writing about specific bottlenecks and edges
Joined September 2026
- Tweets89
- Following17
- Followers0
- Likes316
William Tirkey retweeted
One other funny difference between Hindi and English native speakers.
English speakers can't hear the difference between any of the d or t sounds made in different places on the roof of your mouth, or any of the aspirated consonants.
Hindi speakers can't hear the letter v.
William Tirkey retweeted
lol reminds me of an anecdote from Richard Feynman.
Feynman's hobby was cracking locks and vaults. One time at Los Alamos, a physicist got locked out of his safe and he had forgotten the combination. No one could open it, so he called Feynman... Feynman walks into the office and locks the door behind him to be alone.
In the previous weeks, he had realized he could manipulate the dial to get the last two numbers of someone's safe if it was left open. Feynman would go into people's offices and distract them while he got their last two digits, and jotted them down on a sheet of paper. By getting the last two, that left only 20 possible numbers for the rest of the combination, which could be brute forced easily.
Anyway, Feynman enters the office with his sheet of paper and opens the safe in one minute. To give the impression that he had been working hard and safeguard his reputation, he didn't go out until after 25 minutes had passed. Read a magazine in the meantime or something.
This quoted post is unavailable.
William Tirkey retweeted
The way you get to the (proper) solution faster is by interjecting.
Stop taking what is given to you. It's not translated in a language you speak. It's theirs, not yours.
Stop them. Ask LOTS of "stupid" questions. Don't let them take any steps beyond the system YOU use to understand. They will step beyond constantly, so be abrupt and cut them off.
We all know we're supposed to get good at saying no, but how many say no to explanations that don't work?
Learning outside this dialogue-driven paradigm is dead. The classroom makes zero sense. It is a waste of time that leaves people behind.
Abrupt questioning that recasts information onto *your* coordinate system is how you achieve true depth and comprehension.
William Tirkey retweeted
If you're naturally impersonal, you'll gain more respect by maintaining that disposition than posturing to fit in.
Others will delight in those rare moments they match your rationality or make you smile.
People don't need to be like you to gravitate towards you. They tend to do the opposite.
Embrace what you are.
William Tirkey retweeted
What’s a polite way to tell someone, “I’m not discussing this with you because your entire understanding of the subject is built on so many interconnected misconceptions that correcting them would require uninstalling your current worldview and starting the tutorial from birth”?
There is always a cost to adding new way of seeing. New way is not always good especially if it adds extra "to do" without improving on ur natural strength
4
William Tirkey retweeted
“just do the thing” is lazy advice
99% of people who are stuck or hesitating aren’t doing it due to a failure of will
they’re doing it because their whole internal belief system is making it seem necessary to hesitate
“why don’t you just take action” ignores the complexity (usually in a way that allows the dispenser of the advice to act superior)
better to acknowledge the complexity while still pointing out the end destination of doing the thing… especially since shame about paralysis tends to make people MORE paralyzed, not less
William Tirkey retweeted
The decisions that operate effectively under uncertainty are precautionary and non-intervening in nature.
They don’t attempt to describe and control the inner workings of complex phenomena. They admit the limits of causal knowledge and instead act on the surface, where actionable information exists.
These are decisions based on true rationality, not faux causality and mechanistic theory.
This is also true of emotions and decisions. The incessant analysis of one’s emotions is of the same pseudoscience that pretends to understand causal mechanisms of complexity. Emotions, after all, are the hallmarks of our mind’s complexity.
The psychological scrutiny of emotions is naively intervening and full of narrative fallacy. It digs into things that cannot be understood through digging. It tries to reverse engineer what was never engineered. A completely wrong framework forced mechanically into a system that isn’t mechanistic.
Your best decisions in life do not attempt to interpret feelings. They act with awareness of feelings, but not analysis of them, nor narratives about them. They are precautionary and non-intervening with respect to emotions.
A healthy and discerning mind does not require psychology, it requires a rational calibration to complexity.
William Tirkey retweeted
A lot of psychology has been falsely legitimized by society because it so readily feeds the narcissism and insecurity of individuals, by providing them labeled “conditions” to use as an excuse to not do what it takes to improve their lives.
William Tirkey retweeted
Wake up.
Every profession deemed white-collar, the middle class dream, is about to be decimated by AI, at a much faster pace than anticipated, with monstrous social consequences.
William Tirkey retweeted
The problem isn’t that AI is intelligent. It isn’t. The problem is that too many adults (but not all) are at once mechanistic, imitative, unimaginative, stupid, formulaic, influenceable, & gullible, arrogant beyond their skill set, & too expensive to maintain.
William Tirkey retweeted
True learning only happens when you're in control.
You have to interject, cut off, force the reframing.
If it's not in your words, your pictures, you have no comprehension.
Stop letting people just talk. It's a waste of your time.
There is a fundamental flaw in things like classrooms, conferences, seminars etc.
So much time wasted on unidirectional passive consumption which teaches you nothing.
William Tirkey retweeted
Just keep exposing yourself to the things you want to learn.
No strategy. No plan. No approach.
Just exposure.
Leads to far superior understanding and ability than the fragile designs of others.
Really no comparison.
The structures you learn must emerge.
William Tirkey retweeted
March of the Fractals
Hey reductionism. Complexity is coming for you. Your rule over science is coming to an end. Your convenient portrayals of nature will be sacrificed upon the alter of practicality. Your outdated canons will fall away to truths forged by trial.
William Tirkey retweeted
What is the most counterintuitive finding in learning science?
@tracewoodgrains, founder of @educprogress:
"One of the biggest barriers to effective learning is that often the more effective education is, the less people intuitively like it... effective learning is hard work. Effective learning is often unpleasant in a way that ineffective stuff is not."
"There's this great video from Veritasium... they show people science videos that just tell them the right thing. Everyone says, 'This was clear. This was easy. I liked it.' And then you give them a test on it, and they retained basically nothing."
"They automatically slotted it into whatever model they already have of the world... it fits with whatever mistaken conceptions they have, and they just get things wrong."
"Whereas if you say, 'This is wrong, this is wrong, and now this is right'... students say, 'That was kinda confusing. That was unpleasant.' And then you test them, and they perform significantly better."