[HN Gopher] Do the weirdest thing that feels right
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Do the weirdest thing that feels right
Author : vitabenes
Score : 206 points
Date : 2023-05-09 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (charliebecker.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (charliebecker.substack.com)
| ftxbro wrote:
| I wish substack will just hurry up and make its medium.com or
| quora turn so everyone will agree to ignore it and it doesn't
| blogspam up every social media. "Why I don't
| actually like greenfield projects." "What I learned when
| I stopped writing clickbait." "When it's actually a good
| idea to put all your eggs in one basket." "When is it the
| time to make a mountain out of a molehill?" "What I
| learned on my journey to stop turning the other cheek."
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Personally I think one shouldn't judge an article based on in
| which media it was posted first.
|
| There are quite a lot good articles posted in each of the blog
| sites you mentioned.
|
| Compare it to people saying, it's sold at Walmart (just an
| example) so it must be bad.
| paulddraper wrote:
| True, but not the strongest example...
| adventured wrote:
| I might even say Target, as Substack isn't so bad at this
| point as to compare it to Walmart's lower-mid quality tier.
|
| If you actually democratize writing/publishing/blogging (as
| their product tries to; as many others have tried to), you're
| not going to end up with a higher quality outcome than
| Substack. It's practically impossible. That's what we have
| the NY Times, Washington Post, Wired, The Economist, et al.
| for.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Or the opposite
| medstrom wrote:
| Do you feel the same way about blogspot.com or wordpress.com?
| If not, why not?
| echelon wrote:
| 1. Nobody really uses those dinosaurs for modern tech
| writing.
|
| 2. Neither platform is VC funded with the expectation of
| hyper growth (which will eventually result in paywalls). One
| of them is owned by Google (and is more likely to get
| cancelled outright), and the other has grown naturally and
| organically over two decades.
| voytec wrote:
| I think these are promoted on HN (Substack is an YC startup).
| More than once there's been a substack link, older, with less
| comments and less upvotes but placed higher on the main page
| than newer posts with active discussions and more internet
| points.
| teej wrote:
| It's not.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Substack has actually good writers who post content regularly.
| Lots of people from the blogsphere migrated there.
| bilsbie wrote:
| If I start blogging should I use it or just post on long form
| twitter now?
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| If you have to ask if you should use Twitter post-
| acquisition when any audience you gather may not be there
| in x time as Musk makes questionable decision after
| questionable decision, the answer is "no". I feel like a
| hostage to the platform in many ways as that's where my
| biggest social audience is--not that I particularly use it
| anyway these days.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I like the new subscriber features and longer videos.
| Plus a long text limit.
| lelanthran wrote:
| So, you recommend that GP ignore his (in your words)
| "biggest social audience"?
|
| Do you not see the contradiction in what you wrote?
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| No, I've been on Twitter since the '00s, and have posted
| over 100k+ tweets. It's not like you go on there and
| suddenly become a success. It's all dependent on buying
| ads these days.
|
| A good chunk of my audience has left already, plenty
| planning to etc. And just because there's a few tens of
| thousands of followers doesn't meant it gets reach or
| engagement like it used to. Seen that for most people.
| alexb_ wrote:
| >I've posted over 100,000 tweets
|
| This is not the flex you think it is. If you've been on
| for 15 years that's 18 tweets, constantly, every single
| day. That's an absurd number.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Who says it's a _flex_? You 're projecting a lot here.
|
| The whole point is illustrating that an audience doesn't
| come out of nowhere and the company is now under new
| management. History will not repeat itself, the world has
| changed, what value I perceived in Twitter has now gone
| because my audience there is in decline post-acquisition.
|
| My investment of time is now worthless other than what I
| took away from the platform in the long-term in terms of
| biz and friends.
|
| Back in the day, we used to use TweetDeck columns like
| IRC channels in terms of hashtags, and new tweets on x
| from y would appear in the relevant column. If you don't
| know what is, imagine a group chat, but people come and
| go. Of an evening, I could probably rattle off a couple
| hundred tweets discussing and debating. Keep in mind the
| original character count, and a simple response could be
| a dozen tweets.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's well within reasonable limits; assuming most of your
| karma comes from posts you've posted about 8 times a day
| on HN. Sounds about right for a social media platform.
| emsy wrote:
| Says guy in HN comments
| mock-possum wrote:
| You can post anything there. You personally just keep happening
| to see a particular brand of content linked off substack
| because that's your bubble. Afterall, often do you make an
| actual effort to find content on substack / medium that doesn't
| fit that category?
