This is very, very long, and I've read about the first third while skimming the rest. (In general, Venkatesh's essays tend to be enormously padded with a very low signal-to-noise ratio, so this isn't too surprising.) That said, my impression is that you could condense this essay to, roughly, the following:
"It's always optimal to leave some energy aside rather than use it to increase performance in areas where you want higher performance, since your environment is more unpredictable than you think, no matter how unpredictable you already think it is."
Stated this way, it feels relatively trite for anyone who's already spent some time thinking about this sort of thing, and also largely unobjectionable (you could argue for some caveats, e.g. in situations when you're putting energy into increasing your energy capacity, foom-style).
Would anyone here disagree? If you think I've missed something important or I'm not giving the essay enough credit, I'd be really curious to hear your points.
> “No, I’m not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I’m after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.”
Sick burn on... (checks notes[1][2]) Possibly Leroy A. Wilson, but more likely Walter Sherman Gifford
"It's always optimal to leave some energy aside rather than use it to increase performance in areas where you want higher performance, since your environment is more unpredictable than you think, no matter how unpredictable you already think it is."
Stated this way, it feels relatively trite for anyone who's already spent some time thinking about this sort of thing, and also largely unobjectionable (you could argue for some caveats, e.g. in situations when you're putting energy into increasing your energy capacity, foom-style).
Would anyone here disagree? If you think I've missed something important or I'm not giving the essay enough credit, I'd be really curious to hear your points.