Minimum Viable Curiosity ⇥ randsinrepose.com
In a hypothetical future world where all I ever knew was sitting in the back of a robot car, I would not appreciate the work involved because I’d never had the opportunity to learn to drive. This might be fine for many humans on the planet, but not for me. I learned how to drive on Highway 17, a scary mountain freeway that required me to become a competent driver as quickly as possible. I remember those lessons, they made me… me.
I liked learning to drive.
Better yet, I like learning. It gives me appreciation of the craft.
A great essay, in large part because I do not know that there is a perfect answer to any of the questions posed — and that is okay. That is basically where Lopp ends up at the end. There is, in an uncharitable reading, an element of young people today no longer know how to write a cheque as though that is essential. Maybe it is not inherently worthwhile to know how to drive or write a standardized corporate letter.
But we learn these things both for the end and for the means of getting there. A teacher is not assigning essay writing to high school students because they are expecting profound conclusions. The purpose of that exercise is to teach research skills, citing sources of information, structuring an argument, and writing persuasively. These are all skills with broad uses. As a formerly delinquent high school essay-writer, it took a long time for me to understand why this would become important or useful.
The shortcuts we have today seem useful, in the sense they can get you closer to a finished product with seemingly less work than before. They have their uses. But they are also missing an undervalued emotional quality and, at the heart of it, curiosity.