🤯Unknown Unknowns #78 - The DGAF Arb

Dec 4, 2022

That’s what a ship is, you know. It’s not a keel and a hull and a deck and sails. That’s what a ship needs. But what a ship is... What the Black Pearl really is ... is freedom. - Captain Jack Sparrow

Last week, I brought up the concept of the DGAF Arb. If you Don't Give A Fuck, you can spend a lot less money. If you don't care that your car costs $30k less than your neighbor, or if you don't care if your house is smaller? With that extra money, you can do more of the things you want or you can do less of the things you don't want. You can work less.

When I was a kid, we stayed at cheap hotels (when we didn't stay with relatives). My parents reasoned that all we did was sleep there. That's stayed with me, and I can afford better vacations by staying in less luxurious surroundings.

But it’s not just money. With a DGAF attitude, you’re not beholden to anyone else’s opinions. You’re less susceptible to mimetic desire. Like the Black Pearl, what DGAF really is, is freedom.

Writing of the Week:

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Paul Millerd defines the term “illegible ambition” as an ambition that no one, including yourself, can define. Contrast this with a legible ambition - what your parents can brag about.

Legible ambitions such as lawyer, sailor, and banker have predefined paths and connotations. My illegible ambition is something along the lines of helping people realize their value. What exactly does this look like? I’m still trying to figure that out.

The concept of illegible ambition leads toward exploration. The act of trying to define something, even if unsuccessfully, makes you explore the concept more.

The problem is that if you can’t define your ambition, it makes it hard for anyone to understand what you’re up to. How can you help people if you can’t explain what you do?

I’m reminded of the concept of tacit knowledge that I learned from Cedric Chin. Tacit knowledge is knowledge that you can’t explain to someone else, it has to be learned through experience. But I believe that tacit knowledge can slowly become legible as training practices improve. But knowledge is fractal - when something becomes legible, it exposes whole layers of new territory to explore.

This cycle reminds me of Tom Morgan’s explanation of Ian McGilchrist’s ideas. The Left brain is rational thought, while the Right brain is synthesis. The Left brain tries to make the illegible legible, while the Right brain explores past the legible frameworks. Learning is a cycle, finding new truths and then exploring the edge cases.

What would cycling between illegible and legible ambitions look like? I’m experimenting with ways to help people realize their value. Newsletter Launchpad is trying to help people incrementally find their creativity. This newsletter explores themes of self-understanding. I have conversations trying to help people build their ideas. These attempts force me to try to explain this ambition to other people, which gives me more context and understanding to try new experiments.

Discoveries:

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Kurt Steiner skipped a stone 88 times. You can't do that unless you're obsessed about skipping stones. He's estimated that he's skipped 250,000 rocks in his lifetime. He’s the best stone skipper in the world because he cares so little about other people’s opinions that he will spend that many hours on his craft.

Is this good? Bad? Maybe it just is.

Skipping has brought Steiner respite from a life of depression and other forms of mental illness. It has also, in part, left him broke, divorced, and, since the death of his greatest rival, adrift from his stone-skipping peers.

🔗 Stone Skipping Is a Lost Art. Kurt Steiner Wants the World to Find It.

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For as long as I remember, I've wanted to understand what makes me tick. What is my intrinsic motivation and how much of me is driven by external forces? The whole point of this newsletter is to understand the blind spots that I have.

But if you DGAF, the search for understanding yourself turns into rationalizing your actions. This essay asks, what if there's no point in trying to understand yourself?

🔗 The False Promise of Understanding Yourself

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I discovered Jack Raines a few months ago and I think I’ve shared his writing before. Here, he talks about the costs of giving too many fucks.

When you realize that nothing matters, and everything matters, you lose those inhibitions that beg you to wait til the timing is better. You ignore that voice in your head that tells you those risks are too great. What risk is too great? You're already dead. There is only one risk: not seizing every opportunity that you can in this life, because you won't get those chances again.

🔗 The Opportunity Cost of Everything