^{Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash}

Naivity

There are many things we take for granted

• Health because we’re young
• Cheating in an exam because it seems easy
• Learning a programming language syntax

We believe all these things are very simple and easy. Many of them truly are simple because they have been abstracted.

What happens when you learn about a topic

But once you know about a topic in detail and try to study it in detail you realize that there are a lot of intricacies and nuances.

As you learn more, your picture resolution for the domain increases and it seems to keep increasing.

It’s like a whole new world of something that you didn’t even realize existed.

In some sense, you could say the truth keeps getting truer.

This has been my recent experience with many things: testing, philosophy, and rationality.

It makes it hard to go back to a simpler version

My experience has been it’s very hard to switch to a normal model.

• Things I learned that made me truthful and more rational seem to destroy many of my friendships.
  • At the same time reveals more of my flaws which I can’t un-see and would have to fix.
• Things I learned about philosophy seem to make me weirder.
• Things I learned about testing: well makes me want to test everything and despise code that hasn’t been written with TDD.

Is it worth the cost?

I’m not sure yet if all this is worth the cost.

Each increase in fidelity seems to be making me disconnect from simpler life, having more friends, a fun existence, and normal life. In some sense, that fun existence is the opposite of responsibility.

Though Naval says it’s possible to be both, learn truth deeply, and still be happy. or maybe it’s just that the grass is always greener on the other side.