The Art of Carving Stones

“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

— Attributed to Michelangelo

My impetus for writing this is that a good friend of mine recently told me he now has not one but two awesome professional opportunities to do good for the world. I’m very happy for him, both because he has done so much to get to this point and because I always knew he had great potential. I’ve gotten to see all parts of that journey and to see how it reflected my own journey and the journeys of many of my friends. This article is therefore dedicated to him.

For a while, I looked for the right metaphor for this article. The classic to go for would’ve been the goose that lays golden eggs. But it didn’t quite fit; the goose that lays golden eggs is already revealed to be producing treasures, and it is plainly foolish to kill her. I was looking for a different kind of story; one which emphasizes that treasure rarely comes ready-made and begging to be plucked up. And indeed, there is another ancient parable which illustrates exactly this: The Difficulty of Pien Ho, attributed to the ancient Chinese philosopher Han Fei Tzu. It goes something like this:

Once a man of Ch’u, named Pien Ho, came by an uncut jade in the Ch’u Hills. He brought it home and submitted it as a present to King Wu. Thereupon King Wu had a jeweller give an opinion of it. “It is an ordinary stone,” said the jeweller. The King, regarding Ho as a liar, had his left foot cut off. Upon King Wu’s death, King Wen ascended the throne, when Ho again submitted it as a present to King Wen. King Wen also had a jeweller give an opinion of it. Again he said, “It is an ordinary stone.” The King, also regarding Ho as a liar, had his right foot cut off.

When King Wen died and King Ch’eng ascended the throne, Ho, carrying the uncut jade in his arms, cried at the foot of the Ching Hills. After three days and three nights his tears were all exhausted and blood flowed out. At this news the King sent men out to ask him the reason, saying, “Throughout All-under-Heaven men whose feet were cut off are many. Why should you be crying so bitterly?” “I am lamenting not the loss of my feet,” said Ho in reply, “but for the calling a precious gem an ordinary stone and for their dubbing an honest man a liar. This is the reason why I am lamenting.” Meanwhile, the King had a jeweller polish up the jade and got the treasure out at last. So it was designated “the Jade of Pien Ho”.

Indeed, pearls and gems are what the lord of men wants badly. Though Ho presented the uncut jade to the Throne, before it was made beautiful, he was never a harm to His Majesty. Nevertheless, it was only after both his feet had been cut off that the treasure was acknowledged. That to establish an opinion of a treasure should be so difficult!

It is a tempting story to sympathize with. Of course now that the jade is found everyone looks like a fool (perhaps except Pien Ho). But one might object that for every Pien Ho who found a great jade there were a thousand or ten thousand whose stones were polished only to reveal more stone. Who is the fool then? Better to miss the rare anomaly than to waste efforts carving up every stone you see or listening to every madman who presents you with one.

We are tempted by outcomes. We only want to work with the best and brightest, those who have already proven their worth. To maximize our returns, we do not want to “waste resources” on training someone who might or might not pan out. But this means that everyone is harvesting but no one is sowing or nurturing. How much potential is lost this way?

If the goal of an individual or organization is purely to extract value now, then it makes sense to optimize for proven talent (ew, even writing the words makes me feel slimy). But this is not the (only) goal of many individuals or organizations. I would assume that many times, even those looking for mid- to late- career people place some significant value on growth and on future performance as well as on immediate performance. But I think (uncontroversially, I hope) that early-career, educational, and incubator programs are (or should be) especially geared towards developing potential and providing a stepping stone to future opportunities. And if this is the goal, then maximizing for “proven talent” is a mistake.

That is not to say that the best and brightest should be shut out—what I am looking for is not a zero-sum tradeoff here. What I want is for there to be more opportunities for people who appear less outwardly impressive but who have drive and potential to be a force for good. Of course we should pick up the treasures which are there in front of us today, but there are surely enough people who want to do that. What we need is for more people to resist immediate temptation, to be planting seeds and polishing stones for tomorrow.

I’ve harped on the overall utility of investing in potential, but I also have to get to my real motivation behind my reasoning, which is that greater investment in those who are not immediate stellar standouts would benefit people like me. I couldn’t have gotten to where I am now if the people who had helped me were looking just for the best performer and not for someone who had drive and potential. But I argue that there’s a generalizable lesson from my experience, which is that at least to a degree, this is true of everybody. Everybody was a nobody once. Whether we know it or not, we owe many people immensely for having put their time and effort and care into us when we had nothing and were no one. If we turn taking a chance on someone into pure transaction and extraction, we risk ending up in a lose-lose situation.

So if we’re not looking (purely) for performance, then what should we look for? Especially for programs which attempt to build specific skills or aptitudes, there is a utility of still having a baseline level of competence—you want someone to be competent enough to get utility out of the program. Beyond that, though, I think the important factors are less quantifiable. I think people in professional contexts tend to undervalue the value of someone being a decent person—someone who is kind, who can work in a team, who communicates well, who takes responsibility. And I think the other important thing (which is also missed) is the question both my master’s and PhD advisors asked me: Why. What is your reason for wanting to do this? And I think there’s a certain glint in the eye and inflection in the voice which signifies genuine passion which, at least for me, cannot be faked.

This admonition goes both ways—indeed, all ways. I would give the same advice to those looking for mentors or benefactors; yes, look for a baseline level of competence, but go after people who take the time to respond to you, who are kind and responsible and really care about you, and who themselves show potential for growth. Hot take: all of that is more important than being able to say “I worked with the #1 person in X field at Y institution.”

Looking back at my lost years, I am heartened by how many people, especially in communities like Effective Altruism, actually had this kind of mindset. A surprising number of people responded to cold emails from some random recent college grad with a crappy resume and 0 experience. They offered help where they could—sometimes lots of it. Above all, I think many wanted to offer more help, but they could not because of external constraints. They did not have the resources or institutional support they needed to help me. I’m sure many others have had similar experiences.

So I very much support continued investment into programs which develop potential and provide support, particularly for students and early-career people—these include fellowships, incubators/accelerators, internships, conferences, and nodes like the EA Hotel. More than that, I urge that such programs refrain from prioritizing performance over promise and passion. These are exactly the sorts of programs which fulfill a vital (public good) function, which is to nurture the people who have not yet poked their heads above the soil. The purpose is defeated if these institutions become just another mechanism for harvesting “proven talent.”

Bringing it back to my good friend: I see all of this playing out in his story, too. For too long, his potential went unrecognized, and a lesser person than him might have given up on trying to have a positively impactful career. But through his own persistence and thanks to people and institutions who put their trust in him, he’s now found his footing. He is better off for it, but so, too, is the world.