In Awe of the Slow

As a kid I read about a 19th century autopsy revealing an abnormally small brain slightly larger than a walnut. The doctors asked around, and the deceased's social circles were surprised by the news. The guy wasn't particularly bright, they all conceded, but he'd been perfectly functional and cogent. They never suspected any such thing.

It doesn't take much to follow the path and do the things - hold down a normal job, keep a conversational ball rolling, and learn the basic tasks that get us through our day - so long as we're not actively working against ourselves with substances, drama, posing and the many other familiar channels of self-defeat.

In my twenties, a musician friend confessed to having a 70 IQ. He was a good player, and a perfectly functional, cogent guy. You'd never have suspected! He wasn't particularly bright - I remembered lots of conversations where I'd say something and he'd steer his reply to some tangentially related topic where he had something to offer. I couldn't remember him ever fluently tackling a topic head-on, except to inject a familiar cliché or sound bite.

But that's what everybody does! Smart and well-educated people do a smidge better. They can offer a more or less salient reply to an unscripted question or statement. In 2024, this is a super power. But even then, it's seldom anything insightful, surprising, or delightful. Even the intellectual elite traffics in clichés and sound bites, but they know more of them, covering a broader set of realms. They'll parse a reference to Hippocrates or Rousseau. That's what a fancy education and beaucoup brain cells buys you.

Color me unimpressed by all that. And this is why I never feel pity or superiority around those lacking such stale toast. My friend couldn't calculate swiftly; he could be a bit bleary/syrupy. But I have my bleary/syrupy moments, too. And when my brainy friends contribute to subtle discussion with blunt banality, I know they're covering for their own bleary syrup. Intelligence is the ability to convincingly bluff past one's essential incoherence.

See my best-received Quora reply, to the question "How do people know who is intelligent?"

So when I find myself needing to explain something several times to someone, I never feel pity or patronization, because we're all slow in myriad ways....though some go to great lengths to pose otherwise. In fact, I much prefer laborious re-explanation to receiving a brusquely perfunctory "yeah, yeah, I get it" from someone (i.e. everyone) unable to concede missing chunks in their weighty omniscience. Walnut brain might actually listen and ponder. Walnut brain has a shred of a chance of eventually comprehending. Ich bin ein walnut brain.

The end of this posting about intelligence recounts a short tale from the Hindu Vedas about the power of sincerely striving to understand, regardless of social cost.

With those two anecdotes planted in my mind, I've become oh-so-slightly better aware when a given person works under unusually narrow hard limits. And my reaction is contrarian: I'm awed.

Walnut-brain guy and 70-IQ guy out there getting it done means they've cleverly avoided the stupid channels of self-defeat in which more blessed people squander their blessings. That's a smart move! That's something smart people can't pull off! For having sidestepped myriad perils (both internal and external) and for having endured to integrate into a complex world, I find them smart. Superior. I look up to them.


I often refer to myself as a yogi here, but I'm also a Taoist. I spring to surprising conclusions not out of eccentricity, but out of consideration from multiple viewing angles (aka framings). Mysteries most often confound because people look through the wrong end of the telescope. I'm dopey enough to playfully try both views. And I often find that a 180° pivot - a flip! - bears fruit (which is a loopy corollary of the essential Taoist proposition). Remember the parable of The Iron!

All Three of Me

My London trip has been pretty surreal.  When I checked into my hotel, the clerk seemed excited and  upgraded me to the best suite. Upon checkout another looked up my name (I can never remember room numbers) and his spine straightened and he donned his extra-ingratiating smile. "Yes, I've heard of you," he beamed. Since he was around negative three when Chowhound opened, I assume there's some other Jim Leff on the rise somewhere. 

And while I feel grubby drafting on his efforts, it's somewhat fitting considering that yet another Jim Leff drafted on my extremely minor fame in the 90s. There is a painter Jim Leff in San Francisco specializing in gay bondage-themed work, which assumedly has alarmed a series of googling ex-girlfriends over the years, who once asked me to send him my book so he could impress his mom with the accomplishment.

The Death of Nuance

If you ever find yourself thinking that I'm writing without nuance (for example, "Jim saw a ghost!"), it's a pretty safe bet that you've missed the nuance.


