I learn to know, not to earn

I never learned things in order to earn from them. That part always confused people around me — what’s the use of knowing this if it doesn’t pay?

But that was never the question I was asking. Mine was simpler and more stubborn: why is it like this? Why not the other way? I’ll follow that question down a hole for hours with no idea whether it leads anywhere useful. Usually it doesn’t. Occasionally it changes how I see everything.

What I do believe is that the understanding pays for itself in capability. When you genuinely want to know how something works — really works, not just enough to pass — you end up able to build it. The skill is a side effect of the curiosity, not the goal of it.

So if there’s a thread running through everything on this site, it’s that: I’m not here to optimize my income. I’m here because I want to know. Whether that ever pays is a separate question, and not the one I am asking.