existing primarily as a means to an end.
Dallas, TX
Joined April 2009
- Tweets14.1K
- Following890
- Followers867
- Likes29.7K
Pinned Tweet
So are hobbies JUST a means of warding off existential dread or am i missing something here??
cool & unusual retweeted
talking about it is the methadone. you describe the project to a friend over coffee and feel the warm rush of having almost done it, the nodding, the encouragement, the sense of momentum, all of it real in the body and none of it on the page. the conversation scratches the exact itch the work was supposed to scratch, just enough, just often enough, that the pressure never builds to the point where you would have to actually make the thing to relieve it.
Eating chicken nuggets from first principles
each parenting “issue” is a fractal trapdoor into true philosophical problems that have no answer - it’s a shame that so many notable philosophers either didn’t have kids or, apparently, didn’t find raising them very interesting (which, admittedly, may have been the style at the time).
here is just one example:
A) a child is presenting picky eating. first question: is this actually “a problem”? is this a pathology, or is the child learning “how to eat”?
in some situations, eating the wrong thing will kill you. so, surely the child has to go through some process wherein they learn how to assess food. is “picky eating” just us seeing this process from the outside? or, is it a serious pathology in a nascent stage? that’s two totally different ballgames.
B) now, whatever answer you chose there determines how you deal with it. now, there are wrong answers based on your input. because if this is a natural stage of development, where the child is learning “how to eat”, how to select foods - interrupting it is bad. if that’s the case, you’re interrupting a vital development process.
but, if that’s not the case, and you’re seeing an actual problem developing, it’s the opposite: in that situation, letting it develop is a dereliction of your duty. you’re making a huge error.
so, which is it? there’s literally no way to check this. it’s entirely up to you.
C) now, you can coerce the kid into eating, somehow. you can make them do it - usually with some type of bribery. so, let’s say you could get into a situation where the kid will eat the things he doesn’t want to eat, because you, the authority figure, are kind of making him do it (or getting him to do it).
is that good? is that teaching them to trust authority - and you? now the kid is eating all these healthy foods, and they’re doing it because they know you’ll give them a cookie later.
is that bad? are you teaching them that their mind and body might be telling them something, and that they should ignore it if an authority figure tells them to? is that a good thing? we’re almost already at: are people inherently good (can develop naturally) or bad (must be brought into submission), aren’t we?
so: listen to your body (which is telling you to only eat hot dogs) , or, trust authority (instead of yourself)? again, no way to check your answers here, it’s just entirely up to you.
so, here’s a kid who always eats all their healthy food, because they want to have cookies later - versus a kid who eats what their mind and body is telling them to eat, which right now happens to be only a handful of things.
which kid is in a better position? is the first kid failing to learn to listen to their body? now one of the most important basic actions to their life (eating) isn’t self directed or in response to actual bodily needs, it’s all subservient to a pleasure seeking desire (cookies) that’s being used as a coaxing mechanism by an outside force (the authority figure, you). they’re eating for outside “reasons”.
is the picky kid developing the ability to self direct their own eating - which seems like a pretty critical skill, or, are they on track to become one of those people who eats only chicken nuggets?
there’s no way to know any of this. and it’s all a microcosm of extremely large important questions - even just here we have: the individual vs authority, the mind body dichotomy, the question of innate intelligence, and more - that likewise have no concrete or fully resolved answers anywhere.
all this plays out in a situation where you have total control, basically, and are playing at the highest stakes possible. so suddenly, all this stuff you’ve read that was always purely abstract is right in front of you requiring hard immediate answers all the time. just eat the food - your body is far more intelligent than people think - but, it’s wrong right now, just listen to me and trust my authority, but later, question all authority, just, eat the food bro. it’s good. bro. just eat it.
cool & unusual retweeted
Debussy: Music is the spaces between the notes
Miyazaki: A film of nonstop action—with no pauses to breathe—is just a commotion
Lao Tse: We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that is useful
Tiktok creators: Finally, we can remove all pauses from everything
I spent weeks trying to remember the antithesis of ‘wordcel’ bc it clarified something in me, stumbled upon roon’s article about it from 2022, and finally rediscovered shape rotation. All this just to know what it was, no real reason.
Classic wordcel
I appreciate the fatherhood tweets giving me more actual fatherhood advice than real fathers I know. We gotta do better than this at a societal level.
I leave the bad screen to look at the good screen. I leave the bad words to write (and say) the good words. I drive the bad commute to get home and drive the good roads. How is it all the same whether I’m working or not?
Every time I'm in conversation now I'm keeping track of how long each bout of eye contact lasts, who's leading it, in response to what turns of phrase, where I feel compelled to look instead, etc.
All because of some tweet where a guy realized it's rude to just stare at people
*scrolling my timeline*
This is irrelevant to my mission.
This is irrelevant to my mission.
This is irrelevant to my mission.
This is irrelevant to my mission.
This is irrelevant to my mission.
This is irrelevant to my mission.
