open questions 4 open of 4 the unresolved ledger

The post’s account of leaving things is that the targets were completable. Beating one person at chess is finishable; getting good at chess is not. Under that reading the pattern isn’t a character problem, it’s a framing problem.

The post names its own conflict of interest before anyone else can:

I will not argue that this belief is convenient for me. I never really reached most of my goals, so saying the goals themselves were the problem is either the cop out or the actual reason, and I cannot tell you which from here.

Marked as testing rather than open because unlike the other two, this one has a stated falsifier and a live experiment already running. The two-part check at the end of the same post is the instrument: whether the domain becomes the subject of the weekly post within six weeks, and whether I’m still in the same domain in two years.

The short check is the one that reports first, and it was designed to. The long one only returns a verdict after the point where I’d historically already be gone, which makes it useless on its own.

The post argues that what I envy in people is depth rather than the subject they went deep on. The war strategy coworker is the example. I don’t want to play the games. I wanted whatever he had.

Then the same post disqualifies the one place I’ve actually had that:

I have been there once. RuneScape. The hours glided, I was consumed by it. And I catch myself saying that one doesn’t count, because it’s useless to my future. But if depth is the thing and the subject doesn’t matter, then it counts, and I have already proven I can do it once. If it doesn’t count, then the subject does matter, and I don’t have a way of saying which subjects are worthy that isn’t just me deciding after the fact.

Both branches cost something. If it counts, then the claim that I’ve never had depth is false, and a lot of the framing on this site rests on that claim. If it doesn’t count, then subject matters, the whole argument was about something else, and I’m ranking subjects by a standard I’ve never written down.

Unresolved because I did not pick a branch, and picking one now, knowing which is more convenient, is exactly the move the entry is about.

The argument is that depth is worth what it costs, and the cost is named plainly: parties, time with people, not always but often enough.

The post ends without standing behind it:

I want to say I’d take that trade. Life has no given meaning, and the meaning I want to give it is depth of knowledge. Whether I would actually take it is not something I can answer from here, because I have never been far enough in to be asked.

That’s the honest position and it’s also a problem, because the whole direction of this site assumes an answer. Everything about going deeper in one domain than I’ve gone in anything is a bet that when the bill comes I pay it.

I have no evidence either way. I’ve never been deep enough in anything for the trade to be offered, which means every previous time I walked away, I walked away before the price was ever named. That is not the same as having refused to pay it, and it isn’t evidence that I would.

The argument is that most friction can be removed by a plain cost benefit analysis. Match your clothes because being self conscious all day costs more than the five minutes did. A plane on route would not leave its drag devices deployed.

Then the rule turns on itself in the last paragraph:

Anything worth having asks something of you. A hobby will. A person will. Something I want to learn will take attention for months before it gives anything back, and by this rule I would cut it before it ever paid.

Which is the same shape as the problem everywhere else on this site: depth is expensive up front and only pays after you have already committed. A rule that optimises for low friction now is a rule that removes exactly the things worth staying in.

There is a second problem underneath it, and the post names that too. There is no measurement here at all, no baseline for focus before any of this started, so even applying the rule for six months produces a verdict made of impressions.