Thoughts

when people look at professions (read games) that are very far from theirs, they easily find people that look so incompetent that you have no idea how did they even get there. This makes it seem like the game is rigged & corrupt in some sense. This is even more relevant in easy to understand games with no "real" objective criteria to measure skillset like politics, fundraising, being a manager at big tech, etc. the only real objective here's is credentials - which itself is in question.

But I've observed that as soon as you start playing the game, things turn havoc all of a sudden. There are so many other things that you hadn't even considered. And then you meet players who are much lower in credentials ladder but they impart such wisdom on you, some sparks of truth, a new mental model that immediately helps you play better. And then, once you're in the game for quite some time, and you meet the incompetent guy at the top of the ladder, and he isn't really incompetent???

Now, you're really confused - like should you listen to this guy that seems like he's talking sense, that you earlier considered incompetent?

The working theory I've accepted is that if you do objectively find someone incompetent from an external frame of reference even with not-so-full information of their profession, they most probably are. So what's the dilemma?

Leaning a new complex game requires significant changes to our world model to adapt our world model to the one necessary to play the new game. And world models are copy-able. Someone having world model X could either mean that they arrived at X by first principles or just by copying/subconsciously learning over time the world model from someone else. The former can predict what changes are to be made to the world model as the environment changes, the latter only knows what world models work in the current environment. And this is the reason why even incompetent-person-higher-up-the-ladder's advice feels like wisdom, because you condition it to the current environment. But it wont hold true as the environment changes.

The point I want to make is, that even if a lot of words may disguise themselves as wisdom and truth, do ensure who's mouth they're coming from. Choose people who arrived at their world models from first principles. Build your own. Else, even if it works out great and you do end up being higher up the ladder, you'll just be an incompetent-person-higher-up-the-ladder.

I think I would give all, to be my 2 year ago self again. And I think my 2year ago self would give away all to be my 4yo ago self. I'm definitely better than my 4yago self in some areas. But what I never expected was that I would be worse in a lot of other areas. And the areas that I'm better in don't bring me any joy at all. Instead, the areas I got worse in make me feel sad, like a part of me had left me forever.

Broadly, i feel my life is much more deterministic now - even with all the chaos that people may see externally - it's just pretty deterministic as if any entropy has been sucked out of me. Like I can see possible futures pretty well compared to 4y ago, and be in terms with them all. like 20 out of 24 hours are hours when I'm fully content in life. Its not that my life is static, I've a lot to look forward to, but I feel I know what few ways it's going to pan out. I've much larger ambitions than my 4y ago self, much better focus, much more resilience - all of this has pushed me into a no surprise zone. Like I don't remember feeling a "sense" of surprise in the last 6 months or so. I know all and more, than I did 4y ago, but my 4ago self had so much curiousity that is nowhere to be seen in me. Paradoxically, I've learnt much more in the last year than the 3 years combined before then, but it somehow never came from a point of curiosity. It came from a point of determinism. "I find X interesting -> it would take xyz steps and XYZ time, if I get stuck in problem like X, then I've a way to solve it through Y.

When we're young, the whole world is a learning pad, and we're trying to learn each and everything by our own. But the learning pad grows at a much smaller pace than you learn. Like you've a lot of movies to watch when you're young, but once you've watched them all, the new ones come at a really really slow pace that no movie adds enough impact on you.

One may think that this all looks good, and is natural? And that there are no side effects to it. I don't think that's true. I'm amazed when I see things that i wrote back in college, or the poems that I wrote 2y ago. It doesn't seem like me at all, and I don't think I would ever be able to write something out with the same rawness & new-ness. I'm a grown man now. I'm too much involved in the play of words and the rhymes that the soul of the poems has left me far away.