Based Camp - Based Camp： The Education Reformation

00:00:00.000 hello gorgeous hello simone it's wonderful to be here with you today i thought today we might talk

00:00:07.860 about a long-time obsession of ours which is crafting and cultivating geniuses and a world

00:00:13.960 leader is what do you think well i mean i don't see the point in having kids if you're not going

00:00:18.340 to aim for the stars yeah i mean we were always really enchanted by what laszlo pulgar did not

00:00:24.980 just because he was a shot caller like laszlo pulgar okay as to who laszlo pulgar is simone

00:00:30.760 because some of our viewers may not just immediately know who this guy is so there was a guy who was

00:00:36.760 living in a communist bloc country and he had this theory that you could intentionally create

00:00:44.940 geniuses and so very similar to i feel like how i met my wife he puts an ad in the paper saying i'm

00:00:51.160 looking to create geniuses and i'm looking for a wife who i can do this with which is very important

00:00:56.400 that he did this from my perspective because there are some people out there who claim they know the

00:01:01.700 secret to being a good parent and they happen to have three kids who are really successful and it's

00:01:07.200 like yeah but if you're just dealing with a large population some people are going to have three kids

00:01:12.100 that are successful or four kids that are successful saying that you're going to do this up front and

00:01:17.640 having it like as a recorded thing in media that is very very different when you're talking about

00:01:25.360 statistical outcomes and can be used as a sign that he probably understood something well this

00:01:30.200 comes back to one of our key criteria for truth right we we give a lot more credit to people who we

00:01:34.760 are who are what we call shot callers and laszlo pulgar called a shot and so we were always really

00:01:40.840 fascinated by this specifically because we are really interested in well what can you do to create a great

00:01:47.360 we haven't finished the story yet they still have no idea who he is okay sorry okay so anyway

00:01:51.960 laszlo pulgar said i'm going to try to create geniuses they know that part they know his hypothesis

00:01:59.480 you're like i i love you it'd be like if we were telling a story about some famous basketball player

00:02:04.720 and you're like and one day that that four-year-old boy said i'm going to become the greatest

00:02:10.660 basketball player of all time one can assume that obviously he did it

00:02:15.820 you've gotta you better than say what happens all right all right okay okay so he raises three

00:02:23.040 daughters and he decides that the metric he's going to use for success is chess and the worst of his

00:02:31.380 three daughters was the sixth highest rate as chess champion in her lifetime as the female the best was 0.99

00:02:37.360 the best female champion of her lifetime and the second was the second female champion of her

00:02:42.400 lifetime and actually when they first went to participate in a chess championship they called

00:02:46.640 it like the event the sack of rome because it was just so outstanding they just were these little 0.51

00:02:51.800 like 13 year old girls who were just like sweeping everyone but the point being and where this is really

00:02:57.060 interesting is i think a lot of people have this perception that if you approached education and you

00:03:03.100 tried to really reform the system or try something very different you could do like 20 percent 30 percent

00:03:10.000 better what the lazul polgar case study shows is that the ceiling for how much we could improve the

00:03:17.280 educational system is like a hundred x 200 x better that you could potentially reliably create outcomes

00:03:26.380 outcomes that are what today would be we'd call geniuses like literally world class every time

00:03:33.460 that is what got us really excited about the potential of this space the other thing that got us really

00:03:40.480 excited about the potential of the space uh i'll get to in a second but simone you had some stuff you

00:03:45.080 wanted to say well i mean it's just been an obsession of ours we really want to know how to consistently

00:03:51.620 and ideally at scale create people who are capable of changing the world perhaps we are even more

00:03:58.020 interested in this today because we see generations of people graduating as infantilized people as a

00:04:04.060 disempowered people people struggling not just to have a successful career but like literally not

00:04:09.360 like endure life with crippling depression anxiety etc so this is something that we're always really

00:04:15.500 obsessed with yeah so when we first went to approach the education system a few things really

00:04:20.800 shocked us so the first thing that we did when we went to the educational system is we wanted to get

00:04:26.520 a read of the predominant educational system like how good is it where can it be tweaked and what we

00:04:32.920 first started noticing about the research is that it was bad and actually this as a science is really

00:04:38.920 interesting if you if you look at people who get phds in education statistically you compare their

00:04:44.080 iq across like different phds you can get they have i think the lowest or one of the lowest average

00:04:49.700 iqs of all phd categories so i guess this is why they like weren't using proper controls and stuff

00:04:55.160 like this but anyway so we were like oh this is really shocking well okay so we have to start

