3 kids under 3 years, etc.). I won't spend that resource doing something that I am not enjoying. How do you do it?
One thing I found out a few days ago was that I was extremely easy to be distracted when learning from computer resources (pdf, online videos).
I wish I could revert to my university learning style (late 1990s~early 2000s) which has zero internet and we had to figure out things from books even for experimental classes (e.g. back then no one had the luxury to have one's own electronics lab for introductory electronics classes, so we had to cherish the time in lan sections and read books for questions we couldn't solve in lab). It was a bit like learning programming in 60/70s -- you submit a program to mainframe and get the result next morning.
Reading the right books is great. 95% of published books are garbage (much like 95% of TV). I've read an awful lot of books, and finally realized that very few books are worth the time to read.
I have started to find a perverse pleasure in reading bad books. At least this is why I tell myself when I am wringing reading out of something awful I've bought.
"Oh my god, they're not going to do predictable thing __X__ are they? Bwahaha"
"Hahahaha, this dialog is completely unbelievable"
"Welp, that unwinds all the interesting things happening in that character's arc."
A couple things that laughter can't even redeem:
- Incessant deus ex machina. The prose can be good, the dialog believable, the world interesting, and the characters likable... but if all the problems just get waved away in some random unpredictable way, that's infuriating.
- Even worse: when a POV character has an ace up their sleeve the entire time that could have been played at any point to avoid all the conflict, and the only reason why we're in suspense is that POV character didn't share that with us.
I’ve done the same but with TV! My all time favorite TV show is “The 100”. It’s incredibly dumb and has so many plot holes it’s honestly amazing. However it never gets boring! Really would recommend it if you like that kind of stuff.
Same, but my genre has become terrible historical romance. I get many groans of enjoyment from the terrible similes (no, you can't compare what she's experiencing to that; it wasn't invented for another 150 years), the inaccuracies, and being able to plot the whole thing within the first 10 pages mostly accurately.
Business oriented: try your hand at any of the best books on x, by forbes. Google the list "forbes list of best books". Its prob circa 2010ish. They put books on leadership (annapurna, great read), entrepreneurship, product (beijing jeep), etc etc. Some really solid stuff
Pulitzer lists: Just go on wikipedia anf look at winners by year. For example, controversial but interesting : guns germs and steel.
Reco engines: I think i used tastekid a loog time ago. Type in a book, it would give you recommendations on books you might like. With advances in ML, I'm sure there are tons of engines doing the same now
I expect you already have some books you’ve been ‘noticing’. They might get recommended a lot on Hacker News - Atomic Habits, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, A Thousand Brains, that sort of thing. Time to learn what all the fuss is about!
A habit I’ve picked up is to follow the deaths of famous authors (the NYT will feature one on regularly on their home page). When that happens, I like to read about their life and oeuvre and pick up one of their most famous books, which is usually both very interesting and worthwhile.
You can also just go to Barnes and Noble and wander around. Find the genre you like, poke around, and you’ll probably recognize some of the titles or authors, which is often a good sign.
If you have some favorite authors, look up their lesser known books! The fact that you liked their other work is a good sign.
Over time, you will develop a long list of books on your list so you can start getting more selective. Check the Goodreads reviews. Try to understand how this book fits into the bigger picture and whether it or the subject seem significant to you.
Honestly, it’s hard to go wrong early on. Imagine you were just being exposed to film/tv for the first time and you ask for recommendations. ‘I dunno, Breaking Bad? The Godfather? Titanic?’ Even though there’s a lot of trash out there, the best books, like the best movies, are easy to find and there are tons of rankings and compilations.
Develop questions you want to answer and then find the books that will help you to do so. If you have an active interest in a book you'll get a lot more out of it.
Don't just read books because they have a good reputation in general.
That's a great idea, but still, You should remember that You do not even know all questions You can ask, thus reading books that has reputation can broaden horizon in ways that You can't event imagine (or alternatively You can try to build computer that will find the question).
A few news orgs in my area have a jury going which every month selects ten non-fiction books. I regularly buy one off of that list. It's in German though. While some of the books are originally English, they only provide the translated title and the list is of limited use if you don't read German.
The problem with books is that, while there are a lot of good books with good content, 5% of it is good content while 95% is filler material to get the book to a certain amount of pages in order to sell it.
I read a ton and this is my #1 complaint about nonfiction (and sometimes fiction too). I’ve read two books recently that broke this pattern (replacing guilt by Nate Soared, and hell yeah or no by Derek Sivers). It was a huge breath of fresh air, to not find myself skimming over the 32nd time the author feels the need to restate the premise of the book in only slightly different terms. Most authors just don’t have 200 pages of insight into whatever they’re writing about; I’m not sure why exactly they all feel the need to write 200-300 pages anyway.
I’m not sure where the disconnect lies, between the people that view this as a huge problem with nonfiction and the rest. I don’t think it’s book selection, because I’ll often read a book where I felt the last half was 90% rehashing, and in the reviews no one else will mention that the author ran out of interesting things to say halfway through.
I find this true for some of the recent horde of nonfiction books with names like “numb: the astounding new science of how your leg falls asleep”. Their topic is usually fascinating, but the content is full of random stories, speculation, and drawn out conclusions.
I agree! I'm a voracious reader but I am very put off by books that I find to be, to borrow the phrase, "garbage." I spend a lot of time curating my reading list, as a result, and I'm always on the lookout for solid recommendations.
Hey there. I'm not sure where I'd start, to be honest. My wife and I recently had our 3rd child. As a result, I've been opting for easier reading material over the last ~4 months. I don't really maintain reading lists, or lists of reading recommendations. But, I do endorse the books that I read and enjoy.
Here are the books I've read in the last 4 months, not in order:
* Frank Herbert - Dune
* J.R.R. Tolkein - The LotR trilogy + The Silmarillion
* Stephen King - 'Salem's Lot
* Stephen King (short story) - Jerusalem's Lot
* Stephen King (short story) - The Night Flier
* Stephen King (short story) - The Children of the Corn
* Stephen King - The Stand (uncut version)
* Stanisław Lem - The Cyberiad
* John Whyndham - The Day of The Triffids
* Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic
* Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep
Okay, so... Dune was a re-read ahead of the film release. LotR was a re-read that was provoked by some conversations I had with a group of friends (who form a loose book and movie club) after we discussed the Dune film and books / universe.
Lots of comparisons were being drawn to LotR (both the books and the film adaptations) and I wanted to confirm that my memory of Tolkein's prowess and effectiveness as a writer were accurate (they were).
I had never read Stephen King before this year and I found that I quite liked him. I started with 'Salem's Lot and Jerusalem's Lot because of the TV series Chapelwaite (an adaptation of Jerusalem's Lot -- I am a fan of horror film and television) which I want to watch.
I really liked King, so I pushed a little deeper. I'll come back to him later this year.
The books that remain are Sci-Fi books that I had either had on my own backlog (Roadside Picnic and A Fire Upon the Deep) or were recommendations that I saw in HN comments (The Cyberiad and The Day of the Triffids).
edit/ There were probably between 4 and 6 books that I started, read a few chapters of, and put down in this time frame, too, FWIW.
If you ask me at different times I'll give different answers, but some are just on top:
War of the Worlds, Lord of the Rings, The Mote in God's Eye, Replay, Earth Abides, 20000 Leagues Under The Sea, 2001, Nothing Like It In The World, Reach For The Sky, Winnie The Pooh, The Last of the Mohicans, The Hunt for Red October, With the Old Breed, Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman, Moby Dick, Shogun, Romeo and Juliet
This is unfortunately true. It's hard to find the books that will shake your world, apart of the obvious ones like the classic Russian authors.
There are plenty of "if you like book x you'll also like y" recommendation sites out there but so far I have had zero success with their findings.
There's a lot of talk about good books, but I do think when I was younger I challenged myself more by reading difficult books at the edge of my reading abilities. That stuff was rewarding but also exhausting. These days I'm exhausted by plenty of other stuff so easy books are more satisfying.
I had opposite experience. I attempted to start reading fiction again multiple times. Most books were boring. That includes classics - they were much less great then I remembered. It includes also pure "for fun" books.
Some did interested me, but they were rare. When I have to try 15 books to find 1 I like, it becomes frustrating and expensive.
> Writing on the Internet is the best way to solve intellectual loneliness because sharing ideas in public turns you into a magnet for like-minded people.
I imagine most people who try writing on the internet don't acquire any audience at all.
I didn't see that as suggesting an audience. To me it sounds more like online friends who know enough about some of the same interests I have to engage in meaty discussion.
I actually found that paragraph rather strange. My experience of writing is the exact opposite: the world as it stands is an internet shouting match among lost souls, and I write precisely because while I have my own thoughts, I want to run away from all the shouting, and I refuse to dignify it by participating in it.
And yes, watching certain professors (not YouTubers) makes one's heart run faster.
I remember prof. Brian Harvey 2008 course (Scheme based) of old MIT courser by Eric Grimsin. Or Systematic approach by Gregor Kiczales, or Dan Grossman's "Programming languages" course.
And then you stumble upon another node_modules shit...
It was bugging me why I knew it was a famous novel when I hadn't read it in or out of school. When I woke up, I remembered - in my freshman psychology class many years ago, we were given a choice of literature to do a presentation on, and one of them (which I did not choose) was Siddhartha, also by Hermann Hesse. And the professor talked about Steppenwolf.
If I'm on HN, you can assume I'm exhausted, running a fever or otherwise too impaired by my incurable medical condition to be trying to work. I always appreciate it when people are kind in their interpretation of my efforts to engage to distract myself from the misery that is my life.
> the war I wage every night when I get a second rush of energy from mind-altering books
Two things I've experienced with this. First is that there seems to be a half-life on this activity. One day one may ask themselves, what tangible benefit have I gained from all these germs of wisdom and information I've gleaned over the years? Second is that invariably, outside of "hard" disciplines, there's nearly always a counter argument or viewpoint that can be equally compelling.
So for myself, the way two decades of intellectual curiosity manifests is the conversations I have with my kids. They generally think I'm a bore, but sometimes I relate something that seems to give them a spark.
I think part of it is building understanding of aspects of art/science/history/literature that you find interesting. If you have, say, a deep understanding of the events and context of WWII (a very ambitious goal), it might not have a big outward effect on your life, but it’s very satisfying and opens the door to more fulfilling ways to engage with the subject —- in this case, say, building a collection, or going to a war museum, or meeting other people who are into this.
I’m not saying that existentially it counts for anything but there are usually rewards to learning deeply about any worthwhile subject.
To your first point: the sheer pleasure of knowing seems to be the benefit. I feel that it would be difficult to find an answer that suffices more than that does.
To the point about there always being a counterpoint to anything—I’ve come to use that as a justification for how nothing we do, believe, or want is objectively necessary, and what truly matters more is whether we can all get each other to agree on a certain goal to then objectively judge our actions against. It seems to me that that agreement on goal or purpose for our actions is at the core of why people disagree on pretty much any issue.
The banality of everyday Life is soul-crushing leading to ennui. I think it is in large part due to our consumerist/distraction-filled society (itself a product of Technology) and catering to the lowest common denominator in everything.
Questions plaguing me:
- Why do i need to conform to social mores?
- Why must i accommodate myself to "popular culture"?
- Why don't people stop what they are doing, take a step back and ask themselves "Where are We and How did We get Here"?
- What have we "Gained" and What have we "Lost"?
- What exactly has "Progressed" and what "Regressed"?
- Why don't people want to face "Reality" but are willing to live in any "Fantasy" of their making/subscribing?
- Is this all there is to my Life?
- How do i cope with the utter meaninglessness of it all?
My answer is to shut myself away from Society and live within my Head, alone and lonely. But Books provide a coping mechanism by getting me out of my Head and providing me new experiences through that of the author.
A rather flippant and presumptuous comment (i am already middle aged :-).
As Krishnamurti said; "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
The point is not that the questions are special/unique; it is that they are fundamental, perennial and plague everybody (the "me" is just a placeholder). The tragedy of existence is that there can be no settled answer to them and each of us have to find out for himself or subscribe to somebody else's answer.
But then again as Camus said; "Beginning to Think is beginning to be undermined".
Your start with realizing something is not quite right but unable to place your finger on it, begin asking questions each of which only reveals the rest of the layers of the onion and before you know it are starting to suffer from cognitive dissonance. You then abandon looking for answers and start to focus on learning to cope with the non-answers and getting on with your Life.
Social mores are a chesterton's fence - they exist for a reason. That may be a terrible reason, but there is _some_ reason. Identify the reason and then reject it, but until you identify the reason you can't form a meaningful response.
Social Mores/Popular Culture all exist to bind oneself to a "Group Identity". The problem with today's hyper-connected society is that it has become so pervasive that it is impossible to escape it completely. You have to learn to live both within and apart from it.
You grouped all social mores into a single reason and provided a criticism at the same time. That suggests you have entirely failed to consider them deeply; we did not gain our social mores in one fell swoop.
I don't think even the social mores of breaking bread or offering your guests food and water came from the same place.
Yes of course! Great essay (i had known of it earlier as "The Last Man") and i do subscribe to some of its viewpoints. For anybody who wants a quick overview of the main points the wikipedia page does a great job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Messiah
- Why do i need to conform to social mores?
- Why must i accommodate myself to "popular culture"
My response to this is because people who conform to social mores and have at least a little accomodation to popular culture are more interesting and relatable people. People who don't are grating and can be very difficult to live with and be around.
Being able to relate to and get along with others makes life a whole lot more fulfilling.
What you point out is a coping mechanism and not the answer to the questions themselves. The questions are about the dichotomy between the need for Individual Identity vs. the need for Group Identity.
Create an alternative, lead the way, show that there's a different kind of life out there that can exist. No-one else will do it for you.
Actually, there are a lot of people who do that, but they are not the majority. They are these people you probably look up to; they are these people who have said: "Ok, enough is enough. I gotta try this, I gotta face my fears, and just take the leap of faith, because it's the only viable way for me to live my life fully". Anyone who tries to do things a bit differently has to be able to stand alone, I would think, but not in isolation, but as a negation to whatever they are trying to fight against.