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| What makes you think it'll make that turn?
|
| Unless Medium is printing money from their terrible UX, I cant
| imagine a company would want to replicate it.
| irrational wrote:
| I only started noticing substack URLs very recently. I haven't
| even taken the time to figure out what substack is. I can't
| figure out if I am late or if you are early in saying it has
| already jumped the shark.
| twic wrote:
| I think what ftxbro is saying is that Medium and Quora have
| both worthless content and a horrible user experience, and
| people ignore them because of the horrible user experience,
| so their worthless content does not get shared, whereas
| Substack has worthless content but a pleasant user
| experience, so its worthless content does get shared, and he
| hopes that its user experience degrades, so this stops.
|
| EDIT: Which is surprising; surely a fellow traveller of the
| EA/LW crowd would understanding optimising for the maximal
| update to your prior?
| tough wrote:
| I've been recently seeing the word enshittification to
| describe this online phenomena.
|
| I also would refer to Eternal September when we reference
| any kind of online community
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
| tikkun wrote:
| This aligns very well with a model I personally use.
|
| When I'm unsure, I complete the sentence in my head "I should do
| _thing_ but I want to do _other_thing_"
|
| If I'm still unsure, I try swapping the blanks in the sentence
| around a few times and I see which one feels more true, which one
| resonates more.
|
| That normally helps me see which thing was something that I felt
| like I should do, and which thing I actually want to do.
|
| The separate questions here are how to learn to access more of
| your inner intuition about what you want, and I think it mostly
| comes from practice of seeing if you can notice and using the
| method I mentioned above, and then seeing how you felt about the
| result. There's also a separate question about how to make sure
| your intuition is well informed, which I think comes from a
| combination of: trying a lot of things in life so you have many
| data points, being well rested and generally treating your body
| well (good food, some exercise), and being mentally healthy
| (calm, composed, peaceful).
|
| Our sense of what feels right is kind of like what our
| subconscious mind thinks would be best for us. And our
| subconscious mind is exceptionally powerful, it's fantastic at
| making predictions about short term emotional outcomes, it's seen
| everything that's ever happened to us and how it turned out, and
| so on. It'll serve you well to have a better relationship to your
| subconscious and vice versa!
|
| Some side notes that I could expand on:
|
| * "You" are not you, I think we are mostly our subconscious but
| our thoughts and words are the tool it uses to communicate and
| interact with the world, and to plan
|
| * Subconscious mind : conscious mind :: Pre-training : RLHF
|
| * The conscious mind, the part of us that has thoughts, is more
| like a limb, or a sense. It's more of a tool to interact with the
| world, and to receive input from the world, and the actual 'us'
| is something deeper, it's the part that has the 'wants'
|
| * RLHF messes with the ability for GPT-4 to be well calibrated. I
| suspect that's because of the "should" vs "want" / perception of
| other people's perceptions introduced during RLHF.
|
| * I wonder if psychedelics help access the subconscious mind /
| "base model without RLHF" and I wonder if this is why certain
| similar patterns seem to be noticed across different people who
| do psychedelics - because they're accessing the things that their
| subconscious mind has concluded, and many people's subconscious
| minds reach similar conclusions because we're using similar data.
|
| * A person who reads a ton of books is kind of like doing a "pre-
| training" phase.
|
| * Aligning a language model can borrow lots of methods from
| effective parenting (by effective, I mean where both the child
| and the parent end up happy), clicker training of animals, and
| effective delegation and management of employees.
|
| * Good advice is advice that helps people "want something they
| feel like they should do but don't currently want to do" or
| something that helps people "feel like they should do something
| that they already want to do but feel like they shouldn't do"
|
| * If you follow your "shoulds" you end up living surrounded by
| things you felt like you should do
|
| * Giving advice to other people is often your subconscious mind
| telling you what it wishes you would do (and so whatever you say
| to the other person is really either something you feel like you
| should do, or something you feel like you want to do)
| ycombinete wrote:
| _"I should move back to South Africa, but I want to move to
| Europe."_
|
| No, doesn't sound quite right...
