Exploring Alternative Education Types： The Good, The Bad, and The... Whaaaa？
Summary
In this episode, Smoad and I discuss the pros and cons of homeschooling and why you should not confuse it with other forms of education. We also talk about the benefits and disadvantages of home schooling and why it s better than public education.
Transcript
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like they've done big meta studies on this persistently. Homeschooled kids are better
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socialized. They're better leaders. They're like better in pretty much every category.
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And people are like, yeah, but I remember I've engaged with homeschooled kids and they have
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no social skills. And I'm like, okay, try to bring them back to your memory. Do you remember
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why you thought they had no social skills? Was it that they were unusually well-mannered?
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Was it that they didn't engage in petty social politicking? Was it that they didn't randomly
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get mad at people who picked on them? Is it that maybe they were socialized by adults instead of
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children? Hey kid, get out of that hamster ball. Oh, I promised my father I wouldn't. Oh boy,
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you best do what he says at homeschool kid. Well, this is our part of the playground. See,
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we're going to duct tape you to the bench. You mean you would actually duct tape my entire body
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to a bench? For what purpose? Okay, there we go. Have a nice second half of the day,
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nerdo. Yeah, well, you shouldn't be such a smart mouth Mr. Know-it-all. Oh dear. Enjoy your lunch,
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nerdo? Ah, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me. Oh dude,
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you don't say that. About the only homeschool kids I've seen that have persistent problems
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are the ones from very religious backgrounds where it included denying them access to either
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common media or denying them the right to date and stuff. Mother Noah, it's a scary world out
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there. Something will go wrong, I swear. Ruffians. Thugs. Poison. Also large bugs. Men with pointy
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In canon, they have never met. I don't care. I ship it. I don't care.
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I know that they are siblings, but I think there's something more. If she were dating that guy,
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they'd be banging, I'm sure. Would you like to know more? Okay, y'all, 60 episode. Hello,
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Smoad. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to have an interesting conversation.
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It is going to be about education because I was having a conversation recently where I realized
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how incorrectly a lot of Americans think about education because they confuse the actual choices
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they have around educating their children. And I would say that all of the choices that we make
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around educating our children should be categorized into three buckets. And you should not confuse these
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buckets. They're almost totally interchangeable with each other. And Simone is going to hate the
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names of one of these buckets. So we'll let her choose a different name. The first bucket is
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location. The second bucket is medium, but Simone also likes to call it method. So method,
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I'll say. And the third bucket is curriculum. So let me explain how people make mistakes around
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the three buckets. So I may make a complaint and I may say something as a parent, like,
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isn't it wild that we just sit our kids in a room with what is to them an arbitrary authority figure
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telling them what's true and what's false and that they are just expected to memorize these things and
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then, you know, write them down at the end of like, like, oh yeah, I just trust the authority figure.
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That's a good way to relate to information. And then some parents will be like, and they'll see
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our, you know, online, what is a form of a platform. And they'll be like, well, that's too tech for me.
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So like, well, I like your high tech stuff. I take my kids to a woods school.
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A woods school. And I'm like, well, that, I mean, they can take a tablet to the woods,
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you know, like, wait, who's, who's teaching them in the woods? And they're like, well,
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it's a, you know, it's basically a normal school in the woods. It's like an arbitrary
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authority figure telling them what's right and wrong. Yeah. But now they're in the woods. So
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yeah, that's what I thought. See that you've got a drum circle in your backyard.
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Oh, well they showed up a few days ago, but I didn't think they were hurting anything.
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Yeah. You know, I had a guy in Jackson County. He had a little drum circle in his backyard,
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turned into a drum circle four miles in diameter. You get a few hippies playing drums.
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And the next thing you know, you got yourself a colony. Oh dear.
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So, so it's good to understand that changing the location where the education is happening
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doesn't change either the method or the curriculum. And when you are thinking about things like
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the method slash the medium, as I call it of education, it is very, very important
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that you not get confused by the aesthetics of the geography. So an example here is let's go back
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to granola mom, right? So we just had the previous conversation. They're called crunchy moms,
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crunchy moms, whatever. She goes, Oh no, it's okay. You see, that's not the method that we're using.
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Uh, my child, like the teacher acts more like his friend. And I hear this and I go, that sounds
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infinitely worse than the previous thing you just told me. It does. You, you are telling me in the
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first, that's a much better way of the child. If the teacher has like creepy ideas that they want
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to incept your child with or world perspectives, it's going to be much easier if they've taken on
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this interpersonal relation with the child. This is a cult leader now. Oh good. So we've gone from
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arbitrary authoritarian leader who you might hate and whose ideas you might question to a cult leader
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whose ideas you will certainly not question because they've loved you. Yes. And, and we're,
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and worse. And I've seen teachers like this when the kids don't love them, they're not that happy
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with the kid. It's very cult leader vibes. But then the question is, is like, also like,
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what are you filtering for? Like, what kind of person is like, I want to be friends with a bunch
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of like middle schoolers or toddlers. And I want that to be like, some, some heavy filters have
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been applied by the time you've gotten to that point. And then if they're in the woods with your
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kid, this is the sub faction that said, I want to not be near other adults. And for whatever reason,
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I couldn't get a job in the local public school. Are you really sure that this is what you want?