Right. My comment in the context of this thread was to shine some light on the causes of "Intellectual Loneliness". It is not as some people have argued here, a desire to show off one's intellectual superiority nor self-aggrandizement nor lack of social skills etc. etc. Instead it is the consciousness of these unresolved questions which gives rise to the dissonant mental state.
You don't really need to conform, nobody is forcing you. You will just get different things out of conforming or not.
I live like a complete stranger where I am, I spend 99.9% of my time alone. Read alone, eat alone, walk alone, sleep alone.
Most of my life is about coding, reading and walking long distances accros countries. And I am pretty happy about my life right now.
I get to have a life where I make almost no compromise, I live so cheaply that I don't really even need to work anymore.
But then you are missing out on having kids, spending time with friends, family, having stability, a dog, a hobby you can pursue, chitchat, routine, etc.
Again, nobody is forcing you to anything, it seems like you just need to take a few days just by yourself, facing your own thought and exploring what you really want to do.
The thing I find stupid in this article, is that the author goes to a party and leave early because he does not like partying.
Well, I don't either. But I have learnt that I don't a long time ago. So I don't go to parties. I don't need to make up excuses about why I am leaving.
I'm facing this. Though without the parties and such.
It seems to go with getting older. My two best friends for intellectual conversation passed away in 2021. Just one such friend is left. TBD how that'll go. Two people can't make for the richness of intellectual conversation that three or four can. And the ghosts of the two who are gone could cast long shadows over the remaining two of us getting together much.
> Two people can't make for the richness of intellectual conversation that three or four can.
Hailing frequency open. (o:
I have found that four or more participants brings verve and more perspectives to the subject. Deeply engaging discussion is far more enjoyable (to me/to some) than tiresome chatter, quips, memes, and n-depth packed nonsense spewed for the sake of content-creation.
The anti-culture of consumer fetishism and media monetisation serves a completely different purpose.
This, to me, sounds like someone who just doesn’t like the challenge of creating their own narrative. Of course it can be easier to just get lost in books and lectures: those are narratives that are ready made and pre-packaged. It’s much more work to walk into a situation and define your own. But it makes you a much more interesting person.
This is how I've come to cope with social situations too. Life got a lot more interesting when I decided to be interested in trying to learn something from everyone I talk to.
I'm a few years out of grad school, working at a tech company, and single. I came from an academic background where talking about interesting ideas and concepts was the norm. I had a pretty uncommon career path into tech and I'm not some coder.
My experience is that when you're in my position, it's getting harder and harder (with age) to find people who are interested in talking about ideas, entertaining the curiosities in life without some agenda/getting offended by the controversial ones, talking about possibilities and concepts (rather than objects). Like having conversations on advanced mode with people who are similar.
Often times at parties, when I get bored, I think of a quote, "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events/things. Small minds discuss wine."
It's getting more and more common that I find people just wanting to talk about wine. Or the equivalent. Stuff that's completely forgettable after you leave the party. I mean that stuff is fine, and there's nothing wrong with talking about good food you've had, some articles you've read, movies seen, etc. too. And to be funny and engaging while talking about it. It just feels like... after you're done talking about that, what then?
Or if I do meet people who are intellectually interesting, how to get more connected or where to take it after a chance meeting and pleasant chat?
That said, what do I have to offer at this stage of my life either, to a stranger? I'm unmarried, so I don't have kids or the mortgage to talk about. I'm not a CEO or someone powerful. Also I'm single -- what are people supposed do with that? Don't have a lot of great reasons for anyone to want to go out of their way to spend more time with me after even an interesting 30 min conversation, without some other excuse.
We're not all living close together in shared housing to make intellectually stimulating conversations natural and prolonged. People have their lives to lead, not sit around talking about theoretical ideas. To contact the few people I've found who are interesting would be... how? "Would you like to schedule a get-together again for a conversation date?"
It's not going to get easier either. Probably in a few years I'll be the really odd guy. Eh, it's a life choice I've made, I realize that too -- to be more interested in ideas and experiences than say... people.
I figure I'd better find some interesting hobbies to make up for the lack of intellectual stimulation. But deeper, what am I working towards? For whom? So, sometimes I think of changing jobs just to see more of the world and gather experiences to be able to have more intellectually stimulating conversations. Learn about VC? Hear about more companies? Where/how?
Yeah, it's a bit of a problem sometimes to ponder.
That's what I miss about college. A friend of mine at Caltech would regularly have chicken wing night at his apartment a few steps from campus. All were invited, and as his chicken wings were to die for, it would be well attended.
The owner of the apartment building, an older fellow, would also come by. He'd just sit quietly in a corner, munching on chicken wings. After a few times of this, I asked him, why are you coming here hanging out with people 30 years younger? Don't you find us boring?
He said no, no. This is fascinating! Nowhere else have I encountered people who talk about the things you guys do. I just marvel at it!
One way to increase the number of conversations like this is to say yes to other people’s line of thought. I learned about “yes, and” in an improv class. Have fun with the idea, build it, explore it… try not to shoot it down or debate it. It’s fun to hang out with people who riff on an idea.
> "Would you like to schedule a get-together again for a conversation date?"
Sounds pretty good - try it! The person you were talking to may feel exactly the same way.
And interesting hobbies? Definitely yes. Try getting into playing an instrument for example. If you like it, it will keep you busy the rest of your life if you want.
> But deeper, what am I working towards? For whom?
If I get to feeling like this, I like to think about my 2 cats. I love having them, they obviously love being around me, because they are within sight most of the time. But what is their purpose for existence? Do we all need a purpose for existence, or is the fact that we do exist good enough? Speaking of pets, that's another great thing to try out. Having something else living with you takes you out of your head.
We are human beings, not human doings. If you feel like doing something, great. If not, just ... be.
At least you have some conversations on HN with others. Let's hope the replies are not just created by AI :) Conferences are nice times to meet and discuss with like-minded, pity Covid took that away (virtual doesn't work as well)
You absolutely set a date for intellectual conversation, and foster a network of relationships with just intellectual people. I have a whole host of friends who I basically only see for this. I wouldn't hesitate to invite them to a party to chat about wine either though. The reality is intellectual ideation as an activity uses your mouth and you make word sounds but is not a typical human activity that just comes up in conversation unless you force it. It's like wanting to always drive around in an formula 1 car or use a fighter jet to get the groceries.
> That said, what do I have to offer at this stage of my life either, to a stranger? I'm unmarried, so I don't have kids or the mortgage to talk about. I'm not a CEO or someone powerful. Also I'm single -- what are people supposed do with that?
Uh, you're single? That's amazing! The world is your oyster! If you think you're boring now, just wait until you're a cleaning, feeding, peek-a-booing family machine.
If you miss shared housing, why did you move out of it ? I've tried living alone in my early college days, that was probably a good experience (even though made me kind of waste a few years), I don't think that I would ever do that again...
But why waste time discussing politics, climate change, etc. when we can't change anything anyway?
Isn't it better to discuss wine and food and holidays and enjoy the little time we have together? Isn't that actually the most intelligent thing to do?
I think most people in this thread misunderstood the meaning behind the post (or maybe I did). This isn't about one's superiority, it's about the fact that there aren't enough people interested in talking about ideas.
People here said that someone like that would get bored if others picked the wrong topics. I don't think so. Even when I don't have a direct interest in a topic, I'm always open to learning more. But as you said, and I think this is what the article meant, many people do not have the habit of intellectual discussion. Yes, they are able to communicate, but their interests are shallow.
There was an argument here about how there's no difference between citing Plato and knowing everything about Manchester United (I think this is what MU meant). It depends. If you are only citing Plato because this is what you were taught, then there is no difference. It's a big difference if you cite Plato when you're trying to figure out why something is the way it is and you find out he had similar interests and ideas about it. The key isn't the imitation itself, but the reason why it's done. Otherwise, it's just another cargo cult.
I don't know if it's laziness of mind, cheap dopamine or something else, but it's rare to meet someone with real interests, one who's passionate about struggling with ideas, playing with them, discussing them.
I'm no big sports fan. And if a bunch of friends start talking about the whatever last second play in yesterday's game or the player stats, trades, etc. I'm pretty tuned out. I will never remember the people or players and what they did in that game that seemed so amazing to others.
But if one person starts talking about how the business of a sports franchise works, who makes money and who doesn't, the operating costs of a team, and the dynamics between owners and players, I'm all ears.
Maybe I just want to understand how the more complicated things work. It's not that interesting to talk about how he slid into home and nearly got tagged out.
There can be a reasonable level of nuance and detail in many sports (if not most sports conversations!)
But most people don’t care about the why’s or the how’s on or off the field, and mainly just want to brag about their team (or complain if their team is bad.)
Wine itself is worthy of deep intellectual discussion, relating to a huge breadth of specialized knowledge: chemistry, biology, social sciences, logistics, engineering, agriculture and so on.
And sure, discussing wine can be posturing. It can also serve as a simple topic to establish social connection for people who are otherwise not entirely comfortable.
From there you can ask questions about what people care about, what they are afraid of, what they love, what they would do in a world without wine, experienced they have had or how they would act in a difficult hypothetical situation.
Ideas, experiences and people don’t have to be entirely discrete things.
I'm also a few years out of grad school and weird in a few ways in STEM circles.
I wonder how much of this is age related and how much of it is that people just have less mental room for intellectual endeavors than they used to? I was raised by what I would consider 'engaged citizens': Neither of my parents had college degrees or 'fancy' jobs (my dad's white collar semi-professional accounting gig was the top of the line for my family), and they followed ideas. We discussed news articles, stuff in science magazines and online, etc. One topic my dad (60s) and I keep returning to is that the world requires way more of his brain power than it did 30 years ago.
It's less and less feasible to maintain an interest in ideas if you aren't folded into a profession or career that lets you combine your interest with your work.
Take the difference in single versus dual income households, for example. I have lots of time for ideas because I've got someone doing the household chores. (And likewise, my sister has a lot of time for HER hobbies because I'm breadwinning for us). Now throw that on top of the pile with everybody outside of tech feeling like their employment is precarious, inflation, the pandemic, and general social instability, and I wouldn't be shocked if people just don't have the bandwidth.
I just got out of legally enforced poverty in 2019 and the difference not being in survival mode made to my ability to have intellectual interests and conversations is IMMENSE.
> "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events/things. Small minds discuss wine."
To counter with a more famous quote: "in vino veritas."
A conversation's quality is the product of each participant's contributions, so perhaps there are ways you can enliven or guide the conversation to improve the experience for everyone. (Chances are you aren't the only person secretly thinking it's dull.)
> there's nothing wrong with talking about good food you've had, some articles you've read, movies seen, etc. too. And to be funny and engaging while talking about it. It just feels like... after you're done talking about that, what then?
Next you can use those shared topics to move beyond the what to the why, from facts to opinions, and from those to deep truths about ourselves and our world.
"Oh cool you liked Batman v Superman? I couldn't see past the explosions, what did you like about it that I must've missed?"
"Well the way the villain pitted the two heroes against each other reminded me of how when I was younger…"
or
"Well the scene where Superman gets nuked in orbit but then revives from the sun made me wonder about how radiation…"
One should be genuinely curious as well as kind, because unlike sharing facts, sharing opinions or questions inherently creates vulnerability. You might've been getting at this, but in today's political powder keg, (fear of) visceral reactions to unorthodox opinions, facts, and even word choice impose significant barriers to reaching that next level of intimacy where you can share feelings and half-formed opinions. Still, it's not impossible to create that environment quickly, it just takes skill and the understanding that sometimes the immediate conditions just aren't right.
> sometimes I think of changing jobs just to see more of the world and gather experiences to be able to have more intellectually stimulating conversations. Learn about VC? Hear about more companies?
Not to write off an entire profession, but I doubt venture capitalists can hold a candle to journalists when it comes to interesting experiences or conversations. I had far more interesting stories to tell when I worked in retail than when I worked in tech. Perhaps status is getting conflated with "having good conversations at parties" a little bit here.
Most people are implantation people, not academics, so that’s what you’ll usually meet. Speaking from the point of view of implementation, it’s hard to engage with academics who want to discuss objectively impossible flights of fancy. But it can be really neat to find the intersection of academic interests that are borderline implementable.
Some would call it narrow mindedness, some would call it focus.
As a soon-to-be PhD, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I think this is one of the major hidden costs of grad school: the tendency to constantly overintellectualize stuff, and a reduced empathic capacity for the lay person.
This feels like it belongs on /r/iamverysmart. I hate to break it to you: you are not nearly as smart as you think you are.
You can't talk to a single person at the party who has an interesting world-view, experience, or education? Isn't that the heart of creating characters? Empathy and experience?
It's fine to not enjoy socializing but acting like it is because you are too creative and smart for everyone else is delusional.
When I go to parties I talk to people about ethics and philosophy and creating music and creativity and cooking, and I trade stories from my past and make jokes.
Acting like watching a lecture on YouTube or reading your thousandths book is somehow superior to talking to living breathing humans because "ideas" is bizarre.
You can do both. Read a lot of books and also socialize.
I basically agree with this, but honestly there’s actually a big snob factor as well.
Some of the best post-age-forty conversations I’ve had came out of me asking someone, “what do you find hard in that job?”
The more hands on the better. And these things - these kinds of discussions - aren’t generally available on YouTube lectures or whatever. In person you can get people to drop the facade or the spin and just talk.
In my late 20s I moved from a relatively uneducated city to one with 5 universities and an intense intellectual culture. I went from being intellectually alone to being super stimulated and connected with people intellectually. So while I appreciate your point of view, sometimes you ARE just living in an intellectual waste land.
It took me a few minutes of browsing this guy’s blog to determine what sort of “intellectual” this guy is, and I can’t say in surprised to find it on HN.
I wonder how old the author is. I had a phase like this in my early twenties that grew out of eventually. I realized there’s a certain kind of wisdom hidden in people that you can’t find in books, if you just ask the right questions. If you find that every party you’re going to is full of boring people then maybe it‘s you not them.
This comes across as very defensive and reactionary. I didn't draw any of those conclusions from that reading. I don't think op is necessarily proud of not being able to relate to people, much the opposite in fact. Rather, you seem quite proud of your social abilities and the riches you have mined from these social interactions. Good for you. I think op's point is that he can't derive the same rich experiences from these interactions. No need to attack him.
