Understand the Encryption

A password is a phrase you can recite to signal you've studied a topic — proof you've put in the hours, a claim on status — that does nothing to help you operate in the world.

Encryption is the opposite: understanding what the password actually does, the mechanism underneath, the thing that lets you operate whether or not anyone's watching.

A lot of schooling rewards password collection. It gets grim when you meet someone who's spent decades on a subject but has prioritized passwords over understanding. You visit a home with walls lined with books, excited because they've clearly spent their life learning and you want to hear what they have to say — and when you start asking questions, they only want to repeat the lines that mark them as the type of person who's read a lot. They force the conversation back toward showing what they know, instead of bringing what they know into contexts where it's useful. Holding the distinction is psychologically difficult, because we're all driven by status and want to be seen as smart.