Space L Clottey

Beware Blending

When you meet your first really smart person, you will be in absolute awe. You will be astonished by them, you will love them, and you will wish to do everything they suggest. You will want them to like you.

They will have undergone most of your current battles — or at least similar variants — so for any unsolvable-to-you problem you bring to them they will have about two dozen amazing solutions and ideas you’d never thought of.

They will probably repeatedly tell you “I’m not the type of person you should listen to 100%. I make mistakes a lot” and you will begrudgingly nod your head, though you won’t fully believe it. You’ve not seen them make those mistakes — not personally. Those supposedly real mistakes they made will not seem real to you. So you will listen.

One day, they’ll propose an idea, and something will feel different. You’ll still be in awe that they thought of it.

Other people in your life may say your new friend is malicious, and is purposefully giving you horrible advice. Some may say they’re trying to hurt you.

But you would’ve already seen this new friend and their thinking ability totally blow all these people out of the water. So you will largely disregard them.

But you were warned of this.

Of course from your new friends internal experience, whatever they suggest to you will make sense to them and seem right and good. Only after mistakes can they see that they made them. Only retrospectively can they say they were wrong.

And they are open minded! So they’ll admit this! And they’ll warn you of this early on, that they do make mistakes and you shouldn’t take everything they say for granted!

But they may forget to hammer that in this time. And you’ll embark with them on a great adventure, something within you feeling off but lacking the words to explain it. Here’s a tip:

Don’t do anything you’re not 100% into doing, you don’t need a reason to say NO.

You don’t need to be able to label these complex feelings and explain them in great casual detail to give them credence and use them as a guide – there are things you consciously may not be aware of.

Beware blending. Boundaries prevent things blending into their surroundings. Sometimes you need to say no without giving a reason, without needing to seem reasonable.

These are your unconscious boundaries. Listen to them.

Eventually, if you keep growing and learning, you’ll learn how to casually explain what you felt and why their idea was off. And your friend will see this too, and as they are open minded they will accept that they made a mistake. And in this moment, of both looking back and seeing mistakes, you will both grow, and you will realise that the younger, dumber versions of both of you were fiddling with lives with far too much confidence for the risks, with a far greater belief in their precision than was warranted — like giants playing with grains of sand.

Remember:

To someone who can’t say no, every choice is an infohazard. Boundaries drive diversity, beware blending.

Quotes

You should not ignore something just because you can’t define it. I can’t quote the equations of General Relativity from memory, but nonetheless if I walk off a cliff, I’ll fall.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky


Space L Clottey