00:04:59.060 performing some of our own research in the space or start gathering evidence from different areas

00:05:03.380 in the space to try to get a feel of how good education is we do it right now because it seems

00:05:08.760 really silly the way that we're doing it we're like sending people to a room and then sit and then

00:05:12.560 somebody's lecturing to them that doesn't seem like it would be a good system now that like

00:05:17.320 the internet exists so anyway we we said okay well how can we create a control for the education

00:05:24.300 system and this is where unschooling became really important to us so unschooling is this educational

00:05:30.640 movement which is different from homeschooling in that kids have literally no structure there there is

00:05:37.640 no test for them there is no anything like that just go do whatever you want so this researcher in

00:05:43.640 this phase he he looked into these kids and what he found is doing literally nothing ended with these

00:05:50.520 kids having higher educational outcomes than kids who go through the traditional school system

00:05:54.740 they were getting into college at higher rates they had better mental health and they were graduating

00:05:58.460 college at higher rates and yes these studies that he did didn't control for socio-economic

00:06:03.820 groups so that probably plays a pretty big role yeah but doing literally nothing should not be even

00:06:11.820 close to better than this hellish thing we call the public school system in addition to that we then

00:06:21.000 said okay so we saw all this and we go okay well then let's go out there and see what better systems

00:06:25.380 exist and this is where we really began to panic because what we realized is people just really hadn't

00:06:34.480 experimented with that many genuinely novel systems in the education space and when they did they weren't

00:06:40.960 even necessarily looking at do these people have successful careers it is what was it it was

00:06:45.580 self-esteem that they were checking for yes oh my god tell me about this study that you read on

00:06:51.320 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

00:06:55.840 at kids self-esteem as an outcome like how was their self-esteem instead of okay now they're adults

00:07:01.400 what is their average earning what what is this is what's really interesting about what you said you

00:07:07.060 shared with me that study i guess you don't remember sharing it with me but it was terrible

00:07:09.880 to me but simone is really good at finding studies and sharing them with me and then we we talk about

00:07:14.740 them and synthesize them but anyway so one of the studies you showed me on self-esteem it one showed

00:07:18.680 the percent of educational research that is optimized around self-esteem it was high it was like

00:07:23.420 i i'm just remembering off the top of my head but i just remember reading it and being like that's a

00:07:27.360 comically high amount of the research yeah it doesn't make sense but then they looked at these

00:07:31.800 self-esteem measures because all these papers were using the same tests and they tried to correlate

00:07:36.480 them with life outcomes like mental health as an adult career success as an adult oh right and there

00:07:42.000 was like no correlate they were at least very little correlation yeah like the entire field is optimizing

00:07:47.040 over a useless feel good metric yeah oh my god anyway it gets crazier it gets crazier so so then we're

00:07:56.380 like okay so what are people actually optimizing for when they're trying new systems and then what you find

00:08:01.260 is they're optimizing around their own ideologies they're not optimizing around outcomes like the

00:08:06.320 waldorf system or whatever where it's like some commie utopia thing where all the students get to vote

00:08:12.220 and and i don't know whatever they want more like it's not actually it's feel good vibey stuff it's okay

00:08:19.460 i get what you're going for but like it'd be cool if you spend a lot more time focused on like student

00:08:23.980 outcomes in terms of of what you're studying and then there was this other thing oh my god it was wild

00:08:28.860 well they'll do something different but it's really just moving a slider and right that they

00:08:34.100 really love to move is how much control do we have over the student's life so you know unschooling

00:08:39.720 might be one extreme of this and like military school might be the other extreme of this but

00:08:44.460 outside of moving this slider they really don't change much in the educational paradigm and so then

00:08:50.180 we go and we're like okay so then who's tried like really different things like one of the best

00:08:54.800 systems out there right now in terms of like educational innovation is montessori which is

00:09:01.780 comical because it's literally over a century old yeah yeah that and the only other thing that seems to

00:09:08.480 be new and i mean arguably montessori is just more like freedom a freedom to explore your curiosity

00:09:15.380 right and then the other really big innovation is project-based learning which is great on an individual

00:09:21.760 level but only really when you have a lot of money it's not scalable so it's not like you could do

00:09:26.920 this sustainably at the public school level and make it spread everywhere yeah and the problem is

00:09:31.580 is that when they do it in public schools to make it sustainable they put people on big teams so you're

00:09:36.020 working on a project but was like five or six other people so the teachers have to grade less

00:09:39.680 and talk about you have a lot to say about working in teams oh gosh i mean group projects are

