I agree—as long as awesome is understood as shorthand for a more precisely defined concept.
Here’s an even better way to put it: Do interesting awesome things now, especially those that will increase my ability to do interesting awesome things in the future. When I was in elementary through high school, I thought science was awesome, so I learned a lot of it, but it never really went anywhere. (If I had intrinsic aptitude for physics/chemistry/etc. it probably would have.) I also thought programming was awesome, but I was never really effective at it (QBASIC is a monkey-man language). When I graduated from high school, I made a serious conscious attempt to learn a real language—and I found that (a) I really liked being effective at creating imaginary machines, and (b) the more I learned the more effective I was. So I’ve been riding this feedback loop ever since.
Monetary payoff is nice, but for me, the ultimate motivator is increasing my ability to precisely imagine something, write it down, and have it work perfectly on the first try.
I agree—as long as awesome is understood as shorthand for a more precisely defined concept.
Here’s an even better way to put it: Do interesting awesome things now, especially those that will increase my ability to do interesting awesome things in the future. When I was in elementary through high school, I thought science was awesome, so I learned a lot of it, but it never really went anywhere. (If I had intrinsic aptitude for physics/chemistry/etc. it probably would have.) I also thought programming was awesome, but I was never really effective at it (QBASIC is a monkey-man language). When I graduated from high school, I made a serious conscious attempt to learn a real language—and I found that (a) I really liked being effective at creating imaginary machines, and (b) the more I learned the more effective I was. So I’ve been riding this feedback loop ever since.
Monetary payoff is nice, but for me, the ultimate motivator is increasing my ability to precisely imagine something, write it down, and have it work perfectly on the first try.
If were to be one qualia which wasn’t a shorthand and was actually a fundamental ontological entity then I would certainly hope it was the ‘awesome’.