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Granularity: How to Give Better Advice
Do you See the Rifles? How to Better Ask and Answer Questions
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This is from my series on Optimizing Communication.
“Only hire rock stars!”
We’re two weeks into our incubator burning through our meager seed funding and that’s the advice that’s supposed to help?
The people who know me know that I’m obsessed with optimizing and improving. I consume a lot of information on this topic and one thing I’ve realized is that I hate advice that is super broad. It’s the Twitter-style pithiness that sounds profound but then you realize you don’t know how to take any action on it. It’s like hearing a motivational speaker and feeling super pumped up about finally changing but then it’s a week later and you realize your life still sucks and you’ve done nothing about it. Broad advice can be useful for people but I think it’s almost always made better by providing examples with hyperspecific granular steps.
I’ll give you an example from the startup world.
Normal crappy advice people give: “Talk to the people who can help you solve your problem.”
What?!
How do I find them? Can I type “person who solved this business problem” into Google and get a spreadsheet with their names and contact information?? Let’s say I do identify them. Their email isn’t publicly listed. Their Twitter doesn’t allow DMs. Do I publicly tweet at them? Stalk them outside their work?
Actually useful granular advice:
I wasn’t joking. Those are actual screenshots from my email.
Normal crappy advice: “Spend less time on social media! It’s all fake! Be present in the real world.”
Granular advice: Mindless scrolling can be a symptom of not being fulfilled in other ways. Do a trial of not going on social media for a week. Schedule two socializing activities and see if your compulsion to flit on Facebook is as strong afterward.
Other options:
You can always get deeper and deeper into abstraction like “How do I figure out what to beef up my LinkedIn account with?” or “How do I write better?” but I think striving to provide some level of granularity is good.
I know that there are neurotic advice-seekers who want to be told every little detail without having to think about it for themselves or have the underlying goal in mind. I’m sure some of this can be motivated by laziness but a lot of it seems to come from a neurotic personality. Keeping it broad isn’t helping them much either way.
Some people are attracted to super broad advice. My hypothesis is that these are the people attracted to more abstract bullshit in general. Stuff that they can read into without making concrete progress on any of their actual goals. Let’s not enable them either.
A healthy list:
1 Get more sleep
2 Make time to exercise
3 Drink more water
4 Eat less sugar
5 Stay teachable
6 Read and write more
7 Remove clutter
8 More random acts of kindness
9 Do not respond to negativity
10 Spend quality time with family
11 Show gratitude
12 Forgive first— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) June 11, 2019
Stuff like this. Do people really not know these are good things? Yes, I know it’s Twitter so you can say that’s what it’s for but still.
Being more concrete is helpful in many domains. Being specific and moving in the direction of granular advice can help show where there may be gaps in what you know and what someone else doesn’t. So when giving advice, try to provide granular steps and examples to help people understand. I disagree with the Judith Butler outlook that people should be straining themselves to try to understand and apply what you’re saying.
So here are some steps when giving advice:
Conversely, you can also go through that list and use it to think about how you can apply changes from broad advice.
That said, do you have a good piece of advice or recommendation? Do you know how to solve a problem or can you suggest some good resources to do so? I’d love to hear about it!
Further reading:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NgtYDP3ZtLJaM248W/sotw-be-specific
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JcpzFpPBSmzuksmWM/the-5-second-level
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TappK5n3kZmQzWEWD/recommendations-vs-guidelines
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XosKB3mkvmXMZ3fBQ/specificity-your-brain-s-superpower
This has wonderful, granular advice on dieting: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TappK5n3kZmQzWEWD/recommendations-vs-guidelines#eydrCSqyWmi9MWCKE
Spencer Greenberg’s Facebook feed is a gold mine. Just keep scrolling down: https://www.facebook.com/spencer.greenberg
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I signed up for a film class my second semester in college. I was looking forward to it since I love movies. I kept thinking about how fun it would be to talk film with my fellow classmates. Boy was I wrong.
Think of your favorite thing. Whatever it is. And then imagine having to listen to someone drone on about it and say obviously wrong and stupid things. Even if you have a smart professor, the best you can hope for is a patient rejection of the person’s opinion.
Generally, in a big group, there’ll be 28 vapid airheads, and one or two people with something interesting to say, if you’re lucky.
There’s something called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect that Michael Crichton came up with:
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward — reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
The kind of frustration from seeing how wrong the journalists get it is what I’m talking about.
The professor even showed a scene from Casino, my favorite movie.
I sat quietly while I watched my fellow classmates take turns outdoing each other on who could come up with the most inane theory.
“Uhh, they’re all having a meeting.”
“The voiceover is an homage to the voiceovers in films like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” (Casino came out in 1995. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in 2005.)
“The duality of the white exterior of the grocery store to the red meatballs the woman carries in represents the violent world the characters interact in.”
Hell, in my English class, we were talking about government and some genius came up with this gem:
“…it’s right there in the word government. Govern + mental, they’re governing your mentality!”
My friend Aaron, picking his jaw up off the floor at the stupidity, incredulously asked, “Is that the real etymology of that word??”
The professor just shook her head in a “How did my life turn out like this?” way.
Now this was at Berkeley City College, a junior college. Maybe if it would have been a film class at USC or NYU or the AFI Conservatory it would have been better. Or it would have been 99% of the same bullshit and 1% hearing the John Milius, Ari Aster, or Martin Scorsese of the class.
Years later, I went to a Future of Work design workshop at the Singularity University. Now, I didn’t know much about SU before I went except for the fact that Ray Kurzweil was involved. I was interested in what they had to say since I’m a believer that AGI will completely overtake humans in all roles and they have been very aware of AI, or at least Kurzweil is.
Only a few minutes into the workshop, I realized I had made the same terrible mistake I had made signing up for film class, only these people were “accomplished”, or at least were on paper.
They spent the whole time parroting the oft-repeated 5th-grade railings against Big Tech (“They’re unethical! They only care about profit!”) and thought a good solution would be for Facebook employees to take a corporate ethics class. What a bunch of momos. How did these people make it to the parking lot?
They thought that a solution to AI taking over all the jobs was to teach truckers to code. I’m from the Central Valley, I know truckers, and believe me, most of them just can’t learn how to code! Even if they could learn to code, AI will take over ALL the jobs, not just trucking, coal mining, and factory work.
I ended up bonding with this cynical VC at the water cooler who was scoffing just as hard as I was. We instantly shared a moment of “They just don’t get it!” and “How dumb can these people be??” She was one of the 1% interesting and cool people who sometimes make it worth the slog. In hindsight, I’m sure there was a selection effect by SU attracting dreamy hippie feel-good types with little understanding of things but still, the dynamic is everywhere.
It reminds me of that scene in Good Will Hunting:
“…I’m sorry you can’t do this, I really am because I wouldn’t have to fucking sit here and watch you fumble around and fuck it up.”
Plus when you realize that most things are signaling or bids for attention it gets pretty old…
The worst is when the people are self-righteous about their, to use a big vocab word, jejune opinions.
It’s like this classic: seeing everyone nod their heads and insist the person is right when they’re calling a butterfly a horse.
Chip Morningstar has a delightful essay that you should read in full about this but here’s a choice quote:
“The basic enterprise of contemporary literary criticism is actually quite simple. It is based on the observation that with a sufficient amount of clever handwaving and artful verbiage, you can interpret any piece of writing as a statement about anything at all. The broader movement that goes under the label “postmodernism” generalizes this principle from writing to all forms of human activity, though you have to be careful about applying this label, since a standard postmodernist tactic for ducking criticism is to try to stir up metaphysical confusion by questioning the very idea of labels and categories.”
