original thoughts have terrible UX

[tw: meta bullshit]

an original thought is such a fucking pain in the ass.

so I wasn’t even trying, bro. I was just listening to music, daydreaming, and it just shows up. no references, no nothing. I can’t even tell if it’s a good thought, or just a bad idea, or even something incredibly stupid. and now I have to spend days trying to understand what it’s saying, what it’s thinking, what its shape is, how to fit it in my head.

meanwhile, there are millions of perfectly good opinions just lying around, fully formed. lots of people have tested them. they say they like them. they’re endorsed. and if I want, I can just pick one up and start using it.

and the economics of original thought, the dollars, they’re just ridiculous. like, I can spend three, four days developing a perspective on something, and I have no guarantee of a useful outcome. on the other hand, I can just adopt an existing opinion in ten seconds, and I’ll get the same social benefit. even better, actually, because there’s already an audience for an established opinion. there’s a community, there’s vocabulary, and there are already even specific people who will disagree and engage with it. you know all of this from the start.

also, these original thoughts, they don’t scale. every new one needs an investment of time and energy, and there’s no guarantee that either that one’s good or the next one’s going to be good. you can’t reuse much of the work, and maintenance itself is a huge cost. occasionally you’ll discover a flaw in an idea, and now you’re spending the weekend just reconsidering everything. like, something you were perfectly happy believing until yesterday, and now you’ve got to go back and figure out what else you’ve been wrong about.

just a terrible product.

what I’m saying is, I think we should just standardize. we should have a small number of trusted opinion providers, and each one constantly gives you a curated selection of perspectives across all sorts of subjects. who cares what the subject is? everything.

and that way, you can subscribe to one or more that match the personality you want to be associated with, okay? and then you’ll get automatic updates. whenever something happens in the world, within seconds, minutes, you’ll just get that opinion. you don’t even have to bother with the specifics of what happened. you’re just told what to think about it.

this would be amazing.

so anyway, in the meantime, I’ve decided to stop developing my own opinions on things. it’s just too much work. there’s no return on investment, and I’d rather spend my time on something more productive and efficient.