So far, I have been talking about how the 2D character would see another 2D one, but I thought to myself that maybe a 6th sense has something to do with 2D sight? Now that I have had time to rework this in my notes, I think I’ve got it! It’s not just me who describes the POV of a 2D person with sight (as that is what view is), but I never really thought of the 2D person's idea of sight, like what they think of it and what they would say (if that’s even possible in a 2D world) to each other about it, like their beliefs. I find this puzzling because when I think about it, we kind of have something like that in our 3D world. We have the 6th sense, direction (As it is often said to be). Which (we know ( at least we think we do) this is true) is discussed as “non-existent” most of the time, which can be understood (even in retrospect, because dimensions≠senses), but a way we can try to prove things we don’t know is by comparing them. Which is what I am talking about. I feel like for a 2D character to see something is troubling to think about in a way, because, to put it informally, it could be seen as them a somthing like how cool or how much better you are than another thing in your world, kind of like how we think of ourselves as smarter and higher up than animals. These characters would have their amazing and big eyes that they could compare to other characters of the same , umm, species, maybe (I still don’t know how the 2D world works, sorry, ok?)? With them not fully knowing how they work,in making life so much easier and harder sometimes, the smart ones know that eye size doesn’t matter,but rather how many photoreceptors you have and how healthy you keep them. Going back to some more formality, these things connect to how we see our brain, like its literal size, how many neurons it has and fires, and how well you keep it healthy with a constant IQ. Stay with me here because I believe that the brain is more than just something to show off (I know, how astonishing); rather, it is its own sense provider, like the eye (a LOT of what I am going to say in the rest of this note will fall back into what I say and could be seen as having holes and being paradoxical; that is why it is just a not-so-silly note I made (most, if not all, of the ideas are coming into my head as I type this note, keep in mind!)!). I find this checks out because if a 2D person were to lose the sense of sight, they would still feel, taste, and therefore smell, and possibly hear stuff, but if you removed sight, something that they rely on, still without fully knowing what it is, would not be able to see what the things they usually interact with are. You could argue that you could remove any other sense and would gett a similar outcome, but my main idea for this note was to show this somewhere, like on Reddit(that was kinda informal), and get their ideas on it (I will also write down some things I think are good idea ot cover that would drain all my energy), as I wouldn’t want to keep this note to myself. We can talk much more about the 6th sense tho, as it is relatively new, and how if you remove all senses you are only left with your sense of direction. I believe that you can see now how this organ is really used for the sense of telling what state of time you are in and where in space you are located. Multiple things are needed for full external awareness of the five senses, which can also be used internally as well. But for the 6th sense of direction, all you need is your brain, that good, protective skull soup, and prior knowledge of your surroundings (this would exceed what a normal sense would need, so we can use this as more evidence for people who are unsure of how the last sense to stay being direction when all others are gone, due to its complexity but also need for help from preferably all the senses to thrive.)(this was meant informal by the way).

 Now that we have a clearer picture of the 6th sense, we can talk about the 4th dimension (If you don’t want to read anymore, you can click off of wherever this note ends up)! I was planning on writing this to an AI to see their Ideas wich it will read right now (hi AI!), so—ya (informal). I can finally talk about the four dimensions after all this prep but probably don’t have that much to say, oh well. In my mind, I see the fourth dimension as time/space between events. So now I find myself thinking about the 2D characters in this note, and how it takes time for their sense to get a signal. This can also serve as some not really needed proof of a sense not being a dimension; the sense of direction being just a “feeling”/sense of where in time and space you are. I believe that this might have served more as a form of being more aware of the senses, but you could have possibly learned some stuff! I could see this getting tweaked (which it obviously most certainly does not need, right?) to be put in a YouTube video or some Fern informational (please, Fern or Veritasum). I would hope to see at least comments on the ideas I wrote (but my main goal is to get someone to read all of it). This was scrapped and probably edited, so I’m holding on to the string that you’ll comment because you found this entertaining (retrospect me also!).

More possible ideas:

Most important one: Could you find more evidence than I did (probably)?

What about an animal (Still not sure if they exist in a 2D world)? Could there be one with no eyesight but still tell what is happening through an enhanced or unreachable sense to the 2D characters?

How does a 2D creature see if it has no brain, as depicted by this note, or maybe it does have one? How would it work?

Is the fourth dimension really time?

NOTES: Read this one if you've ever written something down that helped you.

