Oceans of Wisdom

you have to find your way through a hyper-dimensional landscape

in both cases there is no safety net

being an artists is like being a startup entrepreneur

and people get to go along for the ride doing tasks

someone else found product market fit

which is why most people are employees

is one of the hardest things in the world

eg. the people who want to purchase the thing you make for more money than it costs you to make it

but finding "product market fit"

both popular activities because the rewards emotional and financial and reputational to success are high

both these are high failure rate activities

for the same reason that it is "hard to make a successful startup business"

"why is it hard to make a career selling art"

more productive, more cooperative etc etc

because more educated citizens are better for the collective

even in countries with limited interest in the individual, there is mandatory schooling

so whether luxembourg or north korea, we have schools

but at the top level societies figured out they should try to educate everyone to reasonable levels

they matter at the next level of detail

these don't matter so much

now the details are implementation details - public only, hybrid, vouchers, whatever

it is one of the most obvious high ROI things in society to educate people

is that it has higher societal fitness

the reason all societies evolved to some version of this

it might be framed as charity, but it is not really

it is 'selfish' from the point of the collective to do so

but because public education allows people with various talents to become maximally useful to society regardless of the economic circumstances of their birth

the reason we have free public education is not because someone cares specifically about you personally

but the purpose of the system is to optimize the collective, not to optimize you

systems still very imperfect

as we learn more, as humanity, we get better at this

is to get the right people, into the right position, with the right support to be maximally useful for society, for the collective

so the purpose of any civilization scale system

physics does not care

there is no equality of outcome

if someone jumps out of a helicopter incorrectly they die

and these things have different outcomes due to reality

someone has to jump out of helicopters special forces style, someone has to do genomics experiments, someone has to pick up the trash, someone has to dance ballet

which is right, I think

it cares about optimizing the collective

it cares about the collective

the system does not actually care about you personally

because the system (whether genetics or society) is not organized on behalf of optimizing for you personally

humanity's strength is having this vast spikeyness

in almost every aspect of life, there are many people who are better than me, it can't be any other way, there are 8 billion people, we have diverse genetic and environmental backgrounds, our skills, personality, motivations are all going to be different

it can't be any other way

what one does with those opportunities has to be your own issue

what we can do is offer a transparent, open, non-discriminatory platform where everyone is respected and given the same opportunities regardless of their background

maybe everyone was supposed to have equal outcomes in communism but stalin sure seemed to live in a bigger, nicer house than someone in siberia

and any and all attempts to force this just replicate the same outcome but in annoying and transparent and inefficient ways