I spend a lot of time around people who are not as smart as me, and I also spend a lot of time around people who are as smart as me (or smarter), but who are not as conscientious, and I also spend a lot of time around people who are as smart or smarter and as conscientious or conscientiouser, but who do not have my particular pseudo-autistic special interest and have therefore not spent the better part of the past two decades enthusiastically gathering observations and spinning up models of what happens... ... All of which is to say that I spend a decent chunk of the time being the guy in the room who is mostaware of the fuckery swirling around me, and therefore the guy who is most bothered by it… I spend a lot of time wincing, and I spend a lot of time not being able to fix The Thing That’s Happening because the inferential gaps are so large that I’d have to lay down an hour’s worth of context just to give the other people the capacity to notice that something is going sideways.
This thought came to me recently and I wanted to commend you for an excellent job at articulating it. Having the “wincing” experience too many times has damaged my optimistic expectations of others, the institutions they belong to, and society as a whole. It has also conjured feelings of intellectual loneliness. Having this experience and the thoughts that follow from it constitute what might be the greatest emotional challenge that I struggle with today.
This thought came to me recently and I wanted to commend you for an excellent job at articulating it. Having the “wincing” experience too many times has damaged my optimistic expectations of others, the institutions they belong to, and society as a whole. It has also conjured feelings of intellectual loneliness. Having this experience and the thoughts that follow from it constitute what might be the greatest emotional challenge that I struggle with today.