Disease of Credentialism

Unedited by Larry Chiang 

Naval Ravikant said

Smart people, capable people, don’t let themselves be pigeonholed into one definition.

That is a disease of credentialism because we created this university system, and now you have to go to university and get a degree in something. Then people ask, “What is your expertise? What is your credential?” That’s a question dumb people ask. Smart people don’t ask that. Smart people don’t need to know your credentials. They just talk to you for five minutes, and they figure out if you know what you’re talking about or not.

A really good person, a so-called natural philosopher, can be good at any branch of anything. Nature has no boundaries. Nature has no concept of mathematics versus physics versus chemistry. It is all one thing. Anyone who’s either meditated, done psychedelics, or read enough books, they figure that out: it’s all one thing. 

When you find one thing, it connects to the next thing, connects to the next thing, connects to the next thing. And true creativity jumps boundaries. It can go from anywhere to anywhere. It doesn’t have to follow a path of interconnections in between.