|
| _"I should move to Europe, but I want to move back to South
| Africa."_
|
| There it is
| [deleted]
| sph wrote:
| > "Do the weirdest thing that feels right."
|
| I prefer another version of the same idea: _" If it's worth
| doing, it's worth doing badly."_
|
| Cuts through any perfectionism, analysis paralysis and
| overthinking. Go be shit at whatever you love. It'll feel better
| than trying your best at something you don't really believe in.
| robocat wrote:
| I think the phrase "Do the weirdest thing that feels right" just
| doesn't catch the meaning they're trying to explain[2].
|
| I thought of a couple of alternatives, but can you think of a
| sentence that captures the sense better, or a metaphor[1], or an
| existing concept (perhaps in another language)?
|
| [1] e.g. the road less travelled - although that particular
| phrase has always bothered me because it doesn't imply roaming
| over fields or bush bashing through jungles, but instead just
| following the routes of others which is kind of self-defeating. A
| road is definitely not what I am looking for here (alternatively,
| some metaphorical popular roads are fabulous).
|
| [2] a good blogpost on a personal discovery is hard to write -
| how do you reproduce that epiphany in someone else through
| writing? Couple of good topics there for a blogpost!
|
| (Edited for clarity)
| vaidhy wrote:
| Almost everyone misunderstands "the road less travelled" poem.
| The point is not to take the less travelled road, but it is
| that it does not matter. Irrespective of the road taken, the
| poet says he would be just connecting the dots in hindsight.
|
| Here is a nice image that expounds on the same idea -
| https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/60-robert-frost-the-road-no...
| astrobe_ wrote:
| Perhaps "off the beaten path" is more appropriate, although
| it has apparently (non native speaker) both the meaning of
| "less traveled" or "atypical".
| [deleted]
| el_don_almighty wrote:
| Thank you for such a compelling link. It was a wonderful
| interlude to my day and confirmed your thought.
|
| In my mid 50s now and I find no solace in reconsidering past
| decisions. I awake to a new world every day, thankful for the
| fond memories, blessed that today holds new opportunities for
| a future I cannot imagine.
| robocat wrote:
| Phrases take on their own memetic life and often, in popular
| usage, do not carry the original meaning. Choosing a good
| phrase matters to help keep the core idea alive.
|
| Beautiful comic (with bonus nearly-localised references!)
| Definitely shows two very popular life choices in New
| Zealand.
| lief79 wrote:
| Ah yes, the false dichotomy of the road less travelled.
|
| Fairly sure one of my friends in high school had an essay
| trashed for taking that stance. Then again, he was a minimalist
| with anything homework related, so it could have been justified
| for other reasons.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| If you're not being strongly compelled from within by an idea,
| then I wouldn't pursue it. I don't think it has to be weird
| necessarily.
|
| I've been working on a side project and there are so many little
| problems that creep up that it really feels like you're running
| an ultramarathon or climbing Everest.
|
| If you don't have that very strong and deep calling from within I
| don't think many will make it through that, and so you'll just
| end up burning a lot of mental/physical/emotional energy on
| something that doesn't pan out.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Just a side comment to the article, it's great to see so many
| substacks referenced on HN. It reminds me of the geocities of the
| 90s, people free to post into the world as they please. Hopefully
| the substack pricing model doesn't change to affect the input.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Well, now I feel a little better about having quit my job to work
| on creating "digital ant farm meets mental health app", hah.
|
| That said, I have mixed feelings about the article. On the one
| hand, yes, there are very few, if any, objectively correct
| answers on how to live life and so pursuing your own, unique
| truth is empowering. On the other, humans are notoriously poor at
| accurately weighting long-term vs short-term benefits. Plenty of
| things feel right in the moment, YOLO and all that, but dwindle
| as more information becomes available and doors close.
