A.M. Partugimov

if you ever have a really good idea and think “holy shit i’m going to be a billionaire, let me just research any competition…” congratulations you’re about to find out about an extremely successful company you’ve never heard of

Smartest people I knew from high school: - software consultant - corporate executive at well known megacorp - dermatologist - aimless startup tech guy Smartest person I ever met: Works for high frequency trading firm

I've no dog in the fight (having sensibly done my BA in North America) but the Oxbridge discourse reminds me of Reddit threads like "what's the smartest kid in you school doing?" and the answers are always like "he's really successful" when what people want is "he overdosed".

hit with the harshest reality truth.

people wildly underestimate how local "status" is any sort of "status" doesn't matter the moment you leave your small circle

One of the stranger things to believe is that genuinely exceptional intelligence is rarely found where society expects it to be. We have this assumption that the smartest people naturally gravitate toward the most prestigious or intellectually complex work. It's actually the opposite. The people with the highest intelligence are just as likely to be plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, or doing something society considers completely irrelevant. Not because they lack ambition, but because they're the least susceptible to prestige games. Once you understand what the game actually is, your desire to win it begins to disappear. what cannot escape notice instead is that it's usually the middle of the distribution that becomes obsessed with complexity. Complexity is status. Complexity is proof. Complexity is how they convince both themselves and everyone else that they're exceptional. Their intelligence is spent demonstrating intelligence. If you already know what's sitting at the bottom of the glass, only an idiot insists on drinking the whole thing just to confirm it. Real intelligence has very little interest in unnecessary proofs. This is also why the high grade intelligence rarely ends up at the top of civilizations. One thing is that they don't want to and another is that power structures are built by people who still need recognition, competition, and victory. The people who have already seen through those incentives are far less likely to dedicate their lives to climbing them. Most of civilization is simply people competing over an illusion they collectively agreed was real. Once you understand the illusion, very little remains that can force you to participate in it. It's the second grade intelligence that you see all around. First grade intelligence is rare to meet in one's life. They're in the escape.

Computer science people have developed an unintentional form of gatekeeping by virtue of being extremely bad at explaining/naming things, which results in simple concepts sounding far more complex than they are.

so cute

Worst accent on the planet

The spritz ain't enough....me and the fragrance need to become ONE 😂