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I would remind you that in the United States, one in 10 kids, I think it's over one in 10 kids
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have experienced SA by a teacher. So, you know, and these are typically public or private school
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teachers who have had criminal background checks and a lot of other vetting. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So
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don't maybe send your kids into the woods with somebody like have a little do so with your eyes
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wide open if you need to, if you must. Oh yeah. Well, so then they're like, no, I'll send my kids
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into the woods with a book. Okay. I'm like, you know, teacher, just a book. You, do you know how
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quickly CPS is going to be called on you? Like, I love it when parents like have these fantasies that
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it's clear that they've never actually sent their kids out of the house. 37% of American kids have had
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CPS called on them. We've had CPS called on us twice. I was in a podcast with another woman who
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asked me this question and I was like, because you'll have CPS called on you immediately. And
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she, and she thought for a second, she goes, oh yeah, actually once I let my kids play outside and
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within two hours, the cops were at our house. Oh, what? Oh God. Yeah. Okay. Cause this isn't the
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world of our parents' generation. You know, we're under the authoritarian regime. So let's begin to
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break out and delineate all of the different methods and curriculum and environments that kids
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can learn within. Yes. So, and the potential benefits of each, right? So if I'm going to talk
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about methods, the core ones are teacher who tells kids what's true and what's false, right? Like the
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authoritarian model, I guess I'll call it. Second one is friendly model and the friendly model comes in a
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number of varieties, but friendly model. The third one is reactive model. This is a teacher who is
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only there for questions. Oh, the Mrs. Frizzle. No, not Mrs. Frizzle. She's a insane. Mrs. Frizzle's
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always almost getting her class killed. Is it just me or is that a real life Tyrannosaurus rex behind
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them? Correctosaurus, Ralphie. And the T-Rex was the biggest meat eater of all time. I don't know
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what you're talking about. No, I think she's a great model of a teacher because she's the kind
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of teacher who puts students in a situation and presents them with problems and says. Or they
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could die. Well, okay. That's the fantasy part of it. But when you look at the practical element.
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Where they experience body horror. If I may. Where they get jizzed on by a fish while she is singing a
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song and dancing in a big device that has human lips. It's looking at the kids who have been trapped in
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fish eggs. This is a horror among the horrors, Simone, where the kids say, I guess this is our home
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now. Or we're going to be fertilized. Whoa. Holy mackerel. The bus just laid eggs and we're in them.
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Look at it this way, Ralphie. As soon as we hatch, this will be home.
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A salmony winter courtin' he did swim. Salmony winter courtin'. There's your answer, Carlos.
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What? Is he some sort of car wash? No. Don't eggs have to be fertilized and we're going to be the
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next generation of salmon? Get ready to dig in, Liv. Hey! The bus is burying us alive!
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Cutting an egg? Okay. Getting fertilized? Okay. Getting buried in an egg? Not okay. Class?
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Let's see if hatching's all it's cracked up to be. Wow! I'm hungry! My yolk sac's history! Let's find food!
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What?! When you take away the fantasy sci-fi element of it, she is the kind of teacher who presents students
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with problems and questions and then encourages them to find for themselves the truth. And I think
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that's a method and I quite like that method in the end. I think it's a great method because
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she's not their friend. She's not an authority figure. She doesn't answer their questions. She
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encourages them to find their own answers. No, but the truth is, is this method that you're
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describing right here is a fantasy method that many parents believe? No, it's true. So I actually know
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the method that you're talking about. A lot of ultra-rich parents believe that it's the way
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their kids are being educated. Oh, yeah, but no one actually has the time to do that.
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Nobody actually has the time to implement this. No, no. We kind of do at home. Trust me,
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I know people who have started schools that were meant to use this method and were at least half
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billionaires and their own school ended up going insane. Like, it just doesn't work. It is a fantasy.
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Why does it not work? Because either, there's two problems. One is it's completely non-scalable,
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okay? Completely non-scalable, especially post-middle school where kids begin to,
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you know, develop more autonomy. And then when you actually say, okay, I understand it's
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on-scalable, but let's have like three kids in a classroom or two kids in a classroom,
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the teachers just give up after six months and go back to some other form of education
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or become completely passive. Is that because you need students to be so involved to find
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their own answers and they typically don't have that kind of initiative? Yes. Yeah, like with our
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son Octavian, our biggest problem with him, and I was just having a parent-teacher conference about this,
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is if you ask him, you know, like, what's this? He's always like, you tell me. Like, I don't care.
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He just doesn't care. I mean, our other son is very different in that he is actively finding
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things out on his own and insisting on telling us. I want to tell you something he keeps saying,
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but yeah, you're right. Most students, it doesn't work for. Back to the real education model. Yeah.
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Passive education model. Okay. Okay. Passive education model is I have given my kid a form
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of curriculum that has them regularly run into problems. And typically there is an authority
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figure around that they can communicate with. So the passive medium typically works alongside
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one of the other mediums. So then the last- So if you get stuck, you go to the teacher,
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right? They're like a tutor who's available on demand to help you organize. Yeah, an on-demand
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tutor. Yeah. Often a parent or something like that. Yeah. And then the last two mediums are books and
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internet. So those are of the realistic mediums that actually work instead of fantasy medium.
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You have authoritarian, friend, passive, book, computer. And basically these are the- Oh,
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one new one I'd say, AI. And the AI, I generally think is a better passive medium,
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unless the passive medium is the parent, just because it's typically going to be one much more
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on demand and the child is actually learning as they're engaging. Yeah, more informed, more patient.
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No, but they're also learning how to use an AI and how to source questions with AI as questions
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come to them. So as an adult, when they might not have some arbitrary authority they can turn to,
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they know, oh, this is the AI I use for these types of questions. And they build habits around
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that, that are effective at coming to true answers. So these are the various methods of
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communicating information to the kids. Obviously our school, the Collins Institute, Parasia,
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you can check it out, collinsinstitute.org. It's free. Right now it's mostly in the development
00:14:01.320
stage. We have a bunch of editors. We have like a huge team of editors that are going through it.