Intellectual as an adjective, relating to the intellect. Without any claim to degree of intellect. So as opposed to emotional, physical, or spiritual loneliness. This is a loneliness of the mind, intellect.
I see it as a product of specialization. So many of us put so many hours of our life into things that few other people can understand or relate to. It's not that these other people aren't smart enough to understand what we do. It's simply a matter of hours of attention dedicated to a specific topic. Think of it like branches on a tree. The tree of collective human knowledge keeps growing and consequently, individual knowledge becomes more disparate.
> I hate to break it to you: you are not nearly as smart as you think you are.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten more used to the opposite idea:
Relative to other people (which is implicitly the metric we are using here), you are really smart.
Why do I think that? Because of the data.
The data is pretty solid that, whenever you survey the population, the level of intellectual sophistication is extremely low.
So low that many of the words I'm using in this comment would not be understandable to a significant chunk of the population. So low that, while knowing how to do a wordy math problem is table stakes on HN, knowing how to solve (x+5)*3=21 places you in the 'elite' of the general population.
It's got nothing to do with how we feel about it. It's just a fact that, when we look at the problems that 50% of the population cannot solve, the bar is shockingly low.
So based on that, yeah: the people who are reading this, who know how to write a 'for' loop on a computer, who read way above a 6th grade level, who could say 'yes I know what an imaginary number is', are really smart.
Solving the equation is not intelligence, it’s education. There’s a huge difference. You are not smart because you can solve the equation. Someone showed you how to solve it.
The OP is ONLY interested in a subset of topics he feels is interesting. This is the opposite of intelligent. A hallmark of intelligent people is to find fascination with everything. I recently went to a party where I met a guy who worked in a chicken processing plant. I know nothing about processing chicken. I literally spent an hour talking to him about his job. (By the way, he works way harder and takes way more garbage than us white collar guys).
from this thread and the far-too-many-hours I've spent on Reddit - obviously these feeling are not uncommon, but the tone in which this stuff is presented always reeks of unearned superiority
like I think its great that people like OP have enjoyment and passion for "intellectual pursuits", but most other people don't. you have an interest, and like most other interests, people aren't going to share your interest because they have their own, different interests. so don't be surprised when you try to pivot the conversation, people don't want to talk about
like it sucks you can't share your interest with those close to you, that's a problem most everyone has, but when it's on the topic of "intellectual pursuits" or whatever
- articles like this it always read as "I'm smart, everyone else is dumb, woe is me"
that may not be what people like OP are intending - but the problem is others just have different passions and priorities than you and are turned off when you want to discuss only what interests you. I'm certain most could have such a conversation with someone like OP, but why would they when their tone smells like "smarter than tho" because they want to talk about esoteric philosophy or abstract ideas at a college party
if one want to get rid of this "loneliness" you either need to find a community of like-minded others (see the internet) or introduce conversation topics in a more mutually interesting manner instead of wishing for others to meet you where you are
I write this as someone who has been on both sides of the conversation
I agree. There was a TIL thread on Reddit a few years ago about how smarter people are usually more depressed -- low and behold everyone in the comments was lamenting over how cursed they were to carry the burden of their intellect. No one really pointed out that if you were on one of the most popular websites on the planet in a default subreddit, chances were you were pretty average with average intelligence.
We fetishize intelligence too much as a society and too many don't understand what it really is and how it can differ. It's nice to imagine a world where we valued empathy as much as intelligence.
> if you were on one of the most popular websites on the planet in a default subreddit, chances were you were pretty average with average intelligence.
This isn't true. If you have a very popular website and take the most common threads people might read on it, then you will likely have at least a few hundred thousand people viewing it. If 1% of the smartest 2% comments you would have a maybe a hundred comments from people who would qualify for mensa if the viewers were random people, basically flooding the comment section.
The reason this works is that people will flock to threads that is about something relating to them. People who do well on IQ tests will flock to threads about intelligence etc.
The Dunning Kruger effect study found that there is a strong correlation between confidence and skill, it just isn't perfect and it is much more wrong for low skill than high skill.
People tend to think they're closer to the middle than they are. A useful thing you can do for people on topics where you have more expertise and perspective is draw them away from the middle. Let people know if they are especially good or bad at what they're doing. Try to be gentle about it.
People don't have to care about IQ tests to know that they got a good score on one and therefore consider themselves smart. You can see them in almost every thread about IQ tests "I got IQ score 1X0 and I think that IQ is stupid and doesn't matter!".
Anyway, being smart without an education is pretty worthless as you say, but there is a lot of such people out there. Being uneducated doesn't mean they aren't intelligent, it just means that they didn't utilize their intelligence in life. I'm not sure why you would try to say that they aren't intelligent just because they lack education. If a study found that intelligent people face more boredom or whatever, then it is almost surely that the study was a correlation between IQ and some questionnaire result, so whatever score someone got on an IQ test is very relevant for the topic.
And if you are educated, you have an even wider gap with your average person.
Education starts with school and parenting, when school is averaging to the lowest students and parents are busy with their own work, what is left to your "high IQ kid"?
School would just provide a less-than-average knowledge, parents won't guide, and you get an uneducated kid surrounded by "idiots".
As a parent, you provide guidance to your kids, high IQ or not, you still get a large gap with their peers. Yesterday, we were drugging kids with TV, today, with tiktok and the likes.
The big clue is that you could swap out books/reading/learning for videogames/watching/playing/learning or TikToks/watching/making, or LEGO/building/designing, or any other hobby and the article and the experience wouldn’t change at all.
The distinction between the author and others is not the intellectual pursuit, but the dislike of parties. My bias is to think they’re attending parties with the wrong people, or of bad design (yes, design/engineering is something that social gatherings benefit from).
I like a good party plenty, but I’ve slipped away to read books, and I don’t consider myself to be a voracious reader of books.
I can’t share a whole lot, mainly because I don’t know much myself. In the pre-COVID days, before I stopped going to parties, then blew up my life and moved to another city (thus not having a social network to attend parties with) there were many things to consider when hosting:
- who to invite (complicated by melt/flakiness) - involves making predictions about how people will behave and interact with each other
- how many to invite
- when to start
- when to end and how to end
- what beverages, snacks, food to include; how such things will be prepared and delivered in sequence
- drug and alcohol (also a drug) choices
- what music to play
- lighting and furniture arrangement; use of space generally
- desired outcomes; things to watch for; connections to encourage or discourage
- props, toys, games, and other objects (I suppose food and snacks are partially a subset)
- compartmentalization and breakaway spaces
An example of a party that the author would likely enjoy would be an informal book club gathering with a mixer before or after, or perhaps a showing of a film adaptation with discussion for interested participants after, while less interested people can break off to play board games. Or perhaps board games would be stimulating enough, there are a broad range of kinds, and they can drastically change the feel/experience of an evening.
I suppose “engineering” implies a formal discipline. I think that actually is a profession, I just know nothing about it. But design thinking can be applied by anyone to anything, and I do try to be intentional and/or am slightly neurotic about hosting.
Parties are also a little over-hyped, even a social construct, I would say (writing it down it actually sounds tautological).
On my country's local sub-reddit someone was asking people older than him how did they spend New Year's Eve parties in the past, which reminded me of the New Year's Days I used to spend with my grandparents in the countryside, in a village close to the Carpathians. There were no New Year's Eve parties in that village, or in the villages surrounding it, for that matter, young, unmarried, people would usually congregate on Saturday's evenings for a "village party" so that the boys would find girls to marry and that was pretty much it, once you were married and especially once you had kids of course that parties were not a thing anymore for you (why would have gone there? you were already married).
A little on the conspiracy-oriented side I would say that modern parties have been presented to us as the way we now know them ("you have to be there! you have to be seen as a likeable person! you have to talk and make conversation! you have to small almost at all times!") out of consumerist reasons, I would even that most of this whole "modern socialising thing" is backed-up by consumerist reasons.
People in the past did celebrated with friends and family, but it also involved drinking and music and general partying. Kids were generally present until they were sent to sleep.
There were taverns and pubs where people went to drink and be noisy too.
That is what I got from my grandparents and parents. And when I read memoirs (from wwii and such), people mentioned very party like a activities too.
I think it depends on the region. I can see what you’re saying to be a thing in Western Europe, especially the UK, where because of the earlier industrialization there would be more occasions to socialize outside of the family and you would have been expected to socialize outside the family a little more compared to the only-agricultural past.
Also, the tavern can only be a thing in a society that has cash/money, which also makes me think that a place like Western Europe would have the upper hand on this. Even going in the second part of the 20th century my grandparents’ village was trying to avoid money/cash as much as possible, work-days were often-times paid in other work-days, so to speak, i.e. “I help you out with that hay thing for three days you help me out in return with two days carring wood out of the forrest” or something like that.
Big parties did indeed also happen at weddings and after burials, the latter ones are called “parastas” and I think it has been directly taken from the antique Greco-Roman tradition.
No, it was not West. It is in post communist block. Industrialized only later then west.
Every village big enough to have church has also tavern. Usually close to each other. People drunk a lot, actually. They were poor a lot, but alcoholism was a thing and big social issue.
Paying in work or work for work was a think exactly as you described.
If anything, current western norms are significantly less social. People visit each other less often. You don't have drinking and talking till late while kids run around never at all. Especially as you get older. The way we live forces us isolate in middle age and lonely in old age.
Parties, basically by definition, require excess. It's no shock that people without an abundance of resources didn't throw big parties. In contrast, pretty much every cultural moment where people had large surpluses threw parties: China with drinking and gambling games, India has a whole slew of holidays involving general excess and merriment such as Holi, Diwali, Nowruz has been celebrated by a variety of middle eastern cultures for millennia.
Not to mention weddings, coming-of-age celebrations, and funerals/wakes, which date back well into prehistory.
I went through a phase of beginning to think my intellect was isolating me and realized I was just a self absorbed asshole eventually.
That was hard to swallow. I think the next hard to swallow realization was that I’m not a very good person. I’m not mean to anyone, but I invest very little in actually doing good. I know I should, I have the resources to do it, but I’m still so self absorbed. I buy things I don’t need knowing the same money could literally save lives. I worry about my own security even though I could find a new job within a month.
I used to think I was a pretty nice guy until I realized how terrible I am at changing my behaviour to help other people. In all practicality I’m kind of an asshole. I’ll do better.
Not going out of your way to help people doesn't make you an asshole.
> I buy things I don’t need knowing the same money could literally save lives. I worry about my own security even though I could find a new job within a month.
These things are normal, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
But you are right that going through life thinking you are some lonely, tortured genius is not healthy and is a recipe for being a true asshole.
Not helping others when you are able doesn't make me an asshole; it makes me self centered. Yes, it is quite normal, but I disagree with your next clause: we should think harder about it and not dismiss it so easily.
I've pitched this one before, as it is a short book (pdf, or audiobook) and is one of the most impactful things I've read in a long time. It was Peter Singer's book, The Life You Can Save [1]
The book methodically and non-judgmentally addresses many objections and false beliefs people have about charity [2] and effective altruism. In a nutshell: ideally we'd have enough resources that everyone had everything they need, but we don't. There is a strong instinct to care more about people who are similar to you or live near you than for others, but we shouldn't. That is, the suffering of a person you will never meet is just as real as the suffering of someone you are friends with. Because we have limited resources to help others, the resources we do have should be focused on those who are worst off.
[2] For instance, many people moan about how much of the federal budget is spent/wasted on foreign aid. When asked to guess how much of the budget is spent, people (in the US) commonly guess 10-20%. When asked what they thing would be more appropriate, they commonly say 5-10%. The reality is it is well under 1%.
To play a devil’s advocate (I don’t think I’m right, it’s just the next obvious thought), the life you save produces another two, and after few steps you still can’t. Animal charities, and I feel sorry for this comparison, in areas without controlled population tend to overwhelm themselves to the point where the charity dilutes into conditions indistinguishable from natural.
You may say, well, then help fixing the root cause. That’s right, but you have to find true one and fix it, and both is hard. Much easier to calm yourself by a donation to people who you prefer to believe to understand more.
One point is that when people have secure lives, the birth rate plummets. When your only capital is children, you make more children. By meeting the needs of the worst off, they have fewer children, not more.
I'm sure there were other points made, but I don't want to attempt to restate those from my shaky memory of what I read more than a year ago.
I'm arrogant beyond belief and a self-absorbed asshole. I'm absolutely comfortable with that and feel no need to change. I can point out multiple situations in my personal life where this has been massively advantageous for my own psychology.
By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists. I don't see people not using the knowledge that Isaac Newton shared with us, because he was a horrible person...
I honestly think that if he saw a shrink and worked on "his issues" (by today's standards) he would have lobotomized himself.
Nietzsche had a good intuition about people that optimize for full manifestation of the self in reality, but was kind of naive what qualities these people would exhibit. It is the entire package, not only the "good parts" (by today's standards)
> By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists.
I don't know if there is any data/research on being successful or valuable requiring an arrogant narcissistic personality. I believe it doesn't. If anything, such people became successful despite having such difficult personalities.
The "difficult" in difficult personality is not for themselves, it is for everyone else.
It is not necessity for being successful or valuable, but it is undeniable that people like that exist throughout history.
At the most fundamental level: It is arrogant to believe that from purely biological point of view, an individual would posses qualities like "arrogant" that are of no possible value.
Societies need to believe certain things to function. You cannot have a society where each individual is like Isaac Newton. I'm sure that if you asked the people that were knew him, they would say that "one is more than enough..."
>It is arrogant to believe that from purely biological point of view, an individual would posses qualities (like "arrogant") that are of no possible value
Newton died with no friends, he was celibate his whole life, and he never travelled farther than about 100 miles from where he was born. He was rightly recognized for his contribution to math in his 20s, but by the time he was in his 30s he'd removed himself from the scientific community and spent all his time studying alchemy and the bible.
You believe that it was necessary for him to be a dick in the pursuit of genius; I think the outcome of his "full manifestation of the self" meant that society benefited from 10 years of his singular effort and then lost out on the next 50 years because no one would work with him, and his peers actually laughed at him for his (entirely wrong) approach to the theory of what light is. Boyle and Hooke accused him of stealing their ideas on optics.
The fact Newton was an asshole, and people let him be an asshole, robbed us all of 80% of what he might have achieved if he'd been a bit nicer.
