Term coined by Logan in https://logangraves.com/social-infrastructure. Also seems to have been independently coined by Anson Yu in https://anson.substack.com/p/recognizing-sparkly-people-without.
Sparkliness is “roughly, the mix of intelligence, curiosity, and agency.”
These are the kind of people who “learn category theory together” at 5 am”, spend weeks going through math textbooks because of sheer curiosity, take online courses and work on cool projects in their fun time.
I want more of them in the world because they are the ones who become great researchers, writers, innovators, and professors. They’re the type of people to think hard about the world, care a whole lot when things are broken, and fix them.
(Note, this was a dominant part of my vocabulary until I read https://sparc24jcs.substack.com/p/i-want-to-destroy-the-words-interesting. Now I try to be much more mindful about using it.)