Tarkovsky on why art matters:
“My belief is that all these dreams are yours as well, and that is what poetry, painting, literature, or filmmaking is all about...”👇🏿
The next key ingredient in scaling free learning is to disseminate appropriate social learning norms, which in principle may be replicated at zero cost.
I launched my Socratic Michael Strong YouTube channel to share the norms of intellectual dialogue that I’ve found effective at developing children’s minds for free.
Alana's journey shows what’s possible.
Her father began asking me about educating her when she was three.
I began recording my conversations with her when she was four (you can find hundreds of these on YouTube).
She turns thirteen next month and is:
✔️ Near completing Harvard’s CS50
✔️ Scored 680 on the SAT verbal (top 1%)
✔️ Having fun, casual conversations on Book I of The Odyssey
The Socratic Parenting course at The Socratic Experience is now finishing up its third cohort.
Parents currently pay for it, but the ultimate goal is to open-source all of our content.
The pattern replicates itself:
– Alana is engaged in Socratic mentoring with a younger student.
– Our team actively hosts or participates in seminars with people around the world.
– Parents from our 6-week course keep in touch with each other’s parenting journeys.
What might the next generation of young people be capable of if they grew up surrounded by questions instead of answers?
Let me tell you I’m getting older without telling you I’m getting older:
– No sugar or processed food
– Carnivore trial + bone broth
– Intermittent fasting
– EDT weight training 3x/week
– Zone 2 cardio
Tried to touch my toes today now thinking stretching/yoga isn’t optional.
I own a home now
Home ownership is a cult
A mortgage is massive long term loan that holds considerable risk when a local market crashes (see Detroit)
It's a bad investment and a moneypit
After real estate fees, taxes and maintenance it heavily underperforms most other investments
The only arguments to be made for home ownership is leverage by borrowing money (most people can't borrow $1M to put in S&P500, but they can to buy a house)
And being able to highly customize your own living experience (like me, I installed a home gym, sauna, jacuzzi, etc)
Don't let anybody tell you it's a great investment, generally it's not and it usually does not or at times only barely outperforms inflation
You should buy a home for the reasons above not any financial reasons
Health hack I've learned from living in San Cristóbal, Mexico 🇲🇽 and Chiang Mai, Thailand 🇹🇭: Choose a town just small and cool ❄️ enough that walking everywhere makes more sense than driving...and you're not drenched in sweat by the time you arrive at your destination.