0:00:00 - 0:00:21 So I received an email and I've got this ongoing conversation with a husband and wife pair who were uh discussing long term plans and life plans. And this most recent iteration, I thought it would be much faster for me to just do a quick video. I've noticed that when specific people have questions, this 0:00:21 - 0:00:39 is something I picked up as a, as a classroom instructor. If one person has a question, usually more than one person has a question. This is why it's very important to have the courage to speak up because not everyone will. But if you do speak up, then you can get the answer and everyone else can share 0:00:38 - 0:01:09 and you can have a piece of that uh part in bringing that out for others through your faith. So the, the question was about long term goals, especially for young Children and in particular, this, this thread of the email, the step in the thread. Um She's, she's talking about um how to bring the long 0:01:09 - 0:01:32 term goals into the practical. And so, um she, she says it, it kind of sounds like what you're saying is that all of these options reduce down to establish the most functional homestead you can and then see where the world goes after that. And she's kind of being tongue in cheek. Um But she's like, look 0:01:31 - 0:01:50 , how do you balance this is the formulation of the question, how do you, she didn't write it this way? How do you balance the, what we know about the end times and what we do right now? So the world as it is right now versus as it will be, how do you optimize over time is really what she's asking knowing 0:01:49 - 0:02:09 that the conditions are going to change significantly. One reason I'd rather answer this with the video is because actually just yesterday, I had a brief exchange with someone who has older Children, uh who are still at home but ready to get kicked out of the nest. And he was asking, he's a father. He 0:02:09 - 0:02:31 was asking about specific careers he might encourage his Children to go into and he had thought about his own career. And he was asking me my opinion on mine. And um I, I have said, and you've heard me say this on this channel, I wouldn't necessarily steer a child towards tech uh the technological fields 0:02:30 - 0:02:58 as far as coding, for example. And so this, this lady, she asks, um why are you having your kids study tech and design? If the economy were in those skills would be useful, is near collapse? Isn't this futile? And this is where it, we all have to elevate to a higher level of thinking. I'm not saying 0:02:58 - 0:03:23 this person is not bright. Uh Her and her husband both are delightful to, to speak with precisely because they are thinkers. But in general, just speaking, generally now, we need to elevate to a higher level of rational thought because in a complex system, there is no general solution, the greater the 0:03:23 - 0:03:41 complexity, the more specialization is required. And there are all sorts of properties that come up in with that, including the fact that the more specialized, the solution, the more temporary it's gonna be. And that's a real bitter pill. That's to say, well, maybe today you need, I'm not saying this 0:03:40 - 0:04:01 is true, but suppose you could have um created some life changing machine, the cotton gin without any kind of formal education at all. I don't know that that was the case. But whereas today, if you wanna make the next improvement on some space shuttle, well, you're gonna have to have a phd in physics 0:04:01 - 0:04:25 plus a bunch of other things and a lot of aptitude on top of that, that's all specialization and the things that make you really good at that necessarily make you less good at other things in a complex system. Do you understand that? So if you're the whiz bang best person ever at memorizing definitions 0:04:24 - 0:04:46 of words, you will necessarily be pretty terrible at other things because the kind of person you have to be, to be really good at memorizing words makes you terrible at other things. God is optimized to all things. And this is one of the barriers he, he can't make himself known to everyone in equal ways 0:04:45 - 0:05:16 because they would learn things about him that they're not willing to believe that might be a shocker to you. Um He's not optimized to specific things. He's optimized to all things and he's optimized through all time and eternity, not here and now anyway, not to go too deep off the end there. Um So there's 0:05:16 - 0:05:42 a huge difference between uh two young boys living in a house where their father has a phd in computer science, was a tenured computer science professor and has a multitude of experience at all levels of software engineering in the, in the professional space. And someone who's 23 has never really done 0:05:42 - 0:06:06 anything difficult in their entire lives and it