Pavel Durov: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, it’s grounded in a good instinct of compassion, you don’t want people who suck at a thing to feel pain but it seems like struggle is a part of life, either you do it earlier or you do it later. And it’s true, that’s such a good point that competition does seem to be a really powerful driver of skill development, like you mentioned, pursuing mastery. There’s something in human nature that, especially for young people, if you can compete at a thing, you’re going to be really driven to get good at that thing. If you can direct that in the education system as China does, as many nations like you mentioned do, then you’re going to develop a lot of brilliant people. … do, then you’re going to develop a lot of brilliant people, resilient people, people that are ready to create epic shit in the world. I think there is a lot of evidence proving that we are biologically wired to compete and establish our understanding of what our qualities are and talents are in relation to other people around us, and this is one of the ways society self-regulates. Speaking of competition, your brother, Nikolai, he’s a mathematician, programmer, expert in cryptography. He has won the IMO International Mathematics Olympiad, he got gold medal three times, ICPC programming, two times, has two PhDs in mathematics, and you have worked together for many years creating incredible technologies that we’ve been talking about. So what have you learned about just life from your brother?…

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