Why Education

Why Work On Education?

When thinking about the survival and prosperity of civilization, education usually doesn’t come up. But if we follow the idea that sustained dysfunction of social systems is a significant existential threat, then the ambiguity of how it might be resolved is alarming.

Authoritative imposition, history shows, will not work. Indirect influence, such as through social networks, can have a strong influence on public opinion and behavior, but seems to be insufficient to improve systemic and institutional functioning, while inducing many negative side-effects as well.

The better approach therefore, through the process of elimination, is bottom-up, which raises the question of how robust social systems are made–specifically, what aspects of it can be (and ought to be) controlled. There are the intangibles–knowledge, culture, ethics–and there are the tangibles–technology, organizations, and resources. Systems encompass both, but when one part of the system grows to dominate the others perpetually, a cannibalistic effect occurs. This means that for a system to improve enduringly, its components must each improve within proportion. To improve all of them, there is only one channel: education.

Education can be either explicit or implicit. Institutionalized, it is explicit. In our common lives, it is implicit. Yet, when I say that to improve and continue improving society’s systems and institutions, education must first improve, I only refer to its explicit institutional variant. This is because implicit education is emergent and personal; it should not be controlled explicitly. That would be authoritarian and ultimately counter-productive.

At a high level, improving education means advancing its natural purpose: to help people live fuller lives, through greater range and depth of experiences and understanding. Education should help people become wiser, more effective, more skilled at dealing with novel problems and at accomplishing big things. Such people build better systems–better culture, ethics, organizations, and technology.

The greatest practical risk to our civilization’s survival is not a cannibalistic effect from AI nor another technology; it is insufficient education to adapt in time and balance civilization. In this vein, education is not only a catalyst for growth, but a buffer after fallouts inevitably occur.

It is the clearest and simplest solution to the public’s economic and existential problems. It is the most worthwhile endeavor of our time.