I write about technology, culture & markets
Joined September 2019
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If you're a creative person the only thing that matters is contact with reality: real words on a page, real jokes told on stage, real apps published to the app store etc.
I do think it's fine to get advice from people you respect sometimes, but you can spend a lifetime doing fake work related to the thing instead of the thing itself
Also, you don't really learn most lessons until you face a problem on your own terms and work through it... theory can only get you so far: "The map is not the territory"
>I've probably wasted a year of my life reading craft books and self-help stuff so this is all said from fumbling the ball personally
The only answer I've found is blocking off time for the main quest and when I inevitably wander off track it's just about trying to be gentle and coach myself back to what matters
Ben Roy retweeted
> can’t own stonks with capex slowing
> can’t own crypto with quantum and ai risk
> can’t browse the internet cause everything is hacked
> can’t own software cause everything is hacked
> can’t own gold cause alchemy is solved
> can’t own bonds as inflation and crowding out hurting it
> mfw
Ben Roy retweeted
Another takeaway after three years of building a company is that the returns to just "being a good person", and not acting transactionally, are higher than I expected.
There are so many transactional, boring, and at times immoral people in the tech industry that if you act with sustained warmth, authenticity, humor, and integrity, great gifts will be laid before you. White pill.
Ben Roy retweeted
A bit controversial but I don't like doing founder references.
- Outsourcing your thinking to others shows lack of conviction in your own beliefs
- The best founders often get lots of negative references anyways
Ben Roy retweeted
Someone else's "to do list" doesn't have to be yours. It's hard to say no, but not every email, text message, voicemail or interaction warrants a response. It doesn't mean you don't like them or there's any assigned feelings to anything. It's just that time is finite and YOU get to choose how to spend yours.
It's rarer than gold.
Ben Roy retweeted
planning is overrated
just take the shortest term action that is in the general direction of your goal
reality is a super high dimensional space, so this basically always works
Ben Roy retweeted
I still think the key question of this decade is: what do you want more than dopamine? because there are infinite ways to waste life scrolling, sitting in group chats, having endless conversations with LLMs etc.
So what do you actually want? Are you doing the thing?
It takes a lot to really surprise (and inspire) people in modern culture but this is another where were you when moment from Elon
>Despite all his faults he's the only person playing at this level and all you can say is gg
Ben Roy retweeted
I think that feeling bearish during one of the most exciting periods in human history may be a you problem
Ben Roy retweeted
We asked @nealstephenson if he uses AI in his writing. He gave us lore about his book Quicksilver:
"I'm not real big on atrophying my skills."
"There's something about the serendipity and the randomness of doing it yourself that is very productive in the end."
"When I was writing my Baroque Cycle series of historical novels, I would just make notes by hand in comp books."
"It was all hodgepodge. It wasn't organized or searchable. And so I would have to flip through them trying to find stuff."
"In the course of doing that, I would stumble across things I'd have forgotten about or connections would get made, and new ideas would emerge."
"So for me, having that work done by a research assistant, whether it be a human or AI, would actually be counterproductive."
"I mean, I already know how to write books, so I don't need help."
This is such good bait and also a textbook example of how to go viral
>Make something visual that's controversial ish so a) people pause when they're scrolling and b) they feel compelled to clap back with a comment or quote tweet (or share it in their group chats)
No notes, gg
Ben Roy retweeted
doomerism is a self-preservation response to uncertainty about the future. if you convince yourself the worst is inevitable you at least get to feel like you know what’s coming
optimism on the other hand comes with significant emotional risk
