The Hidden Science Behind Schools & Degrees

How many times have you asked yourself, "Hmmmm, what's the point of even learning the Pythagoras Theorenm?" or "How are these physics equations going to help me in real life?"

You are not wrong to ask these questions, after all you have the freedom to think about anything and ask about anything if you don't know the answer for.

But have you asked yourself if this question is really something you came up with or it's just being shoved onto you by the famous influencers who want to sell you a 49$ course that will teach you everything you need to know within 6-12 months.

Was this question influenced by someone you actively watch on YouTube or Instagram Reels or even TikTok? Got you thinking right?

The Justification Trap

You must have heard your favourite tech vloggers or finfluencers constantly throw random quotes like "A degree is just a piece of paper; it doesn’t define me." or "School is useless" or one of the most famous quotes since 2020 "School never taught me how to pay taxes or invest my money." You are one of the millions, (including me) who fell into the trap called The Justification Trap.

That sounds deep, until you realize that the person saying it probably already had rich parents, connections, or a backup plan.

I too once thought that schools are useless and I am never going to need linear equations, or the anatomy of the human body or the periodic table or the history of ancient civilizations or Newton's laws of motion or circumference of a circle.

It felt like I was part of a system that didn't want me to learn the "Real Things" and keep me busy learning this bullsh*t, while someone out there was gatekeeping the secrets of how to earn money and become rich.

And then, one day, something happened. I wasn’t even looking for it. I was just mindlessly scrolling through YouTube shorts when I saw something about ChatGPT, some AI chatbot that could answer anything.

“Cool,” I thought. “Let’s see if this thing is actually smart.”

As a developer myself, naturally a question comes to my mind, "How would someone even build such a thing?", "What technology was required?", "How much compute power was required to even calculate and process these answers so it feels natural to read?"

When I did some research, I found out that it was built using all of those "Stupid and useless" math equations that I thought would never help me in the real world.

After years of struggling, failing, and realizing the hard way that the world doesn’t reward ignorance, I can finally look back and say to myself in a mirror that I was a complete idiot.

I’ve realized that complaining about school was never about the system, it was about me avoiding the work. And now, I see the cost of that mistake.

Sure, most people will never need to solve complex equations in daily life. But guess what? Every single thing you rely on, from your phone to your WiFi, was built by someone who did.

Do you want to challenge it?

• Car Troubles? Mechanics use engineering principles to diagnose and fix problems. If you knew a little bit of it, you wouldn’t need to spend your hard earned into unnecessary repairs.
• Buying a house? A bit of math knowledge could save you thousands in interest rates.
• The phone or laptop you’re reading this on didn’t just appear out of thin air. It wasn’t built overnight by slapping random pieces of metal together. It took decades of math, physics, and engineering to make that swipe feel smooth and that screen light up.
• Feeling too hot? You crank the AC. Freezing? You turn on the heater. But do you ever stop and think that someone had to figure out thermodynamics so you wouldn’t have to dump ice buckets on yourself or burn wood like it’s the 1800s?
• Love stalking your crush online? Leaving mean comments on posts? Watching cat videos at 3 AM? You do that thanks to satellites and fiber optics which, spoiler alert, don’t run on ‘good vibes’ but on physics and advanced computing.
• The reason you can fly across the world safely is because of aerodynamics, physics, and engineering principles. Without them, we’d still be traveling by boat for months.
• Your Google Maps or Apple Maps wouldn’t work without satellites orbiting Earth, placed there with precise physics and orbital mechanics. Without them, you’d be lost, LITERALLY.

While writing out these points, I can hear a random Joe Schmo ranting "Yeah, but I’m never going to build a satellite, design a smartphone, or create an AI. So why should I care?"

Alright, let’s say you’re never going to build a smartphone, design a satellite, or create an AI. Fine. But guess what? You’ll still end up paying more just because you don’t understand how things work

• Your phone feels slow? Instead of clearing storage or replacing a $20 battery, you drop $1,000 on a new one.
• Your laptop dies? You throw it away, not realizing it just needed an SSD upgrade.
• Your internet feels slow? Instead of checking if it’s just a router issue, you pay double for a “faster plan” that doesn’t even solve the problem.

And it doesn’t stop at gadgets.

• If you never understood basic math, you probably signed up for a terrible loan with insane interest rates.
• If you ignored problem solving skills, you might be stuck in a low paying job while others, who learned how to think logically, are making 5x your salary in AI or tech.

The brutal truth

I get it, you’re not going to be a physicist or an engineer. Neither am I. But here’s something that nobody tells you, Just the act of learning these subjects changes how your brain works. When you solve math problems, your brain builds neural pathways that help you analyze and break down any problem, not just numbers. When you learn physics, you don’t just memorize formulas, you start thinking about cause and effect, which helps in decision making. Even history teaches pattern recognition, so you can avoid mistakes that others have made before.

The biggest benefit of school isn’t just the knowledge, it’s the ability to analyze, solve, and think logically. And once you develop that skill, you’ll start seeing how it applies to everything in life, from finances to career choices.

But like I said earlier, most people (including me) already fell into the trap of believing that school is useless and we all wasted so many years of our life. We can never go back and change things but we can surely change our mind today.

It doesn't matter if you are late. You can pass on this knowledge to your kids and who knows maybe they become the next or even the first millionaire in your family and then you would feel proud of passing something so meaningfull to them.

So where to begin?

Step 1. Accept that you were wrong & stay open minded

The first step is simple but powerful: Admit that you don’t know everything. Recognize that dismissing school as ‘useless’ might have been a mistake. It’s okay. We’ve all been there.

The smartest people in the world aren’t the ones who ‘know it all’, they’re the ones who are always willing to learn.

Step 2: Start small to learn again

Just like you I hated studying in school. Not because I didn't like to study. But because I didn't like to give exams.

"Never memorize something that you can look up." – Albert Einstein

Einstein wasn’t against learning, he was against pointless memorization. School made us believe that studying meant stuffing facts into our brains just to pass exams. But real learning isn’t about memorizing formulas, it’s about understanding concepts and knowing how to use them.

Luckily we're adults now and don't need to give exams. So for us it's just enough to understand the concepts and then we can use ChatGPT to implement them faster.

This removes the fear of getting good grades in exams and being categorized as average by our friends or teachers.

Step 3: Apply critical thinking in everyday life

For a while, my version of "critical thinking" was doubting everything people told me. If someone gave advice, I’d reject it instantly, assuming they were either misinformed or trying to manipulate me.

Spoiler alert: That’s not critical thinking, that’s just blind skepticism

But here’s what I learned: Instead of outright denying what people say, use due diligence to verify it.

• Is what they’re saying actually backed by evidence, or just a confident opinion?
• Do they have something to gain by making me believe this? Are they selling me a dream, a course, a product?
• Does it align with my goals, or am I just being influenced by emotions?

Critical thinking isn’t about rejecting everything, it’s about questioning intelligently.

Follow these three steps, and over time, you'll develop your own way of seeing the world—one that isn’t dictated by influencers, school systems, or social norms, but by your own ability to think, analyze, and decide for yourself.

You don’t have to become a scientist. You don’t have to master every subject. But if you train your brain to think critically, you’ll never be fooled, trapped, or left behind. The choice is yours.