00:14:05.640
We have a number of them that are paid to just basically work on it all day, every day,
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removing anything that's wrong. Because a lot of the initial content was developed with AI,
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so it's got some mistakes. And so we're basically cleaning all that up while also getting right now help
00:14:19.560
from anybody who's interested and people are like, oh, so it's not ready for kids. No, it is ready
00:14:22.920
for kids. Just part of the way the kids are going to learn is identifying wrong answers and questions
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and flagging them and identifying mistakes. My wife and I built the Collins Institute,
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a comprehensive interactive map or skill tree comprising all of human knowledge. The platform
00:14:38.200
is designed to be usable as soon as a student gets comfortable with reading and goes about midway
00:14:42.840
through a PhD in most subjects. However, we built it to cover all human knowledge,
00:14:46.840
meaning it covers a much larger domain than is taught in the traditional school system,
00:14:51.160
ranging from tort law to hanging drywall to the industrial transportation of grain or aquaculture
00:14:57.400
pharmacology. Click on a node to open it. The node will include a description of what knowledge
00:15:02.600
is needed to pass its test, as well as a list of the best places to learn that information.
00:15:08.200
Vote on the sources that were most useful to you by clicking this button. To add an additional source,
00:15:13.800
click this button. And by the way, to those of you who are in Parisia, adding feedback,
00:15:19.000
adding resources, making yourself available as a tutor. Thank you so much. You guys rock.
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Yes. So now to the environments. The environments are really, I'd say primarily two, but maybe you can
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get more or three and maybe you can get more. You've got your home. Okay.
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Okay. You've got a school and you've got everything else. By that, what I mean is that can be the woods,
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that could be a city, that could be one of our kids could, you know, with the Parisia platform,
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get a tablet and hop on our little floating watercraft and spend the day on the lake right
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outside the house. Well, don't you think now among very wealthy families, the concept of world
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schooling got trendy around 10 years ago and has held steady. World schooling. Yeah. Basically,
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you know, wealthy family travels around the world, does their world tour, brings their kids with them
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because they want to spend time with their kids and their kids just do a homeschooling program
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while on the road, but also while going to museums in Florence and, you know, meeting with
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families in Egypt. The question here is, what are the advantages and disadvantages of these various
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models? I find it interesting how many people think like nature is like, I don't know, like
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sink an educational process. Like we can have an authoritarian teacher, we can have a kid learning
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online. It's going to be totally different if they're floating on a river. And it's like, well,
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maybe, I mean, if that's what the kid wants, but I'm sure they'll find some efficiency drop in doing
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that eventually, you know, but sure, whatever, you know, that's what you want to do. They can sit
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on that with their little tablet and go down lazy river style while studying if they wanted to. But
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the question is, are they going to learn more efficiently in that environment? Definitely not.
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No. So there's a principle in psychology. The term I was looking for was context-dependent
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memory or state-dependent memory. If the learning environment is similar to the recall environment,
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you'll be about 20% better at recall. So an example of this is if you study for a test in
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the room, you take the test, you will do about like 20% better or something. And it's also like
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if you study in a radically different environment, like on an airplane or on a boat or in the woods,
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and then you are testing in a test room, like an ACT test room, you have,
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you know, like shot yourself in the leg before running a marathon. It's an intentionally like
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stupid thing to do outside of the just health benefits of being in nature. But at that point,
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it's like, well, I mean, couldn't the kids just go on a couple hour walk every day? Like we live by
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the woods. I don't know. Like the hacks that I used when I was a student to get around that when
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I was concerned about it was I would wear the same perfume on test day as I did on study days.
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It helped. I felt it helped, but maybe it was all placebo effect.
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So, you know, world schooling. So I think this idea that if you put a kid in an environment like
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that, they're not going to build social ties. This whole thing about, oh, if I homeschool my kids,
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they won't be socially well-adjusted is the biggest myth. It's yeah, they, your, your child
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is going to be worse socially adjusted and have worse habits and pick up worse things
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if they hang out at a school environment, period, period. If they're hanging out around adults.
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This weird Lord of the fly scenario. And it's, it was one of these things like they've done big
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meta studies on this persistently homeschooled kids. I'm better socialized. They're better leaders.
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They're like better in pretty much every category. And the, and the question is, is people are like,
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yeah, but I remember I've engaged with homeschool kids and they have no social skills. And I'm like,
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okay, I want you to meditate on those engagements. Try to bring them back to your memory. Do you
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remember why you thought they had no social skills? Was it that they were unusually well-mannered?
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Was it that they didn't engage in petty social politicking? Was it that they didn't randomly
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get mad at people who picked on them? Is it that maybe they were socialized by adults instead of
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children and you in child world were confused because you ran into somebody who wasn't socialized
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in child world and didn't understand that it was you who was poorly socialized?
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Hey kid, get out of that hamster ball. Oh, I promised my father I wouldn't.
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Oh boy. You best do what he says, a homeschool kid. Well, this is our part of the playground.
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See, we're going to duct tape you to the bench. You mean you would actually duct tape my entire
00:19:58.680
Have a nice second half of the day, nerdo. Yeah, well, you shouldn't be such a smart-mouth
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Mr. Know-it-all. Oh dear. Enjoy your lunch, nerdo? Ah, sticks and stones may break my bones,
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but words will never harm me. Oh dude, you don't say that.
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And this is something I've persistently seen when people are talking about, you know, homeschool kids.
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About the only homeschool kids I've seen that have any sort of persistent problems are the ones from
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very religious backgrounds where it included denying them access to either common media
00:20:32.200
that everyone else would have access to. So in the modern age, this would be something like denying
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them Facebook and stuff like that, or denying them the right to date and stuff. And then they become
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like sex freaks. Mother knows best. It's a scary world out there. Something will go wrong, I swear.