You're saying that if he was not the asshole that he was, he would have achieved more. I'm saying that if he pretended not to be the asshole that he was, he would have achieved nothing.
You cannot go against your own nature. It requires too much energy and does not work, it lobotomizes you.
Kids come with different personalities right out of the box, ask anyone with more than one kid. You've bought into some liberal propaganda that people are fully malleable objects. We are not. It is a combination between nature and nurture. I personally believe it is significantly more "nature" in this case.
There are certain aspects of your personality, like "arrogance", that the society might find unacceptable. That doesn't mean that they are bad for you or that you can change them.
Of course they are bad: you will be shunned by peers, you will have stunted communication skills. Interpersonal relations and communication is a critical skill for any endeavor where you don't work alone (I've no idea what is it that you do).
People are pretty malleable though, is the thing. We like to think otherwise because it’s cognitively simple to think people (and ourselves) are static objects as identities that don’t change over time. In fact, people are very dynamic and change dramatically over time in response to their environment, self-inflicted or not. It can be anything from sudden trauma causing drastic personality changes, puberty, or rigorous work at changing one’s maladaptive thinking patterns.
You might be right. You might not. We have no way to know. Back in Newton's day a person could make huge leaps alone. Today I think there are few people who can make breakthroughs on their own now, or even do great work without collaborating. Maybe being an asshole was OK 400 years ago but it isn't now.
Also, suggesting it's OK to emulate Newton when you're not a genius is likely to have a worse outcome.
- People should emulate you. (Think about how fundamental the change from emulating to non-emulating is for all their talking/reading/thinking patterns. I don't see how else can you reboot your personality short of emulating someone.)
If you're really convinced that there's a "true" version of yourself, you should read the 70s cult classic "The Dice Man" by Luke Rhinehart. While not exactly earth-shattering prose, and while also following a general plot arc of increasingly graphic and violent sexuality, in the right setting it can be a deep reminder that there is not a single version of you. You make choices, sometimes arbitrary, sometimes circumstantial, sometimes due to other people, and those choices can illuminate entirely different aspects of who you are.
Newton wasted a lot of time on pursuits such as alchemy and mapping out the geography of hell. Not to mention surely some of his contemporaries would have came across many of his discoveries- the much better socially-adjusted Leibniz did, after all.
Isn't arrogant and narcissist describing two completely different things? Narcissism is social. You can be an arrogant asshole and become and hermit. A narcissist wouldn't choose to be a hermit, because that person feeds off interactions with others.
My problem with the idea of being "arrogant and a self-absorbed asshole" is that it smells like identity. Taking on strong identity can be a problem, as we see with identity politics. I feel a better path through life is to keep identity small and be more creative on being adaptive.
As I said in another comment, the author is going into the party in a frame of "seeking intellectual conversation." Another person at the party may have attended in the frame of "seeking a hook-up." Both may have been similarly disappointed. A better approach is to be be creative and adaptable. We have forgot how to play.
I feel that having a default frame would be problem for me. Being adaptable is just more fun. Being arrogant may be effective in certain situations, but a problem for others. One of my favorite playgrounds is the British pub cultural thing of "taking the piss." That's where someone you're talking to at the bar just starts ripping into you. I LOVE that, and I usually surprise them at being better at it than they are. An arrogant frame in this situation would leave you wide open.
>I'm arrogant beyond belief and a self-absorbed asshole. I'm absolutely comfortable with that and feel no need to change. I can point out multiple situations in my personal life where this has been massively advantageous for my own psychology.
I'm a thief. I'm comfortable with that and feel no need to change. I can point out multiple situations where this was advantageous to me.
>By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists.
Nah, this is just the standard /r/iamverysmart drivel: you basically are so superior to everyone else that any interaction with the inferior masses leaves you so annoyed that you have to lash out like an asshole. Probably popularised by depictions of the """genius"" like Sheldon on Big Bang Theory, Zuck on Social Network, or that Steve Jobs flick.
In reality unless you truly are massively wealthy or influential nobody will stand for your bullshit. The most competent and intelligent people I've found are also nearly always the most humble and the best communicators.
These realizations are easier to swallow (or spit back out) when you ask people directly, or recall when they said so or otherwise. The “not goodness” that you describe is likely a sort of self-eating during yet another crysis.
I know I should
This is a great opening to self-analysis. Whence do you know it? What’s the goal? What if you did something “good” whatever it means to you, what then? Imagine it, what’s different? Walking this graph of questioning every term may discover the true source of your unease, which may be completely unrelated to “being good”.
I’ve contemplated these questions a fair amount and I suspect the answers are approximately these:
I know I should do better for other people because a) my success in life has depended on others to a large degree and b) I’m not doing much to help others succeed
I know I worry about my own security because I grew up quite poor and I struggle to imagine that things will still be secure tomorrow, or even by half way through the day
If I could overcome that I would likely feel more at ease and be better off for it. At the same time, I’d likely enjoy helping others with resources like time, wealth, and energy which I felt more secure to offer. I immensely enjoy opportunities to help others when I do allow myself to do it, and I believe I would continue to enjoy it if I did it more
Some of this is hypothetical, but I figured I’d outline my thinking so it seems less like I’m beating myself up for no reason. You’re right - without questioning or exploring the thoughts, I’d likely be pursuing the wrong thing or for the wrong reasons. I think several lines of questioning are how I got here though.
Having said that, I’m certain “being good” will never mean a singular thing and as I make efforts to enact change, more questions and more answers will put me on a different track. Absolutely.
For what it’s worth, a major source of the question and desire to do good or to be a better person came from reading and researching stoic philosophy. I don’t adhere to it or love all of it, but I do love the notion of living in accordance with nature. As a social animal, what are my duties to those around me? In all practicality, what is the best thing I can do for the people I have duties towards? As a dad, a friend, a neighbour. Something about that framing really resonates with me. Upon reading it years ago and letting it incubate, I came to realize I am fairly poor at fulfilling my duties.
> Upon reading it years ago and letting it incubate, I came to realize I am fairly poor at fulfilling my duties.
I disagree, because I think you're not taking into account at what stage you are. You're realizing it would be better if ... , that's great. Nourish that, water that seed. Don't judge the sappling as if it was a big tree.
You're not either a good guy or an asshole. There is a lot inbetween. Sometimes good people make mistakes, but I don't think it's good to instantly label them as assholes.
I agree. I think the problem with me is that I’m very aware of how I can be better and why I should be, but I’m failing to make it happen. My main blocker is typically myself; what I think I need, what I want, generally protecting my self interest to an unnecessary degree.
In my defence I think I’ve gotten better about it over time and have taken real steps to do better. It still bothers me quite a bit sometimes. I know I should do better.
I went through similar realizations and have had another:
- My intellect is isolating me, but it's not my fault and it also is not the fault of people around me. Not any more than it is either my fault or the average person's fault that I need a stepstool in my kitchen since it's not designed for me. (I'm quite short). Being very intelligent is like being very tall in that it's falling to one side of the distribution curve and human society/life is going to be designed for the average person. As shitty a measure as IQ is, having a 140 IQ is kind of like being 7 and a half feet tall: Nothing is wrong with you, but good luck.
Basically, that my intellect is isolating not because I am superior to the other apes, but because any personal characteristic that puts me on one end of the bell curve when it comes to experiences is going to be isolating. I also feel very isolated due to my homosexuality and my MS, and in some similar ways: They all involve experiences that influence me in foundational ways that most people cannot understand and never will.
Thank you for this - I like your perspective on what I said a lot. That’s a genuinely useful insight. It’s not particularly negative or positive, but very sensible.
I thought I'd drop it in because I did have the 'oh my god, other people aren't the problem, I'm just an arrogant asshole!' moment in my 20s, but assuming my intellect was a non-factor in my ability to connect with others had its own problems. I corrected too far in the other direction ("stop thinking you're special/smarter than everyone else, that's just your arrogance talking") and it made me depressed because when I disagreed with most people around me/wanted different things, I assumed it was because I was the problem (as opposed to others).
It turns out none of us are a problem. We're just different.
"I went through a phase of beginning to think my intellect was isolating me and realized I was just a self absorbed asshole eventually."
Everyone is self-absorbed to some extent; it's an evolutionary trait that helps with our survival. Some will be self-absorbed in a narcissistic sense, others, as you've mentioned, with their security and position. Then there are those who are so completely self-absorbed with their ideas and interests—interests that have become so integral to and inseparable from their thinking that the way they think has shaped their identities. In essence, ideas have shaped and remolded their personalities in ways that let them think and dream of little else other than their principal interests.
I would suggest that if we examined the behaviors and inner personalities of many if not most of history's great illustrious thinkers such as famous scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and many others who we now revere and respect—then there's little doubt that we'd find many of them would easily be classified as self-absorbed assholes. Moreover, the term self-absorbed asshole would automatically apply to many by virtue of their very nature—and it would still apply irrespective of whether their interests are noteworthy or important and or whether their work actually possesses any real value or utility or not. Simply, one can be a self-absorbed asshole no matter what the intrinsic value of one's work is.
For instance, take Isaac Newton, who from various accounts was a rather nasty man and that's likely putting it mildly. Then there are true self-absorbed bastards like Fritz Haber the German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the Haber–Bosch process to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen that led to the large-scale production of fertilizers, this process has benefited many millions of people worldwide over the past century. Despite Haber's important discovery he nevertheless remains a self-absorbed asshole with his stripes as rotten as ever—just by virtue of the fact that he's also the Father of chemical warfare having overseen the 'weaponisation' of chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I. Haber's virtuous discovery doesn't mitigate him in any way as from various accounts he was a truly nasty person.
Then there's Einstein. Can you imagine Einstein arriving at the patent office in Berne fresh off the very tram that he'd already envisioned as central to his thought experiment in relativity—only to confront his co-workers with those very ideas? I've no idea whether Einstein did so or not [he likely had more sense not to] but it's easy to imagine that he did and that his co-workers quickly offered excuses then exited his presence in great haste.
The fact is, one has to be self-absorbed in one's thoughts if one is to achieve anything worthwhile. Whilst there are notable exceptions, I'd respectfully suggest that for most people that it's not possible to integrate thought into concepts and cohesive ideas without being obsessively involved with them.
How one presents or hides this self-obsession to others in the outside world that is perhaps the main or most important issue. Being adept at handling one's obsessions in the presence of others and in social settings is a worthwhile trait, that's if you possess what it takes to do so. Unfortunately, not everyone does and the ones who don't are likely to end up with the 'asshole' moniker.
(For my own part, when I'm self-absorbed with a problem it's best others not be around me as they'll likely be ignored. At least nowadays I've some cognizance of my problem: for the women in my life have repeatedly pointed out that being male means I've only the limited capacity to think about one matter at a time. I now understand this.)
There are of course a few in the genius class who can be both totally self-...
I'm probably going to get downvoted for being elitist, but here goes...
On the flip side, I have found a startling amount of people genuinely don't have many passions / interests. Skills and talents, sure. But passions - no.
Or I guess if eating foods like cereal and McDoland's counts as a food passion, or watching TV, or working a job you don't actually enjoy - if these count as passions - then I suppose everyone does have interests.
I'm just not inclined to think people are really that passionate about these things - and instead, it's just what they do. Sure - anybody who spends 10 hours a day laying bricks - they're obviously infinitely more skilled in that and related things than someone who doesn't. But a lot of people simply exchange their time for money, and don't particularly love what they do. Most of us HN-ers do, and we forget how rare that is.
I think some of us on here forget how close we have it to a life of leisure compared to the average person (ESPECIALLY globally). I know a lot of people that pretty much have no time for anything besides work and family.
And I hope that all people like this LOVE at least their work or their family. But in reality, I know A LOT of people trapped in a life where they genuinely dislike both. And that's pretty much their whole life.
> On the flip side, I have found a startling amount of people genuinely don't really have many passions / interests.
That'd describe Perell well. He doesn't have many passions/interest. He's bowing out of one interest to flee back into his singular comfort zone of unchallenged isolation, where no one "tests" his chops and he can fly on the wings of his self perception to whatever height he desires.
He shuns every passion/interest that does not align with his narrow view of which passions and interests make a person "intellectual". He's the kind of guy who will use his superior training as "guy who writes things on the Internet" to start arguing medicine with me, and then leave the party because few people share his interests and he just can't contribute to theirs. Because we're not as intellectual than him.
... in his narrowly defined niche of what makes a person intellectual.
Hint: being able to cite Plato does not make you in any way, shape, or form, more "intellectual" than the guy at the end of the bar who knows every Man U soccer game score, who scored, against whom, in which game, at what game time, using which strategy.
Having consumed a 500 page book does not make you more intellectual than having consumed 500 episodes of Coronation Street. Consumption, in general, is a low hanging fruit, intellectually. Your love for Doctor Who doesn't make you smarter than someone's fanning over Rihanna.
Intellectuals are rarely lonely. Because true intellectuals see value in information, no matter the sender or matter. Restrictive topic selection is pretty much the definition of anti-intellectualism, in my opinion.
> Hint: being able to cite Plato does not make you in any way, shape, or form, more "intellectual" than the guy at the end of the bar who knows every Man U soccer game score, who scored, against whom, in which game, at what game time, using which strategy.
> Having consumed a 500 page book does not make you more intellectual than having consumed 500 episodes of Coronation Street. Consumption, in general, is a low hanging fruit, intellectually. Your love for Doctor Who doesn't make you smarter than someone's fanning over Rihanna.
> Intellectuals are rarely lonely. Because true intellectuals see value in information, no matter the sender or matter. Restrictive topic selection is pretty much the definition of anti-intellectualism, in my opinion.
Big red flag anytime anyone prefixes something with "true." First you stubbornly deny what an intellectual is, then you redefine its meaning to suit your narrative, with your "true intellectual."
I mean yes, you have described literally the rhetorical techniques they are using to communicate their idea. Would you give them the green flag if they framed it more humbly "I meekly propose my opinion, that if one wants to better define intellect they could consider.. "
So what if people do not have a "passion"? Is that so wrong?
I think we need to be careful about setting unrealistic expectations for what is normal/desirable (you use the term "elitist" as if having a passion for something is only reserved for the social/economic elite). This echos back to job adverts looking for engineers with "passion" etc.