|
| Maybe I'm just projecting my own insecurities onto what I see
| others doing, though? As an example, a friend of mine was
| recently laid off. We both live in SF and they work in Customer
| Satisfaction for tech companies. They had recently switched jobs
| and, when they were laid off, they received four months of
| severance after having only worked for their employer for two
| months. They felt like they had just received a gift, didn't care
| about the macro-economic environment, and decided it was time to
| travel to Costa Rica and participate in an Ayahuasca retreat.
| They were so moved by their experiences that they skipped their
| original flight home and extended their stay in paradise a week.
| As they shared their story with me and my friends, I felt uneasy
| for them and their situation. They seemed intentionally oblivious
| to the changing labor landscape and I became worried for their
| financial well-being, but, to them, the decisions all felt right,
| the layoff was a blessing, and jobs always work out - right?
|
| Who knows! Everyone has to live their truth and it's entirely
| possible their view plays out well and I'm just a worrywart, but,
| from my perspective, they were overvaluing the pursuit of doing
| weird things that feel right. Similarly, I'm sure plenty of my
| friends find my actions to be reckless. Quitting a job without
| another lined up is something society speaks openly against.
|
| It will always be tough to make objective counter-arguments
| against living one's truth since luck plays a non-trivial role in
| all of our lives.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Some company hands out 4 month severance package to 2 month
| employees?
|
| A gift indeed.
| randomopining wrote:
| People who are conservative like you probably overestimate how
| much money they need to have saved. Plus how much less life can
| cost if you're single without a family to provide for.
| JohnFen wrote:
| As an example of this...
|
| During the pandemic, I took almost a year off from work of
| any sort. I had eliminated all of the expenses I had that I
| wasn't deriving real value from, and estimated how much I'd
| need to have in the bank to afford the time of no income.
| Then I saved up that amount.
|
| At the end, I'd overestimated by about 4x and learned a great
| lesson about how much money I actually need to live in the
| manner that I prefer.
| bombcar wrote:
| Heh, my calculations are always under, because I go
| "mortgage + utilities + let's say $5 for ramen a day" and
| miss a bunch of things.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I did my estimations by reviewing my bank statements for
| the prior year. I was afraid of missing things, so wanted
| some actual historical data. Then I added an extra safety
| margin. I didn't want to have to break into my real
| savings!
|
| If I had spent a few months really tracking my spending
| at a granular level, I think my estimate would have been
| much closer to correct.
| munificent wrote:
| Because of my past, I carry around a big pile of financial
| anxiety. The past few years of political and economic tumult
| have been _really_ difficult for that even though thankfully I
| 'm currently in a great economic position. But, paradoxically,
| the better I am financially, the more stressed I feel because I
| just have more to lose. Anxiety is a bitch.
|
| Either way, my impression of the article is that by "weird",
| the author doesn't mean "risky" or "impulsive" like you're
| inferring. I interpreted it to mean more along the lines of
| "wouldn't be appealing or resonating to many other folks."
| Something that appeals strongly to your own particular quirks
| and felicities.
|
| Lots of people would want to take a few weeks in Costa Rica if
| they got laid off. And after Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind"
| there are a hell of a lot of people taking psychedelic trips.
| That's not particularly weird.
|
| Weird would be more like getting laid off and deciding to make
| a go at becoming a full time poet.
| mxuribe wrote:
| > ...paradoxically, the better I am financially, the more
| stressed I feel because I just have more to lose. Anxiety is
| a bitch...
|
| Sorry about your anxiety. But, thanks at least for helping
| remind me (and likely others) that we who feel similarly are
| not alone!
| JohnFen wrote:
| > my impression of the article is that by "weird", the author
| doesn't mean "risky" or "impulsive" like you're inferring.
|
| I agree. I think the author was pretty forthcoming about what
| he meant: he meant that we often write off possible things we
| want to do on the basis that they're "weird" -- in the sense
| that we think others will reject those things.
|
| But doing that is a trap and we shouldn't avoid options
| purely based on what we think others will think about them.
| jonahrd wrote:
| From what you wrote, it sounds like they are already back,
| still in their severance window, and took maybe a 2-3 week
| trip?
|
| This sounds like a very reasonable thing to do when you receive
| a 4 month severance package. There's still time to look for
| work. I assume your friend who works in tech also has some
| amount of savings.