just sort of flailing around life living in their parents' basement with no clue as to what to do and no real strong reason to do anything. So what's optimal for one of those people is very different than what's optimal for another. Do you understand that 0:06:06 - 0:06:25 ? It's like I say, uh I don't, I can't think of a good reason for anyone to join the military today, but there may well be a person in a situation where that's exactly the best thing they can do. Is it best in the universal sense. So now actually we're dovetailing into another gospel principle that no 0:06:25 - 0:06:51 one understands or would believe. And that is that what is good? Depends on the situation. It turns out what is optimal, depends on the circumstances. And so when you change one of those cir circumstances, you have to change what the best thing is. So, with his father yesterday, he said, hey, here's 0:06:51 - 0:07:07 the situation on one of my sons. Do you think he should get into coding? Because I thought that'd be a good idea. No, I don't because I don't think he can hack it because if he could hack it, he would have shown evidence of that in other ways in his life and it happens to be a really hard thing. So either 0:07:06 - 0:07:29 you're naturally, really smart, which is not, was not the case for me. Um Or you just will work like a son of a gun to figure it out and it's a million times easier to figure out today with all the free resources and tools and you know, what, what I had, I just had a book and good luck. I mean, we didn't 0:07:29 - 0:07:43 even really have people we could go to and I had to go to college for it, et cetera, et cetera. And you just sort of had to figure it out back then. There wasn't Google, believe it or not. We just had the earliest search engines and they were, there just wasn't any content out there to help with this 0:07:43 - 0:08:04 . So it's just a wing and a prayer. So you had to be really determined or just super smart and I was really determined. So nowadays you, you don't really have to be so determined, but it's a heck of a lot harder than a million times other things, a million other things you could do. And there are many 0:08:03 - 0:08:26 difficult things out there. Uh Programming is nothing, it's not uniquely difficult. There are several things out there that are quite similar as far as the challenges they, they provide the benefits are not as great. But um anyway, so it just depends and, and we're brought to you multiple topics here 0:08:26 - 0:08:46 . But what you, you know, your kids and if they're little babies still, you still know something about them because kids come with an awful lot of personality. But you can change the plan if right now all you have to go off of is what's the generically best thing for a generic kid in the circumstances 0:08:45 - 0:09:12 ? I know that we provide his parents great, go with that. And as you learn more, change the plan, right? So I have one son who has an aptitude for art and it wasn't clear that he had an aptitude for art uh for the first eight years of his life, maybe. So plans change as things develop as kids develop 0:09:12 - 0:00:00 , as people develop, you know. So and then the other thing I want to highlight that I've already mentioned, but just to draw an underscore under it is over time and, and you do need to think, well, what if, what if the end of the world comes tomorrow? It's not going to uh any more than it has today? 0:00:00 - 0:09:57 What if the end of the world is in a year? Five years, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, even after you die however long that's gonna take, you need to think about all those things. And then you can either go all in on an assumption, a specific assumption or you can generalize over all of them. The wonderful 0:09:57 - 0:10:24 thing about God's paths is that they provide multiple benefits. And so as we aim, we ought to replicate that as much as we can. So there's no broad brush swipe that's good for everybody e except to say point to God as best you can. That, that is the only answer. But as far as specifics go, there are 0:10:24 - 0:10:47 details that are gonna vary from person to person. You have to go for what yields the greatest impact in your, in your case. And like I said to the, the guy yesterday, I said, I said, um one set of people for whom I think programming would be good, generic advice for a career would be people who just 0:10:47 - 0:11:11 don't push that hard into life, but they push hard enough into life that they can figure out how to code. And that maybe is a more razor thin margin than, than one would expect. But there's a minimum threshold and a max threshold. And so on the minimum threshold, as I've already explained a little, it's 0:11:11 - 0:11:30 hard enough that you need to push yourself pretty hard to figure it out. And, and more than anything, it