I would argue that a singular "passion" might actually be a negative trait as it can have a negative impact on other parts of your life (as illustrated by TFA). I'd certainly not want to work with or hang around with person from TFA as they sound like a prick (not much to judge them on I agree, but there you go)
It is 100% ok to just live your life. Interested by something different every few days/weeks/months/years? That is totally ok. Maybe you just like to live your life and enjoy leisure activities? That is totally ok too. Too busy for anything apart from work and family? Totally fine.
> On the flip side, I have found a startling amount of people genuinely don't really have many passions / interests.
Every single time I dig deep to search for someone's passion, I find at least one, and often multiple. In general, I find way more than I initially expected when I was a teenager.
I have also found many people don't think it's socially acceptable to talk about their passion in many situations. This makes it hard to discover these passions when you have only casual interaction with people.
I’ve found if you inquire with genuine interest, many metaphorical brick layers have a lot to say about laying bricks, and can get quite impassioned about it. There’s often a lot more depth there than you see at first. (Presumably, most people aren’t genuinely interested enough, so the brick layer doesn’t usually get into it)
The funny part is that everyone needs to start from scratch as a user in most all communities now. They also have to rebuild the entire fort with every new community that starts, it's a lot of wasted work time (without any sort of reward, except for the platform). They could very well be a scholar of science, but if they're enrolling a new account, unless they're buddies with the founders, it's very hard to endure the years it takes to build karma (or to achieve rank in whatever silly merit system that a new community has) on top of enduring arguments with imbeciles, fakers, and being called a "noob" by your unwitting colleagues until you earn credit enough to get permabanned for a comment you made on a meme or on some other part of the site because the mods didn't like the format of your post title.
There has got to be a better way of doing this... Too much "king of the hill" and "payola" mentality on communities that call themselves "fair and credible" these days, and the time/creator investment loss is huge if you consider time invested to achieve any level of credibility and/or voice on social sites.
I have found that my own (personal and business) web sites are usually the best place to post content, my opinions, and maintain user accounts I don't want to lose, and where I can build a far better/more reliable audience than I could ever do on social media and other community sites for over the past 5 years really.
I hope that type of individual web site culture and related indexing comes back. An app or web site that enables seamless integration of personally owned web sites into it in a socially integrated manner would be a much better long-term solution/idea for all social communities in my opinion. I'd develop something like that myself, but would need tons more funding and human resources beyond what I'm working with currently (of course).
Does this happen? On what communities? Where does anyone pay attention to “credibility”? For me all forums are a string of comments. And there’s really only two forums to me, Reddit and Hacker News.
Neither of these I would call "forums", but rather social media, because, for instance, they dramatically reduce the moderation work and fostering of a community. For instance : no need to have to police the proper use of necroposting (which sometimes is the proper thing to do instead of starting yet another copycat thread that will rehash the exact same points - a forum isn't a chat !), when necroposting has been disallowed in software !
It is really sad though that at a college party, i.e. a party of people pursuing higher education, it's hard to find people interested in discussing intellectual matters. Probably unimaginable 100 years ago (although I wasn't there and can't say for sure.
I'm in college atm, I go to parties precisely to get away from discussing "intellectual matters". it's fine to sometimes have a break from the thing you do all dah
To me it revolves around the introvert vs extrovert stuff. With myself as the model, it's not that I don't enjoy speaking to people, it's that I don't enjoy small talk. Give me a heady subject that is interesting and I will jump in with both feet. Rehashing the weather drains me.
Small talk is a protocol for simultaneously discovering the social capabilities and topics of interest of the conversation participants.
Just as a computer that doesn't support HTTPS is functional yet un-networkable, so too can a person choose not to support the small talk protocol (or to offer only obsolete versions) thereby forcing the other participants to degrade or refuse the connection.
Everyone has things they're deeply interested in. If you want deep conversation you just have to muster curiosity about what they're into (and not fail the social capabilities portion of the protocol). Rarely you'll get really lucky and the person will share one of your niche interests, but it's an unreasonable expectation so don't make it your goal.
I'll explicitly highlight "appropriateness" as part of those social capabilities: participants balk at philosophizing in dance clubs or slasher flicks at funerals or topics that exclude or are obviously uninteresting to others in a multiparty conversation (since 3+ participants is common at parties).
Practicing the protocol makes it less draining (assuming that's what's actually draining you).
I will add - many people have intellectual hobbies or read books. Just not exact same intellectual hobbies, because there are hundreds of those. And not the same books. So, that does not constitue common point to talk about.
I would say the issue isn't so much "interests" as it is what one finds stimulating. Most people are content to discuss the surface-level, but moving up the intellectual curve, the conversation needs to be deeper in order to be satisfying.
Another problem being that most people cannot handle disagreement. If you want to discuss an idea that often leads to disagreement. True intellectuals relish an opposing viewpoint, whereas the vast majority of people wonder why you're being an asshole. The fact that most people cannot handle respectful disagreement in search of a deeper understanding is a problem they have, but a burden placed on others.
And of course most people who would call themselves "intellectual" are actually in the latter category.
Hmm, I used to have a lot of discussions like that in high school because there was a whole group of like minded people, but after that such discussions just didn’t really happen any more in my circle of friends.
I sort of miss it, but I’m also happy with the conversations I have now, so meh?
+1 - replace "read a book" or "surrounded by ideas" with "work on a car engine" and "surrounded by oil and grease" and it would be no different. Let's call it "mechanical loneliness".
TL;Dr - some people like to read books, some people like to do other things.
The give-away that it's all self inflected melodrama is *he's going to the party*. If you want to go, go. If you don't want to go, don't go. If you want to go for a little bit, do that. And if for some reason you need to lie with an excuse versus saying "I've had a wonderful time, I'm going to head home.", then do that too! *But* do not try to speak from this tortured soul, zero agency, prisoner of parties that go on slightly longer than you'd like perspective on the same website that you present yourself as master of your domain. Sheesh.
You don't have to be intelectually superior to be bored with people and not getting intelectual stimulation from them. In place of intelectual bookworm you might imagine teenager whose at the same time desperately lonely and bored out of his mind when he people try to talk to him.
The thing is some people have trouble finding people close to their niche. The solution is search better and/or widen your niche.
I understand how opinions like the one OP expressed can be interpreted as arrogant by many people. And you're probably right in saying that many of those Reddit comments reek arrogance.
But to bring a different lens to the topic: to me, articles like this are about protesting the way social interactions are designed and blindly followed by many people, not signaling superiority.
So I don't read OP as "I'm better than anybody else", but as "There must be a better way of interacting with others and sharing interests. I dislike the current way".
The article resonated with me because I think the concept of "parties" is overhyped. I've done a lot in my life and yes, there's a good side to them. But there's also plenty of BS going on: power dynamics, shallow conversations, etc.
The problem is, parties are a sort of a sacred dogma to the vast majority of people. Friends and aquitances will often tease/insult you you for not going to them, or for going and not staying late enough.
I don't understand why the hype. Why are parties the "ultimate and only" way to have fun and interact socially for some people? There are dozens of other ways to interact with people.
For example, I rather have one to one catch-ups with friends because when you get small talk out of the way you can deep-dive into topics. Because of that, I'm an anti-social outcast for many people. "The weird guy that doesn't go to parties".
I think that's what the article is on about: societal pressure to individuals so they interact in a certain way and bend to stablished norms, when such norms are not enjoyable for such individuals.
"always"? On one side Reddit is known for its armchair experts to the point of being a cliche'.
Yet anti-intellectualism is widespread in many environments. The idea that people should only engage in gossip and idle conversations in a college party is a good example.
What pops in my head is what is the point of all the self-indulgent reading and learning if it just dies with you inside your head when you pass away? It’s just masturbation. I see both sides of the answer, as I too love solitude. Probably best to share it with others and teach others so it can make the human race better. But that sweet reverie of being alone!
Smoothly ditching a party they don't feel stimulated by is not the worst strategy in the world. But some people I know have the skill of finding a subject of conversation with practically everyone they meet at a party. One of them has literally talked to British Royalty, yet seemed to have no difficulty holding a conversation with a man with limited education, some substance abuse issues, and assorted other difficulties in life.
It seems to me that this is a valuable skill to aspire to. And if at first glance nobody at the party seems to have anything in common with you — maybe that's all the more of an opportunity to hear about views and experiences outside one's usual circles?
The ability to speak to anyone doesn’t necessarily mean that you never feel lonely at parties. Good conversation is a two way street after all, and if you can’t find someone to challenge or interest you, then you can talk to people all night and not really get anything out of it. I think we all know that feeling, even those who aren’t as “gifted” socially as others.
I don’t think the solution is what the author does though. I mean, If you really can’t find someone interesting to engage with at any party or social event… I mean it’s a cliche to say this, but maybe it’s you?
> The ability to speak to anyone doesn’t necessarily mean that you never feel lonely at parties
The ability to extract valuable entertainment or information from all conversations is, though. I am no expert in this, and I have actively fled from conversations that started to center on someone's hobby horse without much escape or diversion, but I know people who can enter a conversation on anything and, even just by asking smart questions, emerge better from them.
You can still feel lonely while asking those questions and keeping other party engaged. Because it is one way discussion. You are saying things to engage and fun the other person. But you yourself is not getting connected nor feeling like you are engaged or expressing yourself.
I mean, it can be fun and enjoyable, but it does not help loneliness, no more then business meeting.
> It seems to me that this is a valuable skill to aspire to.
It's simple actually, the techniques in winning friends and influencing people is a good place to start. Most people love talking about themselves and their interests. In reality, for anyone seeking relationships and real connections, "tricking" people to talk about what they want is empty, hallow, and disappointing. It will almost never be reciprocated.
I think the author needs to spend time with people they actually like to be around. That's the key of enjoying social gatherings. Obv what these people like to talk about would correlate with how much they enjoy being around them, but it's not the only factor.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 320 ms ] threadI was thinking about creating a platform similar to clubhouse, but asynchronous .
So like an audio version hackernews.
why audio based? because producing audio content/conversation is easier than writing/blogging? And being asynchronous makes topic mining and content based recommendation possible.
I guess Metaverse will work too?
One of my friend groups uses Marco Polo for this. It's video, not just audio, but for us most of the time the video is not important.
I think the key feature should be content mining and a robust recommendation algorithm to find interesting people.
As for liking it... I've always preferred text over audio or video, but some members of the group are much more likely to participate this way, so it's a compromise.
Maybe I just need to build a social media following (probably on Twitter)?
Maybe i have a problem…
Man. This sounds like 14 year old me thinking I'm just so beyond everybodys mental capacity and that's why I am lonely.
I don’t think I’m beyond everyone’s mental capacity, but I’m certainly beyond most people in terms of curiosity and fascination for subjects beyond general conversation. I’ve gotten better at driving conversation to deeper places, and surrounding myself with people who enjoy doing the same. But it’s often easier at social events to drink and stop caring.
When I started reading again my world caught on fire. A good book is vastly, unimaginably better than doom scrolling, and the wealth of ideas and history and inspiration that starts to accumulate as you read more is life changing. For example, I learned how to properly build habits, how my childhood in a cult came about and what other people who left have done to come to terms with it, and endless interesting facts about lifelong hobbies and interests. Reading is great.
In contrast, what’s the price of reading a book and realizing it is awful? Literally nothing except the time you spent reading it. Hardly life-ruining.
It's a damn metaphor - if we wanted to be precise we'd roll with the whole damn explanation without metaphors.
Usually by the cover.
For example, for scifi, the following lines on the back cover are cause for putting it back on the shelf:
1. journey to the end of the universe
2. journey to the end of time
3. the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance
Those novels always turn out to be bad :-/
Btw, I didn't downvote you, I never up/downvote people. I do like responding to downvoted people though.
> Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.
The second paragraph back there does start "Together, this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by...", but IMO the Hitchhiker's Guide doesn't really fit the proposed pattern very well: There's a lot more to it than just the bland stock phrases.
I wish I could revert to my university learning style (late 1990s~early 2000s) which has zero internet and we had to figure out things from books even for experimental classes (e.g. back then no one had the luxury to have one's own electronics lab for introductory electronics classes, so we had to cherish the time in lan sections and read books for questions we couldn't solve in lab). It was a bit like learning programming in 60/70s -- you submit a program to mainframe and get the result next morning.
that made me think "what a great term"
"Oh my god, they're not going to do predictable thing __X__ are they? Bwahaha"
"Hahahaha, this dialog is completely unbelievable"
"Welp, that unwinds all the interesting things happening in that character's arc."
A couple things that laughter can't even redeem:
- Incessant deus ex machina. The prose can be good, the dialog believable, the world interesting, and the characters likable... but if all the problems just get waved away in some random unpredictable way, that's infuriating.
- Even worse: when a POV character has an ace up their sleeve the entire time that could have been played at any point to avoid all the conflict, and the only reason why we're in suspense is that POV character didn't share that with us.
These books give me hope I could write a book.
Business oriented: try your hand at any of the best books on x, by forbes. Google the list "forbes list of best books". Its prob circa 2010ish. They put books on leadership (annapurna, great read), entrepreneurship, product (beijing jeep), etc etc. Some really solid stuff
Pulitzer lists: Just go on wikipedia anf look at winners by year. For example, controversial but interesting : guns germs and steel.
Reco engines: I think i used tastekid a loog time ago. Type in a book, it would give you recommendations on books you might like. With advances in ML, I'm sure there are tons of engines doing the same now
Sorry, but ick. A less popular viewpoint of this is "Triumph of the West" by Roberts. "Connections" by Burke is very good, too.
A habit I’ve picked up is to follow the deaths of famous authors (the NYT will feature one on regularly on their home page). When that happens, I like to read about their life and oeuvre and pick up one of their most famous books, which is usually both very interesting and worthwhile.
You can also just go to Barnes and Noble and wander around. Find the genre you like, poke around, and you’ll probably recognize some of the titles or authors, which is often a good sign.
If you have some favorite authors, look up their lesser known books! The fact that you liked their other work is a good sign.
Over time, you will develop a long list of books on your list so you can start getting more selective. Check the Goodreads reviews. Try to understand how this book fits into the bigger picture and whether it or the subject seem significant to you.
