The following is a riff from a twitter thread I once wrote that I reference fairly often. I’m choosing to reproduce some of it here because I realize it’s a core part of my motivations.
People who are really knowledgeable about the world are often publicly silent about the juiciest stuff, probably because the upside to talking about those things publicly is minimal, and the downside potentially catastrophic (for them, their interests, their assets).
This really sucks for smart kids in shitty social graphs. Kids in broken or even merely mediocre families, ambitious kids with small-minded peers. Young people who might achieve great things if they knew it was actually an option for them, and if they received a little encouragement.
I think from time to time about the story of how Thomas Edison encouraged a younger Henry Ford, who was telling him about his prototype for a gasoline-powered engine. “No man up to then had given me any encouragement,” Ford said. I can’t help but wonder how many Henry Fords the world must have missed out on over the years, because nobody was there for them in the right place at the right time to give them the encouragement that they needed. Tyler Cowen makes a similar point about the high-return activity of raising others’ aspirations.
If a young person is trapped in a stifling social graph, they’re going to need this encouragement from the public commons. That’s where I got my encouragement – from authors, from books, from music, from the kindness of Internet strangers. I wouldn’t be who I am today without the kindness of others, and I feel very compelled to pay it forward.
So that’s why I do what I do. I remember what it was like to feel like an isolated, disenfranchised young person, surrounded by a lot of cynicism. All I wanted was to hear from an adult version of myself, who was a little further along on the path than me.
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The importance of a healthy, nourishing public commons is something that continues to be underappreciated. In Singapore, for example, I often hear a talking point about sex education along the lines of, “Well, parents should be the ones to teach their kids.” When I hear this, what I hear is, “Fuck the kids who have shitty parents.” This applies in lots of contexts for a lot of problems. It takes a village.
I don’t expect to persuade everybody of this, but I don’t need to, either. I just need a few more people to give a damn about raising the quality of the public commons. We can do this by finding each other, and talking to each other, publicly. I’ve talked elsewhere about how this is how you create scenes. A scene is simply a group of people who are loosely-but-truly aligned. If you study human history, you’ll find that a disproportionate amount of value is recurringly created by a relatively small group of people trying to impress and one-up each other publicly. That’s how science is advanced, that’s how great music is made, everything. Hardly anybody creates great work in isolation – and even then, they have to rely on language to think their thoughts, and they have to reference and study works that other people have made.
Here’s my Roam page on scenes, with a long list of examples of scenes.
Back to thinking about sex education: I don’t think schools should necessarily be the ones to provide it, either. I’m not a fan of school in general and I think it’s a rather outdated system that’s far too coercive far too often. My ideal solution to the sex ed problem is thoughtful, nourishing educators creating content that’s publicly accessible. Stuff that people can point each other to.
This is already how we handle a lot of human knowledge – so many of the important things about life are things that we learn from books, movies and so on. So many people will tell you that a song or a band saved their life. I want to encourage people to think about how this is. We continue to criminally underpay and undervalue our artists, and I hope to help change this. The beautiful thing about artists is that they will make art regardless. But the development of our species shouldn’t be contingent on the sacrifice of a few idealists. We will flourish when more people learn to see and appreciate this.
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I’ve often heard casual observers say, oh, knowledgeable people should just be less cowardly and share their knowledge with the rest of us. I do agree, I think! I’m just not sure that expressing that sentiment is very useful in achieving the goal. It might work once in a while, just as you may have at some point done something because someone pestered you to do it – but generally speaking I think this is an ill-advised tactic. It creates an unpleasant environment that discourages playfulness, sharing and all of the things I actually want to see in the world. But that might be a topic for a separate post.
In essence, though – I believe that the only truly rigorous and effective way to persuade people of anything is to demonstrate the solution. To be courageously open-hearted ourselves.