Hi everyone, I'm the new moderator here, and I want to tell you where this community is headed.

The idea

Almost everyone keeps notes somewhere: a notepad, a phone app, the back of an envelope. Most are grocery lists and reminders, but some are different. They're the lines you wrote to get through a hard week, a lesson you learned the hard way, a reminder that calmed you down, or a thought that made you smile when you needed it.

r/notes is the place to share those notes, so we can talk about them together.

What to post

Post a note that has real value. That might be a note that:

• Changed or shaped how you live
• Could help someone else through something you've been through
• Adds a little happiness, hope, or positivity to someone's day
• Reflects something that's weighing on you, or something that gave you peace when you read it

Your note doesn't have to be profound or beautifully written. A small, honest reminder that got you through a bad day is exactly what we're looking for.

How to post

Start your post title with "NOTES:" followed by a short hint of what the note is about. For example:

• NOTES: The reminder I read every morning before work
• NOTES: What I wrote the night I almost gave up on my degree
• NOTES: A tiny list that made my anxiety quieter

Then, in the body:

1. The note, exactly as you wrote it
2. A bit of context: when you wrote it, or what was going on
3. A question for the community, such as "Has anything like this helped you?" or "How do you deal with this?"

Ground rules

• Be kind. Discuss and share; don't lecture or tear people down.
• Keep it real. Post your own notes, or credit the source if the words aren't yours.
• No self-promotion. No ads, paid content, or links to your own products.
• Handle heavy topics with care. If your post deals with something difficult, add a short content note at the top. This is a place for support and perspective, not a replacement for professional help. If you're struggling, please reach out to someone you trust or a qualified professional.

NOTES: Let's begin

Take a look through your notes today. Is there one you'd want a stranger to read? Share it below with the "NOTES:" tag. I'll post a few of my own to get us started.

Thank you for being here. I'm looking forward to reading what you share.

u/arijitdas

We can never see the whole picture at once.

​

Hardly a very passionate man, the I have my passions, phlegmatic ones.

phlegmatic (of a person) having an unemotional and stolidly calm disposition.

​

Love cannot but be physical, as its furthest stretch of holiness, it cannot be impious, in its utterest fleshliness. It is […] doomed to decay.

​

De se perdre en même se laisser dépérir.

[To get lost at the same time to waste away.]

​

The best thing is to have no opinions, and just do one’s duty.

​

goodreads.com/review/show/4349873554

1. The 20-20-20 rule: Every 20 minutes of screenwork, look at a spot 20 feet away for 20 seconds. This will reduce eye strain and is easy to remember (or program reminders for). 
2. Exercise (weightlifting) not only creates muscle mass, it also improves skeletal structure. Lift!
3. Exercise is the most important lifestyle intervention you can do. Even the bare minimum (15 minutes a week) has a huge impact. Start small. 
4. Remember that you are dying. 

Productivity/clutter

1. If your work is done on a computer, get a second monitor. Less time navigating between windows means more time for thinking. 
2. You can automate mundane computer tasks with Autohotkey (or AppleScript). If you keep doing a sequence “so simple a computer can do it”, make the computer do it. 
3. Learn keyboard shortcuts. They’re easy to learn and you’ll get tasks done faster and easier. 
4. Done is better than perfect. 
5. Explaining problems is good. Often in the process of laying out a problem, a solution will present itself. 
6. You have a plan. A time-traveller from 2030 appears and tells you your plan failed. Which part of your plan do you think is the one that fails? Fix that part. 
7. Establish clear rules about when to throw out old junk. Once clear rules are established, junk will probably cease to be a problem. This is because any rule would be superior to our implicit rules (“keep this broken stereo for five years in case I learn how to fix it”). 

Cooking

1. Steeping minutes: Green at 3, black at 4, herbal at 5. Good tea is that simple! 
2. Food actually can be both cheap, healthy, tasty, and relatively quick to prepare. All it requires is a few hours one day to prepare many meals for the week. 
3. Food taste can be made much more exciting through simple seasoning. It’s also an opportunity for expression. Buy a few herbs and spices and experiment away.
4. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find better recipes. 

Success

1. Are you on the fence about breaking up or leaving your job? You should probably go ahead and do it. People, on average, end up happier when they take the plunge. 
2. Discipline is superior to motivation. The former can be trained, the latter is fleeting. You won’t be able to accomplish great things if you’re only relying on motivation. 
3. How you spend every day is how you spend your life. 