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Prophens, thugs, poison. Also large bugs. Men with pointy teeth. Mother will protect you. Darling,
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here's what I suggest. And like, everybody knows, like it's one of these things why I'm always like
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when somebody's like, well, I'm going to be like super sexually restrictive of my kid and tell them all
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this stuff is terrible and tell them. And I'm like, did, but you do know that like
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everyone that happens to becomes like a super slut, right? Like I will say as a very sexually
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active guy in high school, like that was a very easy crowd to target. They were some of the easiest
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people, the people who had the ultra protective parents. And I don't know like how parents was all
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the stereotypes. I'm gonna put the south fart clip of homeschool girl here. Hey, isn't that the homeschool
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kid's sister? Hi, guys. Holy cow. Hey, baby, come see me later, k? What the damn, baby? Hey, Kyle,
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wanna go make out? Rebecca, you. Rebecca, what the devil are you doing? I'm having fun, Mark.
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You did this to my sister. You made my sister into a slut. I'll kill you.
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Ah! But he's kicking the crap out of Kyle. Yeah, he's a badass. I'm not through with you,
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bitch. Hey, you're pretty cool, Mark. Yeah, that was real badass how you stood up for your sister.
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I had to kick Kyle's bitch ass too. You want to go have some cake with me, Mark? He said he'd hang
00:22:10.680
out with me. Like, how do they not... I guess it's because they don't watch the media or interact or
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weren't, you know, like, they don't understand the vulnerabilities they're instilling in the kids
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through doing that, which was, yeah, very, very interesting. Mother knows best. Take it from your
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mumsy. Sloppy, immature, clumsy. Collable, naive. Positively crappy. I love it so much when I'm
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talking to one of these parents and they're like, oh, yeah, but my kid actually really obeys the rules
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and, you know, she's super sweet and she would never, you know, break any of the rules. And I'm like,
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what? Do you think the girls I was sleeping with who had protective parents told their parents?
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Are you out of your mind? No, of course that's what you'd think if they were sleeping around.
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Oh my gosh. For individuals wondering about the functional mechanism that makes sheltered
00:23:02.840
girls so much easier than non-sheltered girls, it's that once you have gotten a shelter girl to kiss you,
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from that point to PIV intercourse is, there's very few barriers. Because for them, the core barrier
00:23:20.200
is the hard line in the sand that the parents have set for them. Whereas with non-sheltered
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individuals, they have an escalating barrier based on the seriousness of the intimate act they are
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engaging with. So with the sheltered kids, really all you're doing is slightly increasing the difficulty
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of getting the first kiss. But everything after that is dramatically, dramatically easier.
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And it's just a really bad idea. The, God, what was another one?
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Different categories. Oh yes. Yeah. So the world school kids typically, because I've met a number
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of them, they end up like super well-adjusted, super well-adjusted, unusually well-adjusted.
00:24:03.400
Well, and I would even, I would say even those raised in cults often turn out a little more
00:24:08.760
well-adjusted. The people we've met who came from even extreme cults, we're talking
00:24:13.880
polygamous cults in the jungles of South America. And I'm not changing any details there.
00:24:21.240
Very well-adjusted, very normal, cool people. So yeah. Yeah. That guy was exceptionally well-adjusted.
00:24:27.720
It was a cult where they kick out all the young men because the one guy is married to all of the
00:24:33.000
women. Yeah. So this guy had six brothers and they, they were all throughout the United States
00:24:39.080
because they'd all been kicked out of the family and they all kind of helped each other after they
00:24:42.040
got kicked out, which is kind of interesting model. Really cool. Yeah. They've apparently,
00:24:46.440
they were all pretty successful. They were very successful. Yeah. Yeah. Which is interesting.
00:24:50.840
It's like, well, I mean, I guess the dad has like really good genes. Like that's.
00:24:55.400
Well, and I think there's something to be said for forcing enough. Well, yes, forcing,
00:25:01.640
but also allowing people to grow up. We do infantilize people egregiously, even adults in
00:25:07.480
the United States these days, just culturally and pervasively, and even, even systemically and
00:25:12.040
governmentally, we infantilize people across all means. So a cult that artificially kind of removes
00:25:18.600
you from mainstream society and forces you to become an adult is going to give you a distinctive
00:25:23.960
advantage. Well, I mean, that sort of forcing is very useful, but then you're not going to stay
00:25:27.080
within your birth culture. But one that is, is, is really dangerous that I see a lot of people
00:25:32.200
defaulting more towards is sheltering. Well, two types of sheltering that are both very damaging to
00:25:38.840
kids. The first and why it's a terrible idea is more obvious, which is sheltering from social media.
00:25:45.720
If you do not teach your child to do just actually engage with social media, you are hurting them in
00:25:53.320
two core ways. One, they're going to get a social media account when they get out from under your
00:25:58.280
thumb and they're going to do dumb stuff with it. That will be on the internet forever at an age where
00:26:03.960
they're going to be held responsible for that stuff. Do not like I it's, it's, it's, it's the same thing as
00:26:12.120
like telling a kid they can't date. Like, of course you're going to get the, the freak scenario after
00:26:17.640
that. It reminds me of earlier today, I was actually thinking about like what cultural group,
00:26:22.200
because I've slept with women from many cultural groups are typically the best in bed. And when I
00:26:26.920
was thinking, I was like, I hate, it's gotta be Catholic girls. They just have a lot more experience
00:26:32.200
than any other cultural subgroup I'm familiar with.
00:26:34.760
And, and it's partially because of this protective mindset, right? Like, oh, we'll protect them
00:26:57.160
from learning how to date judiciously or anything like that. Right. Or learning how to deal with
00:27:03.240
social media judiciously. Uh, so I think that's one problem, but then the other problem that you're
00:27:08.280
going to have in dealing with social media is as the school system begins to degrade,
00:27:14.280
we are entering a world where one of the core ways that people check the competence of other people
00:27:20.200
is to see if that person has been validated by people that they know, or has been validated by a
00:27:25.640
large group of strangers. And that is done often through social media accounts. So when somebody is
00:27:30.760
deciding to work with us or invest in us or something like that, they're, you know,
00:27:35.000
checking us out on X and seeing, do people who they respect follow us? Do we have X many followers,
00:27:41.080
at least like, are we socially relevant? And there really just aren't that many other good
00:27:49.320
competence fetters that are broadly accessible and inter interpretable across communities right now.
