Comment by Alephinitesimal
1 day ago
I think solitude is great. The hard part is finding the right people to talk to. I'm not sure if this is a Silicon Valley thing, but I've met some people who use a lot of jargon in a way that feels partly about status. At first I thought they just had a lot of ideas. Then they started talking about things in my own field, and I realized they were getting some pretty basic concepts wrong.
My guess is that some of this comes from listening to too many podcasts. You can pick up a lot of jargon and big ideas pretty quickly, and some podcasts are better at giving you that "oh, now I get it" feeling than actually helping you understand the ideas.
I don't live in Silicon Valley but dealing with same issue, finding people brainstorm or discuss ideas is very hard these days. A lot of trend following, listening to same podcast and reading same books, emphasis being on non fiction, using terms like neuroplasticity, neurodivergence etc. Then I end up talking with with Claude, which can be useful sometimes but cant replace human creativity.
> but I've met some people who use a lot of jargon in a way that feels partly about status.
You mean basically every HN commenter nowadays?
Big words. Big terms. Heavy phrasing. All to say a bunch of nothing. True knowledge lies in simplicity. True wisdom lies in humility. Both of which are sorely missing around here.
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