this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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I had no exposure to school or formal education when I was real young. I just had a few picture books about the world, one was a cut-away that showed the layers of earth's crust, mantle and core.
Being about 5, I had no idea of the proportions or scales involved so whenever I saw someone digging a hole outside for a firepit or fencepost I would yell and scream that they were going to break through to lava and it would pour everywhere and burn everything up.
Nobody was able to explain things to me so I had to self-educate myself about science and everything else over the next couple decades. Fast forward to me now explaining to people on reddit what lava is, that it's actually molten rock... there are a lot of people who have never thought about it, saw pictures of volcanoes and just accepted that they spit out "hot goo" and never thought deeper.
I wish I was kidding, but also... I wonder if it's a simpler, more peaceful life when you don't know how anything works. I was up at 2:00 AM with my brain whirring away, like every night.
I loved this story, thank you for sharing.
I think the people who sleep well at night are the ones that don't care how anything works. Sometimes it's ignorance, but often it's just burnout, and worse sometimes it's a complete lack of empathy for anything that isn't themselves.