In a world increasingly blind to nuance, nuance appears to vanish (taking, alas, its practitioners with it).

Related:"Missing Chunks"

My Roommate

I started out in Portugal renting a room in the home of dear old friends who turned out to have become late-stage alcoholics. They'd randomly transform from delightful company to strangling monsters, often flipping several times per day. To them, I appeared to be scrambled the other way, either flinching needlessly like some daffy paranoid in the presence of dear old friends or else baffling them with my positive attitude when they and I were plainly mortal enemies. Gaslit in both directions!

A few weeks in, I was infected by a parasite, losing 30 pounds and becoming so chronically dehydrated that I developed tons of tiny kidney stones. Then I sprained my ankle, permanently over-stretching the ligament so I'd lapse into excruciating pain while walking even months later. Meanwhile, I was viewing a succession of depressing apartments with the stupidest, most arrogantly callous and incompetent realtor on god's green earth, while otherwise spending my time hunkered down on a park bench or in my car, avoiding the boozy chaos. Eventually, in desperation, I moved into temporary quarters which turned out to be next to a marble factory which fired up its stone-cutting machine at 7:30am, sending plumes of caustic rock dust through every wall crack in my rattling cheap apartment, reactivating my long-dormant asthma.

Hang in there; this ends happily.

Finally, I found the perfect apartment, but it was obscenely overpriced. After a series of exasperating and shady realtor blunders and collusions, I faced a choice: continue hunting with the unbearable broker with my wrecked ankle and GI tract and tubercular cough, or else pay the insane asking price to score the perfect apartment in which I could finally unwind and recover.

With gritted teeth, I paid. But then myriad hidden issues with the place kept arising, forcing me to scramble to fix it all in a strange city where I didn't speak the language.

At long last, I reached a position of comfort, ready to begin recovery. And at that life-affirming moment of golden sunshine beaming between clouds, I met my roommate.

But I don't have a roommate.

I'd walked past my office, and, with peripheral vision, noticed someone sitting in my desk chair. I turned my head, and...nothing. But I'd definitely seen and felt someone there.

I am not a ghost-seeing kind of dude, nor am I prone to hallucination. And while the events described above were painful, I was in sound mind because I don't create stress for myself. I just move dutifully forward like an ant, picking up a grain of sand and putting it over there, ad infinitum.

Since I wasn't losing my mind, this was either a cognitive glitch due to an unfamiliar setting, or some sort of weird ghost thing or whatever. Six of one, an infinitesimal speck of the other. I wasn't about to commit to the ghost proposition, but, lingering in problem-solving mode, I surveyed the remote possibility as another potential snag to preempt. So I awkwardly addressed my hypothetical new roommate:

Look, I don't believe in ghosts. I feel like an idiot right now. But if I'm sharing this apartment with, uh, someone/something, know that I wish you well, and have no problem with you hanging around, and do let me know if you need anything. But I have one request: try not to scare me. I've been through quite a lot, and really need to feel comfortable here. So please make some effort not to scare me, ok?

It seemed prudent. Or at least as prudent as one can feel while standing alone in an apartment bargaining with insentient walls and furniture.

There have been subsequent glimmerings, but they've filled me with hope. Because they only happen when I move unexpectedly. Coming home early, swinging open a door suddenly after a long silence, that sort of thing. At such moments I occasionally perceive a scurrying to get out of my way. Nothing mischievous. More alertly diligent. I sense good intentions. And a benevolent ghost might be better than no ghost at all. I'll take benevolence wherever I find it, even if it's imaginary (in my way of seeing, it's all imaginary, with our role to stoically play through, come what may).

One morning, I was exasperated by the disappearance of my eye drops from my night table. I may have moaned out loud about the goddamn eye drops. And that night, when I went to bed, they were waiting for me on the night table.

My mind went click-click-click. Roommate. Imaginary. Benevolent. I sighed, registered resigned appreciation (whatever the explanation), and treated my eyes to double drops.

Next morning, the eye drops were gone again. I mumbled aloud "Are you just messing with me?" in a playful tone. By nightfall, they'd returned, just in time for bed time.

