Mental Pivot #80: Motivation, Envy, Solitude

A parable about talent and motivation, finding the antidote to envy, and the challenges of connecting with others as a lone wolf.

Feb 17, 2023

I’m a big fan of secular parables: short anecdotes with pithy moral lessons (see Issue #19 for another favorite). Sure, they’re contrived, sometimes corny, and even flawed should you over-interrogate them. But like any good story, there’s an important universal message that they communicate.

In his book Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, prolific crime writer Lawrence Block recounts the kind of secular parable that I love. It concerns the inextricable themes of talent and motivation (both intrinsic and extrinsic):

There’s an old story about a young man who cornered a world-famous violinist and begged to be allowed to play for him. If the master offered him encouragement, he would devote his life to music. But if his talent was not equal to his calling, he wanted to know ahead of time, so he could avoid wasting his life. He played, and the great violinist shook his head. “You lack the fire,” he said.
Decades later the two met again, and the would-be violinist, now a prosperous businessman, recalled their previous meeting. “You changed my entire life,” he explained. “It was a bitter disappointment, giving up music, but I forced myself to accept your judgment. Thus, instead of becoming a fourth-rate musician, I’ve had a good life in the world of commerce. But tell me, how could you tell so readily that I lacked the fire?”
“Oh, I hardly listened when you played,” the old master said. “That’s what I tell everyone who plays for me—that they lack the fire.” “But that’s unforgivable!” the businessman cried. “How could you do that? You altered the entire course of my life. Perhaps I could have been another Kreisler, another Heifetz—” The old man shook his head again. “You don’t understand,” he said. “If you had had the fire, you would have paid no attention to me.”

Now onto this week's recommendations...

Thinking Tools:

7 Thought Experiments that Will Make You Question Everything: Not a great article per se, but a fun smorgasbord of mental contrivances to contemplate alone or with friends. I particularly enjoyed the explanations from the creators of these thought experiments (some were surprising).
The Antidote to Envy: Lawrence Yeo reminds us of the importance of being comfortable with ourselves: “Envy is inversely correlated with self-examination. The less you know yourself, the more you look to others to get an idea of your worth. But the more you delve into who you are, the less you seek from others…”
Practice Different: Stephen Vafier considers how Steph Curry became one of the greatest basketball players of all time despite his shortcomings: he isn’t particularly tall by NBA standards, and when he entered the league, many were skeptical about his lack of physical strength and weak ankles. Ultimately, Curry developed a successful approach by addressing his weaknesses creatively, playing to his strengths, and engaging in continuous improvement through obsessive practice.
Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things: Gurwinder Bhogal reminds us not to conflate intelligence and rationality. Per the author, some studies have shown a strong correlation between high intelligence and strong ideological bias. Intelligence often “ceases to guard against wishful thinking, and instead begins to fortify it…” (reminiscent of the famous Feynman quote). Bhogal offers remedies which include awareness, humility, and curiosity. Side note: don’t get turned off by the discussion of “wokeism” midway through the article, this isn’t a political piece and the overall message is ideologically neutral and important.

Reading Enrichment

ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web: Science-fiction author Ted Chiang (The Story of Your Life, Exhalation) employs the analogy of a Xerox copying machine as a framework for understanding the current state of the OpenAI natural-language artificial intelligence model. It’s a riff on the map-vs-territory mental model that cautions us against mistaking the approximation of something (in this case the AI-generated answer) for the thing itself (the “real” answer or underlying truth).
On Hiking Alone: Krista Diamond shares a poignant meditation about her preference for solitude (she’s a self-described “lone wolf”), her discomfort with “fitting in”, and the challenges of connecting with others.
Three Big Things: The Most Important Forces Shaping the World: An aging global demographic, wealth inequality, and information access are the three forces explored. Author Morgan Housel considers the consequences—positive and negative—for each. The article is from 2019, but it’s as timely as ever and one I think about often.
Why the Human Genome Was Never Completed: The first draft of the human genome occurred in 2001 and the Human Genome Project announced the task finished in 2003. The reality was that this “complete” sequence, while an important achievement, was full of gaps, errors, and was a composite of many individuals’ DNA. However, this year, thanks to newly devised technologies, the first complete genetic sequence for a single person is expected to be released.

Odds & Ends:

A Visual Introduction to Machine Learning: An instructive overview for the layperson (aka “artificial intelligence” in the mainstream media parlance). Via a sequence of evocative animated diagrams, you’ll learn how machine learning uses data and statistics to make useful predictions. There’s a second part on Model Tuning as well as a forthcoming third installment.
Speaking of machine learning, Microsoft began offering early access to their Bing Chatbot (which uses a powerful “AI” language model similar to GPT-# and ChatGPT). The results were fascinating, amusing, and often disturbing. In some cases, users managed to push the system into a kind of existential crisis, and in others the chatbot appeared downright hostile. You can read the actual chat-logs in articles like “I will Not Harm You Unless You Harm Me First” and “From Bing to Sydney”.
The Library of Short Stories is a free digital repository for over 1000 classic short stories. You’ll find works from Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf and many more (mercifully, no works by ChatGPT or Bing Chatbot). The stories can be read online or downloaded as EPUBs or PDFs and exported to your favorite ebook reader.
Longformarticles.net: Fans of long-form journalism are familiar with the dearth of sites for curation and discovery (especially after the demise of Longform.org). Every day, this site highlights one long-form piece, sometimes a recently published article, sometimes an older classic. Pair it with Longreads and you’ll be blessed with ample recommendations.

Cross-Promotions:

Refind is a content discovery tool that sends curated articles to your email inbox or via mobile app (iOS and Android). Focus your attention on what’s really relevant to you.
The Sample: A newsletter discovery tool. Based on your interests and feedback, The Sample sends a new newsletter recommendation to your inbox on a daily or weekly basis.

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