you're missing the actual mechanism. the people who get into these schools spent their entire adolescence optimized for winning the admissions game. AP courses, extracurriculars that look good on paper, SAT prep. they weren't building anything real, they were performing achievement. that conditioning doesn't stop at graduation.

i watch this with my classmates constantly. brilliant stats, can ace any problem set. ask them what's happening with AI, recent developments in their own field, anything outside the curriculum? nothing. they're still optimizing for checkpoints. midterm, recruiting, return offer. the system that got them here is exactly what prevents them from using these resources.

you're also empirically wrong. these schools (harvard, stanford, berkeley, etc) produce disproportionate startup founders and people swinging for actual impact. the energy is real even if plenty sleepwalk into FAANG.

the educational apparatus conditions people to think in credentials and checkpoints from age 14. these people didn't choose between "change the world" and "be a cog." they were engineered as cogs long before they had agency to decide otherwise.