In his 1936 essay "the crack-up"novelist f. scott fitzgerald got off his famous observation about the test of a first-rate mind. Fitzgerald said an intelligent person should be capable of holding two opposing ideas in his head and still function. Fitzgerald never specified what he meant by this. Of course his quote endures because of its mysterious vagueness. Maybe Fitzgerald meant to say something grandly philosophical, such as: In order for mankind to survive, we must conduct our lives as if there were a God who would judge us for eternity, when the truth may be ... well, who knows. Possibly he was referring to the old paradox of our dual nature as human animals: part logical, part intuitive. Or maybe Fitzgerald merely was looking at his own unhappy life―and confessing how hard it is to pretend that one's work matters when one is beset by drunkenness and depression. Now, let's see if we can hold two opposing thoughts about Silicon Valley in our heads.
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