I’m going to define “technical” skills and then make the case that they’re everywhere and severely underrated. Handwaving over them allows us to dismiss the work of wide swaths of the population. And noticing them will light up your life and unlock new worlds.
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The specific moment that forever changed how I saw this came right at the end of the movie Free Solo. It’s about the first person to climb up El Capitan without any kind of rope or safety device. As the credits rolled, my friend Sam said something offhand like “it was so cool to see the technical details.”