Based Camp： The Education Reformation
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about a long-time obsession of ours which is crafting and cultivating geniuses and a world leader. We discuss the case study of Lyszlo Pulgar and his theory that you could intentionally create geniuses.
Transcript
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hello gorgeous hello simone it's wonderful to be here with you today i thought today we might talk
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about a long-time obsession of ours which is crafting and cultivating geniuses and a world
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leader is what do you think well i mean i don't see the point in having kids if you're not going
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to aim for the stars yeah i mean we were always really enchanted by what laszlo pulgar did not
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just because he was a shot caller like laszlo pulgar okay as to who laszlo pulgar is simone
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because some of our viewers may not just immediately know who this guy is so there was a guy who was
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living in a communist bloc country and he had this theory that you could intentionally create
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geniuses and so very similar to i feel like how i met my wife he puts an ad in the paper saying i'm
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looking to create geniuses and i'm looking for a wife who i can do this with which is very important
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that he did this from my perspective because there are some people out there who claim they know the
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secret to being a good parent and they happen to have three kids who are really successful and it's
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like yeah but if you're just dealing with a large population some people are going to have three kids
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that are successful or four kids that are successful saying that you're going to do this up front and
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having it like as a recorded thing in media that is very very different when you're talking about
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statistical outcomes and can be used as a sign that he probably understood something well this
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comes back to one of our key criteria for truth right we we give a lot more credit to people who we
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are who are what we call shot callers and laszlo pulgar called a shot and so we were always really
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fascinated by this specifically because we are really interested in well what can you do to create a great
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we haven't finished the story yet they still have no idea who he is okay sorry okay so anyway
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laszlo pulgar said i'm going to try to create geniuses they know that part they know his hypothesis
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you're like i i love you it'd be like if we were telling a story about some famous basketball player
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and you're like and one day that that four-year-old boy said i'm going to become the greatest
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basketball player of all time one can assume that obviously he did it
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you've gotta you better than say what happens all right all right okay okay so he raises three
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daughters and he decides that the metric he's going to use for success is chess and the worst of his
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three daughters was the sixth highest rate as chess champion in her lifetime as the female the best was
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the best female champion of her lifetime and the second was the second female champion of her
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lifetime and actually when they first went to participate in a chess championship they called
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it like the event the sack of rome because it was just so outstanding they just were these little
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like 13 year old girls who were just like sweeping everyone but the point being and where this is really
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interesting is i think a lot of people have this perception that if you approached education and you
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tried to really reform the system or try something very different you could do like 20 percent 30 percent
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better what the lazul polgar case study shows is that the ceiling for how much we could improve the
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educational system is like a hundred x 200 x better that you could potentially reliably create outcomes
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outcomes that are what today would be we'd call geniuses like literally world class every time
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that is what got us really excited about the potential of this space the other thing that got us really
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excited about the potential of the space uh i'll get to in a second but simone you had some stuff you
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wanted to say well i mean it's just been an obsession of ours we really want to know how to consistently
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and ideally at scale create people who are capable of changing the world perhaps we are even more
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interested in this today because we see generations of people graduating as infantilized people as a
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disempowered people people struggling not just to have a successful career but like literally not
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like endure life with crippling depression anxiety etc so this is something that we're always really
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obsessed with yeah so when we first went to approach the education system a few things really
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shocked us so the first thing that we did when we went to the educational system is we wanted to get
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a read of the predominant educational system like how good is it where can it be tweaked and what we
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first started noticing about the research is that it was bad and actually this as a science is really
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interesting if you if you look at people who get phds in education statistically you compare their
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iq across like different phds you can get they have i think the lowest or one of the lowest average
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iqs of all phd categories so i guess this is why they like weren't using proper controls and stuff
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like this but anyway so we were like oh this is really shocking well okay so we have to start
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performing some of our own research in the space or start gathering evidence from different areas
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in the space to try to get a feel of how good education is we do it right now because it seems
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really silly the way that we're doing it we're like sending people to a room and then sit and then
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somebody's lecturing to them that doesn't seem like it would be a good system now that like
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the internet exists so anyway we we said okay well how can we create a control for the education
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system and this is where unschooling became really important to us so unschooling is this educational
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movement which is different from homeschooling in that kids have literally no structure there there is
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no test for them there is no anything like that just go do whatever you want so this researcher in
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this phase he he looked into these kids and what he found is doing literally nothing ended with these
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kids having higher educational outcomes than kids who go through the traditional school system
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they were getting into college at higher rates they had better mental health and they were graduating
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college at higher rates and yes these studies that he did didn't control for socio-economic
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groups so that probably plays a pretty big role yeah but doing literally nothing should not be even
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close to better than this hellish thing we call the public school system in addition to that we then