Honestly, it’s hard to go wrong early on. Imagine you were just being exposed to film/tv for the first time and you ask for recommendations. ‘I dunno, Breaking Bad? The Godfather? Titanic?’ Even though there’s a lot of trash out there, the best books, like the best movies, are easy to find and there are tons of rankings and compilations.
Don't just read books because they have a good reputation in general.
This is just like the great of life - don't fear failure.
Reading a book you wind up hating is way better then spending that time trying to optimize your process to avoid bad books.
If you do want to look for more promising things, reading is still your best tool.
I used to use what I called the two-minute test:
At a bookstore or library, pull a book off the shelf, read it for two minutes, then put it back.
Often you'll find you really don't want to put it back.
If so, then give it a shot.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachb%C3%BCcher_des_Monats
I’m not sure where the disconnect lies, between the people that view this as a huge problem with nonfiction and the rest. I don’t think it’s book selection, because I’ll often read a book where I felt the last half was 90% rehashing, and in the reviews no one else will mention that the author ran out of interesting things to say halfway through.
Here are the books I've read in the last 4 months, not in order:
* Frank Herbert - Dune
* J.R.R. Tolkein - The LotR trilogy + The Silmarillion
* Stephen King - 'Salem's Lot
* Stephen King (short story) - Jerusalem's Lot
* Stephen King (short story) - The Night Flier
* Stephen King (short story) - The Children of the Corn
* Stephen King - The Stand (uncut version)
* Stanisław Lem - The Cyberiad
* John Whyndham - The Day of The Triffids
* Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic
* Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep
Okay, so... Dune was a re-read ahead of the film release. LotR was a re-read that was provoked by some conversations I had with a group of friends (who form a loose book and movie club) after we discussed the Dune film and books / universe.
Lots of comparisons were being drawn to LotR (both the books and the film adaptations) and I wanted to confirm that my memory of Tolkein's prowess and effectiveness as a writer were accurate (they were).
I had never read Stephen King before this year and I found that I quite liked him. I started with 'Salem's Lot and Jerusalem's Lot because of the TV series Chapelwaite (an adaptation of Jerusalem's Lot -- I am a fan of horror film and television) which I want to watch.
I really liked King, so I pushed a little deeper. I'll come back to him later this year.
The books that remain are Sci-Fi books that I had either had on my own backlog (Roadside Picnic and A Fire Upon the Deep) or were recommendations that I saw in HN comments (The Cyberiad and The Day of the Triffids).
edit/ There were probably between 4 and 6 books that I started, read a few chapters of, and put down in this time frame, too, FWIW.
If you ask me at different times I'll give different answers, but some are just on top:
War of the Worlds, Lord of the Rings, The Mote in God's Eye, Replay, Earth Abides, 20000 Leagues Under The Sea, 2001, Nothing Like It In The World, Reach For The Sky, Winnie The Pooh, The Last of the Mohicans, The Hunt for Red October, With the Old Breed, Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman, Moby Dick, Shogun, Romeo and Juliet
I envy anyone reading these for the first time!
Some did interested me, but they were rare. When I have to try 15 books to find 1 I like, it becomes frustrating and expensive.
I imagine most people who try writing on the internet don't acquire any audience at all.
And yes, watching certain professors (not YouTubers) makes one's heart run faster.
I remember prof. Brian Harvey 2008 course (Scheme based) of old MIT courser by Eric Grimsin. Or Systematic approach by Gregor Kiczales, or Dan Grossman's "Programming languages" course.
And then you stumble upon another node_modules shit...
Andrew Ng was also very cool.
Care to name the song?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppenwolf_(novel)
P.S. it seems there are multiple bands inspired by Hesse, not just Steppenwolf.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyone%27s_Daughter
I realized I might be guessing wrong about the reference but was willing to look foolish in the interest of brevity. Appreciate the reply.
Two things I've experienced with this. First is that there seems to be a half-life on this activity. One day one may ask themselves, what tangible benefit have I gained from all these germs of wisdom and information I've gleaned over the years? Second is that invariably, outside of "hard" disciplines, there's nearly always a counter argument or viewpoint that can be equally compelling.
So for myself, the way two decades of intellectual curiosity manifests is the conversations I have with my kids. They generally think I'm a bore, but sometimes I relate something that seems to give them a spark.
I’m not saying that existentially it counts for anything but there are usually rewards to learning deeply about any worthwhile subject.
To the point about there always being a counterpoint to anything—I’ve come to use that as a justification for how nothing we do, believe, or want is objectively necessary, and what truly matters more is whether we can all get each other to agree on a certain goal to then objectively judge our actions against. It seems to me that that agreement on goal or purpose for our actions is at the core of why people disagree on pretty much any issue.
The banality of everyday Life is soul-crushing leading to ennui. I think it is in large part due to our consumerist/distraction-filled society (itself a product of Technology) and catering to the lowest common denominator in everything.
Questions plaguing me:
My answer is to shut myself away from Society and live within my Head, alone and lonely. But Books provide a coping mechanism by getting me out of my Head and providing me new experiences through that of the author.Worrying about these questions is not unique, nor special. You're trying to find an escape hatch to reality. Those do not exist.
If you want to really effect change, stop focusing on the why, and start focusing on the how. We have enough armchair philosophers to last a lifetime.
As Krishnamurti said; "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
The point is not that the questions are special/unique; it is that they are fundamental, perennial and plague everybody (the "me" is just a placeholder). The tragedy of existence is that there can be no settled answer to them and each of us have to find out for himself or subscribe to somebody else's answer.
But then again as Camus said; "Beginning to Think is beginning to be undermined".
Your start with realizing something is not quite right but unable to place your finger on it, begin asking questions each of which only reveals the rest of the layers of the onion and before you know it are starting to suffer from cognitive dissonance. You then abandon looking for answers and start to focus on learning to cope with the non-answers and getting on with your Life.
I don't think even the social mores of breaking bread or offering your guests food and water came from the same place.
My response to this is because people who conform to social mores and have at least a little accomodation to popular culture are more interesting and relatable people. People who don't are grating and can be very difficult to live with and be around.
Being able to relate to and get along with others makes life a whole lot more fulfilling.
Actually, there are a lot of people who do that, but they are not the majority. They are these people you probably look up to; they are these people who have said: "Ok, enough is enough. I gotta try this, I gotta face my fears, and just take the leap of faith, because it's the only viable way for me to live my life fully". Anyone who tries to do things a bit differently has to be able to stand alone, I would think, but not in isolation, but as a negation to whatever they are trying to fight against.
- The Smiths
Say what you like about Morrisssey[1] but he's had some great social observations.
1. And you really should for many reasons.
If you think life is banal and soul crushing, then this is a reflection on you, not on life. I suggest you get counseling.
I live like a complete stranger where I am, I spend 99.9% of my time alone. Read alone, eat alone, walk alone, sleep alone.
Most of my life is about coding, reading and walking long distances accros countries. And I am pretty happy about my life right now.
I get to have a life where I make almost no compromise, I live so cheaply that I don't really even need to work anymore.
But then you are missing out on having kids, spending time with friends, family, having stability, a dog, a hobby you can pursue, chitchat, routine, etc.
Again, nobody is forcing you to anything, it seems like you just need to take a few days just by yourself, facing your own thought and exploring what you really want to do.
The thing I find stupid in this article, is that the author goes to a party and leave early because he does not like partying.
Well, I don't either. But I have learnt that I don't a long time ago. So I don't go to parties. I don't need to make up excuses about why I am leaving.
It seems to go with getting older. My two best friends for intellectual conversation passed away in 2021. Just one such friend is left. TBD how that'll go. Two people can't make for the richness of intellectual conversation that three or four can. And the ghosts of the two who are gone could cast long shadows over the remaining two of us getting together much.
Hailing frequency open. (o:
I have found that four or more participants brings verve and more perspectives to the subject. Deeply engaging discussion is far more enjoyable (to me/to some) than tiresome chatter, quips, memes, and n-depth packed nonsense spewed for the sake of content-creation.
The anti-culture of consumer fetishism and media monetisation serves a completely different purpose.
My experience is that when you're in my position, it's getting harder and harder (with age) to find people who are interested in talking about ideas, entertaining the curiosities in life without some agenda/getting offended by the controversial ones, talking about possibilities and concepts (rather than objects). Like having conversations on advanced mode with people who are similar.
Often times at parties, when I get bored, I think of a quote, "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events/things. Small minds discuss wine."
It's getting more and more common that I find people just wanting to talk about wine. Or the equivalent. Stuff that's completely forgettable after you leave the party. I mean that stuff is fine, and there's nothing wrong with talking about good food you've had, some articles you've read, movies seen, etc. too. And to be funny and engaging while talking about it. It just feels like... after you're done talking about that, what then?
Or if I do meet people who are intellectually interesting, how to get more connected or where to take it after a chance meeting and pleasant chat?
That said, what do I have to offer at this stage of my life either, to a stranger? I'm unmarried, so I don't have kids or the mortgage to talk about. I'm not a CEO or someone powerful. Also I'm single -- what are people supposed do with that? Don't have a lot of great reasons for anyone to want to go out of their way to spend more time with me after even an interesting 30 min conversation, without some other excuse.
We're not all living close together in shared housing to make intellectually stimulating conversations natural and prolonged. People have their lives to lead, not sit around talking about theoretical ideas. To contact the few people I've found who are interesting would be... how? "Would you like to schedule a get-together again for a conversation date?"
It's not going to get easier either. Probably in a few years I'll be the really odd guy. Eh, it's a life choice I've made, I realize that too -- to be more interested in ideas and experiences than say... people.
I figure I'd better find some interesting hobbies to make up for the lack of intellectual stimulation. But deeper, what am I working towards? For whom? So, sometimes I think of changing jobs just to see more of the world and gather experiences to be able to have more intellectually stimulating conversations. Learn about VC? Hear about more companies? Where/how?
Yeah, it's a bit of a problem sometimes to ponder.
The owner of the apartment building, an older fellow, would also come by. He'd just sit quietly in a corner, munching on chicken wings. After a few times of this, I asked him, why are you coming here hanging out with people 30 years younger? Don't you find us boring?
He said no, no. This is fascinating! Nowhere else have I encountered people who talk about the things you guys do. I just marvel at it!
Sounds pretty good - try it! The person you were talking to may feel exactly the same way.
And interesting hobbies? Definitely yes. Try getting into playing an instrument for example. If you like it, it will keep you busy the rest of your life if you want.
> But deeper, what am I working towards? For whom?
If I get to feeling like this, I like to think about my 2 cats. I love having them, they obviously love being around me, because they are within sight most of the time. But what is their purpose for existence? Do we all need a purpose for existence, or is the fact that we do exist good enough? Speaking of pets, that's another great thing to try out. Having something else living with you takes you out of your head.
We are human beings, not human doings. If you feel like doing something, great. If not, just ... be.
Uh, you're single? That's amazing! The world is your oyster! If you think you're boring now, just wait until you're a cleaning, feeding, peek-a-booing family machine.
If you miss shared housing, why did you move out of it ? I've tried living alone in my early college days, that was probably a good experience (even though made me kind of waste a few years), I don't think that I would ever do that again...
Isn't it better to discuss wine and food and holidays and enjoy the little time we have together? Isn't that actually the most intelligent thing to do?
I think most people in this thread misunderstood the meaning behind the post (or maybe I did). This isn't about one's superiority, it's about the fact that there aren't enough people interested in talking about ideas.
People here said that someone like that would get bored if others picked the wrong topics. I don't think so. Even when I don't have a direct interest in a topic, I'm always open to learning more. But as you said, and I think this is what the article meant, many people do not have the habit of intellectual discussion. Yes, they are able to communicate, but their interests are shallow.
There was an argument here about how there's no difference between citing Plato and knowing everything about Manchester United (I think this is what MU meant). It depends. If you are only citing Plato because this is what you were taught, then there is no difference. It's a big difference if you cite Plato when you're trying to figure out why something is the way it is and you find out he had similar interests and ideas about it. The key isn't the imitation itself, but the reason why it's done. Otherwise, it's just another cargo cult.
I don't know if it's laziness of mind, cheap dopamine or something else, but it's rare to meet someone with real interests, one who's passionate about struggling with ideas, playing with them, discussing them.
But if one person starts talking about how the business of a sports franchise works, who makes money and who doesn't, the operating costs of a team, and the dynamics between owners and players, I'm all ears.
Maybe I just want to understand how the more complicated things work. It's not that interesting to talk about how he slid into home and nearly got tagged out.
But most people don’t care about the why’s or the how’s on or off the field, and mainly just want to brag about their team (or complain if their team is bad.)
And sure, discussing wine can be posturing. It can also serve as a simple topic to establish social connection for people who are otherwise not entirely comfortable.
From there you can ask questions about what people care about, what they are afraid of, what they love, what they would do in a world without wine, experienced they have had or how they would act in a difficult hypothetical situation.
Ideas, experiences and people don’t have to be entirely discrete things.
I wonder how much of this is age related and how much of it is that people just have less mental room for intellectual endeavors than they used to? I was raised by what I would consider 'engaged citizens': Neither of my parents had college degrees or 'fancy' jobs (my dad's white collar semi-professional accounting gig was the top of the line for my family), and they followed ideas. We discussed news articles, stuff in science magazines and online, etc. One topic my dad (60s) and I keep returning to is that the world requires way more of his brain power than it did 30 years ago.
It's less and less feasible to maintain an interest in ideas if you aren't folded into a profession or career that lets you combine your interest with your work.
Take the difference in single versus dual income households, for example. I have lots of time for ideas because I've got someone doing the household chores. (And likewise, my sister has a lot of time for HER hobbies because I'm breadwinning for us). Now throw that on top of the pile with everybody outside of tech feeling like their employment is precarious, inflation, the pandemic, and general social instability, and I wouldn't be shocked if people just don't have the bandwidth.
I just got out of legally enforced poverty in 2019 and the difference not being in survival mode made to my ability to have intellectual interests and conversations is IMMENSE.
To counter with a more famous quote: "in vino veritas."
A conversation's quality is the product of each participant's contributions, so perhaps there are ways you can enliven or guide the conversation to improve the experience for everyone. (Chances are you aren't the only person secretly thinking it's dull.)
> there's nothing wrong with talking about good food you've had, some articles you've read, movies seen, etc. too. And to be funny and engaging while talking about it. It just feels like... after you're done talking about that, what then?
