Several conversations with several friends - and also the story of my entire life - is getting me to crystalize some thoughts
The most valuable thing I know is how to make friends
The most powerful + valuable thing I can do is teach it to other people
To really see + hear the other person, in a world where people constantly feel unseen & unheard
and in schools, IMO, we often screw up how we teach it.
If you use threats and coercion to force kids to “pay” attention...
...you set people up for dysfunctional relationships their whole life
Much of self-improvement, personal development, introspection, etc can quite simply be reframed as the art of socialising with yourself. Listen to yourself, pay close attention to yourself, don\u2019t interrupt yourself, be kind and supportive to yourself, be constructive in criticism
— Visa\u2019s Vexing Vacillations (@visakanv) March 27, 2019
Every \u201cutterance\u201d (status, tweet, whatever) is a bit of an invitation, a bit of a proposal. \u201cLet\u2019s play this game\u201d. When strangers read the proposal accurately, and support the game, a shared understanding develops. You can make friends this way.
— Visa\u2019s Vexing Vacillations (@visakanv) September 11, 2018
(fantastic side-benefit of this is that you also develop your taste in the process, and taste is *extremely* valuable)
https://t.co/IocuGZ5MMj
I don\u2019t know if I ever specifically set out to learn this, but Ive gotten pretty good at it over the years: I think giving people specific and sincere compliments is a pretty great skill to develop. It\u2019s a the intersection of making people feel good + developing your taste
— Visa\u2019s Vexing Vacillations (@visakanv) March 17, 2019
https://t.co/1RdFHqYMDm
What have you seen?
— Visa\u2019s Vexing Vacillations (@visakanv) February 26, 2019
What surprised you?
What have you been wrong about?
What do you know now you didn\u2019t before?
What have you struggled with?
What has your relationship with X (food, money, parents, job, dating) been like?
This puts you in 0.1% and people will *love* you pic.twitter.com/CmH88FeEmt
The most powerful IRL interview/conversation/flirting skill isn\u2019t asking good questions nearly as much as asking good followup questions - it\u2019s being sensitive to interesting micro-reactions. When you ask a question and they respond \u201c\U0001f602... no\u201d, and you go \u201cWhy \U0001f602?\u201d Etc
— Visa\u2019s Vexing Vacillations (@visakanv) May 26, 2019
More from Visa’s Vexing Vacillations
the less exciting but more useful graph
now I am going to make a plan for my next 200 youtube videos and then ignore them entirely. but first I have to reply to an email...
well that was quite a detour. now, to google sheets...
ok just sent that email I been procrastinating on pic.twitter.com/ytTAFPKwti
— visa is decluttering old drafts (@visakanv) January 30, 2021
gettin' started
feel free to comment
https://t.co/DUpcQwA8kC
Every “utterance” (status, tweet, whatever) is a bit of an invitation, a bit of a proposal. “Let’s play this game”. When strangers read the proposal accurately, and support the game, a shared understanding develops. You can make friends this way.
Some people deliberately choose to ignore, misread, disregard or denounce other people’s bids. Others are outright clueless and don’t know how to play, and sometimes cluelessness leads to worse bungling than deliberate malice (JJ’s razor)
"The intentionality of an agent with behavior sufficiently indistinguishable from malice, is irrelevant." (JJ's razor > Hanlon's \U0001f609.) @cr1901
— JJ \u300cc\u03b9t\u03b9\u01b6\u03b5\u0273\u0192\u03b9v\u03b5\u300d \U0001f3f4\u200d\u2620\ufe0f (@CTZN5) June 6, 2016
I was a lot more belligerent and disagreeable when I was younger, in part because I simplistically thought playing other people’s games was a sheep-like way to live. Why should I support other people’s dumb games? Why not mock them instead? It’s easy, and intoxicating
I learned that you rarely build anything worthwhile that way. The “best” case scenario: you win over other disagreeable people. A few years of this & it becomes the world you live in – surrounded by other belligerent assholes who don’t know or care how to play nice. A cursed life
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If everyone was holding bitcoin on the old x86 in their parents basement, we would be finding a price bottom. The problem is the risk is all pooled at a few brokerages and a network of rotten exchanges with counter party risk that makes AIG circa 2008 look like a good credit.
— Greg Wester (@gwestr) November 25, 2018
The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.
This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.
The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."
This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.