None of this felt scary. Playful benevolence, real or projected, is never scary. So I considered playing along with the chummy game. Hide the eye drops. See if roommate can find them. But, wait. Perhaps I'd already done exactly that. Maybe I'd been hiding the eye drops all this time and simply forgot. Maybe I'm the ghost.

I don't think so. I'm not descending into senility quite yet. My stomach's vastly better (I healed it like this), I can reset my ankles via a swift sequence of foot movements, my apartment is awesome, I'm making non-surgical yoga progress with my crippled shoulder, and in a few years my apartment may be worth 90% of what I paid for it. I'm neither stressed nor freaked out, and am at peace with the roommate situation. So, no, I'm not fracturing under pressure.

Of course I recognize that the benevolence I'm sensing is projected by my own shifting, healing internal psychic situation. Humans live to project stories expressing their inner states. In fact, that's the whole earthly ballgame. So, given that I'm getting along pretty well with roommate for now, I file it, nonchalantly, under "ain't broken/no need to fix."

As I once wrote:

Human beings spend their lives in conflict with imaginary people: mentally rearguing old arguments, worrying about faceless attackers and detractors, reliving bygone humiliations, and generally using our imaginations to make our lives a living hell.

That's considered "normal", but using the same faculty in positive ways to help us cope seems, for some bizarre reason, childish and loopy.

Playing the Apple Cycle, Chapter Umpteen

Apple's stock price shot up in July upon announcement of their AI initiative ("Apple Intelligence"), which was expected to drive a massive rush of upgrades, as consumers scrambled to ensure their devices could run these catchy new features.

Two problems:

1. Apple Intelligence won't be so groundbreaking. We're all sick of Siri's miserable inadequacy, but the new Siri is expected to be incremental improvement, nothing radical, and the rest seems a bit servicey and milquetoast...at least for now.

2. iPhone 16 wasn't super alluring (and iPhone 15 pro can run Apple Intelligence), so unofficial initial reports say that sales have been "meh".

None of this is top-line news yet. Experts know this, so the smart money does, too (hence the 10% drop from its peak). But the mainstream - and thirsty clickbait media - haven't quite processed these factors to realize that the expected profit surge (still somewhat priced in even now) likely won't happen in a tumultuous rush. So the general public hasn't been massively gloom-sprayed quite yet. And when that day comes (soon, I'd imagine), day traders will start shorting, and grandma will sell her shares (buy high, sell low!), stoking the familiar vicious circle.

All of which is good news! I sold my shares at $230, and would be very happy to buy anew at the next drop, which will be, as always, hyperbolic.

Long term, Apple Intelligence will improve, Siri will improve, and future devices will be tastier. So while owners of iPhone 13s may not be drooling over the new iPhone 16, at some point Siri frustration will inevitably push them into upgrading. There may be no furious stampede to the Apple Store, but Apple will absolutely pocket everyone's money in the end. So when its stock drops to $200 or below, a 20%+ gain should be easy for patient investors (patience is also rewarded by low taxation of long-term gains).


Per above, an eventual rebound to $237 is justified by what we know now. But new developments will add value. A new Mac Mini is to released next month that's intriguingly tiny and powerful and festooned with USB-C ports. Not as sexy as iPhones, but it could spur a genuine upgrade stampede (though we won't hear even unofficial stats until 2025, leaving plenty of time for gloomcasting in the meantime). And Apple will eventually create a lighter, cheaper version of Vision Pro, which transcends the severe limitations of desktop/laptop/table computing (I discussed those limitations here, though I never actually sprang for Vision Pro for reasons explained here).

Scapegoats Are Every Bad Thing

Last month I wrote that the secret to scapegoating is to make contradictory accusations, in order to push every possible hatred button.

"For centuries, we've heard how Jews are inferior, weak, and cowardly and that they run the world, cheat you out of your money, and devour your babies. All those things! So many things!"

Here's a nice tidy example:

Loneliness

Both.

Loneliness is a yearning for some non-specific dream person to appear and perform a role. Lonely for "that person" who wakes you up in the morning and waits for you at night, we feel tasked with finding someone to portray that character.

