I work with a lot of smart people, many smarter than myself, and a goal I've always set myself is to leave them knowing less. Smart people are almost always mor

I work with a lot of smart people, many smarter than myself, and a goal I've always set myself is to leave them knowing less. Smart people are almost always more efficient at knowing more all on their own; they tend to be autodidacts and information hungry. But knowing less is much harder. We all build up mental frameworks and systems for how we think the world is organized, and that's how we come to "know" it. It's mostly assumptions and invariants we've collected here and there. With age and experience, they become instinctual and habitual too. "Change X and Y will happen". But when someone comes along and pops one of those foundational assumptions, "You know 'Y' doesn't always have to be true, and here's how", it is an incredible gift. A smart person will suddenly see new landscapes of possibility, optimism, and exploration that were previously out of view. What they thought they knew they now see anew.