Here’s a secret that every genuinely original thinker knows: there are no original ideas. there are only original combinations. Every “breakthrough” is two existing ideas from different domains meeting for the first time inside someone’s head.
The person who reads only within their field will only ever have ideas that their field has already had.
This is why the most interesting people are almost always polymaths.
Go wider. Read the thing that has nothing to do with your work. Talk to the person who has nothing in common with you. Visit the place that makes no sense on your itinerary. The irrelevant input is the one that will combine with everything else and produce something nobody’s ever seen.
The only advice i would give a son is the world hates you until you become useful. then it pretends it never hated you, and you must remember that it did, or you will start believing the love is real. and that is how they tame you
"No screens before bed" I highly reccomend you just be so deeply immersed in your work you can work all day until you're so exhausted you practically fall asleep at your desk and drift off into a beautiful rejuvenating sleep after an incredible amount of progress has been made
"It is spiritless to think that you cannot attain to that which you have seen and heard the masters attain. The masters are men. You are also a man. If you think that you will be inferior in doing something, you will be on that road very soon."
- Tsunetomo Yamamoto
"The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Bed of Procrustes
There is a "global courtier" network; to belong one has to be "elite"& establishmentarian w/moderate subservience. Epstein connected w/the largest number of pple in that network.
My red flag: if a "friend" befriends only hotshots, no regular pple, he is a "courtier" not a friend
@nntaleb The Courtier is a derivative asset.
His value is pegged entirely to his patron.
If the patron crashes, the courtier gets liquidated to zero.
Befriending the common man is the only proof of solvency.
btw in your 20's and 30’s you’ll start rediscovering the niche interests and hobbies you had as a kid. it’s very important you revisit them. your younger self was actually on to something.