Sublime

In something he calls the “theory of maximum taste,” New York Times columnist David Brooks says that each person’s mind is defined by its upper limit—the best content that it habitually consumes and is capable of consuming.

My basic approach to understanding prodigies is the same as it is for understanding any expert performer. I ask two simple questions: What is the exact nature of the ability? and, What sorts of training made it possible? In thirty years of looking, I have never found an ability that could not be explained by answering these two questions.

There are so, so many of these men freckled throughout history. Paul Erdős, a renown mathematician characterized by his eclectic genius and all-consuming obsession with math, didn’t butter his own toast until he was an adult. There are several stories recounting how he often offloaded domestic or non-math related tasks to the women in his life

I think productivity is really a race to the bottom um it's I think that the that a lot has been said about how humans uh or machines are trying to be more human but I think less has been said about how humans have for decades uh been trained to be machines

and we have a lot of unlearning to do because if we focus on efficiency and optimization and