“the insights you think are revelatory are actually banal and somewhat pathetic, and you’re embarrassing yourself by presenting them as heartfelt knowledge. ”
Let me try to defeat this.
I have learnt something.
That means, I didn’t know, and then I put in effort, and now I know.
Previously, I did not know; it is highly unlikely that I am the only person who did not know.
Even though it’s obvious in hindsight, I still value having the knowledge; it is highly unlikely that I am the only person to value it.
I spent n minutes acquiring this knowledge; barring better data about others I should expect this time to be about average.
Reading this article will take t minutes where t < n.
Articles get written once and read many times; thus, my investment of effort is a net social good. (The time value is (n - t) * readers - n: time expended—time saved.)
PS: this gives you license to spam your article everywhere. You’re committing a social good!
tl;dr: the corollary of “You are not a special snowflake” is “you are not alone”.
Let me try to defeat this.
I have learnt something.
That means, I didn’t know, and then I put in effort, and now I know.
Previously, I did not know; it is highly unlikely that I am the only person who did not know.
Even though it’s obvious in hindsight, I still value having the knowledge; it is highly unlikely that I am the only person to value it.
I spent n minutes acquiring this knowledge; barring better data about others I should expect this time to be about average.
Reading this article will take t minutes where t < n.
Articles get written once and read many times; thus, my investment of effort is a net social good. (The time value is
(n - t) * readers - n: time expended—time saved.)PS: this gives you license to spam your article everywhere. You’re committing a social good!
tl;dr: the corollary of “You are not a special snowflake” is “you are not alone”.
When I run that through my own mind, it spits out an accusation of motivated reasoning. Thanks for the attempt though.