Even famous authors have to deal with this, about their own work:
“An infamous story told in the autobiography of sci-fi great Isaac Asimov has him arguing with a critic about the meaning of one of his stories and his frustration that his status as the originator of the work did not lend his opinion more weight. It was this argument which later inspired him to write The Immortal Bard, in which a time travelling Shakespeare fails to pass a class based on his own plays.”
This is more prominent in non-STEM areas where it’s harder to find the right answer or worse, there is no “right” answer.
You know what I’m talking about. It sounds like this:
@iamsbeih i cringed so hard recording this HHAHAHAH #woke #socialmedia
I know I sound like an arrogant prick but it’s true, and I know you know it’s true because you’ve been in this situation too! Tell me more about your nightmare group learning experiences in the comments. 🙂
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“Not every legend is a myth. Some are flesh and blood. Some legends walk among us.”
Truly feeling inspired is euphoric. Anything feels possible: getting rich, going viral, getting into your top choice for college, buying your mom a fancy car. Obviously, this can be dangerous. Not everyone can do everything. I can’t play professional basketball or win a Fields Medal. Still, it can be useful to have someone to be inspired by for whatever our goals should be.
For me, inspiration brings up feelings of existential connection. Like “There are other people out there existing, who have their own thoughts, who are creating and innovating, building things that are clever and hilarious and beautiful.”
I’ll read something and think, “Holy fuck! How did someone come up with this?” and “What could I come up with?…”
It feels like everything isn’t terrible, that some greatness exists.
We all come across art that moves us, a song, a movie, a play. But that doesn’t mean the creators of any of those works are our heroes. But sometimes, someone *themselves* is inspiring. Their *life* brings inspiration rather than just what they’ve made.
They are our Heroes.
Why Arnold?
I’ve written before about my love of movies starting in childhood. I don’t remember when I first watched the Terminator movies. They were always there. Like Nickelodeon cartoons and Bruce Lee, they were comforting pieces of media that childhood John got obsessed with. But the more I saw and learned about Arnold, the more he appealed to me.
Why was Arnold such a hero of mine growing up? Let me try to explain.
If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know the legend of the Austrian Oak, the very abridged version goes something like this: a young Austrian immigrant with no money comes to the U.S. and starts winning all the biggest bodybuilding competitions. This strongman starts several successful businesses including mail-order fitness supplies and construction (appropriate for the musclebound) and becomes a millionaire in the process. Then, overcoming all of Hollywood telling him he couldn’t be in the movies because of his ridiculous body and arguably even more ridiculous accent, he becomes a working actor. He goes from silly roles in bad films to box office movie star. Is his myth done yet? No, he goes on to become the two-time “Governator” of the most populated and richest state in the union, a country he wasn’t even born in. This is the story of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Let me borrow from a famous role-playing game’s rules to try to explain what makes Arnold amazing…
I’ve never actually played Dungeons and Dragons but I have friends that do. When you’re setting up your character, you roll dice to see how high your stats are in different categories. So I might roll a 3 in Dexterity which means I’m as agile as Frankenstein’s monster. If my Dexterity was 20, I’d be like Legolas jumping around on orcs.
It’s like Arnold rolled a natural 20 in both Strength and Charisma and at least 16 in Intelligence.
This Youtuber Dominick Izzo had an interesting take on Bruce Lee. Even though it was critical of Bruce, I thought he was spot on about a lot of what made Bruce so notable is that, like Arnold, he was physically extraordinary and also charismatic. Just being a physical specimen wouldn’t have been enough for achieving the level of stardom Bruce and Arnold did.
If he was just strong, he’d maybe be famous in the bodybuilding world but not anywhere else. But he’s not only strong, he’s charismatic as fuck. He has what Scott Adams calls a “talent stack”.
It’s also probable Arnold has what is called a “hyperthymic temperament”. It’s basically this highly enviable personality type where you’re full of energy, confidence, and everything surrounding that. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “Why don’t I have that?” Get in line, dear reader.
I was impressed when reading a review on GoodReads of a biography on Arnold, that the reviewer thought the same thing, given that hyperthymic temperament is a relatively obscure concept.
His Playful Sense of Humor and Charisma
I have a playful sense of humor, so seeing that really appeals to me.
Some moments to show this:
Arnold teaching Linda how to find an excuse to flex, and his “good looks” comment:
Basically every moment from Pumping Iron, but here are some highlights:
Take a look at this reaction to someone throwing an egg at him at a campaign rally for California governor:
Reporter: “What was your reaction uh, you got hit by an egg? What do you think?…”
Arnold: “Well, this guy owes me bacon now. I mean, there’s no two ways about it because I mean, you can’t just have eggs without bacon.”
“But this is just all part of, you know, the free speech. I think it’s great. You see these people here screaming out. Now imagine you’re in some communist state or some dictatorship. You couldn’t do that. That’s why I love this country. And you have to take the whole package when you love something. I think that California’s great. I think America’s great. Everyone can speak out. Everyone has freedom of speech. That’s what creates the ultimate of democracy. So I believe in that and I welcome that.”
That bacon thing, what a line.
How he smokes his stogies:
To see how far he came, look at this clip. Arnold was credited as “Arnold Strong” in his first role and his lines had to be dubbed over because his accent was so thick.
And here’s a bonus to hear him speaking in German:
He’s Unapologetic
Arnold is unapologetic. Being unapologetic doesn’t mean never admitting you’re wrong. It means owning things, good and bad. He doesn’t trip over himself apologizing for things just because the dominant culture at the time doesn’t like it. I wish more people were like this.
Two examples of that:
While he was governor of California, TMZ asked him about Tommy Chong saying they used to smoke together.
Did Arnold hem and haw? Equivocate about having “never broken the laws of his country” or say he “didn’t inhale” the way Bill Clinton did? (Credit to Bill, it was a less progressive time, though.)
No:
“We always had a good time. We knew how to enjoy ourselves.”
Did Arnold take steroids? Owns it immediately:
Needing Greatness
I grew up in the agricultural hellhole that is the Central Valley of California. I felt an affinity for people who grew up in dead areas and longed for more. People like George Lucas, who grew up in the same area I did and then got the hell out of there. And Arnold.
“I’d felt from the time I was ten years old that I was destined for something bigger than staying in Austria, even though, at that time, I didn’t quite know what I was going to be.”
“My hair was pulled. I was hit with belts. So was the kid next door. It was just the way it was. Many of the children I’ve seen were broken by their parents, which was the German-Austrian mentality. They didn’t want to create an individual. It was all about conforming. I was one who did not conform, and whose will could not be broken. Therefore, I became a rebel. Every time I got hit, and every time someone said, ‘You can’t do this,’ I said, ‘This is not going to be for much longer because I’m going to move out of here. I want to be rich. I want to be somebody.'”
I didn’t become a movie star but getting out of the Central Valley opened up the whole world for me. (Sidenote: I would highly recommend moving from an isolated place to a real city, or at least near a real city. Easier said than done if you don’t have any lucrative skills, but it’s worth having as a goal to plan towards.)
Arnold represents the American dream incarnate.
He wanted to get out. And he wanted to be somebody. I was gonna type “Don’t we all?” but I thought of all the people perfectly content with living and dying in the same place they grew up. We don’t all. But my heroes and I did.
The Terminator Mindset to Overcoming OCD
As an adult, I realized I had suffered from many symptoms of OCD as a kid. Intrusive thoughts and images would stick with me and cause me tons of distress. I developed coping mechanisms for dealing with them. I idolized the Terminator’s ability to just do what needed to be done without worry.
I would imagine myself as the T-800 and picturing things with its HUD while doing the dishes or pulling weeds or doing things out of my comfort zone. I liked the idea of just being able to do something without having to be overwhelmed with the “what ifs”.
