Tempering hardcoreness - by Ajeya Cotra - Good Bones

The kids are alright

There’s a kind of young guy who itches to accept great pain and risk for some glorious quest. Depending on other features of his brain and his particular place and time and upbringing, this could manifest as enlisting to fight the Nazis in World War II, free soloing El Capitan, trying to conquer the Achaemenid empire, grinding on the next great B2B SaaS unicorn, training all day to become a UFC fighter or a concert pianist, trying to build a machine god to conquer death, etc. One popular way to channel this drive is to become super hardcore about a totalizing ideology or cause. You could…

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