“something in the water” syndrome

something-in-the-waterism is the belief that what you’re lacking is a secret sauce from not moving to the right city and not being part of some special group that will make you a phenom.

people who think this way almost always need to work on themselves way more than they need to be moving anywhere. “but the vienna ci — “ no, that was uniquely due to socioeconomic necessity from wars and lack of technology we ubiquitously have now. “but these people I know are — “ NO. stop. stop the whole category of thought.

when intellectual meccas like pre-WWII vienna were a thing, people were forced by both wartime constraints and technology to congregate into single places. now that they *don’t have to do that*, there are significantly fewer places that have vienna circle-like influence. name the equivalent of the vienna circle for the post-2000 world. it’s not nearly as straightforward. you’ll debate about what it is and why, and this is very obviously because there is no longer an imperative to congregate in a single location and this becomes *even less true* with time. there is nothing intellectually that people need to be in a specific city to accomplish in mathematics or philosophy anymore; zoom was the death blow to whatever was left.

people like this don’t need “circles”. they need to grind like hell, meaning do at least 3 hours of “real work” a day at bare minimum, with the maximum being whatever you can handle for weeks or ideally months at a time. try your best to not get distracted from difficult, grating, exhausting tasks with not much immediate payoff. do this in some spot where you’re cut oft from excitement in the air, be that your aunt’s guesthouse or some shithole town where nothing interesting is happening and the data connection kinda sucks and no circle of “””interesting””” people is around. work on yourself, and stop trying to find other people who will work on you for you.