I have some areas of artistic expertise where everyone around me is kind of like a level 10 and I’m a level 80. When I try skills near to it, I’m immediately a level 25, and so I actually feel pretty good exploring them. Note that these are not the core skills that my reputation and social status rest on.
I can think of many examples where I think this sort of dynamic happened in the world. I feel some impulse to not name them all because it’s psychologizing others a bit. But I’ll say one that I thought of lately was wondering why Nate Silver didn’t do any forecasting around the pandemic, and this sort of answer was what I settled on.
You say you resolved to live life like a failure, which I like. I have something like this, but those words don’t quite resonate with me. Paul Graham says to try to feel like a noob often, and he has the great line “the more of a noob you are locally, the less of a noob you are globally”, which I also like.
I have some areas of artistic expertise where everyone around me is kind of like a level 10 and I’m a level 80. When I try skills near to it, I’m immediately a level 25, and so I actually feel pretty good exploring them. Note that these are not the core skills that my reputation and social status rest on.
I can think of many examples where I think this sort of dynamic happened in the world. I feel some impulse to not name them all because it’s psychologizing others a bit. But I’ll say one that I thought of lately was wondering why Nate Silver didn’t do any forecasting around the pandemic, and this sort of answer was what I settled on.
You say you resolved to live life like a failure, which I like. I have something like this, but those words don’t quite resonate with me. Paul Graham says to try to feel like a noob often, and he has the great line “the more of a noob you are locally, the less of a noob you are globally”, which I also like.