In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?
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This is spot on. All of my smartest friends go to their lab/startup-wework at 8am and come back home at 1am in the night. They barely have time wipe their own butts, let alone waste time on the internet. The most well rounded ones find time to work out, eat well & to pursue 1 hobby (or children) to the same unhealthy (but healthy?) levels as their careers. If I had to really stretch it, there are some who find time to socialize, party & maybe watch Joe Rogan / Huberman.
My observation is that thinking about the world & your own place in it throws people into deep crises of meaning. The top 0.01% of productive people simply do not have the time to throw themselves into such a crisis. So, they hold onto whatever ideas they inherit unquestioningly, and keep trudging along in the area of focus.
There are 2 exceptions to the rule.
Unmedicated ADHD types who can summon hyper-focus semi-reliably : Motte is the distraction they engage in, and somehow make up for it by hyper focusing into meeting impossible deadlines. I like to think I semi-fall into this category. This cycle is very prone to burn-out though. So, the entire group has periodic crash-and-burns every couple of years. (Yes, I am projecting)
The types who had an early-life crisis of meaning : This includes the Huberman types. How does a skater boy become a Stanford professor ? These people aren't necessarily as online. But, at some point they had a early-life crisis, and went through a lot of the same motte-esque emotions and meaning-finding exercises. The outcome was them finding something they could truly laser focus on, which them led to a meteoric rise into becoming part of the elite. I love this group of people. You can sometimes find them at a party suddenly zoning out with that thousand yard stare. Sometimes it is the hidden tattoos. But these people are a treasure trove of wisdom. Find a person like this to mentor you, man does it help you mature super fast.
Happy to see it mentioned.
Note however that i have unmedicated ADD and the few times I tried amphetamines it enhanced my hyperfocusing obsessive ability instead of decreasing it.
An effect that seems logical, since it give me more energy (which I chronically lack) and make thinking/reading even more pleasant.
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Whenever I read stuff like this I wonder how someone can possibly know enough people to come up with such specific categories of people. If I know anyone who matches any of the types you've described, I don't know them well enough to know that they do. Are there just a lot of people who are social to a level that I have difficulty imagining?
Not exactly, but the style of being social is different. I make sure that the relationships I do form are intimate (even platonically) and not just surface level. I am the kind of person who catches up with a friend once in 6 months, but when we do, we talk for 2-3 hours. A lot comes out.
I have always lived with a lot of roommates, and seeing anyone day-in-and-day-out is a great way of getting to know them well enough. I have also been very open about my experiences in therapy, unconventional career change struggles & my past of being brutally bullied. So, people will often open up to me because they see me as having opened myself up to them. Lastly, I mentor a lot of younger early-in-career types. There are at least 6 people I am directly mentoring, and half-a-dozen who I will offer an ear to every once in a while. These kids will usually come to me with very specific problems & circumstances that they or their peers are facing. The whole thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because my immediate network naturally ends up including people who themselves have huge intimate networks. So, I end up 2 degrees of separation from a lot of specific stories & theories of people's lives.
I guess my history with bullying forces me to try and get a read on a person within my first few minutes of meeting them. I am not very successful, but there is a reflexive observation of a person that I need to do before engaging which might play a role in me bucketizing people. I am not social in the traditional sense at all. I didn't start drinking until I was 27, and even then only have a beer. I don't dance, I still can't pick up on cues as well and I rarely do truly reckless things.
Hubris. At some point, I am projecting my own read on them from limited interactions with that person. I am also notorious for confidently stating models of the world that I come up on the fly. Ask me again tomorrow and I might give you a different answer.
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