both are true

on holding two conflicting ideas at once

Bryce Roberts describing Soleio:

The "culture of Soleio” seems to contain a bunch of contradictions — care for craft with an obsession for speed. A clearly massive ambition coupled with a desire to be a “trim boat” that can be lean and focused.

Are we idealists or pragmatists? Do we have principles we hold dear, and a vision for the future we want to create? Or are we fumbling along, tinkering, finding what works, and forever allowing contact with reality to rearrange our mental furniture, make a mess on our conceptual floor, and occasionally punch so many holes in the walls that need to... See more

Chris Best • Principles and pragmatism

on pragmatism vs. idealism

There is so much mystique around the creative life. It’s fetishized and coveted and seen as mysterious even by the people who inhabit it. We have a cultural script that says: There’s too much consumption, not enough creation! If you want to be a [tasteful/interesting/admirable/happy] person, you should make more things. But then also: Social media... See more

Ava • Making Things Is Hard

Decisiveness is Just as Important as Deliberation

Cedric Chin commoncog.com

At Stanford’s dy/dx program, founder Tony Xu was asked about the qualities he interviews for at DoorDash. One of the five traits is holding and making sense of opposing ideas. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to... See more

Holding Opposing Ideas

both are true: I hold a lot of conflicting beliefs, and have become happier the longer I’ve sat with them and realized that internal conflicts are a fact of life.

Two conflicting perspectives I’m trying to reconcile:

Having a “north star” mission is critical.

Difference between success and failure on everything I've worked on has always been in persisting and getting unsexy details right.

There’s a lot of speculation and rhetoric these days about whether AI democratizes creativity or advances it. However, it is abundantly clear to me that both are true.

On the one hand, humanity’s creative confidence for humanity has gone up as people of all ages are able to prompt whatever is in their mind’s eye and express themselves visually.... See more

Scott Belsky • The Era of Abstraction & New Creative Tensions

on the shift from being skills-constrained to being imagination-constrained