There was a moment in this conversation I almost missed.
It didn’t arrive with emphasis. No one paused for it. It just… slipped through, tucked between more obvious ideas about quantum, startups, and what’s coming next.
Sam said something simple:
that not understanding something—really not understanding it—can actually be an advantage.
And I felt that, but not right away.
It’s easy to move past a line like that. Especially in a conversation about something as complex as quantum computing, where your instinct is to catch up, to keep pace, to prove you belong in the room. There’s this quiet pressure to nod along, even when the meaning hasn’t quite settled yet.
I’ve done that more times than I’d like to admit.
You listen. You follow just enough. You hope clarity will arrive later.
But what stayed with me wasn’t the technology. It was the permission hidden in that moment.
The idea that the person who doesn’t fully understand might be the most important person in the room.
Because they’re the only ones who will ask the question everyone else has learned to stop asking.
There’s something almost uncomfortable about that. It asks you to stay exposed a little longer than you want to. To resist the urge to smooth things over, to pretend you’ve already crossed the threshold into understanding.
And if I’m being honest, that space—the not-knowing—is where I usually feel the most friction.
It’s where the noise gets louder.
Where thoughts overlap.
Where I start reaching for certainty just to quiet things down.
But there’s another side to it.
If you stay there, just a little longer than feels natural, something shifts.
You start noticing the gaps. The places where language breaks down. The moments where experts speak in shorthand that only makes sense if you’ve already been inside the system for years.
And suddenly, you’re not behind.
You’re seeing something they can’t see anymore.
That stuck with me.
Because it reframes what it means to contribute in a space like quantum—or really, any emerging field that feels just out of reach.
It’s not about catching up as fast as possible.
It’s about staying curious long enough to translate what others can’t.
There’s a quiet kind of value in being the bridge between complexity and clarity. Not by simplifying the truth, but by asking the questions that bring it back into focus.
And maybe that’s why this moment lingered.
Because it doesn’t just apply to quantum.
It applies to every room where you’ve felt slightly out of place.
Every conversation where you hesitated before speaking.
Every time you wondered if you were “enough” to be there.
Maybe the goal isn’t to eliminate that feeling.
Maybe the goal is to use it.
To let it guide where you lean in instead of where you pull back.
I keep thinking about that.
Not as a strategy. More like a quiet shift in posture.
Less about proving you understand.
More about being willing to stay in the moment where you don’t.
Listen to the full episode https://player.captivate.fm/episode/6c174666-eb31-4059-b99f-f98b53a6816d
