Thank you for writing that! It’s great to see the “too meta” problem spelled out so clearly. It’s similar to the situation in programming that has long puzzled me. Many people and companies have accumulated processes that they swear by (code review, type systems, continuous integration, agile and whatnot) but at the same time lots of people do amazing work with very little process.
It seems like meta stuff has a way of self-justifying and growing, like a bureaucracy. It’s useful if you’re stuck and nothing works, but if you’re making any progress at all, it’s better to steer with the engine so to speak. Radical meta proposals sound attractive to people who have fought their minds to a standstill, but even for such people I think a better idea is starting one small object-level thing on a strict schedule (gym is a good choice), making the mind more mobile for other things in turn.
Thank you for writing that! It’s great to see the “too meta” problem spelled out so clearly. It’s similar to the situation in programming that has long puzzled me. Many people and companies have accumulated processes that they swear by (code review, type systems, continuous integration, agile and whatnot) but at the same time lots of people do amazing work with very little process.
It seems like meta stuff has a way of self-justifying and growing, like a bureaucracy. It’s useful if you’re stuck and nothing works, but if you’re making any progress at all, it’s better to steer with the engine so to speak. Radical meta proposals sound attractive to people who have fought their minds to a standstill, but even for such people I think a better idea is starting one small object-level thing on a strict schedule (gym is a good choice), making the mind more mobile for other things in turn.