Male Friendship
One thing I admired about my dad growing up was that he had some deep male friendships. They made me feel safe. It’s something I also appreciate in Arnold.
Many of his friends are fellow big dudes that Arnold got small parts in his films.
Dudes like Sven-Ole Thorsen:
And Ralf Moeller (the guy from Gladiator):
And of course, his bestest friend, Franco Colombu.
Arnold met Franco at a bodybuilding competition in Germany and they stayed lifelong besties until Franco’s recent death in 2019. You see their beautiful friendship in Pumping Iron. Franco also makes a cameo as a Terminator in The Terminator.
I was bummed to hear Franco died. Maria Shriver even posted a beautiful tribute including many pictures of him and Arnold despite them being divorced.
Often my dad’s friends were people who he initially fought with.
Like my dad’s way of making friends, Arnold eventually become besties with Sly Stallone after hating each other:
Franco was actually Sly’s personal trainer for some films like Rocky II.
He’s Not Tied to Partisan Bullshit
Arnold was a Republican most of his American life. He supported Republican politicians and ran as a Republican governor. That said, he didn’t stay stuck in tribal ideologies. Arnold has tried to use his masculine idol status for promoting progressive, liberal issues.
He went from saying famous gaffes like: “No, I think gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.”
To this:
He’s had a long fight to end gerrymandering:
He pushes for action on climate change:
He also, of all people, switched to a mostly vegan diet:
Movie Recs
Now I haven’t seen them all, but Arnold hasn’t made a movie I really loved since Jingle All the Way in 1996. I remember being a kid and watching Terminator 3 in the theater and feeling something was off even though I didn’t really wake up to “good” and “bad” movies until I was older. His movie career’s been on a steady decline since Batman and Robin and especially post-Governorship. He’s made some okay movies but he was never an actor outside of action or comedy, and action doesn’t convincingly lend itself to aged heroes, The Expendables series be damned.
For those who have somehow gone their whole life without seeing these, here are Arnold’s movies in tiered rankings. (The tiers are for other people, not my personal ranking which would have Jingle All the Way in the top three…) I would recommend starting with:
God Tier
Great
Good
Bonus
His bit part (not famous enough then to be a cameo) in The Long Goodbye
Missed Roles
If I could see Arnold in one role he almost played, it’d be as Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket. Apparently, Kubrick thought of Arnold specifically. Seeing a Kubrick-directed performance from Arnold would have been out of this world. Probably would have been his best-acted role. Adam Baldwin did a great job of course but damn if I wouldn’t give up that and Running Man to see it.
Second one would probably be a James Cameron directed Spider-Man with Arnold as Doc Oc. Hard to picture but every movie Cameron and Arnie made together was great.
In a callback to the heroes of old, Arnold’s own idol, Reg Park, appropriately played Hercules, and Arnold’s first starring role was playing Hercules in New York! The hero of my hero playing one of the greatest heroes: a lineage.
If I Met Arnold
If I met Arnold, one of the things I’d really want to talk about is how isolated he may feel. It must be hard for people to really know him with his charismatic, public persona. Of course, he might give me a charismatic public persona answer. It’s annoying when people can’t turn it off sometimes. Like the scene in Good Will Hunting when Sean wants him to be real:
The other thing I’d really want is to try to save him. In the transhumanist sense, not the Christian one.
“I have always been extremely pissed off about the idea of death. It’s such a waste. I know it’s inevitable, but what the hell is that? Your whole life you work, you try to improve yourself, save money, invest wisely, and then all of a sudden — poof. It’s over. Death pisses me off more than ever.” -Arnold
I’ve written extensively on how against death and aging I am. I was devastated when Bill Paxton (appeared with Arnie in The Terminator and True Lies) died so young. It’s losing someone F-O-R-E-V-E-R.
I wish so badly that people didn’t have to suffer and die. With our current level of technology, the best we can do for people who may die soon is have them sign up for cryonics.
I hope it’ll become more mainstream and easier to convince people I appreciate like Arnold to support longevity research and sign up for cryonics. Otherwise, you have to passively watch people deteriorate and die and it sucks.
Wrap Up
It’s nice to find someone to look to when you need some inspiration. When I’m slacking on exercising, I think of Arnold saying “Two more (reps)” in Pumping Iron. When I need to be brave and push through something uncomfortable, I think of Arnold as the Terminator blowing his way through a biker bar.
Thanks, Arnie.
When I say the word “hero”, who comes to mind?
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There are many reported health benefits of cold showers like increased testosterone levels and better circulation. I haven’t done any in-depth research but it seems like the data those claims are based on are not very strong. I recommend reading SlateStarCodex posts to help curb some of the gullibility we all have when it comes to pop-science claims. I’ve been taking only cold showers for a little over three months now and here is what I’ve observed.
1. I don’t have to spend time messing with the shower handles to get the temperature right. Hotel? Friend’s house? No problem.
2. I end up exercising more on average, partly because I want my body warmed up before I shower so the icy water is less uncomfortable.
3. I spend significantly less time in the shower. Hot water feels great. With normie showers, I usually end up falling into the cycle of turning the heat up a little, then a little more, and before I know it, I reach sauna temperature. You hot water addicts know what I’m talking about…once you’re enveloped in that warm cozy stream, you never want to get out and have to face the cold air. Cold water solves this problem, with the added benefit of the air being warmer than the water, so it’s actually pleasant to turn the water off.
4. I don’t need lotion to keep my skin from drying out. With hot water showers, I would need to make sure to put lotion on my back, shoulders, and legs otherwise it would dry out. No more!
They both have their pros and cons. I do both. The Blastoise shock method can be fun, and I still gasp audibly, which puts me in a different mental state. Neil Strauss advocates taking cold showers for mood changes, but I haven’t done enough trials trying to control for other variables to make a claim either way.
I do currently live in Florida so the uncomfortableness of doing this is probably less than if I lived in Minnesota. Although, then maybe I would have the heater on in the house and it wouldn’t be as bad…
I originally published this on Medium on December 7, 2017. Three years later, I still take cold showers! The only difference now is I take hot showers after I’ve had my haircut. (It takes a long time to get the little hairs off and it’s just easier and more comfortable with a hot shower.)
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Imagine you’re at the tail end of a business meeting at a restaurant. Your plate is still 2/3 full since you didn’t get to eat as much as you wanted because you were too busy answering questions. (That’s a problem for a different post.) The check comes.
“I’ve got it, Jim!”
“No, Bob. Let me!”
“Really, it’s quite alright!”
*insert wrestling match over the check holder¹*
I never liked playing the back and forth game of who pays the bill. I don’t like it as a diner and I didn’t like it when I worked as a server.
The problem seems to be one of signaling. I’ll have to get Robin Hanson or Scott Alexander’s opinion but it seems like it’s rude if you don’t offer to pay for the group. It’s also rude and signals cheapness if you don’t argue with whoever is offering to pay.
In poorer families, when one person, let’s say Grandma, is known to have more money, everyone else knows not to argue with her and instead just says “thank you” with a hint of humility and shame.
The dating world has certain established norms like “the man pays for things”. The problem in the non-dating world is it would be weird to say upfront that you aren’t going to pay for someone’s meal because there’s not an established norm of who pays for a meal outside of a potential employer paying for a potential new employee’s meal.
It’s like trying to break up a friendship. There’s no norm for that like there is for breaking up a romantic relationship:
I wanted to try to solve the problem of communicating that we can pay for ourselves without it being so weird.
