Dwarkesh

I think a lot of blogging is reactive.

You read other people's blogs and you're like, no, that person is totally wrong.

Part of what we want to do with this scenario is say something concrete and detailed enough that people will say, no, that's totally wrong and write their own thing.

But whether it's by reacting to other people's posts, which requires that you read a lot, or by having your own ideas, which requires you to remember what your ideas are, I think that

90% of people who complain that they don't have ideas I think actually have enough ideas.

I don't buy that as a real limiting factor for most people.

Yeah, it's interesting because, like, a lot of areas of life are selected for...

arrogant people who don't know their own weaknesses because they're the only ones who get out there.

I think with blogs, and I mean, this is self-serving, maybe I'm an arrogant person, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Like, I hear a lot of stuff from people who are like, I hate writing blog posts.

Of course, I have nothing useful to say.

But then everybody seems to like it and read blog it and say that they're great.

Right.

So, I mean, part of what happened with me was I spent my first couple years that way and then gradually I got enough positive feedback that I managed to convince the inner critic in my head that probably people will like my blog post.

But there are some things that people have loved that I was like absolutely on the verge of, no, I'm just going to delete this.

It would be too crazy to put it out there.

That's kind of why I say that maybe the limiting factor for so many of these people is courage because everybody I talk to who blogs is like within 1% of not having enough courage of blogging.

I think like eight to ten years on LiveJournal before... No, it was less than that.

It's more like five years on LiveJournal before ever starting a real blog.

I blogged on... I posted on LessWrong for like a year or two before getting my own blog.