Many more weeks have gone by in Cleveland. One of the things I really like about my life is the separation of my content algorithm (a lot of pseudo-life philosophy blogposts, essays on interesting intuitions, and random conspicuous consumption) from my everyday life. I don't live in the Bay Area, work in AI safety, attend exclusive events on the billionaire calendar — and so, if I don't engage with these things online, they don't bleed into my life. Some other random interests (fitness, longevity) occasionally cross the line, but never in an unwelcome way. Another notable separation is that I don't live close to any of my best friends.[^1] Which is, again, interesting, because I either experience their friendship through text bubbles or discrete, time-bounded, glorious weekend trips. All this means is the stuff I like is separate from the people I spend most of my days with; and my most juvenile personality, in the sense of complete purity and curiosity, is limited to text bubbles and discrete weekends. Because of these phenomena, these reversions to my "true" self — I reject that I'm somehow a different person; but I'm not sure how else to word it — are complete binges. I read forty essays at a time, call my friend for ninety minutes, etc. These are high dopamine binges. My daily life dulls when I think about it. I consider dropping out, transferring. I [[2.2|look]] at flights (sometimes [[chipotle|I book flights]] during weekend trips. I don't want this to come off like that one meme of the self-indulgent, [[theydontknow.png|self-soothing guy in the corner]]). But none of us show our entire selves to everyone in our lives. To friends, I'm something different to someone who's read this blog, who probably sees me as insert as you wish. I have more and more reservations about this model of binges. It's nice to get invited to other groups' get-togethers, when all of your other friends had no idea you knew those people. It's nice to write blogs on [[meditation|meditation]], [[murakami]], [[kilimanjaro|climbing mountains]], [[baby! baby! crab rangoon!|espresso]]. It's nice to be perceived as a complete person with interests that mull below the surface, especially ones that signal something. My frustration is that to any member of each of these communities, I'm a complete child. I'm a baby rationalist, a novice espresso maker, a mediocre meditator. It only gets more confusing when they argue with each other — barefoot ultramarathoners eat huge salads for breakfast, Jordan Peterson argues for high-fat high-protein from an evolutionary perspective, Huberman doesn't eat anything at all. Meditators keep things simple, so do stoics; the modern rationalist cannibalises awareness into focusing (which I actually quite highly recommend) and statistically models everything. I heard somewhere that early success poisons your mind to lose focus, because you think you can/should succeed in everything. I have this beautiful fantasy of a life where the people around me and my daily life are perfectly aligned with what I'm interested in. Then again, where's the variety in that? There's a pretty good description of learning math that describes it as tendrils pawing around in the never-ending darkness — if you wait to fully explore (perfect) an area before moving forward, you'll never grow. The game [here](https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html) is similar. It'd be nice — simple, thus nice — to just optimise one area and build from there. So maybe I'll never get to the dream life; maybe I'll never be satisfied. Maybe all there is to do is paw around in the darkness, and then you look down at the end of it, and see how far you've walked in the various directions. --- 1. Weirdly, in our friend group, power laws apply to short distances: as in, the 30 minute drive adds a colossal amount of friction, the 2 hour flight adds only a nominal amount more, a 3h30 hour flight is nothing. I've crossed the Atlantic about the same number of times I've taken the Robertson Express.