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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: April 14th, 2026

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  • We are in a period of magical thinking. Absent of learning process, people have shifted towards the idea of innate skill. It’s a false idea.

    Yep. I’m convinced that the closest thing we have to innate talent is love of the skill. It always takes work. Some people are wired to understand a little more a little earlier in the process, but work is what develops skill.

    As for learning things with no material gain: it’s hard to predict. I started learning lock picking last year. I’m firmly mediocre, but when the front door knob broke, I bought a knob with the same keyway at the hardware store and keyed it the same as every other door in the house. I didn’t start the hobby with that in mind, but it came in handy.












  • Dan Brown writing men: “He had steely grey eyes and was very smart. Scientists thought he was an idiot but that’s because he was smarter than them and didn’t spend as much time writing papers. He did four hundred pushups and took a shower. ‘Not bad for a fifty five year-old guy’, he thought, which was smarter than other thoughts even if those thoughts had won prizes.”