Here are some quick thoughts that I want to share with the world. I’ve also added insights from other people here that may be useful to people trying to explore how the world works. I might expand some of these into full essays in the future.
Play positive sum games: This is a concept in game theory where you can have either positive sum games or zero-sum games. A positive sum game is when the one person gains something and the other person doesn’t necessarily have to lose something. On the other hand, zero sum games are when one player wins and the other player has to lose. Games like status are zero sum games as you hav eto be better than someone to have status. However, in positive sum games, people will want to help you and cooperate as they will also gain things. In general, playing positive sum games will lead to better outcomes for everyone and lead to a much better overall playing experience.
Do things that matter: Solving problems that matter to the world offers three things. The first is the satisfaction of helping people. This is a given with solving big problems and making people’s lives better will make you feel much better than just solely trying to get more profit. The second thing is competition. Many people are hesitant to do unproven, futurisitc things because of thier inherent risk. For this reason, you will have more people just willing to help you out and try to get your company successful. Finally, you can also gain better financial resources by solving big problems, as they come with big rewards.
Work on things that matter to you: This will ultimately give you more drive and willingness to do hard things because you actually care about the problem you are trying to solve and feel excited about doing the things necessary to solve said problem.
School Can Help: Lots of people in the startup space say that school doesn’t matter as it doesn’t teach you about useful things in life. I would disagree though. If kids start looking at only how to get better grades, they will be learning how to do that instead of learning how to learn. I see this pattern a lot where if you actually enjoy the process and understand the first principles of a subject, you are bound to do well in it. In short, aiming to learn will bring good grades but aiming for good grades won’t teach you how to learn. And the earlier that kids are trying to get good grades, the earlier it will backfire on them.
Why is math hated on: Math has had a long reputation of being kids’ least favourite subject. On the contrary, I think that math can be one of the best subjects and especially satisfying for those who can appreciate the underlying patterns in it. From my experience, kids don’t hate math that much in elementary as much as they do in high school. This points to one fact: kids are trying to learn about how to get the results instead of understanding the underlying principles. While this can work in early stages, it doesn’t work well in advanced math. Compoudning is real and the more you try to avoid it, math just becomes exponentially harder.
Discovery vs. Implementation: While research is focused on discovery, it’s very rare for scientists to actually go out into the world and implement thier discoveries. For this reason, it’s very rare for scientists to get recognition for their work when it doesn’t directly impact people. For example, almost everyone knows Elon Musk for created electric vehicles with Tesla but I’m pretty sure 99.99% of the population doesn’t know who created the concept of the car and discovered the mechanisms behind why it works. This should be a factor for people to think about when choosing a career path. If you want to see direct results of your work, get recognition, and possibly see large financial return, implementation is the way to go. If you are content with living a modest life, like discoveries, and really enjoy what you are studying, discovery may be better suited for you. Unfortunately in both cases theere is a lot of unwanted things that will suit neither case like grant applications and legal approvals for discovery and implementation respectively.
I’ll add more soon