Not (Just) Dunking on Jeff Bezos

2026-08-21 · letter vlog · Hank · 10:38 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: History & curiosities, Internet & YouTube) · mode: Personal essay

Replying to John's video on professional provocateurs, Hank examines Jeff Bezos's claim that a trillion humans would yield a thousand Mozarts and Einsteins: genius depends on circumstances, not population size, and valuing canonized genius over thriving is a frame Hank himself gets stuck in; he argues for optimizing for thriving and the safety creativity needs.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Reply to John's video: Hank has no desire to be a professional provocateur, a good way to get views but a bad way to build a better world

★★ Hank says John's video on professional provocateurs reminded him how glad he is to have no desire to be one, though he thinks he would be good at it; he is not built for it. — 00:00:00 · John Green
★★★ Hank says being a professional provocateur is a good way to get views and a loyal audience, but a terrible way to build a better world or be a happy person. — 00:00:00
★★ Hank recalls that as being a YouTuber became culturally desirable, many colleagues, new and established, took the provocateur path because it got views, and it still does. — 00:00:29
★ Hank admits he sometimes enjoys getting views, but he also really dislikes being disliked. (playful) — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — Why dunking on Jeff Bezos is easy; the clip of Bezos on a trillion humans and a thousand Mozarts, served by an algorithm

★★ Hank says dunking on Jeff Bezos is neither difficult nor brave, one of the infinite-points glitches of online discourse. (playful) — 00:00:58

“dunking on Jeff Bezos is neither difficult nor brave”
★★★ Jeff Bezos (quoted): In a clip Hank plays, Jeff Bezos says he would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system, which would give a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins at any time. — 00:00:58
★ Hank did not watch the whole interview: an algorithm served him the clip, since the algorithm would love him to see things that annoy him. (playful) — 00:01:26 · recommender system

00:01:56 — The obvious problem: Mozart and Renaissance Florence show genius depends on circumstances, not on population size

★★ Hank notes there were about 800 million people on Earth when Mozart was born, so by Bezos's math a trillion people would give 1,250 Mozarts and today's 8 billion should already give 10. (playful) — 00:01:56 · Earth
★★ Hank suggests perhaps today's Mozarts already exist: Stevie Wonder, David Byrne, Jacob Collier, Beyonce and Björk. (playful, hedged) — 00:01:56
★★★ Hank says that in another sense there are no other Mozarts: Mozart was a particular person, and rerunning the universe would give one Mozart every time, or none. — 00:02:25
★★ Hank says Mozart could easily not have been Mozart: his father, a world-class musician and music teacher, retired to teach him, and he grew up among world-class instruments that were then new technology. — 00:02:25
★★ Hank says Renaissance Italy around 1500 had many canonical creators though it was not optimized for finding talent: women were excluded, and most men did manual labor without access to patrons, workshops or apprenticeships. — 00:02:54
★★★ Hank says Machiavelli, Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael all worked at the same time in Florence, a city of barely 60,000 people. — 00:03:39
★★★ Hank says, as historians long agree, no magic or genetic difference made these geniuses: Mozart's existence depended on the circumstances he was born into, his family, technologies and the shoulders he stood on. — 00:04:08
★★★ Hank says Mozart was a hardworking genius and very specifically himself, but the best way to get more Mozarts is not more people: you only ever get one Mozart. — 00:04:38
★★ Hank allows that maybe Bezos only meant that more people would mean more genius and more wonderful creations. (hedged) — 00:04:38
★★★ Hank says greater access to resources and equality also yields more genius with the same population, as the world has shown by giving people more thriving and opportunity. — 00:05:07
★★★ Hank is freaked out that anyone, especially super powerful people, thinks genius is a math equation whose main variable is population size: obviously wrong and kind of scary. — 00:05:07
★★ Hank says that view implies Da Vinci would have become Da Vinci even if his father had not worked for a man running one of Florence's most renowned workshops. — 00:05:36
★ Joking that without such connections a Ninja Turtle might be named Brunelleschi, Hank fumbles Renaissance first names, settling on Filippo Brunelleschi and Donato Bramante. (playful) — 00:05:36

00:06:05 — The less obvious problem: valuing canonized genius over thriving, population ethics, and Hank's own habit of valuing his life by its outputs

