Young Me versus Older Me

A Twitter thread from 2018 as I was getting closer to 50, and realized I had become something of an ANTI-intellectual over time

(1)

Young me: Point to life is to answer the questions to the universe.

Older me: That, and to live the hell out of my human body.

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(2)

Young me: Physics is the deepest, cuz, physics.

Slightly older me: Theoretical biology is even deeper, because many of the same high level principles would apply even with different physics.

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(3)

Young me: Math is even deeper than physics!

Older me: Nah. Just tracking down twisted tautologies.

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(4)

Young me: Biology reduces to physics.

Older me: Nah. Physics is about dead goop. Biology is about the vanishingly small goops that are selected to DO stuff.

https://gizmodo.com/how-godel-saved-mark-changizi-from-physics-5928674

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(5)

Young me: I can’t wait to be like Russell, von Neumann, Carnap, Turing, Quine, and Putnam.

Older me: Where the hell did those types go?

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(6)

Young me: Sex is cool and all, but ... life, the universe and everything.

Older me: Sex is, like, everything.

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(7)

Young me: Being on TV looks fun.

Older me: Being on TV is totally not fun.

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(8)

Young me: People can be deeply irrational and biased in their arguments, but we intellectuals can rise above that.

Older me: Nah. Not usually.

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(9)

Young me: To stay healthy, I’ll just eat as much bread as possible.

Older me: To stay healthy, I’ll just eat as little bread as possible.

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(10)

Young me: Looking for political fights at parties.

Older me: Mostly don’t give a crap, other than defending freedom of speech.

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(11)

Young me: I want a wife who is a mathematician.

Older me: I want a wife who is an artist.

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(12)

Young me: Logic is our most sophisticated human ability. Emotions are low and stupid.

Older me: We’re useless at logic. Our most brilliantly designed cognitive system is the emotions.

https://www.amazon.com/Expressly-Human-Decoding-Language-Emotion/dp/1637740484

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(13)

Young me: Science has much to teach the arts.

Older me: Nah. Science can learn MUCH more from the arts than the other way around.

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(14)

Young me: Writes up paper so elegantly that even I cannot understand it, cuz elegance is beauty, or something. (See https://www.changizi.com/uploads/8/3/4/4/83445868/ord.pdf )

Older me: Writes in super-breezy, redundant prose so that anyone can understand.

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(15)

Young me: Wish I could get a little respect.

Older me: Splashes of gray hair induces average young man to say, “Sir”, and I want to punch them in their face for the implication!

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(16)

Young me: I’ll get a couple dogs as training for kids.

Older me: Dogs were actually more difficult than kids.

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(17)

Young me: So cool that we humans are the uniquely plastic animal.

Older me: We’re just as much piles of instincts as all the other animals.

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(18)

Young me: HUGE difference between male and female sexual receptivity at a bar.

Older me: Holy crap, hardly any difference at all!

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(19)

Young me: Defined by what I *plan* on doing in my life.

Older me: Trying desperately not to be defined by what I already did.

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(20)

Young me: The Far Side is freaking hilarious.

Older me: Mildly amusing at most.

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(21)

Young me: Culture is just the suite of silly things we happen to do.

Older me: Culture brilliantly harnesses us, giving us language and the arts, and making us Human 2.0. https://www.amazon.com/Harnessed-Language-Mimicked-Nature-Transformed/dp/1935618539

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(22)

Young me: Laughs at potty jokes.

Older me: Laughs at potty jokes.

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(23)

Young me: Persian in name only.

Older me: Embraced my Persian side.

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Mark Changizi @MarkChangizi

“Young me”-“older me” Thread.