I used to dislike how people needed “social permission” in order to listen to obvious good advice. If a wise scholar or “guru” says it, you’ll do it; if a rando off the street says the exact same thing, you’ll ignore it.

Not anymore. I understand the value of social permission. People need it, because the good advice is only obvious if you already know it! If you don’t, then you don’t know it’s good advice – and the admiration of your peers, while not a perfect validation system by any means, is better than no signal at all.

There’s a funny meme that goes: “I’m going to get a good grade at therapy, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.”

It’s funny because there are plenty of people who want to do therapy “correctly” (and plenty of other subjective things, too). But look a little closer, and this kind of “correct” always translates to “whatever gets me superficial approval from a perceived authority figure.”

If something is subjective like that, then the main – often only – person whose opinion matters is you.

Some things are goals, and some things are tools to achieve those goals.

There’s no universal categorization, of course. What’s a goal in itself for me might only be a tool for someone else. A good example is exercise. Some people enjoy jogging, and the feeling of doing it is enough to entice them; the health benefits are secondary. Other people hate jogging but do it anyway because they want the health benefits. To the former person, jogging is a goal; to the latter, it’s a tool.

Understanding why humans do certain things – whether they’re tools or goals, means or ends – is an important part of predicting why they might or might not rush to engage with some substitution.

Imagine that someone invents a pill that gives all the health benefits of jogging without having to run a single step. This person expects no one to ever jog again, opting instead for the cheap, efficient medicine. To their surprise, many people continue to jog! Not all of them, of course, but way more than expected. The inventor’s confusion comes from not realizing that there were people who were jogging because they wanted to, not as a means to an end.

Some people like to experience art. They like to look at a painting, stand in the presence of a sculpture, or listen to music. Other people use art as a means of connecting with other people – often the artist themselves. They aren’t just looking at Starry Night, they’re reaching across the gulf of souls to connect to the heartbeat of Van Gogh. They’re screaming along to The Clash not because of an objective appreciation of a well-constructed song, but because they want to borrow some of the burning indignation between the notes.

That’s why it’s never mattered whether or not art was “good” to some people. What mattered was what it communicated, because some people were always using art as a language, not a platonic representation of beauty.

Things like AI will replace some art, for some people. I expect that it will illustrate a lot more cereal boxes and movie posters. But it will never replace our desire to simply know another human in some new and novel way. Not everything is a tool to be replaced; some things will always be experiences to be cherished.

My marvelous Miss Squish, my middle child, turns nine years old today. What a wonder she is! Endlessly curious, smart as a whip, funny and joyous. She solves puzzles, crafts, invents, explores, and creates endlessly. She is a constantly humming machine of creativity and brilliance.

My father pegged her as philosophically brilliant at a young age, not just scientifically so. The last voice mail he ever left me (which I still have saved) was him explaining to me why she was clearly a genius, and she’s only gotten smarter every year since then.

She’s also a supremely sensitive young lady, in tune with both her own emotions and those around her. She can pick out a sad child or a ticking temper tantrum intuitively. And she’s ever so kind.

I love her more every year, and I can’t wait to see the next few dozen lives she chooses to live. Happy birthday, Squishy!

What you think is “average” or “normal” is a function of what’s normal for you. Both because we tend to generalize from the self, and because birds of a feather flock together.

In terms of generalizing from the self, people have a tendency to consider themselves dead average in a lot of categories, and don’t think the range is that wide. Even if you know you’re above- or below-average at something, you still don’t think that the far ends of the spectrum are that different from you.

But this is also a factor of what your life looks like. If you’re a pro athlete, you probably know a lot more other pro athletes than the average person who isn’t one. As a result, most people you know are probably in much better shape than the average, which further skews your view of what “the average” is. “Sure, I think most normal people can bench 300 lbs.,” you might say – because you can, and lots of your friends can, too. But that’s not a representative sample!

And you are never a representative sample all by yourself. Even if you take one of those tests like in grade school and it says “You’re in the 80th percentile,” that still only means you’re smarter than 80% of people who took the test. That by itself is a skewed metric!

The point is this – when you’re trying to guess what a group of people is going to be like on average, never use yourself or the people you know as your measuring stick!

It’s always odd to me when I see someone complain about an experience that they deliberately altered from its intended state.