Next you can use those shared topics to move beyond the what to the why, from facts to opinions, and from those to deep truths about ourselves and our world.
One should be genuinely curious as well as kind, because unlike sharing facts, sharing opinions or questions inherently creates vulnerability. You might've been getting at this, but in today's political powder keg, (fear of) visceral reactions to unorthodox opinions, facts, and even word choice impose significant barriers to reaching that next level of intimacy where you can share feelings and half-formed opinions. Still, it's not impossible to create that environment quickly, it just takes skill and the understanding that sometimes the immediate conditions just aren't right.Not to write off an entire profession, but I doubt venture capitalists can hold a candle to journalists when it comes to interesting experiences or conversations. I had far more interesting stories to tell when I worked in retail than when I worked in tech. Perhaps status is getting conflated with "having good conversations at parties" a little bit here.
Some would call it narrow mindedness, some would call it focus.
You can't talk to a single person at the party who has an interesting world-view, experience, or education? Isn't that the heart of creating characters? Empathy and experience?
It's fine to not enjoy socializing but acting like it is because you are too creative and smart for everyone else is delusional.
When I go to parties I talk to people about ethics and philosophy and creating music and creativity and cooking, and I trade stories from my past and make jokes.
Acting like watching a lecture on YouTube or reading your thousandths book is somehow superior to talking to living breathing humans because "ideas" is bizarre.
You can do both. Read a lot of books and also socialize.
Some of the best post-age-forty conversations I’ve had came out of me asking someone, “what do you find hard in that job?”
The more hands on the better. And these things - these kinds of discussions - aren’t generally available on YouTube lectures or whatever. In person you can get people to drop the facade or the spin and just talk.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten more used to the opposite idea:
Relative to other people (which is implicitly the metric we are using here), you are really smart.
Why do I think that? Because of the data.
The data is pretty solid that, whenever you survey the population, the level of intellectual sophistication is extremely low.
So low that many of the words I'm using in this comment would not be understandable to a significant chunk of the population. So low that, while knowing how to do a wordy math problem is table stakes on HN, knowing how to solve (x+5)*3=21 places you in the 'elite' of the general population.
It's got nothing to do with how we feel about it. It's just a fact that, when we look at the problems that 50% of the population cannot solve, the bar is shockingly low.
So based on that, yeah: the people who are reading this, who know how to write a 'for' loop on a computer, who read way above a 6th grade level, who could say 'yes I know what an imaginary number is', are really smart.
The OP is ONLY interested in a subset of topics he feels is interesting. This is the opposite of intelligent. A hallmark of intelligent people is to find fascination with everything. I recently went to a party where I met a guy who worked in a chicken processing plant. I know nothing about processing chicken. I literally spent an hour talking to him about his job. (By the way, he works way harder and takes way more garbage than us white collar guys).
like I think its great that people like OP have enjoyment and passion for "intellectual pursuits", but most other people don't. you have an interest, and like most other interests, people aren't going to share your interest because they have their own, different interests. so don't be surprised when you try to pivot the conversation, people don't want to talk about
like it sucks you can't share your interest with those close to you, that's a problem most everyone has, but when it's on the topic of "intellectual pursuits" or whatever - articles like this it always read as "I'm smart, everyone else is dumb, woe is me"
that may not be what people like OP are intending - but the problem is others just have different passions and priorities than you and are turned off when you want to discuss only what interests you. I'm certain most could have such a conversation with someone like OP, but why would they when their tone smells like "smarter than tho" because they want to talk about esoteric philosophy or abstract ideas at a college party
if one want to get rid of this "loneliness" you either need to find a community of like-minded others (see the internet) or introduce conversation topics in a more mutually interesting manner instead of wishing for others to meet you where you are
I write this as someone who has been on both sides of the conversation
We fetishize intelligence too much as a society and too many don't understand what it really is and how it can differ. It's nice to imagine a world where we valued empathy as much as intelligence.
:)
This isn't true. If you have a very popular website and take the most common threads people might read on it, then you will likely have at least a few hundred thousand people viewing it. If 1% of the smartest 2% comments you would have a maybe a hundred comments from people who would qualify for mensa if the viewers were random people, basically flooding the comment section.
The reason this works is that people will flock to threads that is about something relating to them. People who do well on IQ tests will flock to threads about intelligence etc.
Are those people who are smart, or those who think they are smart? Because those two groups tend not to overlap as much as one would think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Anyway, being smart without an education is pretty worthless as you say, but there is a lot of such people out there. Being uneducated doesn't mean they aren't intelligent, it just means that they didn't utilize their intelligence in life. I'm not sure why you would try to say that they aren't intelligent just because they lack education. If a study found that intelligent people face more boredom or whatever, then it is almost surely that the study was a correlation between IQ and some questionnaire result, so whatever score someone got on an IQ test is very relevant for the topic.
School would just provide a less-than-average knowledge, parents won't guide, and you get an uneducated kid surrounded by "idiots".
As a parent, you provide guidance to your kids, high IQ or not, you still get a large gap with their peers. Yesterday, we were drugging kids with TV, today, with tiktok and the likes.
Wow...
No, because that once again assumes IQ tests are a relevant way to measure intelligence.
The distinction between the author and others is not the intellectual pursuit, but the dislike of parties. My bias is to think they’re attending parties with the wrong people, or of bad design (yes, design/engineering is something that social gatherings benefit from).
I like a good party plenty, but I’ve slipped away to read books, and I don’t consider myself to be a voracious reader of books.
- who to invite (complicated by melt/flakiness) - involves making predictions about how people will behave and interact with each other - how many to invite - when to start - when to end and how to end - what beverages, snacks, food to include; how such things will be prepared and delivered in sequence - drug and alcohol (also a drug) choices - what music to play - lighting and furniture arrangement; use of space generally - desired outcomes; things to watch for; connections to encourage or discourage - props, toys, games, and other objects (I suppose food and snacks are partially a subset) - compartmentalization and breakaway spaces
An example of a party that the author would likely enjoy would be an informal book club gathering with a mixer before or after, or perhaps a showing of a film adaptation with discussion for interested participants after, while less interested people can break off to play board games. Or perhaps board games would be stimulating enough, there are a broad range of kinds, and they can drastically change the feel/experience of an evening.
I suppose “engineering” implies a formal discipline. I think that actually is a profession, I just know nothing about it. But design thinking can be applied by anyone to anything, and I do try to be intentional and/or am slightly neurotic about hosting.
Parties are also a little over-hyped, even a social construct, I would say (writing it down it actually sounds tautological).
On my country's local sub-reddit someone was asking people older than him how did they spend New Year's Eve parties in the past, which reminded me of the New Year's Days I used to spend with my grandparents in the countryside, in a village close to the Carpathians. There were no New Year's Eve parties in that village, or in the villages surrounding it, for that matter, young, unmarried, people would usually congregate on Saturday's evenings for a "village party" so that the boys would find girls to marry and that was pretty much it, once you were married and especially once you had kids of course that parties were not a thing anymore for you (why would have gone there? you were already married).
A little on the conspiracy-oriented side I would say that modern parties have been presented to us as the way we now know them ("you have to be there! you have to be seen as a likeable person! you have to talk and make conversation! you have to small almost at all times!") out of consumerist reasons, I would even that most of this whole "modern socialising thing" is backed-up by consumerist reasons.
People in the past did celebrated with friends and family, but it also involved drinking and music and general partying. Kids were generally present until they were sent to sleep.
There were taverns and pubs where people went to drink and be noisy too.
That is what I got from my grandparents and parents. And when I read memoirs (from wwii and such), people mentioned very party like a activities too.
Also, the tavern can only be a thing in a society that has cash/money, which also makes me think that a place like Western Europe would have the upper hand on this. Even going in the second part of the 20th century my grandparents’ village was trying to avoid money/cash as much as possible, work-days were often-times paid in other work-days, so to speak, i.e. “I help you out with that hay thing for three days you help me out in return with two days carring wood out of the forrest” or something like that.
Big parties did indeed also happen at weddings and after burials, the latter ones are called “parastas” and I think it has been directly taken from the antique Greco-Roman tradition.
Every village big enough to have church has also tavern. Usually close to each other. People drunk a lot, actually. They were poor a lot, but alcoholism was a thing and big social issue.
Paying in work or work for work was a think exactly as you described.
If anything, current western norms are significantly less social. People visit each other less often. You don't have drinking and talking till late while kids run around never at all. Especially as you get older. The way we live forces us isolate in middle age and lonely in old age.
Not to mention weddings, coming-of-age celebrations, and funerals/wakes, which date back well into prehistory.
That was hard to swallow. I think the next hard to swallow realization was that I’m not a very good person. I’m not mean to anyone, but I invest very little in actually doing good. I know I should, I have the resources to do it, but I’m still so self absorbed. I buy things I don’t need knowing the same money could literally save lives. I worry about my own security even though I could find a new job within a month.
I used to think I was a pretty nice guy until I realized how terrible I am at changing my behaviour to help other people. In all practicality I’m kind of an asshole. I’ll do better.
> I buy things I don’t need knowing the same money could literally save lives. I worry about my own security even though I could find a new job within a month.
These things are normal, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
But you are right that going through life thinking you are some lonely, tortured genius is not healthy and is a recipe for being a true asshole.
I've pitched this one before, as it is a short book (pdf, or audiobook) and is one of the most impactful things I've read in a long time. It was Peter Singer's book, The Life You Can Save [1]
The book methodically and non-judgmentally addresses many objections and false beliefs people have about charity [2] and effective altruism. In a nutshell: ideally we'd have enough resources that everyone had everything they need, but we don't. There is a strong instinct to care more about people who are similar to you or live near you than for others, but we shouldn't. That is, the suffering of a person you will never meet is just as real as the suffering of someone you are friends with. Because we have limited resources to help others, the resources we do have should be focused on those who are worst off.
[1] https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/peter-singer/
[2] For instance, many people moan about how much of the federal budget is spent/wasted on foreign aid. When asked to guess how much of the budget is spent, people (in the US) commonly guess 10-20%. When asked what they thing would be more appropriate, they commonly say 5-10%. The reality is it is well under 1%.
You may say, well, then help fixing the root cause. That’s right, but you have to find true one and fix it, and both is hard. Much easier to calm yourself by a donation to people who you prefer to believe to understand more.
One point is that when people have secure lives, the birth rate plummets. When your only capital is children, you make more children. By meeting the needs of the worst off, they have fewer children, not more.
I'm sure there were other points made, but I don't want to attempt to restate those from my shaky memory of what I read more than a year ago.
By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists. I don't see people not using the knowledge that Isaac Newton shared with us, because he was a horrible person... I honestly think that if he saw a shrink and worked on "his issues" (by today's standards) he would have lobotomized himself.
Nietzsche had a good intuition about people that optimize for full manifestation of the self in reality, but was kind of naive what qualities these people would exhibit. It is the entire package, not only the "good parts" (by today's standards)
I don't know if there is any data/research on being successful or valuable requiring an arrogant narcissistic personality. I believe it doesn't. If anything, such people became successful despite having such difficult personalities.
It is not necessity for being successful or valuable, but it is undeniable that people like that exist throughout history.
At the most fundamental level: It is arrogant to believe that from purely biological point of view, an individual would posses qualities like "arrogant" that are of no possible value.
Societies need to believe certain things to function. You cannot have a society where each individual is like Isaac Newton. I'm sure that if you asked the people that were knew him, they would say that "one is more than enough..."
Why?
Creating a lot and getting a lot of attention are two different things.
You believe that it was necessary for him to be a dick in the pursuit of genius; I think the outcome of his "full manifestation of the self" meant that society benefited from 10 years of his singular effort and then lost out on the next 50 years because no one would work with him, and his peers actually laughed at him for his (entirely wrong) approach to the theory of what light is. Boyle and Hooke accused him of stealing their ideas on optics.
The fact Newton was an asshole, and people let him be an asshole, robbed us all of 80% of what he might have achieved if he'd been a bit nicer.
You cannot go against your own nature. It requires too much energy and does not work, it lobotomizes you.
In reality, your way of being is shaped by your life learning, of which your way of relating to those around you is a part.
There are certain aspects of your personality, like "arrogance", that the society might find unacceptable. That doesn't mean that they are bad for you or that you can change them.
Also, suggesting it's OK to emulate Newton when you're not a genius is likely to have a worse outcome.
- People should not emulate anyone.
- People should emulate you. (Think about how fundamental the change from emulating to non-emulating is for all their talking/reading/thinking patterns. I don't see how else can you reboot your personality short of emulating someone.)
I don't know the history, so I won't speak to whether Newton was, in fact, a jerk.
But it is possible to recognize the asshole inside yourself and change. At least, I've been doing that in the past two years.
My life has been much harder as a result, but it's also clearly benefited both me and the people around me.
He rescued the Royal Society from bankrupcty and also worked with the best equipment makers of the day to improve experimental science.
At the Mint he was responsible for the gold content of the coinage and using science and design to limit counterfeits.
There was quite a bit more than "studying alchemy and the bible" because "no one would work with him."
My problem with the idea of being "arrogant and a self-absorbed asshole" is that it smells like identity. Taking on strong identity can be a problem, as we see with identity politics. I feel a better path through life is to keep identity small and be more creative on being adaptive.
As I said in another comment, the author is going into the party in a frame of "seeking intellectual conversation." Another person at the party may have attended in the frame of "seeking a hook-up." Both may have been similarly disappointed. A better approach is to be be creative and adaptable. We have forgot how to play.
I feel that having a default frame would be problem for me. Being adaptable is just more fun. Being arrogant may be effective in certain situations, but a problem for others. One of my favorite playgrounds is the British pub cultural thing of "taking the piss." That's where someone you're talking to at the bar just starts ripping into you. I LOVE that, and I usually surprise them at being better at it than they are. An arrogant frame in this situation would leave you wide open.
I'm a thief. I'm comfortable with that and feel no need to change. I can point out multiple situations where this was advantageous to me.
>By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists.
Nah, this is just the standard /r/iamverysmart drivel: you basically are so superior to everyone else that any interaction with the inferior masses leaves you so annoyed that you have to lash out like an asshole. Probably popularised by depictions of the """genius"" like Sheldon on Big Bang Theory, Zuck on Social Network, or that Steve Jobs flick.
