Upper-middle class Americans are already as gods, we just aren’t godlike.

I think most undergrads don't realize yet that the economic cage is open.

it’s fundamentally dehumanizing to be surrounded by people and then never interact and engage with them.

I've done several different kinds of work, and the limits were different for each. My limit for the harder types of writing or programming is about five hours a day. Whereas when I was running a startup, I could work all the time

“With all the time you spend watching TV,” he tells me, “you could have written a novel by now.” It’s hard to disagree with the sentiment — writing a novel is undoubtedly a better use of time than watching TV — but what about the hidden assumption? Such comments imply that time is “fungible” — that time spent watching TV can just as easily be spent writing a novel. And sadly, that’s just not the case.

if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.

Trying out a bunch of things, having a ton of plates spinning, keeping a lot of balls in the air, being in a new job, a new relationship, a new hobby—these kinds of things will tend to accrue technical debt. Prior to having put in tons and tons of meditation time, there’s sort of just too much going on to easily "integrate" in real time (or in stolen moments, or on long walks, or in meditation), because integration, when needed, takes real time, and sometimes a lot of time.

One can tell they’re maybe accruing technical debt (accumulating karma, in another model) if they have to kind of use a bunch of willpower, or push through a bit, to show up for things or to get things done, some of the time—or, even if not being "pushy," if one’s "mental checklists" kind of go into overdrive.

There’s an arguable phrase in the software industry world, "always be shipping." Maybe, here, it’s something like, "always be living."

Hard is easier

Art will save you. Design: don't blame the user

MVP mentality to everything: what is the most compelling demo I can make of this technology? That's what a charter city is.

[…] I can’t help but think of a line written by the poet Marianne Moore: The cure for loneliness is solitude. And the solitude of the pilot in the spy-plane, seeing everything, touching nothing, reading The Once and Future King fifty thousand feet above the clouds - that makes my heart break, just a little, because of how lonely that is, and because of some things that have happened to me, and because T.H. White was one of the loneliest men alive.

unicorns are often pictured, being smaller and cloven-hoofed, and possessing that oldest, wildest grace that horses have never had, that deer have only in a shy, thin imitation and goats in dancing mockery. For infovores, text, in contrast to photos or videos or music, is the medium of choice from a velocity standpoint. There is deep satisfaction in quickly decoding the textual information, the scan rate is self-governed on the part of the reader, unlike other mediums which unfold at their own pace (this is especially the case with video, which infovores hate for its low scannability).

. ``There's no importance whatsoever. I'm just doing it for the fun of it.'' His reaction didn't discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.

We delight in fine cuisine, and yet concentrated sugar + fat + salt = irresistible junk food. We execute complex tasks, and yet fine tuned difficulty + intermittent reinforcement + clear feedback = video games that people play until they die.

There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics. When something is "out there" it's hard to make it personal because it's not my ball, it's the ball. It's not my problem, it's the problem. I happily pass on the exciting e-commerce app deals, for example, that get sent to me, both because I don’t really have the expertise to vet them and also because I just don’t really care. If my view of the next 15 years is correct, those things will all be noise, drowned out by the massive AI and biotech revolutions headed our way.

Always prioritize the substance of what you're doing. Don't get caught up in the status, the prestige games. They're endlessly dazzling, and they're always endlessly disappointing.

After I read the book, I started noticing that a lot of the things I’d mentally cycle through on a daily basis were just flat wrong. I started to feel puzzled - were these thoughts actually helpful? I had kind of assumed that beating yourself up internally was useful, like whipping a horse to get it to move faster (which, when I really thought about the analogy, didn’t seem like a nice thing to do either). But could I have been wrong about that?