Explainers and generalists

Education is being democratized. I Google or Youtube a concept when I don’t know about it. So do hundreds of millions of others.

As this change occurs, there is a new demand for “explainers” who are not teachers but simplifiers of concepts so that common folk can digest it.

So there is a huge demand for guys like Dhruv Rathee who have started explaining stuff that they have no clue about. They conduct a great literature review, sort through the credible stuff, and release a video that reaches millions.

The problem with such a thing is that nuance is lost. The audience feels they know all about inflation by watching one video. Whereas it takes decades to understand these economics. And half a century to realize how much we, as humanity, still don’t understand much of it.

This, I fear, will end up creating an era of half-ass dumbfucks who will go around thinking they know everything. But they won’t know much about anything.

It is a bad idea to learn about something from a generalist. But the problem on the other end of the spectrum is that specialists tend to get too technical, seem incapable of thinking like a common person, and end up being bad at explainers.

This creates a need for an entirely new category of people in every specialized field. Explainers who are specialists. Someone who understands the nuance but still has the eagerness to simplify.

This gap can be seen in super-specialized fields like crypto, AI, economics, epigenetics, and many others that are at the cutting edge of innovation.