00:27:55.960
And so when you ban a kid from this, it's a bit like banning a kid from getting a college degree
00:28:00.120
in the last societal system, it's going to lead to like huge negative externalities for the kid.
00:28:05.640
Do you have thoughts before I go on? No, I agree. Let's go on to the different.
00:28:09.720
The other problem is, and now we're going to move into the question of the digital though, right? Like
00:28:16.920
if the message that the kid is being educated on is digital, is that going to cause problems?
00:28:23.240
And I would note here that what a lot of people don't know is when books were first released,
00:28:28.760
there were lots of panics around this of people becoming addicted to books and all of the negative
00:28:33.160
psychological effects of books. When I was talking to a mom about this recently, she was like, well,
00:28:38.600
I mean, even today, you know, my daughter got a little too into fantasy books and I had to like
00:28:47.400
wean her off those a bit for a period because she's like, it's not that they were bad books.
00:28:51.640
It's just that she was, you know, reading them to the exclusion of everything else, right?
00:28:55.720
Not just that, but they were building bad expectations about reality for her, you know,
00:29:00.040
expecting fantasy book boyfriends, expecting fantasy book environments, you know, the world
00:29:04.920
doesn't have dragons, right? You know, so it created a, a, a set of bad pre and you know,
00:29:12.440
for ages when, when people today are like, isn't that funny? They thought young girls were getting
00:29:16.920
addicted to reading in the past and going insane. And I was like, well, I mean, it's not that insane.
00:29:23.960
Like I, I think it was probably actually happening. It's just today we call that being a little too
00:29:29.720
into fan fiction or something like it still happens. It's just different these days.
00:29:35.640
I was talking to one fairly sheltering mother at one point bragging about how into writing her
00:29:42.040
daughter was and how she was involved in all of these communities online that wrote. And I was
00:29:47.480
like, huh, are they writing fan fiction? And she's like, yes, yes, that's exactly what they write.
00:29:54.520
And here I am thinking, oh, oh my goodness. You have no idea what your daughter is doing, do you?
00:30:14.200
I know that they are siblings, but I think there's nothing more.
00:30:19.800
If she were dating, like I made me banging, I'm sure.
00:30:27.000
but the online environment people are like well look at all the research on screen times you know
00:30:47.320
look at all the how bad screen times are my take on screen times is it's a bit like
00:30:53.620
i told somebody well living in the tenderloin in san francisco is bad for you
00:31:00.540
and they're like why do you think that and i'm like well you know every time i go there there's
00:31:05.420
like people throwing up and they look sick and they're screaming at the wall and they can barely
00:31:09.900
move and they're like that's the meth and i'm like yeah but why is it only in the tenderloin and
00:31:15.820
they're like well because that's where the they sell the meth that's where they do the meth that's
00:31:20.240
where all the meth is done it is not the tenderloin intrinsically it's that's where
00:31:25.580
meth is sold dopamine loops within online environments is what's causing all of these
00:31:31.620
negative externalities it's not the environments themselves that intrinsically lead to these
00:31:37.040
externalities and so yeah i it's and then they're like well yeah but you can't tell your kid that
00:31:44.820
they have to go to the tenderloin to work every day and i'm like if it turns out that that's where
00:31:48.120
our entire economy is based i mean yeah you kind of need them to learn how to handle this environment
00:31:54.780
without taking meth um and this creates this whole other scenario so people don't know what i'm talking
00:32:00.940
about when i'm talking about dopamine loops okay so you know there is you i'm forgetting the word for
00:32:06.140
this right now but if you put like a mouse or a rat skinner boxes skinner boxes yeah and it pushes
00:32:12.540
a lever and it gets food every time it pushes the lever it'll push the food when it's hungry if it gets
00:32:17.320
food sometimes when it pushes the lever it'll start like pushing the lever repeatedly right this is why
00:32:22.120
you get all these gambling like things in video games and online environments these days and they
00:32:27.700
can create an addiction using your own neurochemical pathways instead of inducing exogenous chemicals and
00:32:34.660
it can cause all sorts of and and and people are like i don't engage with anything like that online
00:32:39.640
and i'm like well do you use facebook or twitter or instagram because those are all social inner boxes
00:32:47.860
you are putting the picture out and then you get a variable positive response and to an adult that's
00:32:55.180
one thing but to a kid kids respond extremely exaggeratedly to social approval and so that is a
00:33:02.240
huge addiction pathway for kids and so the parents are like well so it is screens that are the problem i'm
00:33:08.040
like well i mean not really so if a kid's just like on wikipedia right it's not a problem right if if i put
00:33:16.560
a kid on youtube and he's watching magic school buzz i am 100 positive and people are like no all shows
00:33:22.320
are bad to some extent i'm sorry i'm 100 positive that that kid is going to be learning more than he
00:33:26.960
would be was a random adult and people can be like no the adult can be like but it's like yeah but you
00:33:33.400
haven't seen kids around adults even around you okay you can sit down and read them a story you've
00:33:40.160
read to them before which is like marginal additional utility you can try to engage them
00:33:45.420
in a conversation yeah like go outside and annotate things like your mom when she was still living would
00:33:51.280
tell you that you have to go outside and go on a walk with the kids and tell them the name of every
00:33:56.460
single plant also in latin um and she had this big vision for how you were going to educate the
00:34:01.460
children they are not listening to us when we're talking oh yeah no they're over there climbing a
00:34:08.880
tree they're over there stepping on hornet's nest they are not listening to us tell them the plant's
00:34:13.760
names in latin as an adult can like sit down and monopolize your kids attention maybe this works with
00:34:20.660
some kids but it doesn't work with our kids and i imagine it doesn't work with a lot of other
00:34:24.840
people's kids if i want my kid to sit down and actually watch something that has any educational
00:34:30.880
value and let me define educational value here it uses uh broad plot narratives it has human beings
00:34:36.780
with emotions reacting appropriately to various scenarios and it explains some sort of scientific
