unlearning school

What 13 years produces:

• staff engineers
• sales directors
• surgeon specialists
• subconscious habits and mindsets

We leave school, but the behaviours it trained into us don't necessarily leave with us. For me, l've dabbled in more extracurriculars than the average student, and there’s a couple things l’ve noticed.

Tldr:

• Difficulty ≠ value; value = how much can one help others get what they want
• Don't blindly follow rules, chase structured uncertainty
• Adopt a 'strong opinions, weakly held' mental model

What’s Hard ≠ Valuable

During school, an exam paper went from easiest to hardest. The hardest questions were worth the most marks. Doing math extension 2 makes one seem smarter with its imaginary numbers. Spending longer on homework feels more natural than finishing it quickly.

What does this all have in common?

Difficulty. Effort too. Why?

Because they're observable immediately.

This leads to us reversing the logic - valuable things are sometimes hard, so we assume hard things must be valuable.

Outside school, value is determined by outcome.

If one automates a task in 10 min that previously took 2 hrs, one would be applauded. An easy or simple solution is often easier to understand, more scalable, cheaper, and can be iterated more. Complexity should have to justify itself through a better outcome.

When did l have to remind myself this?

When l assumed that those who dropped out of school must've been valuable since they're choosing a harder and more unconventional path. Or when I became interested in an InfoSys degree because it was looked down upon for sitting between business and engineering, and I wanted to prove people wrong by becoming good at both through it.

(l was told infosys was for degens - and after looking at course specs l agree it's quite prehistoric)

Redefining 'value'

If difficulty isn't what makes something valuable, then what does?

In school, what gives one an advantage is often better notes, better exemplar material, better teachers. I generalise these as 'access to better inputs'.

Because school gives one a predefined problem. Everyone wants the highest marks, therefore one's advantage comes from having better inputs to solve the same problems.

But in reality, value is measured by ‘how much can one help others get what they want?’

Let's take networking as an example.

One's value might come from:

• What one knows
• What one can do
• Who one knows

Why do people want to know event organisers?

From a cynical pov, the organiser sits in the middle of a big network - founders, investors, you name it. So people approach them with "great event!" and "thanks for organising" as the best initial common ground and eventually hope that relationship leads somewhere. It might be a referral, information, or simply access to someone they otherwise couldn't reach.

The organiser is doing the same calculation in reverse.

Is this person someone worth knowing? What do they know? What can they do? Who do they know? If there isn't much there, they'll probably be nice, agree with you, and move on.

Of course, people can actually be curious and helpful. I like Keith Ferrazzi’s model as build relationships by helping other people succeed, and over time one creates a network in which people naturally help one another. (Book: Never Eat Alone)

But even if networking is partly transactional, the power of being helpful is in itself, generous, yet if it benefits both parties, does it matter if the original incentive was for the self?

Self interest and generosity and coexist.

A fine example of comparing reality's greyness against school's black and white.

Don’t follow rules, chase structured uncertainty

In reality, uncertainty is everywhere. No good story happens from things going right ~ Glen Powell

There is a relationship between uncertainty, risk, and expected value (EV). The goal is to chase structured uncertainty. These are situations where the downside is relatively bounded, but the upside is uncertain and potentially massive.

Being young (under 18) is probably one of the best examples:

• low risk (still living with parental support)
• stable backup (hsc -> uni isn't going anywhere)
• uncertain upside - projects, people, opportunities, knowledge, skills
• high EV - even when something fails, much of what one internalises becomes another tool for what value one can offer others

So why aren't we chasing more of these bets?

Because uncertainty brings the unknown, and rules remove this uncertainty.

School gives us a very clear path. Do this assignment, study this syllabus, get this mark, get this ATAR, go to uni. Follow the rules and one roughly knows what happens next.

The act of following rules itself is neutral. The problem is following them without asking why the rule exists. Is it an actual constraint, or just a long-standing practice created under circumstances that might no longer exist?

Otherwise:

• one gets trapped inside the rule teller's narrative framework
• one rejects shortcuts because they feel wrong, rather than asking whether they produce the same or better outcome
• one builds inertia from chasing scores and certainty, even when reality has changed

A note on survivorship bias: only looking at the people/things that succeeded, while ignoring all the others that tried and failed.

This matters cuz chasing uncertainty doesn't mean copying unconventional people who succeeded. Seeing a dropout become a billionaire doesn't mean dropping out has high EV.

So don't blindly follow the conventional path. But don't blindly follow the unconventional path either.

Develop your own judgement.

How?

Strong opinions, weakly held

And what stops us from becoming trapped in our own judgement?

Paul Saffo's 'strong opinions, weakly held' means having enough belief in one's current understanding to make decisions and act. But don't get obsessed with being right.

This matters especially when chasing structured uncertainty because if one waits for certainty, one will never act. If one acts with complete certainty, one will ignore evidence that one is wrong.

The framework itself should be weakly held too.