Flipping the Script on Expertise

A Beginner’s Mindset: Flipping the Script on Expertise #

This will be my final original blog post.

As counterintuitive as that sounds, I’m starting here—at the end.

I must admit, it’s because I do not have all the answers. I believe in Richard Feynman’s quote: “I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose.”

It’s essential to question what we should believe, even the things we hold dear. I like trying new things, laughing at myself, and even raising my hand to say, “I don’t know”. I guess, I’ve realised that I must be okay with being the only fool in the room who doesn’t know. I find that as I advance in expertise, I strive to remain a consummate beginner.

I believe that Socrates was onto something when he said: “It is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas, when I do not know, neither do I think I know.” All of us are just accumulating knowledge as we move forward in life. We acquire, we adapt, and we learn—often without fully realizing it. Experience: “You cannot buy it, borrow it, or pretend to have it.”

This blog, from here on out, will be a documentation of my attempt to embrace this philosophy. Every post will reflect my efforts in foraging, sensemaking and picking apart my beliefs in the hopes of returning to a child-like state of creation—for the sake of creation itself.

By the end of this exercise, I hope to follow my intuition and create without expectations. This is an attempt to change my worldview, showing me that the world is a playground for exploration. Perhaps it may have that same effect on you too, as one man once said: “I want to get you to try being creative on canvas just to take your time and sit down and have nothing in mind when you start just have a good feeling and be happy and in love with life and your world and sit down and begin playing and if you feel good about yourself and the world it’ll show in your painting”. So if you leave with that, that’s more than enough for me.

The posts that will follow will be a mixture of three key talking points:

Infrastructure & Technology: A deep dive into the systems that power our world and the people who maintain them.
Business: Especially start-ups and those “sleeper picks” in the stock market that shape the global economy.
Mastery & Competency: My personal approach to gaining and refining skills across different aspects of life.

These will be the foundations of what I will write about moving forward.

These are some essays that I’ll be delving into: #

The Quest for Individuation: Exploration, the main goal of this blog, helps you discover new aspects of yourself. When harmonized, these aspects can make you more creative, wiser, and stronger.
How Power Structures are Built and Maintained: Some YouTube channel once imparted this golden nugget of information to me: “No matter how bright the sun rays shine on any king, no man rules alone. A king can’t build roads alone, can’t enforce laws alone, can’t defend the nation, or himself, alone. The power of a king is not to act, but to get others to act on his behalf, using the treasure in his vaults. A king needs an army, and someone to run it. Treasure, and someone to collect it. Law, and someone to enforce it. The individuals needed to make the necessary things happen are the king’s keys to power.”
The Maintenance Jobs That Power the World: The dramatic bullet above was just a segue into this point by the way. From software engineers to civil workers, many jobs are not about creation but about keeping the wheels of progress turning. Why these roles are foundational.
Language and Understanding: All language is a poor translation of our thoughts, and meaning is subjective. This shapes how we interpret the world.
Cars and Cities: I don’t believe in cars as a universal solution. Traffic is a curse for cities, and our transport systems need rethinking.
The Maintenance Jobs That Power the World: From software engineers to civil workers, many jobs are not about creation but about keeping the wheels of progress turning. Why these roles are foundational.
The Information Age: How the age of the individual and the flood of data have commoditized our living experience. What are the implications? How do we make sense of the growing surveillance state? How do technologies like GrapheneOS and Tails OS represent a pushback against the erosion of privacy - and are they effective?
Relative Knowledge vs. Ground Truth: There are many “truths” but few universal facts or “ground truths”. How does this impact how we see and interact with the world?

My attempt at storytelling will offer practical insights, lessons learned, and occasional failures.

Each post will be an experiment in thinking critically, embracing the beginner’s mindset, and ultimately growing not just in knowledge, but in wisdom. Join me on this journey, as I uncover the hidden forces that make the world tick—and perhaps, how we can make a difference in keeping it running.