|
| Life isn't a single track of work that you mustn't ever get off
| or you will utterly fail. There's room for some amount of
| leeway in moments like these.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Yup, you are correct on all accounts and I do agree. It's
| just me projecting my insecurities onto them. I had a parent
| die uninsured when I was 21 and my other parent fell into a
| deep depression and became financially dependent on me. It's
| only recently that I was able to get them onto Social
| Security. My worldview has been one of "If I stop working my
| loved ones will struggle." in a way I didn't exactly sign-up
| for as I would a planned child or marriage. So, I sort of
| implicitly assume everyone needs to be preparing for the
| worst financial outcomes possible.
|
| Quitting my job to pursue a creative project is basically a
| direct response to having come into some money and having
| reduced my dependents. It's a nice place to be, but is also
| quite a foreign mindset to try and embody. Hopefully it feels
| more natural in time. :)
| djsavvy wrote:
| Best of luck with your creative journey!
|
| What are you working on?
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Thank you, I appreciate it. The elevator pitch is:
|
| Symbiant is a real-time, sci-fi ant colony simulation for
| modern browsers. It draws inspiration from RimWorld,
| SimAnt, Progress Quest, and Tamagotchi. You awaken to
| find your consciousness trapped inside a satellite's
| computer, sharing space with a damaged AI bent on
| terraforming an alien world that you both now orbit.
| Withered from eons of isolation, a chance encounter with
| an ant colony provides you with hope, companionship, a
| distraction, and, potentially, a way to help the AI
| complete their directive.
|
| Symbiant is a digital aquarium. Slow, calm, and a 24/7
| source of simple entertainment. A respite primarily meant
| for observation and reflection, you briefly command the
| satellite just once per day and must use this time to
| make prescient decisions which ensure your ants thrive
| until your next check-in. The rest of your day is spent
| simply observing the side-effects of your actions and
| taking notes for tomorrow.
|
| Symbiant is tactful mental health software. Its goal is
| to help you be more consistent in your personal growth
| and more aware of your mental health. Over the course of
| real-world months, you help the protagonist grow their
| pet ants, themselves, and yourself. A quick routine
| involving breathwork, meditation, and self-reflective
| journaling is gently woven into your daily self-care
| habits all while the software masquerades as a colony
| sim.
| southwesterly wrote:
| That sounds excellent. Best of luck with that. Do you
| have a website?
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Not yet. There's a discord link in my bio to follow along
| for now and I will share my prototypes with the HN
| community for feedback as it progresses. It's written in
| Rust so, you know, it's basically required to hype it up
| on HN. :)
| kaba0 wrote:
| This recent HN comment on another thread seems very on-point
| here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35870453
| Octokiddie wrote:
| To recap:
|
| - "weirdness" means what others will think is weird
|
| - many options feel right
|
| Therefore, following the advice in the title leads to the
| selection of the path that works personally, and which is most
| likely to be true to one's inner compass.
|
| But I do wonder about the "feels right" part. The thing that
| feels right often only does so in hindsight. In the moment, it
| may feel very, very wrong.
|
| This reminds me of something a speaker at a corporate
| "Innovation" symposium during a summer internship once said many
| years ago. There was talk after talk about how you have to "take
| risk" and "push the envelope" and "think outside the box."
|
| Then this guy stands up and gives the best heuristic I've ever
| heard for identifying innovation in your actions. He said You'll
| know you're innovating because you'll feel deeply uncomfortable.
|
| Nothing makes you stand out like actually innovating. Nothing
| makes you hated more than actually innovating. Nothing raises the
| stakes of what you're doing like actually innovating. And
| usually, nothing feels more wrong than actually innovating.
| elliotec wrote:
| I don't think "feels right" and "uncomfortable" should be
| conflated, though. Many things feel right and uncomfortable at
| the same time. Think of break ups, moving locations or jobs,
| having children, and to your point, innovating.
| fidrelity wrote:
| Isn't what the author describes simply a mental model to amplify
| an egocentric worldview?
|
| Most people are about average and those 'alright, not weird'
| decisions are on average the best decision not just for the
| individual but also for society. That's why they're not weird.
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