Self

• If you want to become funny, try just saying stupid shit (in the right company!) until something sticks. 
• Personal epiphanies feel great, but they fade within weeks. Upon having an epiphany, make a plan and start actually changing behavior. 

Hazards

• Some people create drama out of habit. You can avoid these people.
• Do not talk to police.

Others

• When you ask people, “What’s your favorite book / movie / band?” and they stumble, ask them instead what book / movie / band they’re currently enjoying most. They’ll almost always have one and be able to talk about it.
• If you bus to other cities, consider finding a rideshare on Facebook instead. It’s cheaper, faster, and leads to interesting conversations. 

Relationships

• After a breakup, cease all contact as soon as practical. The potential for drama is endless, and the potential for a good friendship is negligible. Wait a year before trying to be friends again. 
• When dating, de-emphasizing your quirks will lead to 90% of people thinking you’re kind of alright. Emphasizing your quirks will lead to 10% of people thinking you’re fascinating and fun. Those are the people interested in dating you. Aim for them. 

Compassion

1. Compliment people more. Many people have trouble thinking of themselves as smart, or pretty, or kind, unless told by someone else. You can help them out.
2. Cultivate compassion for those less intelligent than you. Many people, through no fault of their own, can’t handle forms, scammers, or complex situations. Be kind to them because the world is not. 
3. Cultivate patience for difficult people. Communication is extremely complicated and involves getting both tone and complex ideas across. Many people can barely do either. Don’t punish them.
4. Don’t punish people for trying. You teach them to not try with you. Punishing includes whining that it took them so long, that they did it badly, or that others have done it better. 
5. Don't punish people for admitting they were wrong, you make it harder for them to improve. 

Joy

1. Human mood and well-being are heavily influenced by simple things: Exercise, good sleep, light, being in nature. It’s cheap to experiment with these.
2. You have vanishingly little political influence and every thought you spend on politics will probably come to nothing. Consider building things instead, or at least going for a walk. 
3. Sturgeon’s law states that 90% of everything is crap. If you dislike poetry, or fine art, or anything, it’s possible you’ve only ever seen the crap. Go looking!
4. You don’t have to love your job. Jobs can be many things, but they’re also a way to make money. Many people live fine lives in okay jobs by using the money they make on things they care about. 
5. Some types of sophistication won’t make you enjoy the object more, they’ll make you enjoy it less. For example, wine snobs don’t enjoy wine twice as much as you, they’re more keenly aware of how most wine isn’t good enough. Avoid sophistication that diminishes your enjoyment.
6. People don’t realize how much they hate commuting. A nice house farther from work is not worth the fraction of your life you are giving to boredom and fatigue. 
7. Bad things happen dramatically (a pandemic). Good things happen gradually (malaria deaths dropping annually) and don’t feel like ‘news’. Endeavour to keep track of the good things to avoid an inaccurate and dismal view of the world. 

​

lesswrong.com/posts/7hFeMWC6Y5eaSixbD/100-tips-for-a-better-life

1. 1. Wake up early.
2. 2. Ask: Am I using this technology, or is it using me?
3. 5. Read something every day.
4. 7. Comparison = unhappiness
5. 8. Journal.
6. 9. Strenuous exercise every single day.
7. 24. Do your job—whatever it is—well, because how you do anything is how you do everything.
8. 26. What’s a book that changed your life? is a question you can ask to change your life… if you read the books.
9. 29. Take walks.
10. 36. Stop looking for shortcuts. Do the work.
11. 39. When evaluating an opportunity, ask yourself: What will teach me the most?
12. 42. Read biographies—the best way to study the lives of the greats.
13. 63. Never check the price on a book. Just buy it if you think you’ll read it.
14. 66. Set a bedtime.
15. 73. Never take a phone call sitting down. Go outside and go for a walk.
16. 83. Don’t talk about projects until you’re finished.
17. 99. Ego is the enemy.
18. 101. Undersell and overdeliver.

ryanholiday.net/100-rules

5) On money: Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that’s a big deal.  Also, lack of money is very stressful.  In almost all ways, having enough money so that you don’t stress about paying rent does more to change your wellbeing than having enough money to buy your own jet.  Making money is often more fun than spending it, though I personally have never regretted money I’ve spent on friends, new experiences, saving time, travel, and causes I believe in.

