I’ll be honest.
I’m worried.
I’ve gone deep into the AGI and post-labour-work rabbit hole.
There’s been a few questions on my mind for the past month:
What can humans do that machines can’t?
What will the future of work look like?
What jobs – if any – will persist over the next 20 years?
What can we, as humans, do to secure an above-average future?
With these problems at the forefront of my mind, I’ve found a few answers that may bring you optimism and clarity as you enter the unknown.
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I want to focus on this point that many are worried about:
We don’t know what to teach children because we don’t know what will be relevant in 20 years.
Only slaves are expected to perform one task for their entire life.
Our current education system reflects the education of slaves.
They were career-specific skills like growing wheat, herding sheep, and riding a horse.
Today, we are taught to be useful workers. We are taught to obey the authority. We are conditioned to get good grades out of fear of punishment.
A free man is expected to act on his interests and do many things throughout his life.
If you don’t create a purpose, you will be assigned one.
A purpose is a goal. Most people don’t choose their own goals.
A goal implies knowledge and skills that must be learned to solve problems that prevent you from achieving the goal.
If you don’t choose your own goal, you do not choose what you learn or what problems you solve. Your destiny is decided for you because the only potential you know is the one you were assigned.
The difference between the two is how to live, how to think, and how to learn.
True education, not a clone-producing machine we call public school, is an orientation toward how to live and thrive without being dependent on another.
True education does not only teach career skills that produce results by performing specific tasks, but how to think and learn so they could adapt to any situation.
Stop worrying about what career skills AI will make obsolete.
Worry about whether you are training (or being trained) to make ideal-future-aligned decisions, be open-minded and perceptive, and be self-motivated.
Everyone is creative.
Creativity is about achieving any goal with the knowledge and skill available to you, not fancy art or designs.
In other words, you need to learn how to set self-generated goals, utilize the internet, mentors, and the abundance of information you have access to to educate yourself.
Then, you need to embrace trial and error, self-reflect, and experiment to create your own path.
Creativity gives you the power to do whatever you want in life.
Those who don’t realize this gift are doomed to the assignments of others.
The Irreplaceable Individual
It is impossible to know what the future will hold.
All we know is that there will be a way of life that leads to the most satisfaction.
While some aspects of this ideal lifestyle will be unique, like the interests you choose to pursue, the overarching principles of the good life remain immutable, like what allows you to pursue those interests as a sovereign individual.
To discover what these are, we must look at what is not taught in schools.
If schools train you to be a modern slave that performs one task in one career for the entirety of your life, what is the knowledge and skill that sovereign individuals are taught – or teach themselves?
There’s a lot I want to elaborate on this issue so be on the lookout for the next few letters!