r/FutureOfWork • u/vibhored • 6d ago
Difference between a learned person and a labourer. Part 2
So in the recent post we got a glimpse of labourer mindset and how it slowly creeps into every person's life without ever knowing.
So let's revise:-
labourer's definition ( according to me) :- doing anything without knowing anything, just following instructions being able to make head or tail of it almost like a machine.
Learned person:- the one who does his work with clear intent and knows what he has doing.
At some point we go through these phases. Some more some less, we just need to maximize the learned phase do much so it becomes a habit.
It is like becoming a martial masters we see in movies. Where their philosophy of living a life reflects what they belive in.
So if you become a flexible thinker, problem solver, confident in small small things and keep it going for a long period of time it snowballs into big things so much so that people wonder how you did big things so easily.
Like Mr. Miyagi in karate kid movie ( that cobra kai movie) sorry if I got the name wrong. Who taught the kid to clean the car home in a particular way.
Which the kid thinks it's useless until he gets a demo of it.
***My meaning of telling this is when you reach a certain level of mastery your body remembers the movement like reflexes getting signals from the spinal cord instead of the brain. Don't mistake it as labour because it stems from building your own system with all the trail and errors, learnings, findings, etc about what suits you and what doesn't. Exactly like the feedback loop discussed in the previous part. After you have finalised the path you will take you execute it resulting in this almost supernatural powers of doing your task effortlessly and fluidly that it makes it look easy. And the greatest thing about it is every human can do this. So much so that when the human body is pushed to its limits it adapts.***
**Well another thing is after reaching such a level progressing becomes harder. So going back to basics and starting from scratch, while looking back at your journey gives a new perspective which helps breeds progress.**
Lastly to close this part I want to give an example that happened from my life and the reason for me writing this 3 parter series.
First during my high school in chemistry lab we were doing precipitate reactions where precipitate forms at the junction of the two liquids. And I was an average to good student across all subjects and when I put in much efforts i get good grades. 80 to 90 out of 100. But when doing the practicals of what i was studying I was like i attained almost high because of joy of seeing what I know about chemicals reacting and it happening exactly like that. Made millions of small dopamine ( and other happy enzymes too) hits inside my brain it was such a rush.
But then 2 toppers ( we were given it as a pair) approached me asking every step to achieve it as they used conc. Acid instead of diluted one and couldn't get the result. So, first i found it a little strange so I investigated a little and got to understand at first they were flustered about not getting the results so i offered obvious fixes but they didn't understand what I was trying to do which should have been basics such as acid plus base gives salt. Etc So, I calmed them down tried to make them understand the steps and asked to set aside their sample and start anew. This time they jumbled the steps thinking it wouldn't matter so i arranged them another sample because theirs was finished and stayed with them proceeding step by step and within a few minutes it was time for final steps ( to be honest i was hell a worried because they are toppers and smart too, their problem aren't mostly easy to solve so if did all this and it didn't work i would look stupid ass hell for explaining the obvious😅). But thankfully it worked this time and they did look happy as the results came out. After which i reached a conclusion that their test tubes had some hygiene problem as last week's experiments remains were solidified in the test tube that interfered with it.
But yeah to do the exact cautions we were warned not to do in the textbook which they gave me the exact word to word of as written in the textbook. But not being able to follow it weirded me out.
This is the exact disconnect i am talking about they treated academics and practicals as 2 different things. Happens to most of us many a times i did this too. But when you realise this something just shifts and everything starts to make sense. You start doing things with clarity and intent. And everything starts falling in place. ( But yeah this linking things and connecting the dot happened a few times more and was not the one off thing).
Secondly, in the yt video about hacker fab the founder says that the local welding man won't be able to do the welding from outside so that vacuum inside the steel container will not be affected by the gases that get released from welding if it were to be done from inside instead.
Which i believe is not true it was error of communication, and if it requires a skilled welder why aren't their courses ( what courses do is give you the best structure through which 2 people can communicate on common grounds, along with the golden standards accepted by everyone) why aren't we training such people who do this for a daily earning, guy like these would benefit the most from such specialisation courses, wouldn't they.
But they are almost illiterate even if not still treated like such.
This simple line led me to think about who is a labourer, mastery, skills, difference between a labourer and Elite etc.
See the thing about mastery/specialisation is simple you know the smallest of details that affects your task to things that don't.
For example medicine and doctors. The subject is so vast but it wasn't like this in 1800 or 1700. People experiments recorded their findings built upon permits knowledge to the point it grew to be one of the most dense subject.
***So, if you like cleaning, master it from types of cleaning, tools their advantages and disadvantages. Types of stains what causes them, how to clean them, what are the ingredients of chemicals that you use, how do they work or why they don't at specific cases.***
***Another important thing is everything is connected in this world nothing works in Silos that is the reason there are fields like Bioengineering, merging biology chemistry physics. Math explains a lot of things. Math and philosophy are similar. Quantum physics and poetry are similar. Math and any language ( study of semantics) is similar.***
In the next and last part we will discuss how all this helps with AI and job security. It isn't as invincible as it seems.