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(og thread) when I was younger I thought that talent was rare, but as I get older I realize that the answer is so much weirder than that. talent is not ~super~ rare. but talent hides, talent often doesn’t want to be found, talent is scared, talent is clueless
you could revise the definition of talent such that “it’s only talent if it’s also brave, bold, sensitive and savvy, otherwise it’s just sparkling potential” or something of the sort… I’m in two minds about that
it’s just so strange to contrast how
there’s this whole sphere of people who have minimal talent, minimal taste, but they’re just really loud and obnoxious about LARPing success, and they even get some of it in a tedious sense
then there’s talent that’s scared, or just clueless
like with each passing year I am more and more confident that most of the best artists in the world just go unknown. probably the best science/tech minds too. Elon has that anecdote about going to Netscape to ask for a job, standing in the lobby, being shy/nervous and going home
regardless of what your assessment is of Elon, like, my point isn’t about him, it’s about all the others
it’s about all the planes that don’t make it home. all the creative spirit that dies, or is locked in stasis, or closeted. we have billions of people in the world.
how many people do you know? I have made it a priority in life to aggressively get to know as many people as I possibly can. I would say I know like… 10,000 people, maybe. Push it up an order of magnitude, 100,000 people. that rounds down to like 0% of people
every single time I host an ii salon, overqualified experts show up who make me feel like they should be the host instead. I host a salon about aesthetics, a professional semiotician shows up. salon about optics, iirc some guy with 30+ years experience in related fields. but – and not to project too much assumptions about these people – for the most part, they don’t want to do the hosting themselves. it’s too much visibility, maybe. perhaps it’s professionally risky, idk. and I respect that.
but what it tells me is that… if I make bold, audacious leaps of faith, there will be people who show up quietly behind the scenes to support me. to lend me their strength, their knowledge, their expertise.
it’s a huge honor and also like a massive societal-level optical illusion. humanity is run by volunteers. (runk). the world is held up, held together, by all these people that few people really know about. (Island records).
all the attention is focused on whoever volunteers to be the face of the operations, the face of the movements. which is it’s own kind of chaotic hell, yes…
as a person who’s very sensitive about things like credit, my first instinct is “we should give more credit where it is due!”
but funnily-ironically, often these people don’t want to have their names and pictures plastered on everything. so even this has to be managed artfully.
it’s just wild to me, the conflicting messages in the commons… I have very rarely met a talented person who needed to Hustle and Grind. I mean, ok- I don’t want to be prescriptive here, each person gets to make their own choices about how much exposure they want. but still.
everything is just described wrongly and the language is all wrong and our general mainstream concept of everything is also all wrong. there is massive opportunity here, but it’s not signposted, so it takes brave, patient, persistent people to figure it out and bring light to all
reducing abuse doesn’t just reduce the torment and suffering of people being abused (which is of course worthwhile for its own sake) – it also encourages more talent to uplift everything and everyone. a bunch of the hidden talent that is hiding in fear
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I always wondered why Actually Successful people don’t talk very much publicly about the details of journeys and paths, and I’ve come to learn that it’s because there are disincentives for this that hit almost everyone except frauds – which then perpetuates a hostile commons
there’s a sort of Great Filter / dark forest whatever for public figures who want to talk openly about the truth of their experiences. We really end up getting the public commons (and politicians, etc) that we deserve
managing any public commons, any large enough group, any serious endeavor, etc – eventually it becomes about, well how are you going to handle abuse? Truly amazing what a small % of people it takes to ruin any good thing
the public as a whole is not interested in the truth and will attack anyone that attempts to speak it
if you have not yet been attacked for speaking the truth, it’s because you have not yet become a significant enough threat to the prevailing social order
here’s a rare-ish version of the missing utterances I’m talking about – it only really happens in private correspondences. I doubt franklin said anything like this openly in public
there must be so many geniuses or potential geniuses in our midst who we’ll never hear from because they’re averse to dealing with harassment and abuse if we get better at solving the abuse problem we will uplift the whole species
and as with say, sex education, lots of people will say things like “oh, it’s up to parents to teach their kids about the Real Stuff” – well that means kids with shit parents are supposed to what, fuck off and die? sorry lol i’m very passionate about this