00:09:46.580 completely the worst and i can't believe people people use them at all because it really just

00:09:52.020 teaches really conscientious students to just hate working with other people and then it teaches

00:09:57.260 freeloaders just be freeloaders it's it's i think it's good for everyone to go through a couple group

00:10:02.000 projects just to learn game theory essentially and to learn how to avoid working with freeloaders

00:10:07.360 and to destroy them in the future and know how to pick teams well but i mean in terms of actually

00:10:13.860 encouraging people to work motivating people and encouraging them to learn really what it means

00:10:18.560 is like 70 of the people on the team aren't going to learn a thing and then 30 of the people on the

00:10:24.520 team are going to be really stressed out and angry at other people and that's what they're going to

00:10:28.700 learn no one learns about the actual thing it is so frustrating but anyway so back to the system

00:10:33.500 so then we're like okay so are there any genuinely innovative we're not just going to tweak the public

00:10:38.880 school model we're going to do something totally different and i say there's really only one system

00:10:44.000 that i have any respect for outside of our own which is the acton school system yeah they're awesome

00:10:48.440 acton is a good school system i think ours is better but acton is solid and replicable well what

00:10:54.960 they have running going for them is that they're like live and teaching students right now and

00:10:58.640 so i think they kind of totally take the cake well they i mean they've been around longer but yeah i'm

00:11:05.220 just saying it's not like everything but it's wild to me that there aren't like more like genuinely

00:11:10.220 different attempts at education that are based at scalable approaches so not just we're going to give

00:11:17.320 everyone a private tutor who gives them a bunch of project-based learning things to do and that are

00:11:22.560 focused on results this is just not something we see so we then were like well dang it are we gonna

00:11:27.540 have to do this ourselves but before we get to that let's talk about the existing school system and

00:11:33.260 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 0.90

00:11:42.820 either is the legacy or industrial schooling system was created during the industrial revolution at the

00:11:49.020 height of the british imperial empire and it was optimized around something that actually worked

00:11:52.780 really well at the time which was creating interchangeable cogs to employ in the british imperial

00:11:58.540 empire they had just created replaceable parts replaceable parts was a new concept at the time

00:12:04.020 and it was this really exciting oh can we basically turn humans into replaceable parts great concept

00:12:10.540 because we're running this big imperial system and you need to be able to run it very smoothly and you

00:12:14.920 need to be able to replace people easily in this way if someone had the same grade and same degree

00:12:19.220 they were essentially the same part you could switch them out one dies of malaria and one of the

00:12:24.020 colonies and you just replace it with the same same grade okay yeah he's replaceable but then of course

00:12:29.140 actually that that continued to work yeah in post post colonies in a world in which there were these

00:12:35.240 like big lumbering bureaucratic corporations with lifelong corporate jobs like again you needed to have

00:12:40.760 those replaceable parts we call this the era of the skyscraper corporation and the skyscraper

00:12:46.460 corporation and this is why skyscrapers were so important during this period of industrial history

00:12:51.040 was before the internet before phones were everywhere or easy to use how did you get that sort of human

00:12:58.620 connectivity where you could have lots of humans vibing off of each other you basically all have

00:13:03.780 to work out of the same building this hugely restrained the geography from which companies were

00:13:09.820 recruiting from so it meant even if the concept of replaceable parts was no longer the concept they were

00:13:15.680 vibing off of what they were vibing off of was this idea that you needed sort of blank slates that you

00:13:22.280 could then train up and you needed some system for judging the general quality of the blank slates

00:13:28.700 you're getting so you know where to put them in the hierarchy in terms of like where they start

00:13:33.200 and this was the era where you'd have a shoeshine boy at one company or a mailroom clerk work their way

00:13:38.160 all the way to the top of the company which just doesn't really happen anymore because i mean that that

00:13:43.120 really made sense in this blank slate a system where people didn't travel a lot but now it makes

00:13:48.740 sense to begin specializing almost immediately so now someone go to our current system and why

00:13:54.220 this replaceable part dynamic is so bad right so i mean obviously that worked when all these things

00:14:01.780 could not be automated because essentially they were turning humans into machines as sort of part of

00:14:06.160 this industrial revolution mindset that totally works when machines can't do what humans do

00:14:10.680 well guess what first i mean well first we we really had outsourcing right and so first people

00:14:16.120 were getting offshored and outsourced and that wasn't very good for people you're this replaceable

00:14:20.520 part you are literally the easiest thing to outsource yes you you you are literally the most disposable

00:14:27.120 part of our economy and yet our entire educational system is optimized around this yeah and now with ai as 0.98