00:34:42.860
phenomenon i.e magical school bus like this is useful here um and it has an important bill
00:34:49.720
nye the science guy our kids love bill nye so so the old stuff not since he went woke and crazy
00:34:56.040
i mean he was an actor he wasn't like a smart person people understand this right parents who
00:35:01.580
are shocked to find out that bill nye is just a dumb actor like with the opinions of any other dumb
00:35:08.620
actor give off to me the same energy of like a police department who's stuck in a really hard
00:35:15.360
homicide investigation calling up steve from blues clues and being confused why he can't solve the
00:35:25.780
crime great we gotta find a paw print that's the first clue we put it in a notebook and now what do
00:35:34.740
we do we gotta find another paw print that's the second clue we put it in a notebook but varied ideas
00:35:41.040
so one of the things that people miss when they're like i'm just going to talk with my kids is the
00:35:45.100
vocabulary that you are going to use when you are trying to communicate with a child that's going to
00:35:49.440
be intrinsically limited and less than the vocabulary they're going to engage in a show so much of the
00:35:55.400
parenting advice i hear is from people who have clearly never interacted extended 100 and it's like
00:36:02.760
that won't work like they're like let the kids go outside i'm like you'll be arrested they're like
00:36:06.840
don't show them a show sit down and talk with your kids and it's like kids won't talk with you for more
00:36:13.120
than like five minutes like what are you talking about they'll get annoyed and walk off and go do
00:36:17.940
something else well what we've what i found really works well is annotation so yeah watch tv with them
00:36:24.920
but watch it with them and talk about it what are they doing now what's happening what do you think
00:36:29.680
they are feeling like right now what does this mean and you get really great conversations from that
00:36:34.200
because they're engaged with the media but they're also excited to talk about it but yeah but if you
00:36:39.100
prevent your kid from interacting with these types of medium because you're like well i don't want my kid
00:36:44.900
to have experience with those skinner box things they're gonna experience them eventually and they're not
00:36:51.220
gonna have any defenses when they do yeah yeah it's like it memes and addictive pathways are not
00:37:01.100
too dissimilar from diseases it's like introducing smallpox to indigenous americans they have no
00:37:09.140
defenses so you you want to have the kids who grew up around smallpox and you know slowly developed
00:37:16.320
you know resistance to increasing levels of viral load i guess and you don't want the kid who grew
00:37:21.760
up in a bubble and has absolutely no system it reminds me you know growing up i've mentioned i had some
00:37:27.540
friends who like their parents were like no dating until after college and i was like well do you know
00:37:32.560
how effed those kids were after college like and and but the point being is that until after college
00:37:38.860
they were hard more efficient than i was like they had more time to study than i did they had less
00:37:45.600
distractions than i did they were doing better than me when somebody says well we didn't allow a kid
00:37:52.440
any engagement with screen time in an online environment and look he did better than the kid
00:37:57.960
who did have access to screen time in an online environment i'm like yeah i mean i believe you
00:38:02.300
now at the end of the period where you still could control his access to the online environment that's
00:38:07.660
great while it lasts yeah i do not believe you five years post then and the question is is okay well if
00:38:15.360
my kid is accessing these sorts of things how do i convince him to you know play with the college
00:38:21.860
institute instead of go you know on a video game or something like that and i'm like well
00:38:26.920
that's the crux of it now you realize your core job as a parent how do you build a moral philosophy
00:38:34.620
for your child how do you build a system for your child or when a child is deciding what do i want
00:38:41.280
from my life and they're making decisions around that that they make the right decision you know
00:38:48.960
with our kids we focus on this concept of well you've got to you know make fix the world where
00:38:54.100
fix the world is defined as making the world a better place for future humans and and and we're
00:38:58.320
like oh my god how dare you give your child expectations and i'm like well that's an insane
00:39:05.520
thing to say of course i would have expectations for my child like the urban monoculture tries to
00:39:10.840
normalize this sentiment because it makes it easier to deconvert children from their birth cultures
00:39:15.820
because it doesn't have kids with people in the urban culture don't have kids and so it can only
00:39:20.040
survive by taking children from other cultures and so it doesn't need to motivate practices that are
00:39:24.240
actually useful in terms of child rearing it just needs to motivate practices to convince anyone that
00:39:29.220
their parents are abusive because the first step of a cult is to try to break a person from their
00:39:33.960
traditional support network i.e their parents and their community and birth culture so yeah and i know
00:39:40.740
my kids won't be particularly susceptible to that and we'll do another episode on why that would be
00:39:44.960
the case but point here being you as a parent need to come up with a system for communicating a broad
00:39:53.980
moral framework for your kids and if what you're thinking right here is oh i don't need to worry about
00:39:58.920
that because i take my kids to church every week i'd say you are so effed there is no way that kid's
00:40:04.920
going to be a christian when they grow up because i know so many young kids in this generation these parents
00:40:10.620
who grew up in an environment where most of the people around them were christian okay so the the type
00:40:16.360
of christianity that they grew up with is different and the type of sociological context that they grew
00:40:20.940
up in is different and they're like oh i can just copy and paste that iteration of christianity
00:40:24.220
onto my kids in a world that's like actively hunting them and attempting to brainwash them
00:40:28.840
and they'll be fine and i'm like no what no that's an insane sentiment you're you're you are
00:40:36.260
you are the shepherd that is leaving your flock with the wolf like what are you thinking that that
00:40:42.420
is not going to work you come you come one day and you're like well where is where's little temmy
00:40:47.480
and uh the wolf's wiping the blood off his face because you were a buffoon and you thought that
00:40:54.580