takes AAA degree of courage to be a good programmer that I see in very few programmers. That's the number one failing I see in programmers is a lack of courage. They'll code all around what they really 0:11:30 - 0:11:53 have to do because they're scared and it's, it's, I have never, I've never been in a situation where I've managed to figure out how to help a developer be more courageous, significantly more courageous. They've all moved on the needle, but just not by very much. And I've met people that are way better 0:11:53 - 0:12:20 developers than me, by nature. They have inherent gifts for that. Uh But I have never met anyone who has more courage than me, uh except Jesus. And so, and so uh the secret to me being able to code circles around other people when that's been the case. Um I would boil it down to my courage because I'll 0:12:20 - 0:12:47 stare right into the abyss until it lights up. And uh that, that's a property that is very difficult to instill in someone. But anyway, um if you push hard enough to be successful at something like that, then you have to get you have to stay in this sweet spot and I know multiple professionals across 0:12:46 - 0:00:00 various fields that have that same threshold to get into it and be successful. Uh who have no doubt felt the same thing as you push into it with your whole weight. The, the only, the only way you can justify that is by presuming that it is going to fulfill massive quantities of meaning in your life. 0:00:00 - 0:13:31 And so you push into it with all of your might and you happen to be willing to push into it a lot harder than normal people would. But you reach the end of the sweet spot where it can no longer support the hope you place into it. One reason I'm going into such depth with this because it's true of life 0:13:31 - 0:13:52 in general. I it's just that programming and some other fields happened to replicate that property enough that you could learn it in that, in that specific slice of life. But this is absolutely the case for life in general. And once you hit the end of it, you've got a real problem on your hands because 0:13:52 - 0:14:16 power comes through sincerity. And once you've reached the limit of meaning in your field and you've, you've, you've done everything that one can do in it, you're in big trouble because you now don't have something that's, that can sufficiently hold your hope. And so you better have something else in 0:14:16 - 0:14:41 your life that does or else you're gonna go through a massive ego death. And, um, I smile, it's a horrific thing. It's not funny at all. But I smile because, um, just like you'd smile at the wedding of two, two people who are rather innocent in life and they think that they're getting into something 0:14:41 - 0:15:06 that's very different than what they are getting into and you know what awaits them. So, yeah, the, the world is going to, to end and, and all sorts of things in the economy are going to collapse Indian society in general. And if that, none of that means that it's not good to do something that can't 0:15:06 - 0:15:33 roll right into that because otherwise you're just gonna have to go live in the woods somewhere. Uh, as a, as a vagabond that, I don't know, I don't know that that's going to do anyone any good or any legal way of doing that. I'm not aware of one. Um, I looked so, um, so, so what your path is between 0:15:32 - 0:15:56 now and then though? Yeah, you should look for things that you can do that provide you, uh, a mix of what's useful for now. Uh, whether that be purely money, which there are worse things to think about maximizing or, uh, some measure of character development, which doing something that's difficult and 0:15:56 - 0:16:20 tedious is certainly useful there. But, but there are much deeper things as well being able to do a job where you sincerely feel like you're contributing to the, the benefit of the world. That's a massively powerful motivator. And if you are getting into a field where, where given your personality traits 0:16:19 - 0:16:41 , you're going to hit a wall and just, it's gonna seem totally empty to you. And that's gonna happen two years in and it's something that took you four years to learn and train for that. That's not fun, right? But then there's a whole host of situations in life where you will learn things from them that 0:16:41 - 0:17:05 will cause you to say I would never do this again. And yet you have to acknowledge that it was the only way you could have learned those things. So it's super complicated and you, you gotta think about this and, and, and balance the need to think about it with resisting, overthinking it and just kind 0:17:05 - 0:17:27 of go at it. The good and bad news is that the state of affairs is such that uh uh I, I mentioned how there's no general solution to this problem also for individual people. It's, it's