Musings, Moment of Clarity

Technical writing on blogs like this take a lot of time to put together, especially when writing high quality, research-backed articles that are backed by a real codebase and detailed code examples.

Coding and engineering is niche as it is so picking a topic within that narrows your audience even further. Making them interesting enough for people to want to read and to come back to takes work — especially when it’s not my day job and I have so many other interests and responsibilities. On the other hand, opinion pieces, are easier to put together, will get more views, interaction, and reads especially if they are headlined with some click-bait title! It’s just human nature.

So from time to time I think what’s the point in the effort? Why not just do what other people do and just generate clicks and views to justify paying Medium $5 a month. In a world of AI, true human experiences and opinions are the only things left that are real - even those clickbaity ones.

To be completely transparent, though, it’s partly the Feynman Technique — me trying to gain true comprehension of a topic through selection, research, writing, explaining (teaching), and refining. It’s partly learning in public i.e. exposing myself to Internet Opinions. It’s also a bit of about my own perfectionism, concern about perception, and reputation — I mean why listen to me, a random guy on the net, unless it’s obvious I know what I’m talking about?

Getting reactions like this does make it all feel worth the effort:

That said, I always tell my kids there is a difference between being intelligent and being smart. The latter is where success is found.

Juxtaposing the above sentiments with some lyrics by Jay-Z from his record Moment of Clarity gives food for thought:

Quote

I dumb down for my audience and double my dollars, they criticize me for it, yet they all yell “holla”

If skills sold, truth be told, I’d probably be lyrically Talib Kweli

Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense - But I did 5 mill’ – I ain’t been rhyming like Common since (Woo!)

It’s not difficult to see who’s the most successful between the billionaire Jay-Z, Common, and Talib Kweli — though they’re all talented artists.

Jay-Z says he “dumbs down” (or simplifies / speaks about popular topics) and doubles his dollars.

Further, he reveals that if “skills sold, he’d probably be lyrically Talib Kweli”. That is, deep topics and technical mastery doesn’t necessarily make money/isn’t as popular.

He wants to rhyme like Common Sense (an artist known for his technical and socially conscious lyrics), but since he got a load of money keeping it simple, he hasn’t bothered to do so since.

Jay-Z goes on to say: “Forget perception, Go with what makes sense!”

So if all of a sudden my quality drops but my views and interactions start going up, this is my disclaimer — remember my book of work and forgive me for having my own moment of clarity.

Just musing…