00:14:36.460 simone points out nobody's gotta completely throw out the book and rethink everything about what

00:14:42.880 you're teaching kids and a lot of people will be like oh you won't have ai in your pocket wherever

00:14:46.300 you go and it's okay first of all bitch i already do second of all i remember when you told me this 1.00

00:14:52.740 about calculators i want to lie that was one of the big lies along with that lie that like oh having the 0.98

00:14:58.580 light on in the back of the car is illegal or we can't drive that way these are like the two big lies

00:15:02.900 of childhood oh absolutely yeah oh yeah they i wonder if kids these days even know that one

00:15:08.500 i know we would read in cars okay growing up and when you turned on the light it made it harder for

00:15:15.620 the driver to see and so they would tell this lie that like what's what was the version of it they

00:15:20.920 told you honestly i don't think it makes it that much harder for you to see and they were like oh i

00:15:25.240 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

00:15:30.680 of kids were told this lie it's it's such a thing but you know that and that along with this these are

00:15:36.760 the big lies so so we've got this system that is creating this useless output that is just not at

00:15:41.860 all optimized and and the research in the field is terrible it's done by well i know this is horrible

00:15:47.500 we're gonna have like educational researchers who are like learning out and they're like they're

00:15:51.760 making to be fair i was just looking at this ranking and early child development is even worse

00:15:56.480 so oh oh oh should i i should i should post this on this page did you just pull it up simone

00:16:02.640 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 0.99

00:16:09.040 i'm just saying objectively um just saying the majority of your colleagues are stupid not well no but 0.98

00:16:16.900 in education they've determined iq doesn't matter i wonder why they came to that determination 1.00

00:16:22.260 um we're going to hell despite it having this really high correlation with economic outcomes

00:16:29.520 with success in the workforce with oh god all sorts of other things anyway no but iq doesn't matter

00:16:35.980 whatever come on man that's nonsense so anyway hey we got to be based right based camp and i got

00:16:43.580 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

00:16:50.660 okay so simone malcolm hi where were we so we're coming to this we're like wow and this is so weird

00:17:02.420 when we like approach a new field and we're like genuinely this is one of the single most important

00:17:08.040 fields like this is where we're sending our kids to be trained for the future yeah and it's become

00:17:15.340 this horrible system so why doesn't it update this is a question a lot of people have a lot of wealthy

00:17:20.900 people spend a lot of money trying to make the education system better and it seems to have very

00:17:27.300 little effect in terms of outcomes why is that happening uh so there's there's two core reasons one is

00:17:34.160 is a lot of that money is going to educational experts which unfortunately are trained in this

00:17:41.260 field there was a great study done on this where they were looking at teachers who had learned to

00:17:46.140 be like what was actually associated with a degree that we associate with educational expertise and it

00:17:51.300 was something like 70 percent or 60 it was some like number that scared me percent of the classes they

00:17:57.480 were taking was just like social justice it was i think i saw this too it was basically just on how

00:18:05.040 to better ideologically it was ideological indoctrination that's what the actual college degree was it was

00:18:11.520 your ideological indoctrination course it was not like this is how you do research in the space this is how

00:18:15.780 you advance the space so you've got to keep in mind most of the people who are managing the funds they

00:18:19.840 haven't been educated outside of the system just completely ideologically

00:18:23.480 indoctrinated and if you suggest anything that threatens the teachers unions you get thrown out

00:18:31.420 of and and not just the teachers unions but the most entrenched bureaucratic teachers this is why

00:18:38.240 teach for america is struggling so much right now we know some people inside teach for america

00:18:41.480 and they just can't get people to join anymore because they were actually making a really big positive

00:18:46.480 impact but then the old entrenched bureaucratic teachers didn't like that some young upstarts were 0.97

00:18:51.900 coming into their districts and and showing that things could be done better so they vilified teach

00:18:57.640 for america and now the only people who they could conceivably get to work for them are conservatives

00:19:01.880 but you know that's not going to happen so and the organization isn't going to rebrand so they can't

00:19:06.440 get enough teachers and so they can't function anymore so whenever somebody's working on genuine

00:19:11.980 innovation that in a way that could disrupt the way the system is working right now or the unions

00:19:16.700 they get absolutely blasted and this was really clear to me so zuckerberg did this huge donation i

00:19:22.580 want to say hundreds of millions to the new york public school system and it was to try to innovate

00:19:27.380 things and something like 30 or 40 percent basically went to a bribe to the local teachers union

00:19:32.020 to allow them to change anything to allow and and they got very little changes and i recall that the

