I used to be extremely confident in myself.
I was barely 20 years old and I would tell people how to sleep, how to make friends, and how to live their lives. I started a nonprofit aiming to literally rebuild the institutions of science from the ground up. I was dismissive of everyone who didn't impress me in the first 7 minutes of talking to them. I was especially dismissive of old people.
I've always wanted to prove myself to the world; if I were a 60 year old, trying to impress a random 25 year old would be the last thing I'd be trying to do. First, wanting to impress people is the result of not knowing what you want and by the time you're 50 or 60 or 70 you do know what you want [ed. more likely what you'll get or settle for. And people definitely do try to impress for things they know they want.]. Second, the stupider people think I am, the better. I just want to do my thing and I don't want anyone to think highly of me and start actively interfering with whatever it is that I'm doing. [ed. and that is? If it's trying to convince people of something, do you really want them to think not very highly of you and that you're stupid? Really?]
I've always thought that I was very competent. Now I at least realize that I have no fucking clue how anything works.
Which makes me think: I have like 5 years of experience of real life. What kind of tricks under their belts do people in their 50s, 60s, 70s have? What kinds of crazy heuristics and meta-heuristics they've got in their minds, hearts, and muscles after decades of poking the world? I have no clue and this is what makes me really worried about them. [ed. worried about them? Over crazy heuristics and meta-hueristics?]
I wouldn't be surprised if these decades-in-the-making lessons are so qualitatively different from whatever I believe now that even if someone tried to tell them to me I simply wouldn't be able to comprehend them. [ed. oh, well...maybe try? Isn't that what growing up is all about?]
I also suspect that the declining intelligence measurements of old people are mostly attributable to slower-lookup and "shallow" reactions rather than any actual decline in quality of decision-making. [ed. what? ... lost my hearing aid and need to read that again.]
There's exactly one person who I suspect might be running the simulation and he's not 30 or even 40. He's in his 70s. [ed. Bill Gates?]
People ask me why I don't publish much these days. How about because I have a bunch of stupid shit on my blog that's going to follow me into the grave now and because now whenever I talk to someone they usually "remember" me writing something even dumber than what I actually wrote ("oh, Alexey, weren't you the guy who thought that sleeping 4 hours a night is totally fine?" "No, I wrote that sleeping 4 hours a night didn't make me dumb AND that it was absolutely terrible, please stop asking me about this")?
I think about Sam Altman's "honestly, i feel so bad about the advice i gave while running YC i’ve been thinking about deleting my entire blog" a lot.
I do think the majority of my pieces stood the test of time and I'm very proud of them (for example "Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible" which is nearing its 6th anniversary), so maybe I'm overreacting. But it's still unnerving. [ed. but, but...what about all that 'stupid shit' and the grave?]
(Ok, back to old people.)
Many things just take time.
Having 0 close friends is qualitatively different from having 1 close friend from having 5 close friends. Just as knowing them for 1 year versus 5 years versus 25 years. So much stuff in the world can only be achieved via close long-term connections. Probably most of the important stuff. Again, the only way to get these connections is to literally just wait. No other way. [ed. what? How about seeking them out?]
My biggest problem running the company, for example, was simply not knowing enough people to be able to hire for the roles the organization needed the most and instead burning through many months and enormous amounts of nerves figuring out if people I just met were (1) right for the role, (2) work well with me, (3) I work well with them. If I'm starting a company today, I'm simply not doing it until I have an incredible operations person on board from day 1. [ed. so again, off-loading management and learning experience to someone else (to determine if they're compatible with you and vice versa?)].
I understand why you need to be at least 35 years old to become President. [ed. ha!]
Patrick Mackenzie once noted that "people consistently overestimate how widely distributed individual technologies are, even where those technologies are clearly better than alternatives, easy to implement, and have minimal downside risk or cost to reverse adoption." [ed. uh, what were we talking about again? According to who? Corporations, hedge funds and shareholders? How about when those technologies are actually worse than previous efforts and come with significant side effects like more invasive surveillance, DRM, right-to-repair impediments, awful interfaces, subscription requirements, etc.]
How come? Again — things just take time. A huge portion of life is simply about building years-long and decades-long muscle memories for "simple" technologies. To stop the brain when it gets into over-analyzing spirals. To error-correct appropriately when things go wrong. To ask for help. [ed. again... what? And this relates to everything previously written how?]
No amount of reading insights or writing will get you to truly learn this stuff. In fact most of it sounds like empty platitudes & the more you read and write the less time you have to apply it with your body and with your muscles. If I told this to my 16-year old self, he'd tell me to go fuck myself. [ed. bright kid.]
And, sure, no 80-year old is going to be as idealistic or energetic or attractive as when they were 20.
But if you ask me if I'd rather have a President who is 20 or who is 80, I'll pick the 80-year old in a heartbeat. [ed. many Americans wouldn't.]
by Alexey Guzey, X | Read more:
Image: A. Guzey X
[ed. Never heard of this person except through a link today. Some kind of 'independent researcher'/tech pundit...or something or other. Poor guy. Still doesn't get it. Just shut up and get off of X! Nobody cares! (But he's 26 now and not a naive 20). Here's a clue: nobody gives a damn what you think. It's what you do that matters, and apparently that's been very little except to offer some pithy opinions that very few people have heard of or read. Life presents different challenges at different times, and people can be just as confused and opinionated at any age. So broad generalizations do no one any good. Go out and live life and get some real experience, then come back and tell us what you think. I'll bet it'll be very different from this.]
