So weird. Some weeks I just squirrel away on some problem and other weeks I can’

So weird. Some weeks I just squirrel away on some problem and other weeks I can’t stop the tidal wave – I have to sprint just to capture what I can. No control over it at all. Just happens.

One thing that has become so obvious of late, is that hypotheses seem to be purely intuitive in origin, and mere accidents of whatever else you were thinking before hand. And the only possible solution is to place no confidence in them at all, other than to just attack them from every possible angle: what explanatory power does this idea provide? And how can I refute it?

The second thing that’s even more clear to me now, is that writers must carefully limit their stimulation to the subject at hand so that free association is not polluted by conflicting subjects: allow yourself to have pure ‘dreams’ (waking free associations).

The third is that intellectual productivity is largely constituted in the sheer number of hours you focus on a problem to the exclusion of all others: specialization.

I mean, intelligence does buy you velocity, but only in initial free association. Just working at free association on a singular subject trains your neural network so that the previous associations are conducted without cost, and the next association is now available to you for the prior cost.