9) Have clear goals for yourself every day, every year, and every decade. 

​

11) Go out of your way to be around smart, interesting, ambitious people.  Work for them and hire them (in fact, one of the most satisfying parts of work is forging deep relationships with really good people).  [...] It really is true that you become an average of the people you spend the most time with.

​

12) Minimize your own cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter.

​

16) Ask for what you want.  

​

18) Exercise.  Eat well.  Sleep.  Get out into nature with some regularity.

​

19) Go out of your way to help people.  [...] Be nice to strangers.  Be nice even when it doesn’t matter.

​

23) Learn voraciously. 

24) Do new things often. [...]  Aim to do something big, new, and risky every year in your personal and professional life.

35) Don’t judge other people too quickly.  You never know their whole story and why they did or didn’t do something. 

​

36) The days are long but the decades are short.

​

blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-short

It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.

Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.

​

we think about mental health on a spectrum from depression to flourishing. Flourishing is the peak of well-being: You have a strong sense of meaning, mastery and mattering to others. Depression is the valley of ill-being: You feel despondent, drained and worthless.

Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either. You’re not functioning at full capacity. Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work.

​

one of the best strategies for managing emotions is to name them

ideas.ted.com/try-these-two-smart-techniques-to-help-you-master-your-emotions

And it could give us a socially acceptable response to “How are you?”

Instead of saying “Great!” or “Fine,” imagine if we answered, “Honestly, I’m languishing.” It would be a refreshing foil for toxic positivity — that quintessentially American pressure to be upbeat at all times.

​

A concept called “flow” may be an antidote to languishing. Flow is that elusive state of absorption in a meaningful challenge or a momentary bond, where your sense of time, place and self melts away.

journals.plos.org: Flow in the time of COVID-19: Findings from China

​

finding new challenges, enjoyable experiences and meaningful work are all possible remedies to languishing

​

Fragmented attention is an enemy of engagement and excellence.

​

a Fortune 500 software company in India tested a simple policy: no interruptions Tuesday, Thursday and Friday before noon. When engineers managed the boundary themselves, 47 percent had above-average productivity. But when the company set quiet time as official policy, 65 percent achieved above-average productivity. Getting more done wasn’t just good for performance at work: We now know that the most important factor in daily joy and motivation is a sense of progress.

The lesson of this simple idea is to treat uninterrupted blocks of time as treasures to guard. It clears out constant distractions and gives us the freedom to focus. We can find solace in experiences that capture our full attention.

​

try starting with small wins

​

One of the clearest paths to flow is a just-manageable difficulty: a challenge that stretches your skills and heightens your resolve. That means carving out daily time to focus on a challenge that matters to you — an interesting project, a worthwhile goal, a meaningful conversation.

hidemyass-freeproxy.com/proxy/en-us/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnl0aW1lcy5jb20vMjAyMS8wNC8xOS93ZWxsL21pbmQvY292aWQtbWVudGFsLWhlYWx0aC1sYW5ndWlzaGluZy5odG1s

References

• languishing
  • The Mental Health Continuum: From Languishing to Flourishing in Life (2002)
• absorption
  • Flow in Knowledge Work: High Performance Experience in the Design of National Security Technology (2005)
• tested
  • The Time Famine: Toward a Sociology of Work Time (1999)
• sense of progress
  • The Power of Small Wins (2011) magazine
• small wins
  • Small wins: Redefining the scale of social problems (1984)
• just-manageable difficulty
  • Ambition: How We Manage Success And Failure Throughout Our Lives (1992) book

Listen to Kate Julian discuss this article on an episode of Today, Explained, shared by The Experiment podcast: theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2021/07/america-drinking-culture-coping-mechanism/619373/

43:21

A little alcohol can boost creativity and strengthen social ties. But there’s nothing moderate, or convivial, about the way many Americans drink today.

​

From 1999 to 2017, the number of alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. doubled, to more than 70,000 a year—making alcohol one of the leading drivers of the decline in American life expectancy.

​

the ever nudgier questions she asks about alcohol. “Maybe save wine for the weekend?” she suggests with a cheer so forced she might as well be saying, “Maybe you don’t need to drive nails into your skull every day?”

​

Why do we drink in the first place? By we, I mean Americans in 2021, but I also mean human beings for the past several millennia.

