Pritesh

At the heart of agency lies a willingness to question defaults. To be agentic, you have to treat “how things are supposed to be done” as just one option among many.

“I don’t know” is not an admission of ignorance. It’s an expression of intellectual humility.

“I was wrong” is not a confession of failure. It’s a display of intellectual integrity.

“I don’t understand” is not a sign of stupidity. It’s a catalyst for intellectual curiosity.

Movies beckon different tradeoffs today. Seeing the movie isn’t enough reward to justify the cost. Social capital used to mean time given to friends in physical spaces where friendship was solidified. It now means attention given to me that can be used to grow personal social followings and participate in online fandom. The reward of going to see a... See more

Cynicism is a completely reasonable defense against fraud and bullshit. The trouble with cynicism as a defense mechanism is that you can get so good at it that you inadvertently also defend yourself against anything good happening for you.

Identities are interfaces. They mediate between your interiority and the outside world. Each identity provides a set of affordances—things they allow you to do. If you have access to the identity “cop,” you can do and say things that others can’t.

All fraud is a) an abuse of trust causing b) monetary losses for the defrauded and c) monetary gain for the fraudster. You could zero fraud by never trusting anyone in any circumstance.

Birds are thinkers who look at the big picture and survey the landscape from a great height. Frogs are thinkers who love playing around in the mud of specific problems, delighting in finding gems and then polishing them so that they become part of the superstructure that birds survey.