Enter BYOL. There’s BYOB (bring your own booze). I am coining the term BYOL (buy your own lunch). Well, technically my cofounder Kelsey helped me come up with the name so she deserves credit.
Examples:
“We’d love to meet for lunch (byol).”
“We’re having a lunch meeting at Mendocino Farms (byol).”
“We’d love to meet for dinner at 6pm (byol).”
“Our meetings are BYOL.”
I plan on including a hyperlink to this post when I say it in a message, like so: byol
“Let’s meet at Harry’s Hofbrau (byol).”
“Let’s do dinner at Chef Chu’s (byol).”
Yes, I know dinner and lunch are different things, but we like byol over byom and I don’t think anyone is going to get confused.
My next step is including it in messages and seeing how it goes. It might look a little pompous to link to my own writing but someone has to do it.
Servers don’t like splitting the bill among too many individuals.
My co-founders and I will usually pay with one card and the other person can pay cash, with their card, or Venmo us. For really large parties, cash or Venmo seem to be the best options, otherwise, one person does need to pay for everyone.
Let me know what you think, or if there any tweaks, problems, or alternative solutions you see. I tend to lean toward meta-communicating rather than avoiding but am open to hearing other strategies.
And if you try it definitely let me know how it goes!
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KheBaeW8Pi7LwewoF/what-is-signaling-really
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rEBXN3x6kXgD4pLxs/tell-culture
Guy Ritchie doesn’t only make British gangster films but they are to him what the View Askewniverse films (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Bob, etc.) are to Kevin Smith, in other words his bread and butter and best films. The Gentlemen is his latest installment in that genre.
Most directors don’t have their first film become an instant classic but like John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood, Ritchie’s current highest rated film on Rotten Tomatoes is his first: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, at a criminally underrated 75%. Although, as I’m writing this, I’m seeing The Gentlemen is his second highest at 74%, with Snatch at 73%?! Come on reviewers! (They both have a 93% Audience Score as well as Lock Stock and Snatch pulling an impressive 8.2 and 8.3 on IMDB respectively so there’s some justice in the world.)
The formula of charismatic and witty male friendship dynamics is really fun to see. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch are modern-day guy movie classics. His 2005 Revolver is part crime film and part weird quasi philosophy essay that didn’t end up working. RocknRolla was his next gangster movie and while not living up to his first two films, still really worked for me with a great cast and a lot of fun sequences. (Still waiting for the sequel The Real RocknRolla…).
Let’s face it, one of the big joys of watching these films is seeing the badass get to have his show off moment and watching the other characters who crossed them get their comeuppance. The fun of Guy Ritchie’s films is there are multiple groups of badasses and you’re never quite sure who will end up on top but the Battle Royale is a delight to see play out.
Unfortunately some of the characters that The Gentlemen builds up fail to deliver. Matthew McConaughey’s character is supposed to be this wunderkind who is also capable of the ruthlessness and violence to succeed in the underworld but he never does anything really notable. He’s barely violent and we never see him do anything that makes us go “Wow, this guy’s sharp!” It’s mostly his capable lieutenant played by Charlie Hunnam. Unfortunately, Hunnam’s character isn’t that interesting either. He spends most of the movie either ordering a henchman to do some underwhelming violence, or sitting back looking coy while Hugh Grant carries the scenes. Speaking of, at least Hugh Grant’s performance stands out, and Colin Farrell was a great subdued presence. Jeremy Strong’s effeminate affect is quite a departure from those used to seeing him in Succession. (Pitch for a better movie: seeing Logan from Succession take on McConaughey’s character instead.)
Fun fact: The girl who plays Laura is Sting’s daughter. Sting appeared in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. He was convinced to join the cast after watching Ritchie’s short which is available to watch here: https://rarefilmm.com/2019/10/the-hard-case-1995/
Bottom Line: Even as a fan of his other gangster movies, I don’t think it’s worth the opportunity cost to watch.
If you liked this, you might like to read what I thought of The Irishman after waiting thirteen years to see it:
Male Friendships, Witty Banter, and Violence: My Review of The Gentlemen (2019)
Or why I think Harrison Ford has had the great film career of all time:
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You click the side of your phone for the sixth time in ten minutes. No likes. No comments. No snaps. No messages. No new notifications. No one.
You stopped doing the dishes a week ago. The sink can’t fit any more and it’s starting to smell.
You avoid thinking about it. Just like you flinch away from thinking about how the bathroom looks.
You microwave something brown and toss the cardboard box and plastic wrap on top of the overflowing trash. It falls onto the floor but you’re already on your way to the couch.
You debate playing League or jerking off. An hour later and you’ve done both.
You feel that slight sense of disgust after and jump into the shower for the first time since before you did the dishes. There’s no soap left but you use the shampoo. It’s almost out.
You plop down onto the couch and open up Netflix. It’s twenty minutes before you realize you’ve been mindlessly browsing and have yet to watch something. You turn it off and click that side button on your phone again. Nothing. The blank screen is like a little knife carving “No one cares about you!” into your brain.
You flick the lid back and forth of the Zippo your grandfather gave you when you were a kid. Your grandfather had your mom when he was 26. You’re 29. You roll your thumb down on the wheel and the flame pops out. You hold it underneath your hand. A scene from Taxi Driver flashes through your mind.
The doorbell rings. You close the top of the lighter. You hastily throw on a shirt and rush to the door. Thank god you took a shower this morning.
A shaggy-haired guy about your age stands before you.
“Hi, are you Bill?”
“No.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m looking for a Magic meetu… Hey, man. Nice shirt!”
You look down. It’s your Firefly shirt.
The guy’s nice tone makes you feel weird. It’s unexpected and it feels a little like ice breaking inside you. You’re taken aback by the sudden warmth. You look down and smile. You can’t help it.
“Yeah, it’s great. I love Joss Whedon.”
“Same! Hey, this might be weird but I was looking to make more friends and was gonna check out this Magic meetup. Do you want to come?”
“Umm, yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t hung out with anyone in a while…”
“Perfect. I won’t be the weirdest one there, haha. What’s your number? I’m Nate by the way.”
You close the door and slump against it like someone in the movies. You realize you’ve been holding your breath and you let it out.
You look down. A notification pops up on your phone. A text.
Your cheeks suddenly feel wet and hot. But you’re smiling. Ear to ear.
You get up and grab the dish soap.
If you liked this, you should check out “Dumped”, my short sci-fi story published in Waste Advantage Magazine:
Dumped – My Short Sci-Fi Story Published in Waste Advantage Magazine
Did this story make you feel things? Do you want more??
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“Chink.” “Faggot.”
Have you ever been bullied? Have you ever bullied someone else? Do those experiences still affect you? If so, how? If they don’t, when did they stop affecting you, and why?
INT. NICE CHAPEL – DAY
A choir of children in white dresses sings a choral Christian song in unison. Focus on JOHN, 12, a short skinny Asian kid with bushy black hair and glasses.
I went to a private Christian school from kindergarten to 6th grade. It had its own trials and tribulations but overall it was a social paradise. The class was very intimate, and pretty much everyone was genuinely nice to each other. I had a crush on the same girl from 1st to 5th grade. I had many close friends.
EXT. CRAPPY MIDDLE SCHOOL – DAY
Music abruptly transitions to gangster rap. Shot from behind of John, standing on a cracked, treeless sidewalk with a roller backpack. John walks through the chain-link fence onto the campus. Hordes of preteens with spiked hair and frosted tips mill around, roughhousing. As John walks by each group, kids notice him and laugh. JUSTIN breaks off from a group and steps on the handle of John’s backpack, knocking it out of his hand.
JUSTIN
Chink!We’re not in Kansas anymore.
