Recently, I am experiencing the most amazing transformation of my life. No, I am not getting rich. I am not married. I don't have a teenage girlfriend who gets pregnant. But, I am experiencing a learning ability explosion.
My understanding of software engineering just hit the next level. My fitness gets much better. Music resonates in my brain for the first time. I can talk to people and make friends easier. I pretty much just get a better person in me. Partially due to my self identification as a Pro Sleeper, partially due to my realization that humans are born to be free. We grow into self imposed limitations and frictions. I am really into the growth mindset now.
With the ever improving AI system, will we witness AGI (artificial general intelligence)? If so, it's more like artificial god-level intelligence. Even if we don't have that and only have a good generative AI that answers our questions, it's still amazing. We can learn a lot from it.
Our society is not ready for it yet.
On the one hand, pop culture and traditional social media still promotes fame, beauty and richness. But, with the raising of AI power, many of these human greed will matter nothing. No real human can ever fulfill the greed and lust of humans.
On the other hand, the traditional school system is still inefficient at delivering the learning to next generations.
Therefore, we have generations of over addicted/polluted and under learned/skilled people. I am not blaming younger generations here. I am certainly one of these people. I am working my way out of it.
What is a modern school system anyway? Historically, west or east, there is no such a school system. Modern school system started after the first industrial revolution. Governments and capitalists realized that the traditional apprenticeship/mentorship, where a single skilled person teaches a handful of students about certain crafts, was not efficient enough to massively produce work forces that can operate machines and handle paper works. To fulfill this need for economic growth, a modern school system was borned. The basic structure of elementary school, middle school and higher education was drawn.
Yes, here in Nostr, this story sounds as fiat as fuck. But it was indeed a progressive thing 100 - 150 years ago. Back then, schools, especially universities, indeed represented the most valuable knowledge in the world.
But things have changed. Technology and society have been moving much faster than school systems are. No school system in any country is prepared for the shock of AGI, if it happens.
But, if this is true, why are people still attending schools? Especially universities. Attending universities is neither a right nor an obligation in any country.
Well, because the society at large still does not have a better proof of value besides money and diploma. As a normal untalented person, you either have some money or a diploma.
However, it's my belief that we will see a massive wave of the returning of apprenticeship/mentorship. Why?
- Apprenticeship/mentorship is the most efficient way to acquire deep knowledge and skills in any professional. School is the fast food of education, it has calories but no nutrition. Apprenticeship is the fine dining.
- In the industrial age & web2 age, there are 2 problems
- It's hard for me to find masters and learn from them easily. It's just hard to discover talented individuals. Therefore, the school as a brand is an easier choice.
- For similar reasons, it's hard for other people to trust that I actually learned from some masters. The school diploma is like an NFT of my proof of knowledge.
With decentralized technologies like Nostr, I believe that it will be much easier for normal people to find masters/mentors to learn from and establish mentorship. It's also easier to verify this mentorship because we have signed events to prove it. It does not necessarily have to be nostr. Any decentralized technology with these traits has the potential.
My key insight is that, with the inevitable shock of AGI, we have to prepare for it. We need to 100X our learning ability and maximize our human potential in order to coexist with AGI. Why do you think an AGI or AGIs will consider humans valuable and be peaceful with us, if all they see are punches of meat bags watching TikTok & Pornhub all day? It makes absolutely no sense.
If we don't transcend ourselves into a better being, a better race, we won't get any empathy from AGIs. We will at best be like what cows and dogs are to humans and that might be a reality in 50 years and it's a pretty bad future.
Boosting our learning ability and maximizing our human potential in all dimensions is the most important thing of all the generations alive. Modern school system as it is can't do shit about it. Web of Trust, Verifiable Data and Apprenticeship can. Let's make it happen.