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said okay so we saw all this and we go okay well then let's go out there and see what better systems
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exist and this is where we really began to panic because what we realized is people just really hadn't
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experimented with that many genuinely novel systems in the education space and when they did they weren't
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even necessarily looking at do these people have successful careers it is what was it it was
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self-esteem that they were checking for yes oh my god tell me about this study that you read on
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self-esteem and like how it doesn't no no it's just the most of the a lot of the research was looking at
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at kids self-esteem as an outcome like how was their self-esteem instead of okay now they're adults
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what is their average earning what what is this is what's really interesting about what you said you
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shared with me that study i guess you don't remember sharing it with me but it was terrible
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to me but simone is really good at finding studies and sharing them with me and then we we talk about
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them and synthesize them but anyway so one of the studies you showed me on self-esteem it one showed
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the percent of educational research that is optimized around self-esteem it was high it was like
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i i'm just remembering off the top of my head but i just remember reading it and being like that's a
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comically high amount of the research yeah it doesn't make sense but then they looked at these
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self-esteem measures because all these papers were using the same tests and they tried to correlate
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them with life outcomes like mental health as an adult career success as an adult oh right and there
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was like no correlate they were at least very little correlation yeah like the entire field is optimizing
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over a useless feel good metric yeah oh my god anyway it gets crazier it gets crazier so so then we're
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like okay so what are people actually optimizing for when they're trying new systems and then what you find
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is they're optimizing around their own ideologies they're not optimizing around outcomes like the
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waldorf system or whatever where it's like some commie utopia thing where all the students get to vote
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and and i don't know whatever they want more like it's not actually it's feel good vibey stuff it's okay
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i get what you're going for but like it'd be cool if you spend a lot more time focused on like student
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outcomes in terms of of what you're studying and then there was this other thing oh my god it was wild
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well they'll do something different but it's really just moving a slider and right that they
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really love to move is how much control do we have over the student's life so you know unschooling
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might be one extreme of this and like military school might be the other extreme of this but
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outside of moving this slider they really don't change much in the educational paradigm and so then
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we go and we're like okay so then who's tried like really different things like one of the best
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systems out there right now in terms of like educational innovation is montessori which is
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comical because it's literally over a century old yeah yeah that and the only other thing that seems to
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be new and i mean arguably montessori is just more like freedom a freedom to explore your curiosity
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right and then the other really big innovation is project-based learning which is great on an individual
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level but only really when you have a lot of money it's not scalable so it's not like you could do
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this sustainably at the public school level and make it spread everywhere yeah and the problem is
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is that when they do it in public schools to make it sustainable they put people on big teams so you're
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working on a project but was like five or six other people so the teachers have to grade less
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and talk about you have a lot to say about working in teams oh gosh i mean group projects are
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completely the worst and i can't believe people people use them at all because it really just
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teaches really conscientious students to just hate working with other people and then it teaches
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freeloaders just be freeloaders it's it's i think it's good for everyone to go through a couple group
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projects just to learn game theory essentially and to learn how to avoid working with freeloaders
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and to destroy them in the future and know how to pick teams well but i mean in terms of actually
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encouraging people to work motivating people and encouraging them to learn really what it means
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is like 70 of the people on the team aren't going to learn a thing and then 30 of the people on the
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team are going to be really stressed out and angry at other people and that's what they're going to
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learn no one learns about the actual thing it is so frustrating but anyway so back to the system
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so then we're like okay so are there any genuinely innovative we're not just going to tweak the public
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school model we're going to do something totally different and i say there's really only one system
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that i have any respect for outside of our own which is the acton school system yeah they're awesome
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acton is a good school system i think ours is better but acton is solid and replicable well what
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they have running going for them is that they're like live and teaching students right now and
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so i think they kind of totally take the cake well they i mean they've been around longer but yeah i'm
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just saying it's not like everything but it's wild to me that there aren't like more like genuinely
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different attempts at education that are based at scalable approaches so not just we're going to give
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everyone a private tutor who gives them a bunch of project-based learning things to do and that are
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focused on results this is just not something we see so we then were like well dang it are we gonna
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have to do this ourselves but before we get to that let's talk about the existing school system and
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why it sucks so much yes shall i kick us off you kick us off so we argue that the the what we'll say
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either is the legacy or industrial schooling system was created during the industrial revolution at the
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height of the british imperial empire and it was optimized around something that actually worked
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really well at the time which was creating interchangeable cogs to employ in the british imperial
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empire they had just created replaceable parts replaceable parts was a new concept at the time
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and it was this really exciting oh can we basically turn humans into replaceable parts great concept
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because we're running this big imperial system and you need to be able to run it very smoothly and you