Then my dad decided he wanted to move to the Central Valley of California. We moved on the 4th of July, 2001, to a town appropriately named “Hickman”. I was starting 7th grade. In this school district, “middle school” started in 6th grade, so that meant that everybody already knew each other for at least a year. In a small agricultural community like Hickman, all their parents had gone to school together too. One of the self-proclaimed cowboy capitals of the world was a few miles away. My P.E. class has the usual staples, along with hay baling, roping, and line dancing. I was smaller than other kids my age for most of the years I went to school. (What were they feeding these kids? Fertilizer?)
I was the smart kid in class. The teacher assigned me to give out candy for things. I would supplicate kids by giving them candy. Wanting people to like me. This behavior didn’t last.
One of my biggest problems was that I didn’t like to do things just because other people did them. I’m a natural contrarian. I didn’t want to get my hair spiked and tips frosted like every other prepubescent boy in America. I wanted to shake hands, not do the hand slap to fist bump. My family listened to K-LOVE and Christian radio. I was totally oblivious to things like Eminem and Blink 182, South Park and Dude, Where’s My Car?
My lack of awareness and stubbornness contributed to my downfall. I didn’t realize my ridiculous old man glasses and little roller backpack were like a big glowing neon sign flashing “ASKING FOR IT” over my head.
Most kids were either indifferent, dicks (but dicks that didn’t actively target me), or the worst: active bullies.
Some things were more mundane. Kids would come up and tousle my hair. They would try to put trash in my hoodie. They would throw paper at me or draw on me or stick gum on me. Or dump my stuff all over the place. We would put our backpacks in big piles outside on breaks. You had to make sure no one threw yours in the girl’s bathroom. I used to feel my heart race looking over the backpacks and not immediately seeing mine.
The Central Valley is all whites and Mexicans, so I was the only Asian kid in the entire school. Kids would walk by me and do the Bruce Lee “Waaaah!” Later I got compared to Harold from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. I’m just glad I didn’t grow up in the 80s Long Duk Dong era otherwise that would have been the most salient example of an Asian male in the media. Kids would say, “Ching chong ching chong!” to make fun of Chinese. When they were talking about Cheech and Chong in class, I didn’t know if the teacher was laughing at a racist joke with them or not. Remember: I was sheltered. I didn’t know what Cheech and Chong was or more appropriately, who.
Kids would pants you, i.e. pull down your shorts in P.E. I learned that quickly pulling them back up made you look weak. If you take a moment and then reach down for them, it’s much better. This applies to everything. Try it next time you drop your pen.
The paradigm of bullying is weird. Most kids would call you gay and make fun of you for being gay but also act aggressively and predatorily homoerotic. Like, making kissy sounds and saying “Yeah, come here” or “Mmm yeah, can’t get enough of him…”
They would say “John Queer” instead of “John Greer”. I can still tense up when telling someone my name, as if someone is going to use that. We’ve seen the power Trump wields with Crooked Hillary and Low Energy Jeb, they’re “linguistic kill shots” as Scott Adams puts it. Rhymes are particularly nasty because they can stick.
My main bully was Justin Stubblefield. He would be in the bathroom and say “Asians have small dicks” while I was pissing. Sometimes I would fantasize about him dying and then get angry imagining people saying nice things at his funeral.
The people I hung around were friends with him. I was the one who got picked on and made fun of in the group. Years later, in high school, one of the kids gave me some old video games. I remember loading one of them up and stumbling across characters they had made. One of them was named John, and it was an exaggerated Asian head on a giant body. It felt weird in a stinging, voyeuristic way to see this old residue of them making fun of me.
When we went on a school trip to D.C., I ended up being in the same room as Justin and his dad. I remember jumping around and kicking towards him and just acting silly, play-fighting. His dad said, “I don’t know what you know or what you think you know, but Justin can take you.” I am still angry at my past self for not acting harder.
I wanted closure from these experiences. I wanted the bullies to come back from the past and apologize for how horrible they were. There was an episode of Rocko’s Modern Life where (spoilers) Rocko heard his childhood bully was coming back into town and he trained and trained to be able to beat him up and get revenge. His bully comes back but has turned into a Zen pacifist who is sorry. The same thing happens in Anger Management. That’s what I wanted.
I don’t think it’s healthy to need other people to do something for you to get closure because many people aren’t going to do those things. Some people grow up and change, but when I looked Justin up on Facebook a few years ago he was saying the same racist shit.
One of the worst situations in school is where you don’t have any real friends. You’re isolated, alone. If you have good friends, even if you’re picked on, it’s different. You have support. But even the people I hung around with would call me “chink”, “faggot”. I had never heard the word “chink” before, but I ended up hearing it every day of middle school. I had no idea what it meant but knew it wasn’t nice. (I had more of an idea what “faggot” meant, though.) I was a loser. I spent a lot of time in the library reading.
I hoped to be friends with this kid who lived near me. He wasn’t my first choice. One time he tried to impress me by calling this girl a bitch over the phone and getting away with it. But he had GTA III and I wanted to play it. (I made the mistake of being loyal to Nintendo and getting a Gamecube. This was when Halo was out for Xbox as well…) I imagined having neighborhood friends. I could ride around the small town we lived in and have the idyllic childhood experience Mark Twain wrote about. I developed glory fantasies where I would save the day or do something else where people thought I was cool.
Figuring out where you’re going to sit during lunch can be really anxiety-provoking. You don’t want to look like a loser sitting by yourself, but you also don’t want that “What the fuck are you doing here?” vibe either. You’ll settle for anyone who won’t actively treat you like shit. I noticed some kids would hang around our group for a bit and then move on when they had found a real friend group and got tired of being picked on.
One of my “friends” told me that he used to shoot birds and kick them around like a soccer ball while they were still alive. Another kid who was my “friend” talked about robbing drunks of their gold chains outside of bars. (Seems like bullshit that he participated in that given how young he would have had to be. That’s the thing about people telling tall tales in middle school or high school that are supposed to be from their previous life somewhere else, they would have had to be doing this shit in elementary school.) My “friends” prank called me one time and I stopped talking to them. It was weird to spend so much time together and then suddenly ignore each other.
I didn’t know what to do about all this. The problem with the bullied trying to use similar tactics is they often don’t know what the bullies are doing to not get caught. The same person that has been calling you a faggot for years can run to the administration and cry about how you hurt them, and the administration can see you as the monster!
I was hypervigilant. I would feel tense all the time, as if someone was going to throw something at me from behind. I would think through conversations in my head of what to say if someone was trying to fuck with me. I had to be on the lookout constantly to avoid being pantsed in P.E. I would ruminate during class and at home, before bed, thinking about what to say or what to do. My sleep quality was about a 1 out of 10.
I didn’t tell my parents. In my head, it felt like they would be hurt by me being hurt. Like they were vulnerable and needed to be shielded from that world. I didn’t tell teachers because it felt pointless and like it wasn’t my community — like I was the outsider. Even the teachers would have only been able to do so much. The best you can hope for is that the kids stop doing things that tend to get them caught, and cut down to only things that don’t.
INT. CRAPPY MIDDLE SCHOOL CLASSROOM – DAY
MRS. PORTER, 40, circles words on the blackboard.
MRS. PORTER
We walked up the stairs.CHRIS TIPTON, 13, flicks a wad of paper at the back of John’s head.
MRS. PORTER
My mom took a walk around the block.CHRIS
Hey, Queer.MRS. PORTER
I looked under my bed.CHRIS
John Queer.MRS. PORTER
My friend jumped over the bushes.CHRIS
Chink, I’m talking to you!John turns around and stabs his mechanical pencil into Chris’ arm.