★★★ Hank's less obvious annoyance: Bezos saw more people as a chance for more canonized, celebrated genius rather than more people living happy lives, a frame Hank also gets stuck in. — 00:06:05
★★ Hank says getting stuck in that frame is his nature and partly human nature, and it hurts his own happiness. — 00:06:38
★★ Hank says some philosophers hold that more people is a fundamental good: if a million humans thriving is good, a billion thriving is a thousand times better. (hedged) — 00:06:38
★★★ Hank is not fully on board: there is an okay chance a million people thriving is good because they exist and thrive rather than suffer, not as thriving times a million. (hedged) — 00:06:38
★★ Hank cannot say whether we should care more about the total amount of thriving in the universe or only the thriving of beings who exist, and hopes philosophers agree it is open. (unsure) — 00:06:38
★★ Hank says philosophers do not seem to think it better to optimize for imagined, permanent canonized genius than for more happiness and less suffering. — 00:07:19
★★★ Hank says he too thinks the value of his life is not his life but his outputs; he often escapes that frame but also often gets stuck in it. — 00:07:48
★★★ Hank is certain valuing life by output is wrong; the third most-quoted passage of his first book says you will struggle to feel productive until you accept your own joy can be something you produce. — 00:07:48 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
★★ Hank says people quote back to him his own words that life is not about getting a task done but about building a you. — 00:08:18

“your life is not about getting a fricking task done. It is about building a you.”
★★ Hank says these lines resonate because people believe them, yet we struggle to internalize them. — 00:08:18
★★ Hank says striving, competition and hard work are good, since we make a better world by wanting it; these things can be in tension, but he does not know that they have to be. — 00:08:18
★★★ Hank's good news: optimizing for thriving, a world that provides for people's wants and needs and is more equal and just, will produce more thriving and more creation. — 00:08:47 · economic inequality
★★ Hank says remembered-forever canonized genius like Einstein's and Mozart's reflects how cultures remember more than the amount of genius in the world. — 00:08:47

00:09:16 — Conclusion: thriving and safety produce more creation and genius; the response aimed outward and inward; sign-off

★★ Hank says some hunger, ambition and competition are needed for creation, but they are built in; the harder task is providing the safety creativity needs. — 00:09:16
★★★ Hank thinks there is more genius, beauty, thriving and creativity now than in Mozart's era, even if we will not remember it the same way. — 00:09:45
★★★ Hank says we got more Mozarts mostly not by increasing the population but by creating the circumstances in which humans thrive. — 00:09:45
★★ Hank says imagining genius as a roll-the-dice-more problem instead of a create-more-thriving problem needed a response, aimed outward as a dunk and inward, since he and others struggle with it. — 00:10:14

Threads in this video

restate · Is outrage useful? — Hank says being a professional provocateur is a good way to get views and a loyal audience, but a terrible way to build a better world or be a happy person. (00:00:00)
restate · Are skill and talent innate, or acquired through work? — Hank says, as historians long agree, no magic or genetic difference made these geniuses: Mozart's existence depended on the circumstances he was born into, his family, technologies and the shoulders he stood on. (00:04:08)
restate · What is work for, and how much should people work? — Hank is certain valuing life by output is wrong; the third most-quoted passage of his first book says you will struggle to feel productive until you accept your own joy can be something you produce. (00:07:48)
restate · Is human life getting better; is now the best time to be alive? — Hank thinks there is more genius, beauty, thriving and creativity now than in Mozart's era, even if we will not remember it the same way. (00:09:45)
restate · What do the living owe the dead and those not yet born? — Hank is not fully on board: there is an okay chance a million people thriving is good because they exist and thrive rather than suffer, not as thriving times a million. (00:06:38)

Mentioned

Central: Jeff Bezos · Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Also: People: Albert Einstein · Beyoncé · Björk · David Byrne · Donato Bramante · Filippo Brunelleschi · Jacob Collier · Leonardo da Vinci · Leopold Mozart · Michelangelo · Niccolò Machiavelli · Raphael · Sandro Botticelli · Stevie Wonder

Works: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing · Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Concepts: cumulative culture · economic inequality · equality of opportunity · great man theory · Happiness · human nature · productivity · Quantum mechanics · recommender system · utilitarianism

Places: Earth · Florence · Italy · Solar System

Events: Renaissance

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