going to be increasingly unlikely that you're ever just gonna do one thing. One of the reasons society is guaranteed 0:17:26 - 0:17:52 to collapse is because in a complex system, you have to overspecialize. But in a complex system over specialization guarantees that you will suddenly find yourself with way fewer opportunities to do what it is you're good at or it won't be worth anything any more. Suddenly, I don't know if that made 0:17:52 - 0:18:24 sense. So, to keep the thing going, you have to hyper, specialize. But in hyper specializing you're guaranteeing your own. Um, oh, what's the word when you suddenly become useless? Ah, I can't remember the word now. Uh, I keep thinking redundancy. That's not it, futility, that's not it. Um, you guarantee 0:18:23 - 0:00:00 your own obsolescence, you guarantee your own obsolescence. And that's not fun. Right. Because then, so imagine you're an, an anesthesiologist. I'm just plucking this out of thin air. You've trained, you've, you've competed your butt off to get into the several schools that where you had to do this, 0:00:00 - 0:19:07 you've got into med school and then you got into uh, your residency. And so you've, you've been at the head of the pack across multiple thresholds to keep going. Now you're finally out of school, let's say it takes you time to pay off your debt, which you almost guaranteed accrued in going through all 0:19:07 - 0:19:28 that. You're fighting against your malpractice insurance premiums and you get through all this where you're finally making the money that justified the sacrifice for you to get there. And something suddenly changes. Let's say the, the benevolent government says we're putting a hard cap on all anesthesiologists 0:19:27 - 0:19:47 and they're all just gonna make 10% of what they do right now. And you say I never ever would have done that if I thought that that would be the end. And now you've just wasted how many years of your life doing way more than any other person. Does that no normal person gets through those gates works 0:19:47 - 0:20:09 , their butt off doesn't sleep for like, 10 years or whatever. And, and the carpets yanked from, from under you, right when you got to the payoff point. So, if you think that those sorts of things are gonna happen, does it make sense to do those sorts of things in terms of the, the sacrifice to get there 0:20:09 - 0:20:32 ? Probably not. Probably not. Would I go into the medical field today? Heck, no, no, I would not. No, I would not. Does that mean that it's a bad idea for anyone to go into? No, given their circumstances, personality, etcetera, maybe, maybe it's the best thing that fits all those criteria and, and looking 0:20:32 - 0:20:50 at that. So if I was advising particular people and I knew them, I'd say, well, look to be truthful, it'd be way better for you to do this thing. But let's be honest, you're kind of lazy and you'd never succeed at this particular thing or whatever it is. You're kind of a coward. So you'd never succeed 0:20:50 - 0:21:12 at this particular thing. So the choice before you is this, do you want to change in a fundamental way to become courageous or intelligent or, you know, thoughtful patient, whatever to, to be able to do this or do you wanna really stay basically the same in which case, the best thing for you is join 0:21:12 - 0:21:35 the military or whatever. And, and that's, that's the way I would go with that and then to rehash briefly, uh, and then we'll close this up again. I, if someone's super young, well, uh, you've got a lot of options and learning something like programming. Jeez, it costs you nothing because you'll find 0:21:35 - 0:21:54 resources online that are at least as good as anything you'd encounter. Paying for a degree and they're free now that doesn't work if you're a lazy bum. But if you're, if you're motivated and, or you have someone to help you get motivated um or at least someone to help you believe that you can do it 0:21:54 - 0:22:20 and you're 12. Go for it, man. What else are you gonna do? Play Minecraft and then at least you have that to fall back on. If nothing else you could do this for a living and it beats flipping burgers, right? So that's, that's the idea. I hope that helps and, and now maybe it makes more sense when I say 0:22:20 - 0:22:38 parents should architect their, their children's lives and you should start as young as you can. And by the way, this is really hard to do if you're in public school. But it's another benefit for homeschooling all these things converge. It's not about the particulars, it's about the, the big picture 0:22:37 - 0:22:57 and then working backwards from that. So this is way longer than I intended. But I hope that that addresses the, the questions of both people who this is addressed to and that this finds you if, if you're one of the many who I know have the same questions. So.