| name | value |
| location | New York |
| description | Why context is important? |
| date | 2022-07-16 |
I’ve been reading [Balaji’s](https://balajis.com) new book [The Network State](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VPKZR3G). He is an extremely smart person and it’s always interesting to read or listen to his ideas.
However, reading his book (and before that listening to his podcasts) I noticed that it seems like he always gives examples of US, India, China, Russia and Singapore to justify his ideas. This kind of makes sense. I think he lived in at least 2 countries from this list and it seems like he spent decent amount of time reading about India, China and Russia. Because Balaji lived in at least 3 countries he has way more context about the world than regular person. But I don’t think even this context is enough to justify his ideas.
He reminds me of Adam Curtis. Adam Curtis makes brilliant documentaries and have this beautiful mind that connect different dots and able to produce incredible stories. However, there is one issues with Adam Curtis’ work. Most of his films are about US, UK, Russia and China. He is an expert on this countries. And he tried to explain everything (from history to the future) through the knowledge of those 4 countries.
And if you happen to know any other context that is not the same that Adam Curtis or Balaji know their ideas and their explanations stop to be so solid. World is way more diverse than US, UK, China, Russia and India. There are so many places with so many different histories and trends - think Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, Central America and so on - that they would break any theory of the past, or present, or the future that you are trying to build.
Another example is Alain de Botton. Alain de Botton knows a lot about US, US, Switzerland and judean societies. That is his context. His work inspired by what he knows in this context and solves some problems in it. But Alain de Botton is at least acknowledges this limitation. He always says that he is focused on the problems of the Western world. He doesn’t try to come up with the solution for Eastern Europeans or Latin Americans.
So we come to the second point I want to make. I’m reading [“What Do You Care What Other People Think?”](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OA6KIS) by Richard Feynman. He says the following:
I’ve always been very one-sided about the science, and when I was younger I concentrated almost all of my effort on it. In those days I didn’t have time, and I didn’t have much patience, to learn what’s called the humanities. Even though there were humanities courses in the university that you had to take in order to graduate, I tried my best to avoid them. It’s only afterwards, when I’ve gotten older and more relaxed, that I’ve spread out a little bit. I’ve learned to draw and I read a little bit, but I’m really still a very one-sided person and I don’t know a great deal. I have a limited intelligence and I use it in particular direction.
Please read this carefully. How come one of the smartest people of XX century had this humility and honesty about himself? And how come we don’t have such disclaimers in the books of “experts” and “thought leaders” of our time?
Balaji (and many others) has a very beautiful mind (probably 10x more powerful than mine will ever be). Why doesn’t he just write something like this?
I’ve read many books on topic such and such. I lived and heavily studied this and that society. I don’t know much about anything else, but here is the list of ideas and connections my mind was able to produce based on all the knowledge I received. Read those ideas and stories, think about them, try to criticize them, but don’t take it as a final truth.
That is what I want from the modern books. It feels not many people since Richard Feynman or Neil Postman were able to stay humble and honest and down to Earth. The idea is simple. No one can discover ultimate truth and find prescriptive solution. The idea is to make small advancement, acknowledge its shortcoming and pass it on to further generations.