This is irrelevant to my mission.
cool & unusual retweeted
it’s common to refer to screens and the omnipresence of screens as “demonic”, something like hypnotism - for the internet, terms like “hellsite”, “doomscrolling”, all have this devilish lens to them.
regardless of what you think of his work, joseph smith is a uniquely american figure. i see utah hooked in on the earliest internet maps - arpanet and such things - this is presumably just a coincidence.
joseph smith famously had a seer stone which he allegedly used to bring forth the book of mormon. seer stones - i would file these under the folder of “scrying”, a practice where one looks into a physical item to see something beyond normal vision, has a long history. most people are familiar with crystal balls (which were actually used - polished selenite stones).
joseph smith’s personal stone has a long interesting history and chain of custody. allegedly after his death it was present at the consecration of an LDS temple - possibly in manti. i believe he had more than one, and at least one was named. an actual image of one of joseph smith’s stones was released by the LDS church relatively recently, you can see that below.
in some accounts of his translation of the book of mormon, he placed the stone into darkness, and it lit up (for him, personally). there is one tale where as a test, a friend switched his stone out for another, and upon placing this new false stone into darkness, smith remarks something like, “it’s dark as egypt in here”, meaning: it gives no light. then his friend is satisfied, and returns the real stone.
as a unique insight into the american spirit, in my opinion seer stones serve as a kind of extended metaphor in the mormon cosmology. some say joseph smith said every person had a seer stone waiting for them, but by grace these are not revealed to us yet, as we’re presently not in the state to receive them. i believe there is a tale about an angel or spirit looking into a white stone, or receiving their “true name” on a white stone (possibly misremembering this), and there is some account i picked up somewhere that in its perfected state, the earth would even resemble a large polished stone like this.
i am not saying all or many or any LDS people think this, or that i’m even recalling this accurately. i’m not an official source for such concepts, just a nerd who finds these things interesting. but i have often thought about this cosmos structure where everyone gets a seer stone, that has been waiting for them. once, i had a dream that i was in some pre-human state, and i was holding a stone, and it was kind of like a TV: i could look into and see life on earth, and was deciding what i thought about it - if it was good or evil, fair or unjust.
its not a huge jump to tie the concept of a luminous stone that shows you things to today’s screens. essentially, a warped version this odd ethereal vision has become true.
we all now possess the equivalent of a seer stone. show me a soldier dying. show me two people in love. what is the weather in berlin right now? i would like to hear a lecture by a harvard professor about the nicomachean ethics. show me myself twelve years ago today.
the screen-stones just do what we ask. yet, apparently we all view them as some form of evil. perhaps some harmonic of my recalled tale is true: that we shan’t have access to them, because of ourselves and our internal state.
don’t phones have stones in them? i’m honestly not sure. i never told one to tell me.
cool & unusual retweeted
Alysa Liu recently went viral for her Teen Vogue rant on the state of the information environment and the population's cognitive resilience.
"We really are living in a cognitive wild west. Most people have near-zero memetic defenses or cognitive security suited for the online age". She adds, "any semblance of it is easily brute-forced by the onslaught of information & the situation is even worse when it comes to AI agent-orchestrated psyops."
cool & unusual retweeted
This dfw interview changed my life for that reason
Get talking with a group of writers and 9 times out of 10 they'll start in with the handwringing and the teeth gnashing about how the problem with their writing not selling is that they're just not good at marketing, nobody will give them a chance, distribution isn't good, people only want to buy erotica with vampires, etc. I don't think I've ever heard a writer take an honest assessment of themselves and say, "You know, my writing just isn't connecting with people, for whatever reason. I should get better at that." Because 99% of the time, that's the issue - not the fact the writer is some maligned genius that's being crushed and beaten down by the unfair world. The writers who recognize this fact tend to become more successful. The rest mostly just continue to wail and gnash and flail around about the "unfairness" of the world for decades while never improving.
After years of fine tuning, the Twitter/X algorithm has finally learned to just show me any tweet containing the words David Foster Wallace.
cool & unusual retweeted
substack.com/@andrsgmezemils…
Below are educated guesses for the percentage of people who are likely to reach each of the different epistemic ceilings.
Level 1: Pre-epistemic / Authority-anchored (≈25–30%)
Truth is external and personal: it lives in authority figures, traditions, or social consensus. Disagreement feels like insubordination or disrespect rather than information. People at this ceiling can be intelligent and competent, but they do not experience beliefs as revisable objects. Updating happens via deference, not reasoning. This level is stable and functional in hierarchical or tradition-heavy environments.
Level 2: Narrative-coherent / Identity-protective (≈30–35%)
Truth is whatever preserves a coherent self-story. Arguments are evaluated based on whether they affirm competence, virtue, or belonging. Counterevidence is tolerated only if it can be assimilated without threatening identity. This is where most everyday “reasonable adults” operate. Debate is possible, but only within emotionally safe bounds. Many people never feel pressure to go beyond this ceiling because it works well socially.
Level 3: Instrumental-rational / Outcome-oriented (≈15–20%)
Beliefs are tools. Truth is what works, predicts, or optimizes outcomes. People here can revise views pragmatically but often stop short of examining their own framing assumptions. They are good at solving problems but may avoid meta-questions that destabilize efficiency. This ceiling dominates business, engineering, and applied science. It is epistemically powerful but not self-transparent.
Level 4: Coherence-seeking / Model-based (≈8–12%)
Truth is structural consistency across domains. Beliefs are models that must cohere globally, not just locally. People here enjoy tracking assumptions, resolving contradictions, and updating publicly. Disagreement is informative rather than threatening. This level supports philosophy, theoretical science, and systems thinking. Social friction often increases here because many environments cannot metabolize this mode without defensiveness.
Level 5: Meta-epistemic / Self-modeling (≈1–3%)
The epistemic process itself becomes an object of awareness. People here track how beliefs form, how incentives distort reasoning, and how cognition interacts with emotion and status. They can hold multiple models simultaneously and switch frames deliberately. This level often appears in advanced researchers, exceptional judges, or mature contemplatives. It is rare not because it is inaccessible, but because it is costly and poorly rewarded.
Level 6: Integrated epistemic humility (≈0.1–0.5%)
Truth, uncertainty, and selfhood are fully decoupled. Being wrong carries no identity cost. These individuals can engage deeply or disengage cleanly, depending on context. They neither dominate nor self-erase. This ceiling often emerges late in life, after repeated epistemic injuries are metabolized rather than defended against. It is stable, light, and unusually nonreactive.