This post was a stub that evolved into “reality is unrealistic” substack essay a few months later.
“But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”― Arthur C. Clarke
(original thread) Reality is repeatedly wilder than people’s expectations. The stories we tell ourselves mostly have to make sense; reality doesn’t. Reality can seem unrealistic, but this is mostly a failure of our expectations. Our perceptions are substantially influenced by our expectations.
My goto example for this is: consider how “unrealistic” it would’ve seemed to make a reality tv show host become president of the USA. like try pitching that as part of a serious prestige tv show in 2014. Nobody would’ve taken you seriously. Or like, “Nintendo CEO Doug Bowser”. Or consider the map of New Orleans.
Now. because people expect reality to be Realistic, there’s a systemic filtering that takes place. And it ties back to the good/great dichotomy I’ve talked about recently. Good is Realistic. Great is unRealistic. So people will ignore, overlook and forgo great outcomes.
If you successfully solve your problem in a Good way, people who have that problem will be curious to learn from you.
If you successfully solve your problem in a Great way, people who have that problem will accuse you of never having had that problem in the first place.
Great solutions– which are often generative and valuable far beyond the problem they initially are meant to solve– are authored by people who aren’t constrained by Realistic Expectations.
To not be constrained by Realistic Expectations… socially speaking, that’s indistinguishable from being delusional.
Of course, this does not mean that being delusional guarantees greatness, positive deviance, etc.
tbc
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“facing realty part 2”, 2024may2
this post could maybe be “facing reality pt2” (a sequel to pt 1), but the idea of starting with that doesn’t quite appeal to me. I just want to talk about stuff without being overly attached to a starting frame at the moment. but i do want to talk about things like lifting weights and running, and tidying up messes, and maybe about caring for a baby, all of which do fit into the overarching frame of “facing reality”. what else… notes?
I have a note on my phone where I said I’d dump the Lego on the floor in a series of bullet points:
- reality is unrealistic – this is a substack post I published in June last year, which contains several of the following quotes
- John Salvatier: “Reality has a surprising amount of detail” (2017 blogpost)
- everything vague
- Huxley
- Philip K. Dick: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
- Ray Dalio: “I learned that failure is by and large due to not accepting and successfully dealing with the realities of life, and that achieving success is simply a matter of accepting and successfully dealing with all my realities.” I cited this quote in a 2016 Medium post I wrote titled “beating yourself up is egotistic”
- George Orwell: “The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”
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I feel like all of that is metacommentary, and I’d rather just dive right into talking about specific problems. I suppose I could talk about fitness, though that feels slightly premature. I could talk about writing essays, but that feels… too meta, and kinda cheating, since I want to be writing essays that aren’t just about writing essays. I could talk about the physical mess I am currently inhabiting, after maybe taking some time to tidy up.
I’m writing this at my desk, so the first thing I’d like to tidy up is my desk itself. There’s a baby bottle that I just fed my son a while ago, I’ll put that away. There’s a portable charger I must’ve used to charge something a while ago. I’ll put that away too. I have a big stash of books on an overhead shelf…
went diving into more of my shelves, found some camera equipment i bought in 2021 that i haven’t used…
tbc