The Pursuit of Better Explanations

A couple of weeks ago, Instagram algorithm showed this reel to me about James Cameron. It’s a two part series (part 1, part 2) which in aggregate will take you four and half minutes to watch. I recommend you watch the videos, but in case you don’t, this is how the part 1 starts:

“James Cameron is the most interesting person on earth and it is because he is absolutely insane. When he was younger, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life and he was working as a truck driver and a janitor. But that all changed when one day he went and saw Star Wars, of all things. You see, he went and saw Star Wars and he said, "I want to get into movies.”

Then in near the end of part-2, the reel provides a good gist of Cameron’s non-exhaustive accomplishments:

“Just to recap, he is a self-taught painter. He is a self-taught director. Self-taught illustrator. He is a self-taught screenwriter. He is practically a self-taught marine biologist. First director to ever have a film that made over $1 billion. First director to have a movie that earned over $2 billion as well. He currently holds three of the top 4 highest-grossing movies of all time. Maybe he's gonna get a fourth one."

I want to emphasize again: this is a non-exhaustive list. If you’re curious, I recommend you spend the four and half minutes to watch the videos.

During my daily 10k-step walk, I cannot tell you how many times my mind kept going back to thinking about this particular reel in the last few days and as you can see, I feel compelled to write about it even though none of this is really quite related with investing. But hey, it’s Sunday which I may use as an excuse to share some of these random musings with my readers.

The question that I kept wondering how on earth Cameron had such deep reservoir of curiosity in such wide ranging fields! It is one thing to have child like curiosity but a different thing altogether to be so deeply proficient at it.

A couple of years ago, I tried to read David Deutsch’s book “The Beginning of Infinity”. I found it a bit dense but after listening to Deutsch in a couple of podcasts, I found his ideas more accessible through that medium. In fact, I find many of his ideas quite captivating that resonate well with how I perceive the world. As I kept thinking about these reels on James Cameron, I wondered how Deutsch would explain Cameron’s insatiable pursuit to new problems. So, like any normal person would do in 2026, I asked both ChatGPT and Gemini Deutsch’s epistemological explanations for Cameron’s accomplishments. I had some back and forth for quite a while, so let me share some key excerpts below from Gemini’s responses:

“According to Deutsch, the difference between Cameron and the “average” person is not biological hardware (e.g., a “genius” brain vs. a normal brain), but rather the software (ideas) they use to process reality.

Deutsch argues that all humans are Universal Explainers.

The human brain is a universal computer. If a brain can understand one complex domain (like the grammar of a native language), it possesses the computational capacity to understand any domain that can be understood (physics, engineering, directing). There is no such thing as a "math brain" or an "art brain."

Cameron’s ability to jump from screenwriting to deep-sea engineering to optical physics is not a biological miracle; it is the standard function of a human mind that has not arbitrarily limited itself. He treats "physics" and "storytelling" not as separate identities, but as different applications of the same universal explanatory capacity.

The majority of people operate under the "Bucket Theory of the Mind," believing that knowledge is a fluid held by authorities (teachers) that must be poured into them. If they want to learn engineering, they wait to be taught.

Deutsch thinks knowledge is created only through Conjecture and Criticism (Karl Popper’s epistemology). We learn by guessing a solution to a problem and then criticizing/testing it to correct errors. Cameron is a radical practitioner of this method. He did not go to film school to "receive" knowledge. He went to the USC library to solve specific problems (e.g., "How does an optical printer work?"). He would form a conjecture (a design for a camera), build it, fail, and correct the error. Because he was actively creating knowledge to solve a problem he cared about, his learning was exponential compared to a passive student.

Deutsch argues that coercion (forcing someone to learn against their will) destroys the capacity for creative thought. To solve difficult problems, the mind must be free to follow its interest. Deutsch calls this the "Fun Criterion"—not frivolous entertainment, but the deep, conflict-free engagement with a problem.

Cameron dropped out of college because he found it coercive and limiting. He only learned physics because he needed it to build submersibles, making the learning functional and deeply integrated. The majority of people learn to pass tests (coercion), which results in shallow knowledge that is quickly forgotten.

Deutsch warns of "Anti-Rational Memes"—cultural ideas that survive by disabling critical thinking (e.g., "You aren't qualified," "Trust the experts," "Stay in your lane"). Most people are infected by the meme of Credentialism. They believe they are not allowed to do engineering without a degree. This is a "bad philosophy" that acts as a self-imposed prison.

Cameron operates on Deutsch’s Principle of Optimism: “Anything that is not forbidden by laws of physics is achievable, given the right knowledge.” When told a camera couldn't film at 11,000 meters depth, the majority would accept the impossibility. Cameron viewed it merely as a lack of knowledge, which he then created. He respects the authority of the problem, not the authority of the experts.

Epistemologically, James Cameron is what a human looks like when their natural Universality is not suppressed by static, anti-rational memes. He is not a specialist; he is a general-purpose problem solver who treats ignorance not as a permanent state, but as a temporary lack of explanation.”

Just chatting with ChatGPT/Gemini is a daily reminder that education has permanently and radically changed even if much of the world (especially educational institutions) hasn’t quite woken up to that reality. I am not sure I quite believe there will be millions of Einsteins or James Camerons in the data center, but it does seem highly likely that AI may embolden many more Homo Sapiens than ever before to accelerate their pursuit of knowledge and solve problems. Sure, there will be some LLM-induced psychosis along the way, but I will be surprised if the world doesn’t have more Camerons and Einsteins hopping from one problem to another in the pursuit of better explanations of the universe!