Kids are like iPhones (and beer)
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What do you drink at restaurants? Maybe wine. But which one. There is usually a vast range in price and it is difficult to tell what offers best value. One (debunked) rule-of-thumb, is that the second cheapest wine has the highest mark-up. Another theory is to go for wines that are most difficult to pronounce - these cannot be expected to sell well without being particularly good. In truth, it’s difficult to tell how much any bottle of wine is worth without inside knowledge and restaurants use this to their advantage. Choosing wine is inherently risky.
In contrast, the price of beer does not vary much. You’d know immediately if a restaurant was charging over the odds for a pint. The most expensive beer is not that different from the cheapest. Unlike wine, cheap beer is still pretty good - I can vouch for either of these ones at 37p per bottle. Bottles of wine sell for thousands of pounds, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands. Could you tell the difference? The most expensive beer, Antarctic Nail Ale brewed with ice from Antarctica, was sold for a mere pittance, less than one thousand. I will probably never taste the same wine as drunk by royalty, but princesses drink the same beer as everyone else.
Next consider billionaires. They do not drive the same cars as the rest of us. OpenAI’s Sam Altman, for example, has a McLaren F1 worth $20 million, considerably more than the average lifetime earning potential in the US. The consumption of the super-rich - clothes, yachts, mansions - is incomprehensible to most people.
Which phones do they use though? Sam Altman likes an iPhone. The same phone used by 15-year-old school kids and 70-year-old grandmothers. The same as mine and maybe yours too.
Perhaps not the latest version, perhaps an older second hand model, but the best phone that money can buy is affordable, retains its resale value and is becoming accessible to more and more people across the world.
Another example is the laptop. Below shows the NASA team who helped get Curiosity to Mars. The same MacBooks they use are ubiquitous in universities and coffee shops. I’m using one to type this post. MacBooks aren’t cheap but they are mass-produced to the extent that they’re accessible to many.
Isn’t it ironic that the hyper-capitalism of Silicon Valley resulted in a kind of technological egalitarianism? Our greatest inventions, our most powerful computers are not the playthings of billionaires. They are not exclusive to the five richest kings of Europe. You might not drive the same car as Sam Altman, but you can have his phone. You might not be smart enough to work for NASA but you can use their laptops. On the flip side, no matter how rich you are, you can’t get a better laptop or phone than anyone else.
Professor Steve Hsu (below) is a theoretical physicist and entrepreneur with side-interests in genomics and AI. He blogs on Substack and podcasts at Manifold. As well as having impressive academic and business credentials himself, he has rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest physicists and start-up founders.
I recommend his recent interview on the Deus Ex Machina podcast. The whole episode is worth a listen but the final five minutes really stayed with me. Steve discusses his father (also an academic) and how by the end of his life, it was clear that family, rather than academic achievement, is what mattered most to him. Steve reckons that 90% of the great things in life can be found in raising a family. All the other achievements - making discoveries, publishing papers, building businesses, generating wealth - can be crammed into the other 10%. He reflects that most of his meaningful experiences could be achieved without a highfalutin career, prestigious education, or even a college-degree.
Of course not everyone who wants children can have them, while many people will decide that raising children is not the right choice for them. Having children is not cheap or easy. But it’s an experience which is possible for many. Like owning an iPhone or MacBook, having a family is not reserved for the ultra-wealthy, it is accessible for large swathes of the population. Like drinking beer, family can be as rewarding for commoners as it is for royalty. Some of the best parts of life, perhaps the very best parts, are not dependent on how smart you are, how rich you are, or your material accomplishments.
Many people, especially those choosing a vocation like medicine, place meaning in their career. They want to dedicate their lives to helping others, alleviating pain, and curing disease. Often this comes with some personal sacrifice. I think it’s an admirable mindset which is common in doctors and should be cultivated. However, it is important to keep the whole of life in perspective. At the end of your life, those career choices are probably going to matter less than you think right now.
So when discussing a career in medicine with young people, I try to emphasise that medicine shouldn’t be the sole focus of their lives. As a doctor, even as a clinical academic, we are all fundamentally replaceable. If a bus knocked me down tomorrow, another doctor would be found to take my place. No-one is going to remember those days you stayed late to finish those discharge letters. Even for the most accomplished professors, surgeons and physicians, there is a worldwide pool of talent waiting to step in.
Instead, I advise these young people against pursuing medicine at the expense of all else. I suggest they dedicate time and energy on developing human connections. And I ask them to remember that for some people, they will always be irreplaceable.
To the point and very well said. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Cheers from an argentinian collegue.
A great reminder. For many of us, it’s not until we start losing those we love or begin to suffer ourselves that we come to this perspective.