CHRIS
AAAAH! Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Porter!MRS. PORTER
I walked aboard the –. Yes, Chris?CHRIS
John just stabbed me! I’m bleeding, Mrs. Porter!MRS. PORTER
John? There’s no way John would do that.John smirks.
MRS. PORTER
I walked aboard the ship.
I snapped in 7th grade and stabbed a kid with a mechanical pencil. I’m skeptical that people actually believe violence is never the answer, but if they do, they’re dead wrong. Violence is both swift and effective. Jam a pencil into someone’s arm and they tend to fuck with you a lot less. Slam a book into someone’s ribs and they can’t find the breath to call you a chink.
When I took karate as a kid, the instructor told my parents that I was too nice, that I never wanted to hurt anyone. Boy did that change. Discovering violence was like discovering fire.
One time, a kid walked past me and sprayed me with his Axe deodorant, so I took it from him and sprayed him in the face. I would see some kid acting like a jackass, making fun of some loser kid, so I’d go up and start fucking with him. I might physically hurt him, or wash my hands and wipe it on him and say it was piss. Or my friends and I could shove him into a trash can. Some kids would struggle hard and you’d need more people to hold their legs, but some would instantly submit like the antelope that just stops moving when the cheetah sinks its teeth in.
You can use a lot of things as weapons. I would ask kids, “Do you know what I can do with this Snapple bottle?” I’d slam the Snapple bottle or a Spanish textbook into someone’s hip bone.
I had a pen that I nicknamed Felipe. I would brandish the pen and ask if they wanted some of Felipe. If they didn’t acquiesce, I’d jam it into their arms or ribs or back. One of my friends still has a stab mark I left on him.
I would carry steak knives I stole from the restaurant I worked at in homemade sheaths made out of newspaper. This one time, someone punked my friend Chris Arkley and had problems with my other friend Mike Drake. When my friends and I went to the bowling alley (one of the only things to do in the area), we saw the guy’s truck there. I was going to slash his tires but didn’t want the sound to be too loud so I stuck the knife out and dragged it alongside the car. It made a big “LOOK AT ME” screeching sound.
I broke two kids’ fingers in my high school career. Both were my friends or kids that I at least hung around with periodically. I wasn’t trying to break their fingers. The problem happens when you grab their finger and then they start flailing around. Really they broke their own fingers.
If a psychiatrist had observed me, I would have been diagnosed with conduct disorder. My nickname among the Mexicans was “El Chino Loco”. That or “the Crazy Asian” was my usual bowling name.
Middle school basically made me hard. It was like the boot camp in Full Metal Jacket. I would watch violent movies over and over again, and have a kind of cathartic experience seeing things like the (spoiler!) Billy Batts scene in Goodfellas.
We used to have sparring sessions in my friend John Brasher’s backyard. Some kids would get beat up a little more than others because they couldn’t fight as well. Again, I think some people often have that role in these types of male groups. It’s probably not ideal and in some cases, points to a lack of better friend options. People’s jobs or relationships can often be like this. Your boss is a dick and no one respects you, you hate your job, it’s not important, you’re a cog in a machine, etc. Or maybe your boyfriend is an asshole, your wife is constantly complaining about something, whatever. In these situations, especially ones that have been happening your whole life, it can be hard to really know that other ways exist or that they could exist for you. It’s like living in the desert and not being able to imagine an oasis. The same shock a poor person gets when they see a mansion for the first time, or when they start making good money and don’t have to mentally calculate the cost of everything to make sure it’ll be covered by the EBT card.
I gave people nicknames. One was Cottage Cheese Boy because he used to fill up a styrofoam bowl at the cafeteria with cottage cheese and ham cubes from the salad bar. One kid was Stencil Boy because he used stencils to put his name on his P.E. shirt rather than just writing it with a sharpie. Another was Hollister T-shirt Kid because, you guessed it, he always wore Hollister T-shirts. (It was nowhere near as dehumanizing as the names a friend of mine gave some kids: #1 and #2.)
Sometimes there’s someone you’re in conflict with and you can’t hurt them for whatever reason, usually because they’re a girl. So one tactic I learned was to just hurt someone they care about.
Size doesn’t really matter for people’s temperament. I picked on some football players who could have bench pressed me. I remember this one kid saying I could date his sister if I stopped hurting him.
I wasn’t a complete monster. When one of my friends threw an Indian kid’s religious necklace in the trash, I dug it out for him and handed it back. We stopped other kids from picking on kids who didn’t deserve it. The kids we were actually mean to were the assholes.
My family was poor in high school so I ate state-subsidized breakfast and lunch. I would go to school early and get in the minority line to get breakfast (I called it the minority line because it was mostly me and the Mexicans). I still have dreams where I’m super anxious to get to the line in time to get a good spot.
We had a burrito place by our school called “La Perla” where kids would go after school to hang out. We would occasionally sneak off campus to get lunch there. I was a kid that liked eating. It wasn’t fair to see these kids enjoying hot, delicious burritos just because their parents had money to give them! Turns out extortion is a valuable tool when you’re hungry. First you nicely say, “Can I have a dollar?” If they don’t give it to you, you apply more pressure: “Come on, man, give me a dollar.” Then you ramp up the aggression and the threats until they give in. You don’t even have to be that violent, usually an arm grab or the threat of Felipe was enough. I ended up having a burrito whenever I wanted one.
We had a Gatorade machine on campus. I didn’t like going without Gatorade. I would often ask kids for a dollar for Gatorade and would give them the hard press. Sometimes I’d save the dollars. I remember this one kid was walking around with a whole box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies. I got that primal, baffled, animal-kingdom feeling like, “This kid is begging for me to take them!” I went right over and took most of the cream pies from the box.
Lasting Effects
Years and years later, I visited some of my high school friends I hadn’t seen for at least five years for a poker game. The people there who didn’t know me were told not to fuck with me. It felt great to know my reputation was already cemented. I was respected, I had juice.
Reputation is important. That’s why people are willing to kill over it. Your reputation determines how you’re treated. Do people nod at you when you walk by or do they try to punk you? Do they give you the benefit of the doubt or do they immediately call you a liar? Do they listen when you give your opinion or do they scoff at whatever you say? (American Me has some great scenes that illustrate the concept of respect and I’d recommend watching it.)
In a closed environment with repeat interactions (like school), reputation is especially important. If someone bumps into me on the street and calls me a name, I can just walk away. I’ll never see that person again. But if I’m in an environment where I will see them every day for at least a year, and everyone else knows I don’t defend myself, it’s open season.
I still care about respect, and being slighted bothers me a lot, but most people aren’t trying to be malicious or rude, they just aren’t naturally that considerate.
I still get anxious around adolescent males, the demographic most likely to do stupid shit.
Being bullied and bullying others affected my emotional sense of justice. If I see someone who is begging to be robbed or picked on, I think “This kid needs to act tougher!” or “Why are they acting so flamboyant? They’re going to get made fun of!”
I feel an affinity for minorities that lived in rural areas and pioneered the way —shifting the Overton window for other races. (Listen to these accents of Chinese-Americans in Mississippi! https://youtu.be/2NMrqGHr5zE?t=2m20s)
I finally put a name to all the rumination and hypervigilance I experience: intrusive thoughts. People with real OCD (not to be confused with “I like things neat” OCPD) experience intrusive thoughts constantly. These are the thoughts that can be hard to get out of your head, like imagining bad things happening to loved ones, or picturing all the germs you interacted with that day, etc. I recently realized one of my coping mechanisms for dealing with them has been to take the imagined horrible thing and “put it” on the main bully. Say I imagined my girlfriend or mom getting shot or getting into a car accident, I would imagine it happening to him and then feel okay.
