> A writer needs readers. An entrepreneur needs customers. An athlete needs competition. A lover needs someone free to reject him. Any worthy pursuit needs a mat. Nah. I judge myself by how I progressed from yesterday, not by whether what I am or what I built is useful to others. Is keeping a diary pointless if you're not planning to make it a memoir? Is staying healthy pointless if you aren't using that health to co…
What activities are you engaging in where you can make progress with no interaction with other people?
Exit the Cave
101–110 of 112 posts
Re: Exit the Cave
#102> A writer needs readers. An entrepreneur needs customers. An athlete needs competition. A lover needs someone free to reject him. Any worthy pursuit needs a mat. Nah. I judge myself by how I progressed from yesterday, not by whether what I am or what I built is useful to others. Is keeping a diary pointless if you're not planning to make it a memoir? Is staying healthy pointless if you aren't using that health to co…
I'm a grindset man. I never advertise my grind details.
Not long afterwards, roughly the same recipe was being heralded as some hardcore millionaire stoicism business, which amused me to no end.
Re: Exit the Cave
#103Re: Exit the Cave
#104Re: Exit the Cave
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you! The author makes one large assumption about why people do what they do. If I'm doing something for the fun of it, I don't think I need anyone else to see my results in order for me to get exactly what I wanted out of it.
I told my mum about all sorts of projects I'm working on. She stared at me with pity then said, "but who knows about it?"
Re: Exit the Cave
#106Re: Exit the Cave
#107> let reality teach me what it required This resonates with me. I think it takes balls to leave the comfort zone and test our assumptions against the real world, to get actual feedback, good or bad. I think now it’s easier than ever to just stay in our caves surrounded by nothing else but our customised feeds that reinforce our beliefs and the sycophantic AI agents that yes-and all our ideas.
Re: Exit the Cave
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, one thing I do that might be directly relevant to this analogy is to lift weights. My goal when I started was to get stronger. I measure that by whether I can lift more weight today than I did yesterday. The barbell doesn't lie. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Sometimes I even regress a bit. But over time, I have gotten stronger. Some people at my gym urge me to "compete" but I can't see a reason to do this.…
Even for this, I still need outside perspective, especially when I (currently) fail at it badly. Do I fail to increase my barbell by 1 kg because I haven't tried enough, or because it's what only 0.001% people managed to do and I'm likely not one of them? I guess this may make me solve one or two unsolved math problem that I don't know is unsolved, but I don't want to count on it.
This also relates to my interp of the article. There's grinding/training and then there's "having that dog in ya". He's trying to remind people to do the latter.
Re: Exit the Cave
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
What activities are you engaging in where you can make progress with no interaction with other people?
Learning a language not spoken around you is very solitary experience. Also, jogging and swimming, drawing, playing musical instrument.
Re: Exit the Cave
#110'Putting yourself out there' is really only a necessity if the validation you seek through your pursuits is external in nature. Those who seek internal validation need not exit the cave, for it is not a coward's cage; it is merely another space to pursue one's own enlightenment and holds no power over its occupant.