Controlling a complex system is rarely as effective as allowing it to self-organize: markets work better than planning committees; diverse ecosystems are more robust than monocultures. What would it mean to apply this idea to education?
Interesting post! From a first principles perspective, self organization is hard. Abstracting children and adults into nodes (in terms of learning they are about the same, although adults are impaired in culturally) and connections with other nodes as a solid context where knowledge can flow from one to another, we are faced with vast problems:
1) The ever increasing complexity of knowledge mean nodes are growing at an exponential rate. The burden of searching and evaluating some possible connection (which costs energy/time/resources to form) is growing similarly. Many have pointed out the success of open source, online communities, subreddits etc, but there has been virtually no thought on how to develop a "switching network" to connect these nodes, or on what metrics we should evaluate the goodness of each connection (nice point about how important context is, any meaningful connection between nodes would require a shared context as well).
2) While logical from a game theoretic perspective, I strongly suspect trying to scale a system of monetary rewards for learning would only rapidly be punished by Goodhart's law. In the initial phase it might work as a habit former, but long term it is a badly misaligned incentive. The real value of learning is to discover, create or innovate - has to be curiosity and values driven because the financial incentives rarely work out. Put another way the best way would be to alter each agent's utility functions to value discovery rather than money.
I love this kind of thinking - appreciating the properties of complex ecosystem, trusting in self-organisation and emergence by gently influencing incentives. A great use of DAOs and Web3 too. Rewarding kids for teaching other kids would be another approach to reinforce the teacher's understanding while building people up.
But... The prevailing system is and linear thinking are entrenched, and so difficult to change. Great post.
I believe we all have a natural proclivity to pursue mastery, we just need better structures to help draw it out.
I'm modestly optimistic. I think legacy systems will remain, but a rapidly growning subpopulation will grow more diverse, bottom-up alternatives. It is quite shocking the rate if you look at the decline of public school students in favor of homeschooling and alternative education - and there are quite a few very exciting projects in these areas that are rapidly scaling up. So: the next ten years will be interesting and quite chaotic, too.
Interesting post! From a first principles perspective, self organization is hard. Abstracting children and adults into nodes (in terms of learning they are about the same, although adults are impaired in culturally) and connections with other nodes as a solid context where knowledge can flow from one to another, we are faced with vast problems:
1) The ever increasing complexity of knowledge mean nodes are growing at an exponential rate. The burden of searching and evaluating some possible connection (which costs energy/time/resources to form) is growing similarly. Many have pointed out the success of open source, online communities, subreddits etc, but there has been virtually no thought on how to develop a "switching network" to connect these nodes, or on what metrics we should evaluate the goodness of each connection (nice point about how important context is, any meaningful connection between nodes would require a shared context as well).
2) While logical from a game theoretic perspective, I strongly suspect trying to scale a system of monetary rewards for learning would only rapidly be punished by Goodhart's law. In the initial phase it might work as a habit former, but long term it is a badly misaligned incentive. The real value of learning is to discover, create or innovate - has to be curiosity and values driven because the financial incentives rarely work out. Put another way the best way would be to alter each agent's utility functions to value discovery rather than money.
I love this kind of thinking - appreciating the properties of complex ecosystem, trusting in self-organisation and emergence by gently influencing incentives. A great use of DAOs and Web3 too. Rewarding kids for teaching other kids would be another approach to reinforce the teacher's understanding while building people up.
But... The prevailing system is and linear thinking are entrenched, and so difficult to change. Great post.
I believe we all have a natural proclivity to pursue mastery, we just need better structures to help draw it out.
I'm modestly optimistic. I think legacy systems will remain, but a rapidly growning subpopulation will grow more diverse, bottom-up alternatives. It is quite shocking the rate if you look at the decline of public school students in favor of homeschooling and alternative education - and there are quite a few very exciting projects in these areas that are rapidly scaling up. So: the next ten years will be interesting and quite chaotic, too.