High agency

“You can’t rise up in this world if you’re X.” “You can’t rise up in this world if you’re a poor kid.” “You can’t rise up in this world if you are from this race or ethnicity, if you were born in that country, or if you are lame or crippled or blind,” or what have you.

The problem with this is that yes, there are real hindrances in the world. It is... See more

his type of accountability is pretty radical. I recommend that you try it as a thought experiment. All these things are thought experiments.

If you ask yourself to be really honest and you say, "This situation that's causing me great pain and unrest, how was it my fault?" you will discover, almost without fail, it's your fault.

I'll give you an... See more

A single sentence can modify reality. A few weeks ago M emphasized that you’d be surprised how much of life is malleable and negotiable , which sounds like a truism until you actually negotiate for something you want and get it. I realized long ago that what determines your success in the game of life is really simply how persistent and efficacious... See more

Ask for things. Ask for things that feel unreasonable , to make sure your intuitions about what’s reasonable are accurate (of course, try not to be a jerk in the process). If you’re only asking for things you get, you’re not aiming high enough. Jobs are a great example: Particularly if you’re early in your career, you should aim to get rejected... See more

In my way of thinking, radical agency is about finding real edges: things you are willing to do that others aren’t, often because they’re annoying or unpleasant. These don’t always surface in awareness to the point one is actually choosing -- often they live in a cloud of aversion that strategically obscures the tradeoff.

The idea of finding real... See more

If you asked, about physical reads, “what would someone much better than me do to improve,” you would probably come up with an answer similar to mine: read everything on the topic, then on adjacent topics, then on vaguely related topics; watch hundreds of hours of streams on silent with hole cards covered, trying to find patterns; find other people... See more