Aaron Swartz’s Theory on How to Save the World
Aaron Swartz seemed to not know how the world actually worked. It isn&#x27;t a bunch of rational actors that love tech and information. Quite the opposite. One can&#x27;t save the world without first diving deep into how it works. One then realizes there&#x27;s stuff they can and can&#x27;t change on top of lots of biases and trends in responses. Then, one builds on those elements of human nature to focus on the things they can change.<p>He didn&#x27;t do that. Instead, he focused on what can&#x27;t be changed by committing an illegal act with hope it would be meaningful to society or courts. The result was that he killed himself after that failed catastrophically. We might learn a great deal from Aaron Swarts but not how to change the world. He&#x27;s the least qualified to tell us about that because it appears he never understood it to begin with.<p>Instead, we can just learn from and remember the good things he did that his mind was uniquely capable of doing. He has quite a resume of that. This approach is honest and gives him due credit.