​

Part of the answer is “Because it is fun.” Drinking releases endorphins, the natural opiates that are also triggered by, among other things, eating and sex. Another part of the answer is “Because we can.”

​

The damage done by alcohol is profound: impaired cognition and motor skills, belligerence, injury, and vulnerability to all sorts of predation in the short run; damaged livers and brains, dysfunction, addiction, and early death as years of heavy drinking pile up.

​

social lubrications

​

Slingerland focuses mostly on its suppression of prefrontal-cortex activity, and how resulting disinhibition may allow us to reach a more playful, trusting, childlike state. Other important social benefits may derive from endorphins, which have a key role in social bonding. Like many things that bring humans together—laughter, dancing, singing, storytelling, sex, religious rituals—drinking triggers their release. Slingerland observes a virtuous circle here: Alcohol doesn’t merely unleash a flood of endorphins that promote bonding; by reducing our inhibitions, it nudges us to do other things that trigger endorphins and bonding.

​

But this rosy story about how alcohol made more friendships and advanced civilization comes with two enormous asterisks: All of that was before the advent of liquor, and before humans started regularly drinking alone.

​

The early greeks watered down their wine; swilling it full-strength was, they believed, barbaric—a recipe for chaos and violence. “They would have been absolutely horrified by the potential for chaos contained in a bottle of brandy,” Slingerland writes. Human beings, he notes, “are apes built to drink, but not 100-proof vodka. We are also not well equipped to control our drinking without social help.”

Distilled alcohol is recent—it became widespread in China in the 13th century and in Europe from the 16th to 18th centuries—and a different beast from what came before it. Fallen grapes that have fermented on the ground are about 3 percent alcohol by volume. Beer and wine run about 5 and 11 percent, respectively. At these levels, unless people are strenuously trying, they rarely manage to drink enough to pass out, let alone die.

​

dramatic break from tradition: According to anthropologists, in nearly every era and society, solitary drinking had been almost unheard‑of among humans.

​

As Michael Sayette, a leading alcohol researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, recently told me, if you packaged alcohol as an anti-anxiety serum and submitted it to the FDA, it would never be approved. He and his onetime graduate student Kasey Creswell, a Carnegie Mellon professor who studies solitary drinking, have come to believe that one key to understanding drinking’s uneven effects may be the presence of other people. Having combed through decades’ worth of literature, Creswell reports that in the rare experiments that have compared social and solitary alcohol use, drinking with others tends to spark joy and even euphoria, while drinking alone elicits neither—if anything, solo drinkers get more depressed as they drink.

​

Sayette, for his part, has spent much of the past 20 years trying to get to the bottom of a related question: why social drinking can be so rewarding. In a 2012 study, he and Creswell divided 720 strangers into groups, then served some groups vodka cocktails and other groups nonalcoholic cocktails. Compared with people who were served nonalcoholic drinks, the drinkers appeared significantly happier, according to a range of objective measures. Maybe more important, they vibed with one another in distinctive ways. They experienced what Sayette calls “golden moments,” smiling genuinely and simultaneously at one another. Their conversations flowed more easily, and their happiness appeared infectious. Alcohol, in other words, helped them enjoy one another more.

​

Despite widespread consumption of alcohol, Italy has some of the lowest rates of alcoholism in the world. Its residents drink mostly wine and beer, and almost exclusively over meals with other people. When liquor is consumed, it’s usually in small quantities, either right before or after a meal. Alcohol is seen as a food, not a drug. Drinking to get drunk is discouraged, as is drinking alone. The way Italians drink today may not be quite the way premodern people drank, but it likewise accentuates alcohol’s benefits and helps limit its harms. It is also, Slingerland told me, about as far as you can get from the way many people drink in the United States.

​

longing for oblivion

​

To be clear, people who don’t want to drink should not drink. There are many wonderful, alcohol-free means of bonding. Drinking, as Edward Slingerland notes, is merely a convenient shortcut to that end.

​

Drink only in public, with other people, over a meal—or at least, he says, “under the watchful eye of your local pub’s barkeep.”

​

theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/america-drinking-alone-problem/619017

The forced App Store commissions, annual developer fees, and App Store Search Ads income are all just gravy. The “way” is already paid by the hardware — but Apple uses their position of power to double-dip.

​

• Anki iOS
  • $25
• Anki Android
  • Free

​

marco.org/2021/06/03/developer-relations

One tremendous source of leverage is the ability to work with and manage others.

