I wasn't trying to insult the people who are doing good work. It's just an observation that individual good work can be completely dwarfed by broken or exploited systems and industrial scale leverage.
Overall, I'm actually quite positive re: human development.
Your advice to meet people and travel is well taken.
Regarding not reading, etc. Overvaluing personal experience vs. what has been observed by others is the basis of many classic flaws in human thinking. It's great for building empathy, though -- which we could use more of.
Think of bottom-up vs. top-down. There's tremendous knowledge to be gained from the bottom up, but often direct observation does not speak to the why of things. When you get an insider's account of events that have been obscured and have affected millions of people, it's not something that should be ignored.
Finally, I don't particularly like people, but I do like systems. I can better add value by fixing broken systems than by chumming around with more people (except to understand them, so I can fix systems).
Overall, I'm actually quite positive re: human development.
Your advice to meet people and travel is well taken.
Regarding not reading, etc. Overvaluing personal experience vs. what has been observed by others is the basis of many classic flaws in human thinking. It's great for building empathy, though -- which we could use more of.
Think of bottom-up vs. top-down. There's tremendous knowledge to be gained from the bottom up, but often direct observation does not speak to the why of things. When you get an insider's account of events that have been obscured and have affected millions of people, it's not something that should be ignored.
Finally, I don't particularly like people, but I do like systems. I can better add value by fixing broken systems than by chumming around with more people (except to understand them, so I can fix systems).