pull down to refresh

The Fear of Falling Behind is real. I appreciate Paul's approach here.

This post isn’t for you. Although I hope it might help. It’s for me: Paul, hold fast to what you know is true. Don’t try to swallow the river.
You haven’t seen the movie, heard the music, read the book, watched the tutorial, listened to the podcast, seen the tweet, and you certainly haven’t tried this new AI technique I developed five seconds ago.

In this time when there is so much pressure to keep on top of every new thing. Not only to stay on top of it, to adopt the new things, ingest them, master them. But as every kung fu movie ever teaches, mastery doesn't ever come quickly. Even that quickly is the enemy.

Take minute to slow down today and think about what you are racing to do.

here is the whole article in cade it is hard to access

As a finite, linear, non-parallelized being, you are already behind.

You haven’t seen the movie, heard the music, read the book, watched the tutorial, listened to the podcast, seen the tweet, and you certainly haven’t tried this new AI technique I developed five seconds ago.

We are born behind. We gather information as quickly as we can our whole lives and then die more behind than when we started. You step into a river and you’re already billions of gallons of water behind. You’ve already missed out. You’re never catching up. For every handful of water you gather, a million handfuls pass beyond reach.

So give up.

When I spent a year off the internet I had to commit total “keeping up bankruptcy.” Many people thought this would be hard to do. But it was actually incredibly easy. Once I no longer felt obligated to keep up, the not keeping up was the easy bit.

I was drawn to older, timeless things at first. Plato’s Republic and Homer’s Odyssey were my favorite sources of information. I also wrote a lot of music. Eventually I learned a new way to waste time and isolate myself from others: playing offline video games while listening to pre-downloaded audiobooks. I didn’t ultimately cure myself from my dopamine search. But that One Big Pressure of keeping up, not falling behind, staying relevant, knowing the latest, never troubled me again.

Okay, well there were the occasional flareups. Bitcoin, programming languages, elections, wars…

But current AI moment has grabbed me the most. I’m simultaneously aware of how impossible it would be to “stay on top of it,” and yet my career path as a developer, my genuine interest in the frontier of technology, and every discussion I’m a part of is driving me to try.

I open X and the algorithm is too good. Three screenfuls of scrolling and I’ve already found four new projects or workflows or best practices to try out.
“I’m riding the wave!” I shout. “I’m keeping up!”

But my finite attention is shattered. My brain is running too hot. I can’t calm down. Focus grows scarce. One project quickly morphs into another. I vibe code in three panes in parallel, just to keep myself off X. I open X anyway. New idea. A fourth pane must be opened. Need to try the latest thing. Must keep up. Can’t get left behind.
I did a prison ministry thing last year. Talking to guys who had been locked up for three, five, ten years. I tried to explain AI to them. It felt like I was telling stories from a sci-fi novel.

But I didn’t feel like they were going to get “left behind” in that moment. I felt good about their chances. Because everyone is behind. We’re all dipping toes into a huge river of information. No one understands, no one has wisdom.
All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.
  • CS Lewis
If you’re a finite being you’re already behind.

The only winning move is to seek wisdom, virtue, the Fruits of the Spirit.

These are things I believe strongly. Foundationally. But it’s so hard to keep those core beliefs top of mind when keeping up. Keeping up shuffles the stack of priorities. It turns my set of aspirations into a roulette wheel. “Keeping up” is a bad form of “letting go.” It gives control of my life over to the algorithm.

This post isn’t for you. Although I hope it might help. It’s for me: Paul, hold fast to what you know is true. Don’t try to swallow the river.
reply

reminds me strongly of the Book of Ecclesiastes

reply

Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.

reply
122 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 23 Mar

would be such a power move to also rename himself to @pastpaul

reply

so good to see Paul write anything

reply
20 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 23 Mar

Paul is the John Mayer of bitcoin imho. I don't know what I mean by that but it feels right.

reply