Becoming a magician

One of my heuristics for growth is to seek out the magicians, and find the magic. Often without noticing, your progress in aspects of life or all of it unconsciously becomes linear. You made a certain amount of money last year, so you aim to make some ‘reasonable’ proportion more this year. But you are largely using the same tools to get 2x as you ... See more

Not only is any sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic; any sufficiently advanced technologist seems like a magician. In order to write the new version of this life description, I need to imagine a version of myself who, by definition, I cannot understand. If I understood her she wouldn’t be magical.

The way to extraordinary growth and changes often involves a fundamental ontological or ‘lens’ shift in how you see the world. Magicians are wearing not just better, but fundamentally differently shaped lenses to the rest of us.

a good futurist spends a lot of time trying to decipher the present and to try to see it through the mask of present-day biases.

I sometimes think of “seeing the present” as trying on alien eyes; looking at the world as if I were an alien from another planet.

Trying to see beyond the immediate cycles of news is a challenge, because rather than being... See more