Sometimes you see someone review a recipe very poorly, but they’ll say something like, “I substituted banana for the eggs and rice for the flour and it turned out gross; this is a terrible recipe. 1 star.” If you make eight substitutions to a dish at a restaurant and then don’t like it… maybe that’s on you?

People change the rules of games, ask for alterations to outfits, or change driving routes. That’s fine if you know what you want, likely because you’ve had the standard experience before. But if you haven’t… try it. At least then you might have some sense about what to change!

It’s been a long time since I was in school, measured both in years and technological advances. So maybe what I’m proposing is actually being done in some schools! But either way, here’s an exercise I’d give students frequently:

I’d ask a question about history, current events, or something similar. I’d then tell the students to use whatever technology they want to find out the answer and report back. Sometimes they could work in teams, other times alone. Sometimes I’d directly supervise, and other times I’d give them complete autonomy. When they reported back, they’d be graded on accuracy and completeness of the answers, with bonus points for demonstrating real understanding.

The goal should always be to promote critical use of research tools. It will absolutely never matter whether or not you have the state capitols memorized. What will matter is whether or not you can find information when you need it, and whether you can determine what information is accurate from amid the noise.

It’s amazing the way we can trick ourselves in to caring about dumb stuff that we’d never care about organically.

Here’s an example: my son doesn’t like tuna. Unless I don’t tell him it’s tuna. If I fry up a whole tuna steak and serve it to him but never say the word “tuna,” he eats the whole thing and tells me he loves it. If I make a tuna casserole but tell him it’s just “casserole,” he asks for thirds. But if ask him if he wants to try a bite of tuna, he makes a face!

(I haven’t actually tried, but I wonder what he would say if I made him chicken but told him it WAS tuna!)

I remember when I was a kid, there was this pervasive joke on pretty much every TV show that broccoli was gross. I’ve got news for you, broccoli is delicious. Every kid I knew that didn’t like it had never actually tried it, but they sure watched TV.

But this applies in tons of areas. I knew a guy who was about 5′ 10″, and was convinced that girls wouldn’t be into him because he wasn’t six feet tall. His reasoning was that on dating apps, he’d seen girls whose profiles explicitly said they only wanted to date guys who were six feet and over.

Now I could comment on why that’s a silly thing to put in your profile to begin with, but that’s not the point of this post. The point here is that if you organically meet someone and flirt with them or whatever, they have no idea how tall you are. Nobody sees someone and feels an organic thrill of attraction but then says, “Wait, before I allow myself to be interested in this handsome, charming stranger, I’d better make sure they’re not 5′ 11″ tall!”

The takeaway is this: Just enjoy stuff and don’t worry if it’s a thing you don’t want to believe you can enjoy, and don’t spend time in spaces that require arbitrary trivia about yourself as an entrance fee if you don’t want to. Eat the tuna, date the not-tall guy, live a fun life. You wouldn’t know anyway unless I told you.

My eldest daughter, all on her own, researched an alternative high school that she’d like to attend. All on her own, she applied, and worked her butt off on the extensive requirements. Today, she got the letter that she’d been accepted.

All on her own.

This is what I’ve strived for with every day as a parent. To raise children who are, above all else, capable. I won’t always be here. I will open doors for my children when I need to, but the best use of my time is to give them firm ground, instead. A base from which to train. To jump. To fly.

I am so proud I could burst.

The more something is your area of expertise, the harder it is to become aware of what novices or the general public know about that thing. If you’re a cardiologist, it can be really easy to forget just how little the average person knows about heart health. It’s not “very little.” It’s “worse than nothing; almost everything they think they know is wrong.”

That’s the default for most areas of expertise. That’s just the nature of knowledge and mastery. But if your job is to teach, inform, or interact with novices within your sphere of genius, then it’s really important for you to check in now and then on the state of general knowledge.

For example, if you’re not just a cardiologist, but a professor of cardiology at a medical school, then it’s pretty important that you understand where people are when they first come through your doors. If you assume that they all have even 20% of your knowledge, then you’re going to be teaching in a very ineffective way, because you’ll be trying to build on foundational knowledge that isn’t there.

Every now and then (at least a few times per year!), have a chat about your area of expertise with a few people who have no formal exposure to it at all. Listen without judgement. Take stock of what small bits of knowledge could have the most impact. But never lose sight of how deep you are in the rabbit hole when you’re trying to give directions to people on the surface.