the best thing you can do is teach people to write because there's no difference between that and thinking and one of the things that just blows me away about universities is that no one ever tells students why they should write something it's like well you have to do this assignment well why are you writing well you need the grade it's like no you need to learn to think because thinking makes you act effectively in the world thinking makes you win the battles you undertake and those could be battles for good things if you can think
and speak and write you are absolutely deadly nothing can get in your way so that's why you learn to write it's like when i can't believe that people aren't just told that it's it's it's like it's the most powerful weapon you could possibly provide someone with and i mean i know lots of people who've been staggeringly successful and watched them throughout my life i mean those people you don't want to have an argument with them they'll just slash you into pieces and not in a malevolent way it's like if you're going to make your point
and they're going to make their point you better have your points organized because otherwise you're going to look like and be an absolute idiot you are not going to get anywhere so let's say you own a pencil factory i'm a worker in that pencil factory you can have all the machinery all you can buy all the raw materials you want but without me and presumably many others like me to assemble the pencils all you would have is a pile of wood yellow paint graphite rubber what do you think put more in the you spend millions
of dollars buying all the machinery leasing the place making sure there was a management structure doing the llc formation making sure all the tax code was in compliance or you standing outside because you can stick a piece of graphite into a piece of wood [Applause] if you can formulate your arguments coherently and make a presentation if you can speak to people if you can lay out a proposal god people give you money they give you opportunities you have influence that's what you're at university for so that's what you do is you that's you're in you're
in english right you're and yeah new languages anyways it's like yeah teach people to be articulate because that's the most dangerous thing you can possibly be so and that's motivating if people know that it's like well why are you learning to write because you're here's your sword here's your m16 right here's your bulletproof vest like you learn how to use them but ah it's just it's an endless mystery to me why that isn't made self-evident so that's the sort of thing that can drive you mad trying to sort out so i pretend to teach and
you pretend to learn it's like people are there's a there's a conspiracy to bring people into the education system to make them weaker so i guess that keeps the competition down maybe that's one way of thinking about it if your students are stupid they're not going to challenge you [Music] you