But a real person might not be home in the mornings, or might sleep even later than you. A real person might not be predisposed to waiting, being intensely engaged in some pursuit or another. The Special Someone is a fantasy, and real people have limited ability (let alone interest) in portraying one-dimensional fantasy characters. Real people come with a whole backstory. You can't conjure someone fresh to make the role-play their core function.

If you do find someone willing to enact your wishcast - to do the waking and the waiting - there will be perturbances, because it will never completely or consistently fit your mental fantasy. Always "off", you'll always be lonely. The perfect benevolent character in your head was never a human being. Human beings are ambivalent and complicated. Upsettingly, it's never quite all about you. That's why you can't get no satisfaction.

If you can escape the dreamy realm of role play - of desperately seeking the person to act the part - the waking and the waiting, etc. - then, good news. You live in a world full of billions of people. They're doing just fine, and you can enjoy that they're out there, living their lives obliviously to you. You might occasionally offer some support or encouragement - just because! - but it needn't lead to a "Meet Cute" kindling of a fantasy scenario. You can just let it be what it is, which is pretty good!

I've described two radically different scenarios, but you'll feel lonely in either, because you'll never be awakened nor awaited per that special no one in your head. Caught up in drama, the shortfall feels bitterly lonely, even if s/he's right here right now. But if you opt out of contriving indulgent cinematic tearjerkers in your mind over What's Missing, you'll experience loneliness as a light wistfulness. 

You can be free, and able to do whatever you want, encumbered by a light wistfulness.


See also Love Theater

Adjusting my Must-Read Twitter List

I maintain a "Must-Read" list on Twitter, carefully curated to offer a smart, insightful, funny stream of tweets. I don't agree with everyone on the list, but all are reasonably clear-minded and interesting and don't just echo trendy sentiments.

I recently removed Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Elon Musk because both have gone from being trollish dicks who periodically say clever things to a more robust trollish dickishness unrestrained by intention to be clever.

I've resisted this move for years. There's grave danger in closing one's ears to those with whom one disagrees. But I demand nutrition. There must be some enrichment. Snide pique and dorky trolling do nothing for me, even from those with whom I agree (e.g. a lot of the Lincoln Project stuff turns me off, though I strongly support their mission).

I'd love to include a MAGA in this list who offers thoughtful perspective (however flawed), and who doesn't just fling memes and contrived horseshit. I've never found such a person, so I settle for anti-Trump commentary by former Republicans (well-represented on this Twitter list), who help assure me that I haven't been spun into irrational fury and paranoia by cynical profiteers.

It's a concern of mine because while I still strongly disagree with Reagan and GWB, I see now that I was incited into hating/fearing them way too severely. I was spun into seeing them as devils, so now that an actual devil has appeared, I question my appraisal. But with Dick Frickin' Cheney voting Democrat, I'm much more confident. It's truly that bad.

Founder Mode, Manager Mode

If you read the epic tale of the sale of my startup to a major corporation (it starts here), you know my thoughts on the vast chasm between founders and corporate managers, most pointedly stated in this installment:

The best route for creative people with business impulses (or vice versa) is to hatch one's own startup. And then sell out to puddy pudpuds who'll follow procedures to maintain it and apply relentlessness to profit from it.

The same analysis was back-linked in this later short posting.

Well, have a look at this exploration of the gaping differences between companies in "founder mode" or in "manager mode".

Interestingly (and well-explained by my writings in that series), creative types would instinctively roll their eyes at the very notion of "manager mode", while corporate types (aka "puddy pud-puds") would do likewise at the mention of "founder mode". It's every bit as partisan a divide as Harris vs Trump. Yet I think there's something to be said for both. In the epilogue of my series, I strained to be terribly mature, taking a higher perspective:

Both sides screw up when they encroach too far on the other's territory. I am absolutely a poster child for the woes of a creative founder hitting a wall after sticking around too long. With some funding, I might have instituted the revenue scheme on my own early on. But I lacked the funds and the time, and that's on me (though, in my defense, I was perennially being drowned by relentless scaling). I should have been talking to investors (learning to polish my shoes, to carefully modulate my voice, and to project gravitas), when I was mostly freaking out about the latest spammer, or getting the newsletters out on time. But, as I've explained, there's a point where you're so locked into daily overhead that the marginal time to push forward disappears.

