The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Reflection of a Bottom Up-per.

I first ranted in Topics:

I discovered these names by following my curiosity, slowly building up a collection of things I find interesting, connecting with people with similar interests, looking for references of books, before I discovered the taxonomy.

And then having a name for them allows me to discover more related information (bless the internet).

Then I started discovering that things and truths I thought I was so brilliant for observing and deriving were oh so esoteric and original were apparently well established fields and disciplines.

That is how ~~broken~~ limited the entry point of our education is. We go top down by default and not enough bottom up.

Imagine how easy teaching can be if we just let kids follow their curiosity instead of shoving 20 vague disciplines down their throats without introducing how and why they are relevant and interesting? And most importantly: how they are all connected in the grand scheme of things.

The 15 year old me would straight out say “no thanks” to the thought of “sociology”. I would cringe at the thought of expressing interest in “postmodernism”. But now I stumbled upon these fields while following interesting problems, going hours researching on my own, down some rabbit hole.

One thing I learned from this is when you want to investigate big questions in life most of them require multidisciplinary thinking and knowledge.

Once you caught a glimpse of something interesting, you catch it by its tails, follow its trail, and likely you’ll uncover an interwoven web of the whole world’s knowledge at your feet.

You know that saying, that the way you do one thing is the way you do everything? I think that’s true.

The way I learn, process information, organise, plan, make decisions, write, and think are the same: I collect the pieces, dump them all onto the floor, sort through, find patterns, draw conclusions, then put the pieces back up.

Bottom up all the things!

Curiousity -> exploration -> finding names for them -> more clues -> articulating the interest -> discovering people with shared interests -> expressing yourself -> interest grows -> repeat.