Comments to: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

https://kk.org/thetechnium/68-bits-of-unsolicited-advice/

The “68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice” were replaced by a ad for his book.

The original content can still be found at https://archive.is/3xT9u

• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.

After hanging out with the Westboro Baptist Church, I decided to ignore this advice

• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.

That is why we all think that people with down syndrome are super smart (still waiting for the first nobel price).

• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.

Nobody told Darwin this, and look were it got him.

• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.

“How Do The Three Seashells Actually Work?”

• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.

My girlfriend never stop complaining, there is always more. and more. and more. and more.

• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.

I now know everthing there is to know about Sailer Moon season 1, episode 3. I can’t believe I lived my whole life without knowing this.

• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.

I’m so grateful for being raped in the subway yesterday.

• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.

Unless you can’t cook.

• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.

Compared to useing saliva to fix your shoe?

• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.

We are now bonding together in PTSD. Them in wanting to reply to a snapchat message, and me in wanting to get this over with.

• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.

Great advice to someone who has no savings, who just got laid off, and is wondering how to pay for food.

• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.

Don’t take up skydiving

• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.

Your “68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice” doesn’t have any evidence to back them up.

• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.

I try’d, but they all read your advice, and are now all acting coy!

• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.

Tried with a nazi, he still hates yews.

• Don’t be the best. Be the only.

I’m now so unique, that nobody can understand me, or have any common reference points.

• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.

That is why we all love spammers and dick pics.

• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.

If people are actually interrested they will say something like: “I can’t this saturday, but next week …”. Harrasing people who try to be polite might not be the best course of action.

• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.

Flossing, like most habits such as smoking is actually harmfull.

• Promptness is a sign of respect.

Or despiration

• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.

Or you get a PTSD, and refain from anything that even resembles risk ever again in the future.

• Trust me: There is no “them”.

Tell that to “them”. (groups, especially religous groups, use otherness to create and cement their shared identity).

• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.

Anybody who ever talked to a narcisist will disagree on this. There is no filling the endless depth of some people’s empty void.

• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.

Tell that to the homeless person dying alone in a ditch.

• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.

After 10 years of trying singing I’m starting to disbelieve you.

• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.

Tell that to the jews in Nazi Germany.

• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.

If it took you such a long time to find it, you should ask yourself if you are a horder and should do a “Marie Kondo”.

• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.

When I’m 102 I will finally start spending like a milionaire! Also: hyperinflation, also: opportunity cost

• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.

To make mistakes and owning them is human. To prevent mistakes by thinking things through is divine.

• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Unless you’re the Mongols, then you can just trash the place.

• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.

My customers like free stuff.

• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.

I did and she got me a restraining order.

• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.

I actually like feedback loops. Try driving a car without feedback loops.

• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.

Or you should see the doctor about your epileptic seizures.

• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.

The people who gave to much away are not in the position anymore to dispute this nugget of wisdom.

• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.

My boat friend is high maintenance, renting a boat is low maintenance.

• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.

As grifters through the ages have found out, honest country folks have a tendency to be a bit gullible.

• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.

If you lose objects within arm’s reach all the time, then maybe think about decluttering? Honestly, you have bigger problems if this is the solution.

• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.

Asleep

• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.

Or live in the EU, were USB-C is mandated for all chargers. (eg: the “every device has a diffent charger” was a artificial problem, created by the industry to make more money. Fix the problem).

• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.

Like all emotions, hatred exists for a reason. Forget the reason, and be forced to reinvent it.

• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.

That must be the reason every athlete is breaking world records all the time!

• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.

I watched a film, but the final 10% gave me no difficulty at all!

• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.

Actually you don’t take your reputation with you. Also: You’re not going anywhere, you’re dead!

• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.

Strangly enough people who achieved a lot have more people attending their funeral, while people who died homeless in the gutter have nobody attending their funeral.

• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.

My funeral coffin

• Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.

I believe I can fly.

• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.

I’ll think about that when my flight is going down.

• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.

When traveling to India I really recommend spending the first week in a hotel with a toilet and roomservice, untill the traveler’s diarrhea is gone.

• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.

“You’re hired! can you start operating tommorow? Mrs Smith needs a new heart valve”.

• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.

A better advise would be: only gossip face to face

• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.

As a boss I don’t want people that think like me (I already do that). I want a bloody engineer who can take my thoughts and build them into products.

• Art is in what you leave out.

Tell that to Pollock

• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.

I like to collect sand from every beach in the world.

• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.

How do we unify quantum mechanics and special relativity?

• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.

The reason most apologies are not quick, specifically and sincere are because they are enforced apologies.

• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.

“Your wife just collapsed, should we call 911?”

• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.

Has it ever occured to you that when somebody is being hateful or nasty to you, it might be for something you just did?

• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.

Clutter IS my true treasure.

• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.

Warren Buffett

• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.

“like a surgeon, cutting for the very first time”

• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.

Sometimes I just want a week of relexation to forget the disasters at work.

• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.

After losing all fingers I no longer have a need for tools!

• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.

Or learn how to be shameless

• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.

Some kids really love thuggery

• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.

You’re being modest, all of it could be untrue! (also: try harder!)

• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.

Over the long term, the future is decided by realists who believe they can make a change. The unrealistic optimists all went the way of the dodo.

• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.

Don’t tell me that! I’m paranoid enough already! (also: what is it’s endgoal, what does it want from me?)