Genius >
TODO – I may have more notes somewhere.
This was a self-improvement idea of mine.
What is Genius? ∞
Genius is observable in a person’s actions or the product of those actions. In a work which can be judged, it is “correct” and perhaps exemplary. An accomplishment may be made with unusual speed and elegance or be particularly inspiring. It is a fine example of what it is.
Sometimes genius can be observed in all a person’s actions, and sometimes only in a single action and no others. This observation may or may not actually be correct.
Popular geniuses are often portrayed in biased entertaining-but-inaccurate ways. This is the nature of information as entertainment.
It is not a quality observed in all individual human actions or their results. Why?
Poor child rearing
- May leave the resulting adult stunted compared to what they could have become.
- Abuse, education, entertainment, diet, sleep, environmental toxins, culture, religion
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This isn’t a well-understood topic, and may never be.
Lacking resources
- Lacking them, a person’s pursuits may be greatly limited.
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Tools, environment, time, era.
A biological component
- There are biological markers common in geniuses I’ve noticed.
- This may or may not be genetic.
- This may or may not be a physical expression from developmental (womb) or rearing factors.
- There are many common character traits with roots in biology.
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This isn’t a well-understood topic.
Genius can be observed as a sliding spectrum.
TODO – more to be written in here somewhere
Hackers ∞
My focus is currently on the programmer genius, the hacker.
To become a better user and programmer, I don’t just want to learn about the different tools, I want to learn about different underlying thought processes.. conscious and not. I want to understand underlying motivations and inspirations, even and especially when they themselves do not.
Basic Views ∞
Now is the only time you have
There is no reincarnation and no afterlife which can give you the opportunity to either finish what you start now or do the things you missed.
You can believe in god and all that, if you want, but even then it’s important to keep in mind that right now is the only time you can do the things that matter to you right now. In some afterlife you’ll be too busy praising the lord to write your memoirs.
You can believe in reincarnation, if you want, but now is the time you have for your current incarnation. On some future one, your concerns will be about that incarnation.
Know what matters to you
Learn to separate the things that matter from the things that don’t. Spend the bulk of your spare resources attaining the things that matter.
Don’t sweat the small stuff
Shit happens. Don’t worry about the little nuisances in life, even if they seem to all line up to slap you in the face. Little things don’t matter.
Your pizza got burned a little? So what.
When you know what matters to you, you can know what doesn’t.
When you learn to make what matters to you important, you can learn to make what doesn’t matter to you less important.
Don’t regret
Learning from memory is important. Having it be a burden to you is detrimental. Never be concerned about something your “past self” did.
Detach yourself from your past self. You are building on your past accomplishments, and there’s nothing you can presently do about anything that exists only in memory now.
You can even face ridicule from your peers over something your past self did. Don’t let it bother you, that was your past self.
This goes down a path that reduces ego. From the same sort of thinking, your successes attributed to your past self are also meaningless. All you have to be prideful of is what you’re working on this very instant.
Building upon your past successes, working most seriously on what matters to you, you can actually reach those future goals.
It’s never too late
If you want something, don’t put it off to the future. When something matters to you, find some way to work on it right now.
When you work on something that is immediately in mind as important, you tend to be very effective at it. When you wait, something in you lessens.
The longer something goes unfinished, the more doubt builds up. There is something in your enthusiasm that changes.
Money ∞
Money and our economic system is what’s ruining our civilization and our planet. That aside, money can be empowering. It can help you achieve some of your goals.
At a point it becomes a burden unto itself, but that’s probably something for you to discover on your own.
Having money, and especially becoming financially independent, lets you step outside of much of our artificial game of life. It can give you more time, it can enable you get things done better or faster.
With ideas, and partially paraphrasing from, Cynbe
Take the problem seriously.
Most immediately see that money is a totally artificial, intellectually vacuous, culturally capricious game, and thereafter cease to take it seriously.
It is important to treat making money as a first-class problem to be taken just as seriously as attaining your loftier goals.
Put in the time and energy.
You have to be willing to put in as much time and energy specifically focused on getting aboard the money train, as you would to pursue your loftier goals.
more.. ∞
TODO – Still a work in progress.
The path ∞
TODO – more notes are to be copied up here
No such thing ∞
It’s easy for one to see a difference between oneself and another. You know yourself so well, and you only occasionally see facets of another.
Genius can’t really be defined, so it’s not realistic to have it as a goal. At best it’s a sliding scale, in which case you can hopefully judge if you think you’re moving in the right direction according to your own goals.
There no actual goal to be attained. One cannot “attain genius” and then stop. It’s a lifestyle, a path, a perspective, a direction. It’s a way to work on goals.
Reading ∞
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- by Cynbe ru Taren (Jeffrey Prothero)
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- by Paul Graham
TODO – much more to be added
