Everything is Obvious in Retrospect

One of my favorite YouTube channels as of late is James Scholz. He studies for 12 hours a day and livestreams his sessions daily so you can study with him. He also has a discord server where students from all over the world study together.

I’ve been in remote school since last summer and one of the biggest problems that my friends and I face is finding motivation and staying disciplined on such a flexible schedule. Given the pandemic has forced students everywhere into remote school, an idea like this seems so obvious in retrospect.

But the iron rule in history is that what looks obvious in retrospect was far from obvious at the time. Transformative technologies like the internet and mobile phones seemed inevitable but their use cases were non-obvious at first. The same will likely be true when we read about covid-19 in the history books decades from now, yet the pandemic happened recent enough for all of us to remember our shock when this became a worldwide catastrophe.

What does a post-covid world look like? How will blockchain and crypto technologies change the world? Will America fall this century? These are important questions, with non-obvious answers. Maybe a few decades from now, I can return to these questions and say their answer is obvious in hindsight.

April 27, 2021


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