All That And A Bag Of Chips...
Moontower Munchies #1
Moontower Readers,
Welcome to the first Moontower Munchies (I’m gonna shake this metaphor’s moneymaker until the last drop). You might recognize it as a “Last Call” spinoff.
When: These will come out on Wednesdays
What: It will be a link to something I found useful or provocative. If I took notes on it, I’ll include them, but sometimes it’ll just be a link (or two).
[Whether I take notes on something has nothing to do with my opinion of it. I usually take notes when it’s something that relates to a pre-existing mind thread that I’m trying to fill out further. That means a link without notes can be just as high quality as one without. If I share something as a munchie it’s because I think it was worthwhile.]
It was hard to choose a link for the first issue from the stockpile, so I went with one that felt personally resonant and unusually honest.
Sal Khan’s interview On The Finding Mastery Podcast (18 min read)
I had a lot of notes and comments on this one. Here’s the ToC:
1 How did Sal mentally manage the risk of non-venture backed entrepreneurship?
2 Dealing with cynics — who do you need to convince and what evidence do you hold?
3 Where did Sal learn to focus on evidence and focusing on who he needed to convince?
4 How did Sal frame the decision to leave the hedge fund path to start Khan Academy? (This one is pure🔥)
5 Did he share this thinking with others?
6 Healthy and unhealthy “imposter syndrome”
8 Why Sal wanted to dedicate himself to education
9 A quote pulled from Sal’s writing:
10 What is the state of education today?
12 On the stress of college admissions
13 What is the university tuition actually buying?
14 Sal’s desire for Khan Academy
My own reflection on the interview:
When you take risks, cynics will be constant. Sometimes they will be right and sometimes not. But you need to focus on 2 things:
Who do I actually need to convince?
What evidence do I possess that says the risk is worthwhile?
When making a decision, separate what you need from what you think you want. Then don’t be afraid to chase what inspires you (”a protagonist in your own movie”). I think of it as shedding to build.
Imposter syndrome can keep you grounded
Sal’s north star is personalized mastery learning because it increases self-esteem and well-being. It’s the maximum leverage point because our largest problems and conflicts stem from what’s in our minds. This is highly adjacent to my own “agency” argument.
Sal is courageous because he is trying to demonstrate that there can be a better way. He is consciously trying to be a role model through his actions and while I understand that many believe this is nudgy or righteous thinking I have argued the same point. We are suffering from a lack of healthy models and have settled into a forest of Molochian equilibriums. The “lord of the flies” broken culture around college admissions Sal uses is but a metaphor for what I see everywhere — the type of competition that is unhealthy and eats its own competitors. The people who feel on top now cannot outrun it (and they are trying…they see all the problems too but figure think their private enclaves will protect them. If it doesn’t eat them, it will eat their children.
And an old Sal quote:
If you believe in trying to make the best of the finite number of years we have on this planet, while not making anyone worse, think that pride and self-righteousness are the cause of most conflict and negativity, and are humbled by the vastness and mystery of the universe, then I'm the same religion as you.
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Delicious !