><i>To learn you’ve got to become excited by knowledge, obsessed with it, sometimes dangerously so, sometimes in ways that might border on compulsion, or even addiction. How else could someone, like me, make it through 7 years of graduate studies—3 of those with children—making, on average, just about $20,000 per year before taxes?</i><p><i>To learn</i> ... in the author's specific environment.
There are lot of imaginable ways or possible worlds where <i>to learn</i> doesn't mean to be <i>obsessed with</i> it and <i>sometimes dangerously so, sometimes in ways that might border on compulsion, or even addiction.</i><p>This sounds very tik-tok-like in itself where extreme human behaviours bordering on pathological get frighteningly "normalized" and even encouraged, an impression from my occasional uses/observations and talks with young people who use tik-tok frequently.<p>I get it that often times lamenting about the hostile environment isn't productive either but taking "academic philosophy" into Tik-Tok imhv seems more like a desperate move in the context of how the OP's professional career went so far.<p>Some people tolerate and even flourish under stresses under which others would break down and be left utterly debilitated. If someone makes it "through" it is often times hard or impossible to distinguish (survival bias) whether it is because of exceptional prowess and some resistance to the outside stresses or just some base level of skill but highly adaptive to the stresses of the outside environment.<p>For example: the common thread in the Soviet-system in sports was that it physically and psychologically burned through vast majorities of pools of "talented" people and the ones who endured where not only gifted in regards to the respective disciplines but additionally above all else exceptionally good at coping with enormous stress factors not directly related to the sport itself.
I didn't learn anything from reading this article that wasn't in the title. IMO it sounds like an advertisement. Didn't explain how they managed to relay the philosophy in 60 seconds or how it was structured. Didn't explain why this format was better than others, etc.
I have dipped my toe into teaching programming to beginners on Tiktok. But I have not gotten very far into it. There is a small audience there, but not enough to become rich or famous doing it. I think longer form video on YouTube still dominates the learn to program niche.
I was very disappointed by the first example I clicked on. They explained Pascal's Wager, but presume one possible religion that may or may not be true. They then get quite evasive in comments when asked about this, eventually saying they only intended their argument to be persuasive to people who believe something like "70% chance no god, 30% chance there's a specific God from a specific religion". Sure, but that's boring. I also suspect they're wrong that that's how a significant number of atheist-leaning people think.
What about all the data of your followers being stolen to get them distracted more than healthy? How does that fit into your philosophy? You’re not an island.