I often have dreams in which I have some unresolved issue and I’m craving closure. I’ll fight the bullies or I’ll try to be friends with them.
I try to be vulnerable and talking about these experiences is one of my ways of dealing with these types of things.
Your Experiences
I’d love to hear about your experiences with being bullied or bullying and how they shaped you.
Did reading this bring up any memories good or bad for you? Want to get more thought-provoking writing AND make me feel like a special snowflake?
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Note: My Three Buckets post is important background for this and basically every other thing you do in life. I’d recommend reading it first if you haven’t already: https://www.johncgreer.com/the-three-buckets/
First off, is aging and death really such a bad thing?
If you’re like most people, you probably think death isn’t such a bad thing, especially at an old age. Sure, it’s sad when grandma dies but we all have to go some time, right?
It’s because I’m incredibly lucky. I’m incredibly lucky to be born at this time in history, in the United States, with the genes that I have. If any of those things would have been different, my life could have been drastically, abysmally hellish.
There are people who have lives where describing them as miserable would be an understatement. If I had been born before the Industrial Revolution, or in a different place (say North Korea or Somalia), my life could have just completely sucked. Plenty of people’s lives suck right here in the US of A. Many smart people are working on changing that and I fully support them. I don’t want anyone to suffer, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be working on fighting aging.
When people’s lives become worth living, death becomes non-optimal. It’s pretty simple to me:
life worth living = continue living
life not worth living (and it’s not going to get better) = accept death as an end to suffering
My life is enjoyable so I want it to keep going.
Exploration and Curiosity
Don’t you just love finding out how a really good story ends? Or listening to a new album by your favorite artist or discovering a new one?
I was listening to this interview with Larry King:
and I loved hearing his description of curiosity, loving life, and not wanting to die (42:48 mark):
Larry King: “I love the whole ball of wax. And I don’t want to die.”
Interviewer: “You don’t want to die?”
Larry King: “Oh yeah. My wife said if I were frozen, cryonic, you come back in two hundred years. She said, ‘You wouldn’t know anybody.’ I said, ‘I’ll make new friends.’ I like living. Because of curiosity. Who’s gonna win the World Series? Who’s the next football champion? How’s Kevin Durant going to do in Golden State? Can the Pittsburgh Penguins repeat in hockey? Who’s gonna win the election? If you die, you don’t know. You don’t exist. You don’t exist.”
I remember being really pumped to finally see the finale of Breaking Bad. What was gonna happen??? How were they going to wrap up the story? That feeling is so delicious and delightful.
It got me thinking about how some people were as excited as I was but they weren’t going to end up seeing it because they would die before they got the chance. It’s not anywhere near the most tragic things that happen every day but it was a poignant realization. There was even a terminally ill guy who had a successful social media campaign to see Star Wars 7 before he died.
I don’t want to miss the next Pixar movie. Hell, I don’t want to miss any of them. Maybe it’s the next Studio Ghibli for you. Or some manga by an artist you really love. Or a video game by the indie dev you support on Patreon. Or the last of the Song of Ice and Fire books (good luck).
I was praying nothing would happen to Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci before they finally made The Irishman. I waited for it for over a decade.
When I was a kid, I would stand in Barnes and Noble in the science fiction section staring at shelf after shelf of giant books. A feeling of wonder and excitement would come over me. I’d imagine all the universes I could explore and get lost in.
That feeling of timelessness I had as a kid seems lost now. I don’t have time to wander off on endless explorations. I won’t learn what even a fraction of the great books in the world have in store. I can’t really explore all of the real or virtual worlds I want to, not in one lifetime. Even if I had infinite money and only spent my time reading and traveling, it wouldn’t be worth it because I need to spend that time and money trying to reach longevity escape velocity. It reminds me of Nate Soares’ post about Habitual Productivity. (This is taken out of context so please read it and also his very excellent Replacing Guilt series):
“When skiing, partying, or generally having a good time, try remembering that this is exactly the type of thing people should have an opportunity to do after we stop everyone from dying.
When doing something transient like watching TV or playing video games, reflect upon how it’s not building any skills that are going to make the world a better place, nor really having a lasting impact on the world.
Notice that if the world is to be saved then it really does need to be you who saves it, because everybody else is busy skiing, partying, reading fantasy, or dying in third world countries.”
I’m often caught between a feeling of despair and powerlessness, and bouts of hope at the progress being made and the progress I make in my own life. I am still finding the balance between working toward my near- and long-term goals and enjoying life while I know I am alive.
Sylvia Plath had some very appropriate quotes:
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.” -The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” -The Bell Jar
Linda Holmes wrote a wonderfully depressing analysis on how we’re going to miss it all:
“The vast majority of the world’s books, music, films, television and art, you will never see. It’s just numbers.
Consider books alone. Let’s say you read two a week, and sometimes you take on a long one that takes you a whole week. That’s quite a brisk pace for the average person. That lets you finish, let’s say, 100 books a year. If we assume you start now, and you’re 15, and you are willing to continue at this pace until you’re 80. That’s 6,500 books, which really sounds like a lot.
Let’s do you another favor: Let’s further assume you limit yourself to books from the last, say, 250 years. Nothing before 1761. This cuts out giant, enormous swaths of literature, of course, but we’ll assume you’re willing to write off thousands of years of writing in an effort to be reasonably well-read.
Of course, by the time you’re 80, there will be 65 more years of new books, so by then, you’re dealing with 315 years of books, which allows you to read about 20 books from each year. You’ll have to break down your 20 books each year between fiction and nonfiction — you have to cover history, philosophy, essays, diaries, science, religion, science fiction, westerns, political theory … I hope you weren’t planning to go out very much.
You can hit the highlights, and you can specialize enough to become knowledgeable in some things, but most of what’s out there, you’ll have to ignore. (Don’t forget books not written in English! Don’t forget to learn all the other languages!)
Oh, and heaven help your kid, who will either have to throw out maybe 30 years of what you deemed most critical or be even more selective than you had to be.
We could do the same calculus with film or music or, increasingly, television — you simply have no chance of seeing even most of what exists. Statistically speaking, you will die having missed almost everything.”
I’ll be having a nice moment with my girlfriend and then suddenly think about how life extension isn’t here and we’re going to die. I constantly worry for her health and try to avoid thinking about something tragically happening to her, or anyone else I care about.
I’ll be watching the Rick and Morty episode with the theme park where you can’t die. They make a big deal about how you don’t want to be out of bounds of the park or have the force field turned off. And then I remember: I’m in the place where the anti-death force field is ALWAYS turned off! What the fuck?! We need to fix this.
I many notice people have a natural resistance because they’re not that happy in their lives now. That’s understandable but things have generally gotten drastically better and are only looking to continue that way.
A common objection is that it can’t be done. Yes, it can. We just need to get there. If it were truly the case we couldn’t overcome it, then the rational thing to do would be to just try to come to peace with it and accept it like “wise” people have suggested for millennia. But we’re finally at a time when we may hit the longevity escape velocity where “life expectancy is being extended longer than the time that is passing. For example, in a given year in which longevity escape velocity would be maintained, technological advances would increase life expectancy more than the year that just went by.” It’s a leapfrog strategy. You have some tech that extends people’s lifespan by twenty years and the technology developed in the next twenty years extends their lives even longer and so on and so forth.
What about accidents, natural disasters, war, etc.? Won’t people still die from those? Yes, which is why there are also smart people working on existential risk (aka x-risk) and addressing other ways people can be hurt. I support them as well. But we still need to do more to change people’s minds about aging and death. I’ve noticed certain objections come up frequently.
Fine, but wouldn’t you want a choice in whether and when you wanted to die? If you actually wanted to die you’d have the option to.