In reality unless you truly are massively wealthy or influential nobody will stand for your bullshit. The most competent and intelligent people I've found are also nearly always the most humble and the best communicators.
I know I should
This is a great opening to self-analysis. Whence do you know it? What’s the goal? What if you did something “good” whatever it means to you, what then? Imagine it, what’s different? Walking this graph of questioning every term may discover the true source of your unease, which may be completely unrelated to “being good”.
I know I should do better for other people because a) my success in life has depended on others to a large degree and b) I’m not doing much to help others succeed
I know I worry about my own security because I grew up quite poor and I struggle to imagine that things will still be secure tomorrow, or even by half way through the day
If I could overcome that I would likely feel more at ease and be better off for it. At the same time, I’d likely enjoy helping others with resources like time, wealth, and energy which I felt more secure to offer. I immensely enjoy opportunities to help others when I do allow myself to do it, and I believe I would continue to enjoy it if I did it more
Some of this is hypothetical, but I figured I’d outline my thinking so it seems less like I’m beating myself up for no reason. You’re right - without questioning or exploring the thoughts, I’d likely be pursuing the wrong thing or for the wrong reasons. I think several lines of questioning are how I got here though.
Having said that, I’m certain “being good” will never mean a singular thing and as I make efforts to enact change, more questions and more answers will put me on a different track. Absolutely.
For what it’s worth, a major source of the question and desire to do good or to be a better person came from reading and researching stoic philosophy. I don’t adhere to it or love all of it, but I do love the notion of living in accordance with nature. As a social animal, what are my duties to those around me? In all practicality, what is the best thing I can do for the people I have duties towards? As a dad, a friend, a neighbour. Something about that framing really resonates with me. Upon reading it years ago and letting it incubate, I came to realize I am fairly poor at fulfilling my duties.
I disagree, because I think you're not taking into account at what stage you are. You're realizing it would be better if ... , that's great. Nourish that, water that seed. Don't judge the sappling as if it was a big tree.
In my defence I think I’ve gotten better about it over time and have taken real steps to do better. It still bothers me quite a bit sometimes. I know I should do better.
- My intellect is isolating me, but it's not my fault and it also is not the fault of people around me. Not any more than it is either my fault or the average person's fault that I need a stepstool in my kitchen since it's not designed for me. (I'm quite short). Being very intelligent is like being very tall in that it's falling to one side of the distribution curve and human society/life is going to be designed for the average person. As shitty a measure as IQ is, having a 140 IQ is kind of like being 7 and a half feet tall: Nothing is wrong with you, but good luck.
Basically, that my intellect is isolating not because I am superior to the other apes, but because any personal characteristic that puts me on one end of the bell curve when it comes to experiences is going to be isolating. I also feel very isolated due to my homosexuality and my MS, and in some similar ways: They all involve experiences that influence me in foundational ways that most people cannot understand and never will.
I thought I'd drop it in because I did have the 'oh my god, other people aren't the problem, I'm just an arrogant asshole!' moment in my 20s, but assuming my intellect was a non-factor in my ability to connect with others had its own problems. I corrected too far in the other direction ("stop thinking you're special/smarter than everyone else, that's just your arrogance talking") and it made me depressed because when I disagreed with most people around me/wanted different things, I assumed it was because I was the problem (as opposed to others).
It turns out none of us are a problem. We're just different.
Everyone is self-absorbed to some extent; it's an evolutionary trait that helps with our survival. Some will be self-absorbed in a narcissistic sense, others, as you've mentioned, with their security and position. Then there are those who are so completely self-absorbed with their ideas and interests—interests that have become so integral to and inseparable from their thinking that the way they think has shaped their identities. In essence, ideas have shaped and remolded their personalities in ways that let them think and dream of little else other than their principal interests.
I would suggest that if we examined the behaviors and inner personalities of many if not most of history's great illustrious thinkers such as famous scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and many others who we now revere and respect—then there's little doubt that we'd find many of them would easily be classified as self-absorbed assholes. Moreover, the term self-absorbed asshole would automatically apply to many by virtue of their very nature—and it would still apply irrespective of whether their interests are noteworthy or important and or whether their work actually possesses any real value or utility or not. Simply, one can be a self-absorbed asshole no matter what the intrinsic value of one's work is.
For instance, take Isaac Newton, who from various accounts was a rather nasty man and that's likely putting it mildly. Then there are true self-absorbed bastards like Fritz Haber the German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the Haber–Bosch process to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen that led to the large-scale production of fertilizers, this process has benefited many millions of people worldwide over the past century. Despite Haber's important discovery he nevertheless remains a self-absorbed asshole with his stripes as rotten as ever—just by virtue of the fact that he's also the Father of chemical warfare having overseen the 'weaponisation' of chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I. Haber's virtuous discovery doesn't mitigate him in any way as from various accounts he was a truly nasty person.
Then there's Einstein. Can you imagine Einstein arriving at the patent office in Berne fresh off the very tram that he'd already envisioned as central to his thought experiment in relativity—only to confront his co-workers with those very ideas? I've no idea whether Einstein did so or not [he likely had more sense not to] but it's easy to imagine that he did and that his co-workers quickly offered excuses then exited his presence in great haste.
The fact is, one has to be self-absorbed in one's thoughts if one is to achieve anything worthwhile. Whilst there are notable exceptions, I'd respectfully suggest that for most people that it's not possible to integrate thought into concepts and cohesive ideas without being obsessively involved with them.
How one presents or hides this self-obsession to others in the outside world that is perhaps the main or most important issue. Being adept at handling one's obsessions in the presence of others and in social settings is a worthwhile trait, that's if you possess what it takes to do so. Unfortunately, not everyone does and the ones who don't are likely to end up with the 'asshole' moniker.
(For my own part, when I'm self-absorbed with a problem it's best others not be around me as they'll likely be ignored. At least nowadays I've some cognizance of my problem: for the women in my life have repeatedly pointed out that being male means I've only the limited capacity to think about one matter at a time. I now understand this.)
There are of course a few in the genius class who can be both totally self-...
On the flip side, I have found a startling amount of people genuinely don't have many passions / interests. Skills and talents, sure. But passions - no.
Or I guess if eating foods like cereal and McDoland's counts as a food passion, or watching TV, or working a job you don't actually enjoy - if these count as passions - then I suppose everyone does have interests.
I'm just not inclined to think people are really that passionate about these things - and instead, it's just what they do. Sure - anybody who spends 10 hours a day laying bricks - they're obviously infinitely more skilled in that and related things than someone who doesn't. But a lot of people simply exchange their time for money, and don't particularly love what they do. Most of us HN-ers do, and we forget how rare that is.
I think some of us on here forget how close we have it to a life of leisure compared to the average person (ESPECIALLY globally). I know a lot of people that pretty much have no time for anything besides work and family.
And I hope that all people like this LOVE at least their work or their family. But in reality, I know A LOT of people trapped in a life where they genuinely dislike both. And that's pretty much their whole life.
That'd describe Perell well. He doesn't have many passions/interest. He's bowing out of one interest to flee back into his singular comfort zone of unchallenged isolation, where no one "tests" his chops and he can fly on the wings of his self perception to whatever height he desires.
He shuns every passion/interest that does not align with his narrow view of which passions and interests make a person "intellectual". He's the kind of guy who will use his superior training as "guy who writes things on the Internet" to start arguing medicine with me, and then leave the party because few people share his interests and he just can't contribute to theirs. Because we're not as intellectual than him.
... in his narrowly defined niche of what makes a person intellectual.
Hint: being able to cite Plato does not make you in any way, shape, or form, more "intellectual" than the guy at the end of the bar who knows every Man U soccer game score, who scored, against whom, in which game, at what game time, using which strategy.
Having consumed a 500 page book does not make you more intellectual than having consumed 500 episodes of Coronation Street. Consumption, in general, is a low hanging fruit, intellectually. Your love for Doctor Who doesn't make you smarter than someone's fanning over Rihanna.
Intellectuals are rarely lonely. Because true intellectuals see value in information, no matter the sender or matter. Restrictive topic selection is pretty much the definition of anti-intellectualism, in my opinion.
> Having consumed a 500 page book does not make you more intellectual than having consumed 500 episodes of Coronation Street. Consumption, in general, is a low hanging fruit, intellectually. Your love for Doctor Who doesn't make you smarter than someone's fanning over Rihanna.
> Intellectuals are rarely lonely. Because true intellectuals see value in information, no matter the sender or matter. Restrictive topic selection is pretty much the definition of anti-intellectualism, in my opinion.
Big red flag anytime anyone prefixes something with "true." First you stubbornly deny what an intellectual is, then you redefine its meaning to suit your narrative, with your "true intellectual."
I think we need to be careful about setting unrealistic expectations for what is normal/desirable (you use the term "elitist" as if having a passion for something is only reserved for the social/economic elite). This echos back to job adverts looking for engineers with "passion" etc.
I would argue that a singular "passion" might actually be a negative trait as it can have a negative impact on other parts of your life (as illustrated by TFA). I'd certainly not want to work with or hang around with person from TFA as they sound like a prick (not much to judge them on I agree, but there you go)
It is 100% ok to just live your life. Interested by something different every few days/weeks/months/years? That is totally ok. Maybe you just like to live your life and enjoy leisure activities? That is totally ok too. Too busy for anything apart from work and family? Totally fine.
Every single time I dig deep to search for someone's passion, I find at least one, and often multiple. In general, I find way more than I initially expected when I was a teenager.
I have also found many people don't think it's socially acceptable to talk about their passion in many situations. This makes it hard to discover these passions when you have only casual interaction with people.
There has got to be a better way of doing this... Too much "king of the hill" and "payola" mentality on communities that call themselves "fair and credible" these days, and the time/creator investment loss is huge if you consider time invested to achieve any level of credibility and/or voice on social sites.
I have found that my own (personal and business) web sites are usually the best place to post content, my opinions, and maintain user accounts I don't want to lose, and where I can build a far better/more reliable audience than I could ever do on social media and other community sites for over the past 5 years really.
I hope that type of individual web site culture and related indexing comes back. An app or web site that enables seamless integration of personally owned web sites into it in a socially integrated manner would be a much better long-term solution/idea for all social communities in my opinion. I'd develop something like that myself, but would need tons more funding and human resources beyond what I'm working with currently (of course).
Just as a computer that doesn't support HTTPS is functional yet un-networkable, so too can a person choose not to support the small talk protocol (or to offer only obsolete versions) thereby forcing the other participants to degrade or refuse the connection.
Everyone has things they're deeply interested in. If you want deep conversation you just have to muster curiosity about what they're into (and not fail the social capabilities portion of the protocol). Rarely you'll get really lucky and the person will share one of your niche interests, but it's an unreasonable expectation so don't make it your goal.
I'll explicitly highlight "appropriateness" as part of those social capabilities: participants balk at philosophizing in dance clubs or slasher flicks at funerals or topics that exclude or are obviously uninteresting to others in a multiparty conversation (since 3+ participants is common at parties).
Practicing the protocol makes it less draining (assuming that's what's actually draining you).
I have things I’m passionate about as well, and I enjoy a good book as much as the next guy, but I go to parties to relax, and talk shite to people.
Another problem being that most people cannot handle disagreement. If you want to discuss an idea that often leads to disagreement. True intellectuals relish an opposing viewpoint, whereas the vast majority of people wonder why you're being an asshole. The fact that most people cannot handle respectful disagreement in search of a deeper understanding is a problem they have, but a burden placed on others.
And of course most people who would call themselves "intellectual" are actually in the latter category.
I sort of miss it, but I’m also happy with the conversations I have now, so meh?
TL;Dr - some people like to read books, some people like to do other things.
The thing is some people have trouble finding people close to their niche. The solution is search better and/or widen your niche.
But to bring a different lens to the topic: to me, articles like this are about protesting the way social interactions are designed and blindly followed by many people, not signaling superiority.
So I don't read OP as "I'm better than anybody else", but as "There must be a better way of interacting with others and sharing interests. I dislike the current way".
The article resonated with me because I think the concept of "parties" is overhyped. I've done a lot in my life and yes, there's a good side to them. But there's also plenty of BS going on: power dynamics, shallow conversations, etc.
The problem is, parties are a sort of a sacred dogma to the vast majority of people. Friends and aquitances will often tease/insult you you for not going to them, or for going and not staying late enough.
I don't understand why the hype. Why are parties the "ultimate and only" way to have fun and interact socially for some people? There are dozens of other ways to interact with people.
For example, I rather have one to one catch-ups with friends because when you get small talk out of the way you can deep-dive into topics. Because of that, I'm an anti-social outcast for many people. "The weird guy that doesn't go to parties". I think that's what the article is on about: societal pressure to individuals so they interact in a certain way and bend to stablished norms, when such norms are not enjoyable for such individuals.
"always"? On one side Reddit is known for its armchair experts to the point of being a cliche'.
Yet anti-intellectualism is widespread in many environments. The idea that people should only engage in gossip and idle conversations in a college party is a good example.
Smoothly ditching a party they don't feel stimulated by is not the worst strategy in the world. But some people I know have the skill of finding a subject of conversation with practically everyone they meet at a party. One of them has literally talked to British Royalty, yet seemed to have no difficulty holding a conversation with a man with limited education, some substance abuse issues, and assorted other difficulties in life.
It seems to me that this is a valuable skill to aspire to. And if at first glance nobody at the party seems to have anything in common with you — maybe that's all the more of an opportunity to hear about views and experiences outside one's usual circles?
I don’t think the solution is what the author does though. I mean, If you really can’t find someone interesting to engage with at any party or social event… I mean it’s a cliche to say this, but maybe it’s you?
The ability to extract valuable entertainment or information from all conversations is, though. I am no expert in this, and I have actively fled from conversations that started to center on someone's hobby horse without much escape or diversion, but I know people who can enter a conversation on anything and, even just by asking smart questions, emerge better from them.
I envy those people.
I mean, it can be fun and enjoyable, but it does not help loneliness, no more then business meeting.
It's simple actually, the techniques in winning friends and influencing people is a good place to start. Most people love talking about themselves and their interests. In reality, for anyone seeking relationships and real connections, "tricking" people to talk about what they want is empty, hallow, and disappointing. It will almost never be reciprocated.