00:19:39.620 primary change too was was basically incentives like increases in pay based on student outcomes

00:19:47.580 so there was a bribe being placed for the privilege of paying good performers but how dare they because

00:19:54.500 all teachers should be paid a crap ton regardless of their actual performance well i wouldn't say a

00:20:00.180 crap ton but but all teachers must be paid equally or based on seniority because that determines their

00:20:05.580 dedication to the union and the union is what really matters one of my favorite quotes here is 0.93

00:20:10.640 from al schenkner who is the president of the american federation of teachers and he said when

00:20:15.980 school children start paying union dues that's when we'll start representing school children and i think

00:20:21.980 that really shows the mindset of these unions this is why despite if you look at the research school

00:20:27.020 voucher programs charter schools are just like obviously superior but there's been like this narrative

00:20:32.400 created that it's like maybe a toss-up as to whether they're better or the academics aren't

00:20:38.020 sure about whether they're better but you can just look at the research and see they're much better

00:20:41.420 and it's because it threatens these unions which are a very important voting block for the democratic

00:20:47.240 party that that's really the end of it they're just a incredibly important voting block and the

00:20:52.400 democratic party that's why the democratic party will never advocate for the best interest of students

00:20:56.060 because they can't they can't they're they're captured if i wanted to be a democratic politician

00:21:01.300 and i wanted to do this i could never get through a primary i wanted to in any way meaningfully improve

00:21:06.220 the school system or even experiment with improving the school system or experiment with pay based on

00:21:11.140 results they're like the ability to fire a teacher when they molest students oh sorry you didn't know

00:21:15.340 that was a thing yeah there's this teacher that's been getting over a million dollars so far in pay for

00:21:20.120 the new york school system who was caught molesting multiple students uh they weren't able to fire him

00:21:26.000 because it's so hard with the unions so they just kept paying him and stopped having him go to school

00:21:30.060 as a thing still a problem it's horrifying how evil the union i mean i would say that there are in

00:21:36.880 some states and this is not the norm but there are some superintendents that are enacting reform

00:21:41.180 and we do have hope like when it comes to school choice when it comes to slow but sure reform but of

00:21:46.240 course the norm is a lot of adverse incentives with teachers unions a lot of corruption yeah and a final

00:21:51.760 point i want to make is i want to be clear that we are not saying that like people who work in

00:21:56.040 education are in any way not interested in the best interest of the students oh my gosh they're

00:22:01.080 super interested that's why they're there they care what we're saying and often taking lower pay

00:22:06.160 often taking just horrible conditions what we are saying is that the system as it's structured now

00:22:11.860 specifically the unions are motivated to make the lives of the teachers who actually want to improve

00:22:19.180 the quality of education and improve the lives of the students and make genuine system reform happen

00:22:23.980 their lives hell and those are the first ones that get pushed out yeah are the ones who want to make

00:22:30.300 things better the ones who get elevated are the ones who like the bureaucracy and thrive in the

00:22:36.700 bureaucracy exactly yeah and so we basically this is all to say we need an education reformation and

00:22:44.700 that's one of the reasons why we're involved in education reform do another video on our system that 0.72

00:22:49.100 would be a great yeah we could do another another one on our system it's a at some point we want to

00:22:54.500 explain why this matters and also why we're so obsessed with creating geniuses also because here's

00:22:59.420 the thing now like one this really matters two people have essentially done it in the past like

00:23:05.460 they've proven it just as people with like limited resources modest means that they can do it

00:23:10.300 yeah and three like just no one's trying no one's even innovating or trying or testing anything

00:23:16.760 this is one of those really meaningful places where people who choose to put some skin in the game

00:23:21.980 can actually change the world yeah how can you not want to be in on that people i mean oh my gosh so

00:23:29.080 anyway i hope we got you a little excited about this space and yeah we'll totally talk about what we're

00:23:33.700 doing and to add to what you're saying so if you're a young person and you're not particularly

00:23:38.800 technologically inclined but you want to work in an area where you can transform the future of our

00:23:43.560 civilization education reform and collins institute is the project we have in this space

00:23:48.220 collinsinstitute.org we put a lot of our disposable income into this actually last year it was 43 percent

00:23:54.280 we donated charity of our and a lot of it went to developing this system so well i mean here's our

00:24:01.760 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 0.95

00:24:48.000 why'd you do that to me that's disgusting 0.99

00:24:54.220 you 1.00

00:24:54.860 you

00:25:07.680 you

Based Camp - July 18, 2023

Based Camp： The Education Reformation

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