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need to be able to replace people easily in this way if someone had the same grade and same degree
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they were essentially the same part you could switch them out one dies of malaria and one of the
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colonies and you just replace it with the same same grade okay yeah he's replaceable but then of course
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actually that that continued to work yeah in post post colonies in a world in which there were these
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like big lumbering bureaucratic corporations with lifelong corporate jobs like again you needed to have
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those replaceable parts we call this the era of the skyscraper corporation and the skyscraper
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corporation and this is why skyscrapers were so important during this period of industrial history
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was before the internet before phones were everywhere or easy to use how did you get that sort of human
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connectivity where you could have lots of humans vibing off of each other you basically all have
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to work out of the same building this hugely restrained the geography from which companies were
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recruiting from so it meant even if the concept of replaceable parts was no longer the concept they were
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vibing off of what they were vibing off of was this idea that you needed sort of blank slates that you
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could then train up and you needed some system for judging the general quality of the blank slates
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you're getting so you know where to put them in the hierarchy in terms of like where they start
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and this was the era where you'd have a shoeshine boy at one company or a mailroom clerk work their way
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all the way to the top of the company which just doesn't really happen anymore because i mean that that
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really made sense in this blank slate a system where people didn't travel a lot but now it makes
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sense to begin specializing almost immediately so now someone go to our current system and why
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this replaceable part dynamic is so bad right so i mean obviously that worked when all these things
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could not be automated because essentially they were turning humans into machines as sort of part of
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this industrial revolution mindset that totally works when machines can't do what humans do
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well guess what first i mean well first we we really had outsourcing right and so first people
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were getting offshored and outsourced and that wasn't very good for people you're this replaceable
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part you are literally the easiest thing to outsource yes you you you are literally the most disposable
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part of our economy and yet our entire educational system is optimized around this yeah and now with ai as
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simone points out nobody's gotta completely throw out the book and rethink everything about what
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you're teaching kids and a lot of people will be like oh you won't have ai in your pocket wherever
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you go and it's okay first of all bitch i already do second of all i remember when you told me this
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about calculators i want to lie that was one of the big lies along with that lie that like oh having the
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light on in the back of the car is illegal or we can't drive that way these are like the two big lies
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of childhood oh absolutely yeah oh yeah they i wonder if kids these days even know that one
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i know we would read in cars okay growing up and when you turned on the light it made it harder for
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the driver to see and so they would tell this lie that like what's what was the version of it they
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told you honestly i don't think it makes it that much harder for you to see and they were like oh i
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can't drive with the with the light on in the back or it's a it's illegal like you can't do it and a lot
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of kids were told this lie it's it's such a thing but you know that and that along with this these are
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the big lies so so we've got this system that is creating this useless output that is just not at
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all optimized and and the research in the field is terrible it's done by well i know this is horrible
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we're gonna have like educational researchers who are like learning out and they're like they're
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making to be fair i was just looking at this ranking and early child development is even worse
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so oh oh oh should i i should i should post this on this page did you just pull it up simone
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i have to find it i have to find it it's it's a little depressing i don't mean to insult your field
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i'm just saying objectively um just saying the majority of your colleagues are stupid not well no but
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in education they've determined iq doesn't matter i wonder why they came to that determination
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um we're going to hell despite it having this really high correlation with economic outcomes
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with success in the workforce with oh god all sorts of other things anyway no but iq doesn't matter
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whatever come on man that's nonsense so anyway hey we got to be based right based camp and i got
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to say it in a camp way that's your camp that's camp okay that's my camp right there i got it okay
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okay so simone malcolm hi where were we so we're coming to this we're like wow and this is so weird
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when we like approach a new field and we're like genuinely this is one of the single most important
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fields like this is where we're sending our kids to be trained for the future yeah and it's become
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this horrible system so why doesn't it update this is a question a lot of people have a lot of wealthy
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people spend a lot of money trying to make the education system better and it seems to have very
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little effect in terms of outcomes why is that happening uh so there's there's two core reasons one is
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is a lot of that money is going to educational experts which unfortunately are trained in this
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field there was a great study done on this where they were looking at teachers who had learned to
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be like what was actually associated with a degree that we associate with educational expertise and it
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was something like 70 percent or 60 it was some like number that scared me percent of the classes they
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were taking was just like social justice it was i think i saw this too it was basically just on how
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to better ideologically it was ideological indoctrination that's what the actual college degree was it was
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your ideological indoctrination course it was not like this is how you do research in the space this is how
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you advance the space so you've got to keep in mind most of the people who are managing the funds they
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haven't been educated outside of the system just completely ideologically
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indoctrinated and if you suggest anything that threatens the teachers unions you get thrown out
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of and and not just the teachers unions but the most entrenched bureaucratic teachers this is why
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teach for america is struggling so much right now we know some people inside teach for america