you were dealing with the same environmental and technological and might say i'm talking about
00:40:59.420
cultural technological context that you grew up in and you are not and this is why when so many
00:41:05.080
people are like oh i'll just go back to traditions i'm like those traditions were developed for contexts
00:41:09.240
in which they were the norm you know whether it's you know pretty much the only one that wasn't was
00:41:15.000
judaism and that's why judaism is weeping butt right now in terms of fertility rates in terms of
00:41:21.680
deconversion rates in terms of because they for hundreds of years have been a minority in where
00:41:26.620
they lived but right now if you are a baptist you know it's likely that most of the people around you
00:41:31.200
growing up were baptists if you were a mormon it's likely that most of the people around you growing
00:41:34.360
up were mormon if you were uh you know a muslim it's likely that well depends on where you live but
00:41:39.760
most people growing up around you were muslim um and so the tools that defended you won't defend your
00:41:46.060
kids okay the the weapon that you need to bring to school let's put it this way when everyone else
00:41:52.920
at the school is a sheep and not a wolf is very different okay your kids need swords not little
00:41:58.700
shivs and they also need to learn to be smart one of the things i've noticed a lot of like
00:42:03.400
conservative parents they get so proud that their kids got canceled and i'm like no your kids shouldn't
00:42:08.000
have gotten canceled you knob you should have taught them how to defend themselves from being caught
00:42:12.840
out by the inquisition okay they can achieve more if they can stay under the radar until they're
00:42:18.240
willing to use the cancellation to their benefit you know getting ostracized by your peers in high
00:42:25.660
school is not a good thing and you should have taught them that they were the minority and they
00:42:30.660
were the beleaguered group and they were going into a hostile environment but what are your thoughts
00:42:34.120
i agree uh 100 and you hear often from the parents whose kids are canceled because they turn them
00:42:41.820
into news stories but i think majority of kids who go through a hostile environment in school and
00:42:47.060
whose parents are doing a good job with annotation do learn that and we we know kids like that and
00:42:53.640
they're very aware of what's going on which is great and i think it really goes to show that if you want
00:42:59.440
to actually protect your culture you should and absolutely can send your kids through mainstream
00:43:06.380
institutions and actively teach them how to inoculate themselves against toxic culture and habits
00:43:13.020
so we've covered the environment we've covered covered the curriculum yeah but we haven't covered
00:43:20.960
the what's the word i'm like curriculum but i'm not going to cover the curriculum because frankly there
00:43:25.060
just aren't that many curriculum people believe there are like more genuine curriculum than there really
00:43:29.560
are there when i say curriculum i mean just like any model of teaching kids like wikipedia could be a
00:43:34.660
curriculum right like well i don't know so what i hear is basically you can go to a catholic school
00:43:41.200
you can go to like a traditional jewish school you can do what's what's really popular among
00:43:48.860
conservatives these days is a classical christian education and then there is mainstream urban monoculture
00:43:56.500
school by the way i want to roll my eyes harder at a classical christian education okay go ahead rip into
00:44:02.140
it because that's what's pervasive among people who consider these are like these jobs who are like
00:44:06.880
i'm gonna have my kids read all the classics all of these great books because they think that like
00:44:11.500
things in the past are like intrinsically better sources of knowledge than things today and it's
00:44:16.320
like no cultural systems from the past might be better sources but things you know reading old man
00:44:22.680
in the sea is not going to be as useful use of your kids time as learning to code like obviously or
00:44:28.980
spending time learning ai and this is a really important thing that people are missing
00:44:33.060
where people get information from like the best medium of communication of information is changing
00:44:41.880
when i was growing up there were many parents who in educational models that were like okay kids
00:44:49.980
we got to teach you how to learn so we're going to teach you the dewey decimal system
00:44:54.080
and we're going to teach you how to use a library and uh and people of our generation all remember
00:45:00.320
this and no one has used this ever but the kids were like well i mean it seems like this internet thing
00:45:06.180
is what i should be focused on like it seems like this is what i should learn how to use really well
00:45:11.020
if i want to be effective in the next era i i should learn how to do boolean searches i should learn it
00:45:16.000
and how many people i know today still don't know how to do boolean searches you know what i mean
00:45:18.640
like they are they were using the key source of information that everyone else had access to
00:45:23.940
it was like intrinsic handicaps and then in this next era many parents are going into it and they're
00:45:30.180
like okay i need to teach my kids how to use the internet wisely to source for information and i'm
00:45:35.240
like we're in ai era now okay this is this is new if your kids don't know how to use ai they are effed
00:45:43.060
and you know i was mentioning this to the lady in the in i was interviewing because on the deborah show
00:45:48.020
and this is where we're talking about this and she said well you know i think it's unethical the
00:45:52.720
way ai like scrapes other people's images and stuff like that and scrapes other people's work and i'm
00:45:58.000
like okay this is like me saying i think it's unethical that the tuskegee experiments happen
00:46:04.260
therefore i won't give my kids vaccines like regardless of how ethical it is it's happened it's
00:46:10.020
done your kids are going to be competing like if you try to teach your kid how to be a graphic designer
00:46:15.280
and and they go out and try to get jobs they'll be competing against people who know how to use ai
00:46:19.720
and even if they want to do their own art by hand generally now the first way to learn to do
00:46:28.520
something is through ai and i love it like coders oh coders but the the skill tree that we developed
00:46:34.460
for parasia starts with well learn to code using ai i.e learn to give ai prompts that give it back code
00:46:41.700
that you can use and they're like well this will teach you bad habits and i'm like it will teach
00:46:47.000
you bad habits if you're learning to code for the world of today if you're learning to code for the
00:46:51.760