I make a terrible pudpud, and CNET made a terrible creative founder. I stuck around too long and, paradoxically, they jumped in too early. The operation suffered from my poor pudpud skills as well as from CNET's poor creative skills.

Edginess

If you're the least bit embarrassed by the memory of Americans carrying around Mao's little red book, wearing Che Guevara t shirts, and cheering the Viet Cong to seem edgy, maybe you can break that pattern of atrocious stupidity and not make Hamas your edgy righteous paragon.

…while justifiably sympathizing with Palestinians.

 

Processing Hamas Support Through the Lens of Vietnam Protest

 

The Futility Threshold

I have some additional thoughts as to what's really happening in the scenario described in my previous posting, "The Fog of Self Awareness". I described how people fall unwittingly into loops, trying the same thing over and over while expecting different results, as a foggy amnesia blocks self-awareness of their predicament.

I attributed it to the need for continuity. You fancy yourself a chef - a conceit which persists despite the enormous mountain of evidence that you're patently no chef. Forced to choose between contradictory views, you can guess which choice most people make.

This provides the basis for most comedy: the buffoon desperately and tenaciously clinging to presumption despite snowballing contrary evidence.

If you try to make the person cognizant of their plight (and manage to survive their reaction), they'll, at very best, nod impatiently and set themselves to do better next time. As if steely determination is what's needed. This also presupposes that previous attempts were performed by a pathetic slouch...even if they tried super-hard then, too!

At a certain point we need to try something else, and not just keep taking the same run at the impasse. At a certain point, we must recognize the futility of our efforts. Let's call that point The Futility Threshold.

However patently true this may be, it coexists with the antithetical truth that determination and grit can be highly effective. Very often we truly must transcend our slouchy selves via redoubled effort. Iteration - enduring poor results until they eventually improve, seemingly by magic - is a fundamental process.

So the threshold of futility is a crucial consideration. At a certain point we need to stop and reconfigure. In our effortful determination, we can fail to notice that we've passed this point, but outside observers do notice. For them, we're hilarious, trapped in an obvious loop without a shred of self-awareness. A fog having settled, we've lost our clarity.

It's the familiar error of using the wrong tool for the job. Maslow’s hammer! Determined pushing is how we get cars out of mud. But past the futility threshold, we must cease pushing, sip some coffee, and chart a new course involving shovels or chains or tow trucks. When perspective freezes, we lose the flexibility to view from multiple vantage points. Our efforts grow more and more futile (and funnier and funnier) while we remain grotesquely un-self-aware.

This has reverse engineered the observation that insanity is "doing the same thing over and over expecting different results." This saying always irritated me, and now I understand why: Anyone who's ever gotten good at anything has, indeed, done the same thing over and over with gratifyingly different results! Iterating in order to improve is the foundational human magic trick!

But only up to a point. The futility point!

The Fog
What about the "fog" - my foggy characterization of the tendency to become too distracted to notice the futility of one's circumstance? The fog which leaves us blind to overwhelming evidence that it's not going to happen even with an extra generous running start? The fog which creates the amnesia about how hard we've been trying all along?

"Fog" describes zones outside the spotlight of our momentary attention. Mental fog seems to rush in to fill an attention gap the way oxygen rushes in to fill a physical vacuum. The absence of Anything feels like an eerie, foggy Something.

A wine expert friend once told me that a tannic wine is either 1. too tannic, or, more likely, 2. lacking in all other tastes. Similarly, "foggy" is a concrete way to describe the "flavor" of a gap; of negative space; of the Ignored.

I noted that "a fog having settled, we've lost our clarity." This describes the experience of frozen perspective. Lithe reframing dispels fog by viewing from multiple vantage points, casting light from all directions...while a frozen perspective feels foggy everywhere beyond the tight tunnel vision. And so we may err endlessly, oblivious to the obvious truth. 

The act of balancing attention and shifting viewpoint - i.e. active reframing - not only dispels fog, but also recharges our self-awareness and sparks the creativity to devise fresh methods which can connect effectively with desired outcomes.