on (the lack of) authenticity

a plague in the tech community

i should probably start by saying this is not a new phenomenon by any means. it's just something i've only recently truly understood.

it seems that there's a growing plague of inauthenticity within people (which is not to be confused with inauthentic people). so many people are chasing after what other people find interesting or valuable—i mean have one stroll on tech twitter or on linkedin, and you'll see countless examples of people building things solely to get some sort of recognition for their build. or the infamous "cs projects to put on resume" pipeline for students. and i want to clarify here: i don't think posting about your build is bad by any means; quite the opposite, it's really rewarding to see. but, when you're solely building for the purpose of posting or some sort of extrinsic reward, i think this mindset can be inimical.

i describe this as a plague because it's super easy to fall trap into this mindset—trust me, i did too. you see all these brilliant people building cool things, and they're always going viral too. it's in human nature to try to—or at least want to—emulate that same process. then, you become a random node in this network producing "hot" meaningless builds, that may not even interest you. solely for the purpose of external validation. the more nodes in the network, the easier it is for someone else to be infected (to continue the analogy).

this past weekend, i participated in this private hackathon sponsored by eric schmidt, the ex-ceo of google, and sebastian thrun. i was with some of the top minds from the top universities in the world, and what surprised me the most wasn't really their accolades: it was their genuine curiosity and deep interest in tackling the difficult problems we were presented with.

the robustness of thought, their commitment to thoroughness, and the fun they had while being challenged with difficult questions is not something that can be artificially replicated. you can't pretend to be interested. either you were, and you built something amazing in the 6 hours that we had to hack, or you weren't, and you didn't. it wasn't about who was the most technical. it was just simply about how interested you were in the problem at hand. these individuals approached problems with a unique perspective, driven by a desire to understand and innovate, rather than to achieve external validation. in this sense, they were being authentic.

i realized that it's this authenticity that i was missing. i realized i've been navigating the cs world with a broken compass. for the longest time, i've avoided looking at some of the low-level, fundamental projects that help one learn, driven by this belief that it wasn't necessary. i was told to build these complex projects, that i really didn't care too much about, just so that i can put it on my resume. i always thought it was about being the best at programming. but, i learned that it's really not: i strongly believe that while that style of education might help, if you really just chase what you're interested in—what you're truly excited about—then you'll be fine. better than fine.

i want to dedicate the rest of my summer to just exploring the things i really am interested in, and putting less of an importance on the things that may be extrinsically motivated. for me, this translated into the following research goal: understanding how this world works and how everything fits together in it—from a philosophical perspective but also from a technical perspective.

hopefully, that's the cure to the plague.