world of tomorrow maybe not and also keep in mind that it's the first skill in the programming tree
00:46:56.940
it's the skill that a lot of people will drop out at and yet it is the skill that any idiot can figure
00:47:01.960
out right and realize that hey me that doesn't fully know how to code i can figure out how to do some
00:47:10.460
basic stuff with ai and this is true across all fields you know art like hey me as not who's not
00:47:16.660
going to try to become a professional artist i can figure out how to like make art for title cards
00:47:22.860
for example which i do every day right like it doesn't need to be perfect you're seeing it in
00:47:26.840
this little like you know quarter inch square hold on i'm gonna have a octavian come in and say hi
00:47:32.180
to sum it all up yeah what to sum it all up basically parents need to stop thinking that
00:47:39.220
switching up one of these things is going to change everything they have to think about each
00:47:42.820
element of the kid's education right yes and they have to use the collins institute because it's the
00:47:47.180
only real educational system left octavian what do you think of the collins institute
00:47:50.820
that i just really really really labs that are flat and i like that trip and i like you guys
00:48:05.060
because when those sounds took a fake salary and i like tips and so you wait you like us yes because
00:48:15.220
you guys because you are the ones i tell you oh you like us because we are obedient yeah do we do
00:48:25.040
what you tell us yes here you want to hold this and do you like it when we do what we what you tell
00:48:31.600
us too yeah and wait octavian do you like do you like earlier you're telling me do you like this world
00:48:38.260
yes do you do you want to go away or do you like being here i like being here okay do you want more
00:48:57.580
can you tell the audience a joke about liking and subscribing
00:49:02.860
why did uh why did a car ticket cross the road to get to a wire because it found food that was
00:49:18.380
electronic it found electronic food yeah wait a second that doesn't sound true okay wait okay octavian
00:49:30.780
octavian octavian octavian why did the chicken cross the road because he found food that's
00:49:35.340
electronic is that really what he said cross the food to get to a wire because he found food that was
00:49:40.040
electronic because no because cars were in outer space cars were in outer space okay so here's the
00:49:48.420
question i have well that's true isn't it there is a tesla still out there somewhere isn't there
00:49:52.900
yeah okay octavian octavian listen listen listen i have a question for you
00:49:58.080
do you who do you like best do you like mommy daddy torsten or titan
00:50:03.600
i like to see here because he's your brother yeah okay yeah all right i'm gonna go get the other
00:50:14.980
kids i love you simone i love you too pumpkin ravioli with pesto right okay gotcha
00:50:21.420
yeah you can talk to mommy yeah you can talk to me buddy i'll interview you sound good okay look sit
00:50:27.860
down sit down and be down and i'm gonna interview you all right octavian all right where do you learn
00:50:34.320
the most do you learn the most at school or from watching shows like magic school bus
00:50:39.700
um at school at school and what do they teach you at school they learn me they learn you at school
00:50:49.120
do you learn things from shows like bill and i have a science guy and magic school bus too
00:50:54.720
no not those well you also watch the monkey at the baseball play
00:51:00.640
monkey with a baseball yeah play it does got an idea so a computer can make it
00:51:11.320
is that what you watch on the computer at school yes i i also have chromebook
00:51:19.900
oh on your oh chromebooks yeah you watch you watch the monkey with the baseball thing on your
00:51:28.340
chromebook at school no but i know the scope videos um oh there is one at the baseball place
00:51:38.560
the baseball place what what else do you do at school to learn i that's a good question i'll tell you
00:51:52.300
i i i did paper i i i draw paper and do everything i connect the dots and put it in my mailbox
00:52:06.540
so you do paperwork at school is that right yeah and do you like doing paperwork octavian
00:52:16.180
yes i do okay that's fortunate that is very fortunate nice microphone is still blocked in
00:52:26.780
it's still working because i can still hear you which is good what do you want for dinner octavian
00:52:34.420
i want for dinner is the fakes i was talking about yesterday
00:52:40.380
you are like miranda priestly i swear i just want the fakes that say she does ask you
00:52:50.600
the cheetos that she asked me for yeah i want the cheetos i gave her all the cheetos she has all
00:52:58.200
the cheetos there's only healthy food in our house buddy what i'm sorry yeah
00:53:04.560
well you can have strawberries here do you like strawberries yeah i really want the things
00:53:16.040
you're going to defenestrate you're going to defenestrate me can you say defenestrate
00:53:32.500
good so that's that's what you were threatening you're you're going to defenestrate me if you're
00:53:39.600
going to kick someone out through the window you're defenestrating them all right buddy
00:53:42.500
yeah yeah can you say that again basically if you don't give me junk food i will defenestrate
00:53:48.920
you say that if i if you don't give me junk food i'll defenestrate you good job buddy high five
00:53:57.260
through the screen yeah yeah good job daddy learning to to be violent with authority is important
00:54:05.180
no eloquent violence in this house yeah eloquent violence you can't let her
00:54:09.860
what do you want to say titan you want to see baby deer tonight
00:54:29.900
you're titan what do you want to say did you see that baby deer where the baby deer
00:54:44.840
come here come here you just want it's a microphone titan can you say microphone titan
00:54:55.020
yes i just i just want to say baby deer in the window what do you want to say to mommy here
00:55:05.820
okay it's not headphones it's a microphone titan can you say microphone
00:56:22.180
i'm gonna stop recording and come down i love you
00:57:02.980
but i think there's some kind of local ordinance
00:57:05.600
that prevents us from owning livestock above a certain size
00:57:08.460
maybe that's why i was looking for miniature cows actually
00:57:44.280
i guess it's cheaper than hiring somebody to milk your dairy cow
00:57:49.360
can you imagine what it would be like to get a cow sitter
00:58:00.220
if you're in like a conservative mormon community maybe
00:58:18.300
this was back when she just kept an extensive diary online
00:59:06.080
when i think about the number of people who use their dogs for
00:59:35.360
lower percent of americans lived in a rural environment
00:59:48.720
just more people were living on farms in the past
00:59:57.960
are you not grossed out by men penetrating animals