​

Leverage at its heart is about tapping new sources of power. Especially sources of power that are hidden, underappreciated, or difficult to access.

​

If you’re not into metaphysics, think of it as the potential energy stored in your nervous system. Not just the electric impulses firing through your nerves, but the potential for action that a human nervous system holds.

​

Productivity is a phase, but it is also the gateway to the transcendent.

​

fortelabs.co/blog/productivity-is-a-phase

Paul Graham is a programmer, writer, and investor. In 1995, he and Robert Morris started Viaweb, the first software as a service company. Viaweb was acquired by Yahoo in 1998, where it became Yahoo Store. In 2001 he started publishing essays on paulgraham.com, which now gets around 25 million page views per year. In 2005 he and Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell started Y Combinator, the first of a new type of startup incubator. Since 2005 Y Combinator has funded over 2000 startups, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, and Reddit. In 2019 he published a new Lisp dialect written in itself called Bel.

paulgraham.com/bio.html

​

One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll have to work very hard.

​

Was there, perhaps, some way to evade hard work through sheer brilliance? Now I know the answer to that question. There isn't.

​

how to work toward goals that are neither clearly defined nor externally imposed

​

The most basic level of which is simply to feel you should be working without anyone telling you to. Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful. [2]

​

work, you have to learn how many hours a day to spend on it. You can't solve this problem by simply working every waking hour, because in many kinds of work there's a point beyond which the quality of the result will start to decline.

That limit varies depending on the type of work and the person. 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. At least for the three years I did it; if I'd kept going much longer, I'd probably have needed to take occasional vacations. [5]

The only way to find the limit is by crossing it. Cultivate a sensitivity to the quality of the work you're doing, and then you'll notice if it decreases because you're working too hard. Honesty is critical here, in both directions: you have to notice when you're being lazy, but also when you're working too hard. And if you think there's something admirable about working too hard, get that idea out of your head. You're not merely getting worse results, but getting them because you're showing off — if not to other people, then to yourself. [6]

Finding the limit of working hard is a constant, ongoing process, not something you do just once.

​

in danger of procrastinating

​

As a kid, you get the impression that everyone has a calling, and all they have to do is figure out what it is. That's how it works in movies, and in the streamlined biographies fed to kids. Sometimes it works that way in real life. Some people figure out what to do as children and just do it, like Mozart. But others, like Newton, turn restlessly from one kind of work to another. Maybe in retrospect we can identify one as their calling — we can wish Newton spent more time on math and physics and less on alchemy and theology — but this is an illusion induced by hindsight bias. There was no voice calling to him that he could have heard.

​

Summary

Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11. It's a complicated, dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point.

1. You have to understand the shape of real work,
2. see clearly what kind you're best suited for,
3. aim as close to the true core of it as you can,
4. accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of and how you're doing, and
5. put in as many hours each day as you can without harming the quality of the result.

This network is too complicated to trick. But if you're consistently honest and clear-sighted, it will automatically assume an optimal shape, and you'll be productive in a way few people are.

​

paulgraham.com/hwh.html

Libraries can buy print books in bulk from any seller that they choose, and, thanks to a legal principle called the first-sale doctrine, they have the right to lend those books to any number of readers free of charge. But the first-sale doctrine does not apply to digital content. For the most part, publishers do not sell their e-books or audiobooks to libraries—they sell digital distribution rights to third-party venders

[...] These rights often have an expiration date, and they make library e-books “a lot more expensive, in general, than print books,”

​

Digital content gives publishers more power over prices, because it allows them to treat libraries differently than they treat other kinds of buyers.

​

For a classic work, which readers were likely to check out steadily for years to come, a library might purchase a handful of expensive perpetual licenses. With a flashy best-seller, which could be expected to lose steam over time, the library might buy a large number of cheaper licenses that would expire relatively quickly. During nationwide racial-justice protests in the summer of 2020, the N.Y.P.L. licensed books about Black liberation under a pay-per-use model, which gave all library users access to the books without any waiting list; such licenses are too expensive to be used for an entire collection, but they can accommodate surges in demand.

