Steve Job's Epistemic Humility

One of Steve Job's final letters to himself illustrates his oozing epistemic humility. 

I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow

I did not breed or perfect the seeds.

I do not make any of my own clothing.

I speak a language I did not invent or refine.

I did not discover the mathematics I use.

I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive

of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.

I am moved by music I did not create myself.

When I needed medical attention, I was helpless

to help myself survive.

I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor,

object oriented programming, or most of the technology

I work with.

I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am

totally dependent on them for my life and well being.

- via Steve Jobs Archive

Steve Jobs being a technologist forgot its not just "my species" but "all species" that help us survive. If a person like Jobs got it incorrect there not much hope from Silicon valley. 

Nevertheless, I loved his humility and those lines reminds me of Oliver Sacks Gratitude his last book: 

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved, I have given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and though and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

And Christopher Hitchens last book Mortality:

“Until you have done something for humanity,” wrote the great American educator Horace Mann, “you should be ashamed to die.” I would have happily offered myself as an experimental subject for new drugs or new surgeries, partly of course in the hope that they might salvage me, but also on the Mann principle.

Finally, my thoughts on preparing for my death I wrote in 2021.