Phil's Newsletter #14: Being average.
Life advice for average people and the economics of Star Trek. đ
1. What Iâm thinking about.
Iâve long since accepted the fact that I am a pretty average guy. This may sound like a self-defeating attitude. I think itâs empowering. Itâs what motivates me.
Some people are overly optimistic about their abilities. Some are overly pessimistic. Both of these attitudes are delusional. In reality - of course - most people are average in most ways. Neither unfounded optimism nor debilitating pessimism is necessary.
Given the realization that I probably am quite mediocre and unremarkable in most ways, what I want is to be a little less average. I want to be more than average.
I am frustrated with my inadequacy and lack of intellectual prowess (imagined or real). But itâs this frustration that fuels my passion for learning, for improving, for doing more and doing it better.
Perhaps this is just a bunch of self-pity masquerading as personal insight. Or perhaps itâs some kind of imposter syndrome. But it rings true to me.
Most people if asked whether they are better drivers than the average driver will say they are. Of course, thatâs ridiculous. Most people canât be better than average, most people are average by definition. This is a result of answering an easier question rather than the question that is actually asked:
Youâre asked: Are you a better driver than most people?
But you answer the question: Am I confident in my driving skills?
With driving, you build up experience over time, and, like riding a bike, you develop a deep familiarity with the actions of driving and you feel quite comfortable with the skill. This then leads you to answer the question based on how you feel about your driving skills, rather than by looking at some larger data set or thinking about statistics and so on.
The point of this is that we make more progress if weâre honest about where we are relative to our past selves, the world or relative to others.
I see myself as a sort of optimistic realist. So I believe that itâs only by getting to the truth of things that we can understand how to best improve or change our circumstances. And I do believe that progress is possible in most areas.
In other words, Iâve taken my averageness and turned it into something that makes me better. Instead of starting with the assumption that Iâm somehow special or unique, only to be disappointed by all the evidence to the contrary, I start with the assumption that Iâm not. This mentality levels my personal playing field and allows me to move in the direction of âuniquenessâ.
The cartoonist Scott Adams has this great piece of career/life advice where he suggests you can easily reach the top 25% of some area by defining it as a combination of two or three things youâre moderately good at:
âCapitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more âpretty goodsâ until no one else has your mix.â
So by embracing my mediocrity, I open up the path to being less mediocre. I can be exceptionally unexceptional.
I mean, we all just want to find our place in the world, right? đ
So that leads to the question of how to be less like everybody else, how to stand out? Well, thatâs really a topic for another time. But as I get older Iâm learning more and more how important it is to focus less on yourself and more on how you can contribute to others, to the outside world. Paraphrasing Peter Drucker (again):
Ask not "how to be successful?"; the better question is: "how to be useful?".
2. What Iâm learning about.
A post-scarcity economy is a theoretical economic system that doesnât deal with the allocation of scarce resources - what standard economics is concerned with - since everything we need to subsist and live well is produced in abundance or nearly for free. That is, they are not scarce. This leads to a situation where there is no longer any need to work for a living as everyone can get what they need when they need it without having to exchange anything for it. Such abundance is often enabled by some real or hypothesized technology like additive manufacturing (3D printing), nanobots, or âreplicatorsâ that create objects from pure matter (although advanced technology is not a pre-requisite, merely an enabler).
In some interpretations of this future society, there is no need for money in the traditional sense, but there seems to be some disagreement about this. Furthermore, some people claim post-scarcity societies are necessarily Marxist due to the lack of money and the egalitarian distribution of all basic resources. This is however just one version of a post-scarcity society. One can equally imagine something with a more libertarian bent where people use money and see to their own subsistence, but where that cost of fulfilling your basic needs is so low as to be trivial.
Further reading: The economics of Star Trek
Great video on the topic:
3. Assorted links.
The next version of Unreal Engine by Epic Games was recently announced. Itâs mind-blowing:
This is something Iâve thought about several times. What happens when common knowledge disappears? What knowledge will we miss, what is just trivial?
The first in a three-part series on how social media algorithms work and how itâs being used and misused:
How our cognitive machinery can lead us astray:
The six rules for influencing others. From the book Influence:
4. Podcast.
Alive time vs. Dead time The Knowledge Project Ep. #35
Podcast interview with author Robert Greene (48 Laws of Power). I read his book last year and got a lot of value from it. But having listened to this interview Iâm now really intrigued by Robert as a person and will definitely make sure to read more of his work in the future.
Stay safe out there,
/Phil