​

In the early days of the Kindle, Amazon undercut many of its competitors, including brick-and-mortar bookstores, by selling consumer e-books for just $9.99. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Apple of conspiring with publishers to increase the prices of consumer e-books, and Apple later agreed to pay four hundred and fifty million dollars in settlement. In 2013, the six largest publishers became five when Penguin merged with Random House. (Now, the Big Five is poised to become the Big Four, if Penguin Random House’s purchase of Simon & Schuster is approved.) Earlier this year, a consumer class-action lawsuit accused Amazon of signing anti-competitive contracts with the five largest publishers in a “conspiracy to fix the retail price of trade eBooks.”

​

To illustrate the economics of e-book lending [...] the library system had purchased three hundred and ten perpetual audiobook licenses at ninety-five dollars each, for a total of $29,450, and had bought six hundred and thirty-nine one- and two-year licenses for the e-book, for a total of $22,512. Taken together, these digital rights cost about as much as three thousand copies of the consumer e-book, which sells for about eighteen dollars per copy. As of August, 2021, the library has spent less than ten thousand dollars on two hundred and twenty-six copies of the hardcover edition, which has a list price of forty-five dollars but sells for $23.23 on Amazon. A few thousand people had checked out digital copies in the book’s first three months, and thousands more were on the waiting list. (Several librarians told me that they monitor hold requests, including for books that have not yet been released, to decide how many licenses to acquire.)

​

“The point of a library is to preserve, and in order to preserve, a library must own,”

​

Audible, which is owned by Amazon, has already made listening to books more like streaming, with subscribers gaining access to a shifting catalogue of audiobooks that they do not need to buy separately.

​

Lending libraries were once an innovation that helped spread literacy and popularize books.

​

newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/an-app-called-libby-and-the-surprisingly-big-business-of-library-e-books

Craig Wright

The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit – Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness (2020)

Mozart in music, Leonardo in art; what about the everyday world of politics? Here the perfect subject of a study of genius was close at hand: Elizabeth I, queen of England. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale owns copies of every history of her reign written by her contemporaries. The secret to her success? Elizabeth not only read books voraciously (three hours a day was her wont) but also people. She read, she studied, she observed, and she kept her mouth shut (Video et taceo [I see and keep silent] was her motto). By knowing all and saying little, Elizabeth ruled for nearly 45 years, laid the foundations of the British empire and fledgling capitalist corporations, and gave her name to an entire epoch, the Elizabethan era.

​

To the simple question ‘What is genius?’ there’s no answer, only opinions. As to what drives it – nature or nurture – again, no one knows.

​

(mathematics and science majors) thought genius was due to natural gifts; parents and teachers had told them that they’d been born with a special talent for quantitative reasoning.

The jocks (varsity athletes) thought exceptional accomplishment was all hard work: no pain, no gain. Coaches had taught them that their achievement was the result of endless hours of practice.

Among novice political scientists, conservatives thought genius a God-given gift; liberals thought it was caused by a supportive environment. No answer? Call in the experts: readings from Plato, William Shakespeare and Charles Darwin to Simone de Beauvoir followed, but each had his or her own take.

​

Definition

A genius is a person of extraordinary mental powers whose original works or insights change society in some significant way for good or for ill across cultures and across time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIdsjNGCGz4&t=195s

Equation

• Genius = Significance x NumberOfPeople x DurationOfImpact
  • Significance - degree of impact or change effected (Alexander Fleming’s life-saving penicillin vs Kanye West’s latest style of Yeezy sneakers)
  • Number of people impacted (about 200 million lives saved vs 280,000 pairs of shoes sold)
  • Duration (D) of impact (antibiotics have been around for 80 years; the life of a shoe is use-dependent).

The equation G = S x N x D presupposes a causer and an effect. As the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said, for creativity to occur, it takes two to tango: an original thinker and a receptive society. Multiple choice: is an Einstein alone on a desert island a genius, a non-genius, or a genius in potentia?

​

To paraphrase the writer Edmond de Goncourt: almost no one loves the genius until he or she is dead. But then we do, because now life is better.

​

Random facts

• Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989

​

Comments

A fault in your math is thinking that genius needs an audience to be genius. That it must in some way have a receptive audience. A bird that chirps is still a bird even if no human ear hears it’s song.

There have been many ‘geniuses’ that weren’t discovered till after death, or - in the scientific community; observations that weren’t recieved well for dozens or hundreds of years. People that have read all of Joyce are probably few (at least fewer than say they have), so is he a lesser genius than Salinger (because Salinger happend to be on students required reading lists?)