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and they just can't get people to join anymore because they were actually making a really big positive
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impact but then the old entrenched bureaucratic teachers didn't like that some young upstarts were
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coming into their districts and and showing that things could be done better so they vilified teach
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for america and now the only people who they could conceivably get to work for them are conservatives
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but you know that's not going to happen so and the organization isn't going to rebrand so they can't
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get enough teachers and so they can't function anymore so whenever somebody's working on genuine
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innovation that in a way that could disrupt the way the system is working right now or the unions
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they get absolutely blasted and this was really clear to me so zuckerberg did this huge donation i
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want to say hundreds of millions to the new york public school system and it was to try to innovate
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things and something like 30 or 40 percent basically went to a bribe to the local teachers union
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to allow them to change anything to allow and and they got very little changes and i recall that the
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primary change too was was basically incentives like increases in pay based on student outcomes
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so there was a bribe being placed for the privilege of paying good performers but how dare they because
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all teachers should be paid a crap ton regardless of their actual performance well i wouldn't say a
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crap ton but but all teachers must be paid equally or based on seniority because that determines their
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dedication to the union and the union is what really matters one of my favorite quotes here is
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from al schenkner who is the president of the american federation of teachers and he said when
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school children start paying union dues that's when we'll start representing school children and i think
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that really shows the mindset of these unions this is why despite if you look at the research school
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voucher programs charter schools are just like obviously superior but there's been like this narrative
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created that it's like maybe a toss-up as to whether they're better or the academics aren't
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sure about whether they're better but you can just look at the research and see they're much better
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and it's because it threatens these unions which are a very important voting block for the democratic
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party that that's really the end of it they're just a incredibly important voting block and the
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democratic party that's why the democratic party will never advocate for the best interest of students
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because they can't they can't they're they're captured if i wanted to be a democratic politician
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and i wanted to do this i could never get through a primary i wanted to in any way meaningfully improve
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the school system or even experiment with improving the school system or experiment with pay based on
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results they're like the ability to fire a teacher when they molest students oh sorry you didn't know
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that was a thing yeah there's this teacher that's been getting over a million dollars so far in pay for
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the new york school system who was caught molesting multiple students uh they weren't able to fire him
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because it's so hard with the unions so they just kept paying him and stopped having him go to school
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as a thing still a problem it's horrifying how evil the union i mean i would say that there are in
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some states and this is not the norm but there are some superintendents that are enacting reform
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and we do have hope like when it comes to school choice when it comes to slow but sure reform but of
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course the norm is a lot of adverse incentives with teachers unions a lot of corruption yeah and a final
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point i want to make is i want to be clear that we are not saying that like people who work in
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education are in any way not interested in the best interest of the students oh my gosh they're
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super interested that's why they're there they care what we're saying and often taking lower pay
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often taking just horrible conditions what we are saying is that the system as it's structured now
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specifically the unions are motivated to make the lives of the teachers who actually want to improve
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the quality of education and improve the lives of the students and make genuine system reform happen
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their lives hell and those are the first ones that get pushed out yeah are the ones who want to make
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things better the ones who get elevated are the ones who like the bureaucracy and thrive in the
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bureaucracy exactly yeah and so we basically this is all to say we need an education reformation and
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that's one of the reasons why we're involved in education reform do another video on our system that
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would be a great yeah we could do another another one on our system it's a at some point we want to
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explain why this matters and also why we're so obsessed with creating geniuses also because here's
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the thing now like one this really matters two people have essentially done it in the past like
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they've proven it just as people with like limited resources modest means that they can do it
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yeah and three like just no one's trying no one's even innovating or trying or testing anything
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this is one of those really meaningful places where people who choose to put some skin in the game
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can actually change the world yeah how can you not want to be in on that people i mean oh my gosh so
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anyway i hope we got you a little excited about this space and yeah we'll totally talk about what we're
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doing and to add to what you're saying so if you're a young person and you're not particularly
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technologically inclined but you want to work in an area where you can transform the future of our
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civilization education reform and collins institute is the project we have in this space
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collinsinstitute.org we put a lot of our disposable income into this actually last year it was 43 percent
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we donated charity of our and a lot of it went to developing this system so well i mean here's our
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thing like with entrepreneurship in general or with making a difference on things in general you want
00:24:07.020
to go into spaces where not all the world's small smartest people are going so if you want to
00:24:13.460
create a business and really kill it don't go into crypto don't go into vc don't go where all the smart
00:24:20.080
people are going you have to compete against all the smartest people go where there isn't innovation
00:24:24.120
go where there's stagnation go where all those smart people aren't going because that's how you can
00:24:28.620
make a big difference that's where the arbitrage is woof well i look forward to talking about this more with you
00:24:35.820
i love you so much we could talk about this all day because we do yeah that's what i love about you
00:24:42.040
all right ciao gorgeous ciao oh no i said something foreign