This is different from not wanting to know when you would die, since knowing the exact time might just cause you to ruminate on it. I understand that reasoning. I’m referring to when people say things like: “I want to just roll the dice, and if I die of cancer or stroke or heart disease or Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, then so be it.” What?? If you had the option, wouldn’t you rather not develop these diseases? Wouldn’t you rather live as long and as full a life as you wanted?
Sometimes people say they wouldn’t want to live so long because of the misunderstanding that they’d be in an elderly, frail, and pain-stricken body. But the ailments they’re thinking about, like the ones I listed above, are manifestations of aging. Life extension aims to paddle upstream and prevent the underlying process of aging and its unsavory effects, rather than treat diseases once they have occurred. Life extension technology would ideally keep you healthy, increasing the so-called “healthspan”.
Really?! Okay, even though I really doubt this given all the books, movies, TV shows, music, places to travel, food to eat, people to meet, and all the crazy future entertainment we’d have, then if you were really that bored you could choose to die.
Perfectly reasonable and rational! But again, life extension is about rejuvenation where you’re in a “young”, well-functioning body.
Here are some other impossible things:
“On September 11, 1933, renowned physicist Ernest Rutherford stated, with utter confidence, ‘Anyone who expects a source of power in the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.’ On September 12, 1933, physicist Leo Szilard invented the neutron-induced nuclear chain reaction.” -Professor Stuart Russell, AI expert and professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean the atom would have to be shattered at will.” - Albert Einstein
Even those who would seemingly be in the best position to know if something is possible can be dead wrong. Ernest Rutherford is the father of nuclear physics. And if Einstein has a hard time predicting the future of his own field, maybe you need a more open mind.
Here are some more impossible things:
“We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” -Bill Gates
“There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.” - T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961. The first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965.
“The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.” -Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916
“The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad.” - Advice from a president of the Michigan Savings Bank to Henry Ford’s lawyer Horace Rackham. Rackham ignored the advice and invested $5000 in Ford stock, selling it later for $12.5 million.
How many people do you know who died of smallpox? Smallpox killed hundreds of millions in its time, but with the dedication of several key people and organizations, it’s been eradicated. Now expand that example to a future in which it would be crazy to imagine someone dying of old age. No one is saying that combating aging is easy. But it’s possible with enough support.
“To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth — all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.” -Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926
Read more here. The point isn’t that these people were dumb. It’s that even the smartest people in supposedly the most authoritative positions have been wrong. Predicting the future is hard. Bad predictions can go the other way too. Flying cars anyone? But look at how much society has changed in the last twenty years, let alone 50 or 100 or 1000. Technological innovation can take a long time and be immensely challenging. That said, there’s no reason we should think developing life extension is impossible.
This could be a concern but is a low-level one. There are many natural things that would adjust, such as people having fewer children, better resource management, and eventually some super sci-fi off-planet colonization. And I don’t hear the same people saying we shouldn’t save people in the hospital or from natural disasters in order to stop overpopulation.
The rise of automation and AI that can do even creative tasks better than humans can will probably create a post-scarcity society where none of that will matter anymore (or we won’t solve the AI safety problem and we’ll die). Even setting that aside, this is a silly argument. I love how Eliezer Yudkowsky put it:
“A man spoke of some benefit X of death, I don’t recall exactly what. And I said: “You know, given human nature, if people got hit on the head by a baseball bat every week, pretty soon they would invent reasons why getting hit on the head with a baseball bat was a good thing. But if you took someone who wasn’t being hit on the head with a baseball bat, and you asked them if they wanted it, they would say no. I think that if you took someone who was immortal, and asked them if they wanted to die for benefit X, they would say no.” –https://www.readthesequences.com/How-To-Seem-And-Be-Deep
Life extension and your religion don’t conflict! Don’t take my word for it. There are prominent Christian and Mormon life extension supporters: https://www.christiantranshumanism.org/
If God has a plan, and we die when we’re meant to die, then living longer doesn’t conflict with that. For the most part, religious people don’t tell the paramedics to stop CPR because it’s interfering with God’s plan, or tell Grandpa to stop taking his heart medication because that wasn’t around for the Israelites. No one is stopping Alzheimer or Parkinson research. This research would help us avoid all these other tragic problems our loved ones experience.
It can seem like only the rich benefit from new developments but that’s not the case. New technology is more expensive in the beginning and gets cheaper as time goes on. Take cell phones, for example.
Before: “Cell phone? Must be a rich stockbroker.”
Now:
The kids at St. Jude Hospital would be stuck with prayer with this kind of mindset. No treatments, no medical devices, nothing.
Supporting rejuvenation research helps save EVERYONE.
I agree there are other very important causes, but I don’t hear people arguing that we shouldn’t spend time and money to treat mothers with breast cancer in America because children in Somalia are dying.
Also, targeting aging addresses the underlying issue rather than each downstream problem that arises as a result, like dementia or cancer. Imagine the money and resources that are currently spent on these diseases that would be freed up.
For more rigorous, effective-altruism-style analysis, check out Emanuele Ascani and Sarah Constantin’s posts:
A general framework for evaluating aging research. Part 1: reasoning with Longevity Escape Velocity
Cost-Effectiveness of Aging Research
Aging research and population ethics
Impact of aging research besides LEV
There are downsides to CPR. If done correctly, it usually breaks your ribs. Does that mean you shouldn’t do it?
I’m not saying that there no benefits to death. However, many people have status quo bias, i.e. they argue that one or two things that may actually have some upside are enough to justify keeping things the way they are, but fail to consider that if they were starting from first principles they probably wouldn’t have chosen that option to begin with.
For example, if everyone were already immortal, that would mean that dictators would live forever. Oh no! But the solution to dictators living forever is not to kill everybody in the world at random. For any problems that death has solved in the past, like getting rid of dictators, humans will come up with new solutions if they become a real issue.
This is a tough question. There are three options I see.
Aubrey de Grey is the big name in the life extension movement. Most people know him for his long beard and British accent. He’s one of the few people who are my personal heroes. I really respect people who identify what’s important, figure out what their comparative advantages are and how they can be most impactful, and then just do it. Aubrey is one of those people. I also like him because he’s forthright. He’s blunt and he speaks plainly about what he thinks people are doing right and what they’re doing wrong. He also has “skin in the game” (as everyone is saying after Taleb’s latest book) and puts his money where his mouth is. When he inherited an £11 million estate from his mother, he donated £9 million to the SENS Research Foundation.
If that’s not enough, crypto wunderkind Vitalik Buterin donated $2.4 million worth of Ethereum to SENS, and the Pineapple Fund person donated $1 million worth of Bitcoin!
The Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF) is doing some great work on the promotional side by writing articles and collaborating with popular YouTubers (which I think is particularly valuable), greatly increasing exposure to and support for the concept of life extension.
Laura Deming has a nice guide to getting started:
It might also be worth understanding machine learning and applying it to relevant issues or finding other novel ways of approaching problems. I know less about this but the next step would probably be to reach out to one of the people in the field and talk to them about it.
Join these groups:
Ending aging: SENS, SENS Foundation, Aubrey de Grey
Effective Altruism & Life Extension
Check out already persuasive content:
Eliezer Yudkowsky famously wrote Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to see if he could write a really popular fan-fiction to introduce people to rationality and save humanity from death. It worked! When you’ve read it, you’ll be in a good position to recommend it to other people and to think about what you could do to get people to join the good fight. It’s available for free here:
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
These YouTube videos are my favorite intros to life extension:
Brainstorm ideas for how to bring more talent and funds to the cause
What are your ideas for how to get more people on board for life extension? Let me know in the comments!
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