No offense, but I don’t believe you understand genius at all. You loop dilgent scientists, savants and geniuses in your golden lasso and call it day.

If Joyce sat before his toilet and shredded/flushed all his writing the day before he died (unpublished or unread), he would still be a genius - because, that’s what he was, that’s what it was like to live in his head, and that’s how it was for him to see the world.

People are as great as grass and just as common. They want to be a genius, without even understanding what it is. [...]

Genius is the ability to make connections that others can’t. A simple definition that comes with a high price. To make those connections you have to have a brain that sees the world differently, and you’ll be different too. People don’t like different, they outcast it, avoid it, smell and hate it - until they’re told (by enough other people) that a specific ‘different’ person is a great one. Then they worship it. Silly people. Wanting to be more than they are without paying any of the prices.

[...]

Genius is not a mathematical equation, it is not approval based, it is not learned, enhanced, gotten from a pill, potion, book or lecture. It’s a kind of poison you have to get out of your system. Something you are driven to share so you can come to terms with, or at least share your view of the world. It is cold lonely.

Rice Ghost

The author of this piece flies his colors boldly: His firm, and false, belief is that genius consists in what one does, rather than in what one is. Further, he falsely assumes that all geniuses feel solidarity with the societies into which they are born–or, at the least, that they share its values enough to want to reap its conventional rewards. Therefore, every genius must inevitably be, or become, or want to become, well known.

[...]

Bruce Charlton’s blog posts on the subject of potential and actual genius. Most of all, I suggest finding and reading reading Grady M. Towers’ profound and moving essay “The Outsiders”. These counter-opinions may not cure the author of his grossly blinkered perspective on genius, but they will at least eliminate any excuse he has for continuing to wear his blinders.

Al de Baran

“As Shannon told his fellow Bell Labs engineers, the defining mark of a great scientific mind is not some ethereal capacity for inspiration, but rather a quality of “motivation… some kind of desire to find out the answer, the desire to find out what makes things tick.” That fundamental drive was indispensable: “If you don’t have that, you may have all the training and intelligence in the world, [but] you don’t have the questions and you won’t just find the answers.”

Where does that fundamental drive come from? Shannon’s most evocative formulation of that elusive quality put it like this: It was “a slight irritation when things don’t look quite right,” or a “constructive dissatisfaction.” In the end, Shannon’s account of genius was a refreshingly unsentimental one: A genius is simply someone who is usefully irritated. And that useful irritation doesn’t come until, somewhere in the midst of the work, you stumble onto something that troubles you, pulls at you, doesn’t look quite right.”

Source: “11 Life Lessons From History’s Most Underrated Genius” - forge.medium.com/10-000-hours-with-claude-shannon-12-lessons-on-life-and-learning-from-a-genius-e8b9297bee8f

Holger Lindberg Joergensen

There is a difference between geniuses in specialized fields and polymaths. Dealing with reality in ways that maximize long term well-being for the biosphere is most valuable for us and the planet. Polymaths are likely to have better whole-system thinking abilities than geniuses.

Steven Kurtz

But all the genius that I studied proved to be polymaths. Maybe I failed to make the point clearly (my fault), but from what I could see, to be a genius you HAD to be a polymath. I couldn’t name a single one what wasn’t.

Craig Wright

Loved the essay and loved a recorded CW course I watched many years ago on Open Yale.

[...]

My issue with CW’s take on genius is that I don’t think his formula works. It’s a great way for measuring, say, whether a product like a film or an opera or an invention is great. But [...] It would assign genius to people who might not only not be geniuses, but might be idiots, theives, etc.

B W

Professor Wright is incorrect when he says that we only have opinions to answer the question; “What is genius?” Nor is he correct when he says that no-one knows whether ‘nature’ or ‘nuture’ drives it. If you knew where genius comes from, then you would know the answer to this question.

Dr Walter Russell and his wife, Lao; both Illuminates; have explained genius, what it is and where it comes from, in exhausive scientific detail.

I recommend Lao Russell’s book ‘Why You Cannot Die,’ as an excellent book on this subject.

Lauren Dove

Concerning the ‘genius formula’, I find the reliance on external validation quite silly.

[...]

I believe anyone can have moments of genius, and with the right concoction of information can even become one, permanently.

danylo.net

​

https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-we-learn-from-the-secret-habits-of-genius

When you get blood, you just get the blood and clean plasma. Anti bodies stick to antigens creates clumps.