Created: March 21, 2020
Modified: June 12, 2021
Modified: June 12, 2021
keys and locks
This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.- pg says: the random things that you learn as a kid make you into a key. Your job is then to find the lock that you fit into. But that's not as hard as it sounds, because its often close by (every branch has high-value leaves). (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1241312208912551937)
- vgr has a much more elaborate telling: to become a key, we undergo eight traumas that cut out parts of us. these losses limit us to a unique path, which we can then embrace. It's like we're all born with the first eight digits of a sixteen-digit code fixed by nature and nurture. If you fill in the remaining eight digits easily, by default, you'll end up with something like 10101010, which makes you not at all unique.
- One outcome of growing older is that you acquire experiences that make you feel more different from everyone else, but this fact on its own makes you similar to everyone. This is alienation. You'd rather have the opposite, which he calls humanization or self-actualization: you acquire a set of life experiences that make you uniquely you, but in the process realize a universal human connection.
- "The only life experiences that count towards keydom are ones that make your personal story irreversibly fork away from all others, while (and this is the irony of keydom) teaching you something about how you’re actually like everybody else."
- I like the PG view because it's a simpler model and more obviously correct. As a kid I learned weird things about computers and math (and maybe music). As an adult I learned particular things about math, ML, AI, philosophy, bayesian statistics and probabilistic modeling, human psychology, sexuality and love, learning, how people become successful (by watching grad school friends, SuccessfulFriend, to a lesser degree myself, etc), etc. My job is now to fit those things into locks in the world.
- The VGR view is more mystical and harder to interpret. His distinction between alienation and humanization resonates with thoughts I've had in my own life.
- I remember in college, Psych 101, I read about a psych study in which people are shown a horoscope-like description along the lines of, "You believe in your potential but sometimes doubt yourself, you like your friends but sometimes need time for yourself", etc. and most people rate it as describing them very well. To me that felt like a revelatory moment: most people really are the same in some way. Part of this is believing that although projection is unavoidable it is a valid way to understand other humans. That was a humanizing moment.
- More recently, I've felt like I've had a series of life experiences that I don't know how to convey or relate to most people. The experience of failing out of academia is hard to relate to non-PhDs. The experience of failing out of 'elite' successful culture is hard to relate to anyone who was never in that culture, which is most of my friends. The experience of being gay and lonely is hard to relate to anyone who is straight and/or had a normal dating life in high school and college. This feels more alienating.