Michael Gibson joins to discuss his book Paper Belt on Fire, which chronicles his work with Peter Thiel's fellowship program investing in young talent.

He explains how old institutions like academia are declining yet retain lingering prestige, and the development of new ecosystems and hierarchies based on competence. Michael argues creativity comes from outside stale hierarchies, citing the conflict between legitimate prestige and disruptive greatness.

They debate how far we are from the decentralized network state, and if COVID accelerated institutional failure. Malcolm notes elite alternative communities forming, while Simone asks if the paper belt’s dysfunction will deter its acolytes. Overall Michael concludes we need more inspirational stories of success outside institutions.

Simone Collins: . [00:00:00] I'm super excited for this. Hello and welcome to another episode of Basecamp where today we have a very special guest and someone who's writing I really enjoy but also whose work I probably enjoy even more, Michael Gibson.

Simone Collins: You probably, if you've heard of Michael, I've heard of him because of his book, Paper Belt on Fire. However, he's in other circles, much more well known for being the co founder of 1517, a very unique type of venture capital fund that doesn't just focus on sort of already proven older entrepreneurs, but rather really young people.

Simone Collins: They are investing in, in people like pre college. It's amazing. We're going to talk about all these things. But in this conversation, we are really hoping to dive into his book, which I read as soon as an audio book was available paper belt on fire which really aligns with a lot of the stuff that we're saying.

Simone Collins: is much more eloquently written than the way we would write it. It's, it's sort of a mixture of philosophy prognostication, but also like personal history and history of the 1517 fund, which is absolutely fascinating. So we're [00:01:00] really excited to talk with you about it.

Would you like to know more?

Michael Gibson: Okay. Yeah. Thanks for having me on.

Michael Gibson: And You know, thanks for the kind words as well, both about, you know, whatever, my writing style, but also about what we're doing. Yeah, the book I, I maybe How would I boil it down? I said something like because why would I have memoir? In philosophy and then, you know, behind the scenes account, venture capital and backing young people, I think, I think it comes down to strange people do strange things and when the times get tough, the weird GoPro and I wanted to take people behind the scenes and add some color and story to, you know, some of these characters I've worked with over the years.

Michael Gibson: One, the one thing I guess part of my bio okay, why tell this story is the, we have Danielle Strachman, my co founder of 1517, we helped Peter Thiel start his fellowship program in 2010, and that was a program where [00:02:00] 100, 000 was given to 20 individuals a year. The two conditions were one, you had to be 19 and under to apply.

Michael Gibson: And two, you couldn't be enrolled in university. So you had to drop out or take time off or maybe you never went. And across five years of co running that program, we saw incredible things come out of it. We, you know, most notable examples are helping Vitalik Buterin launch Ethereum Dylan Fields created a company called Figma that was acquired by Adobe for 20 billion last year.

Michael Gibson: Austin Russell. Founded a company called Luminor Technologies. They make a LIDAR system for cars. They went public in 2020. So the, the Teal Fellowship had a lot of great successes and there's a independent, this guy is probably the best venture capital analyst in terms of being an outsider at CB Insights.

Michael Gibson: And he put up a tweet in fact, last week, where he did a deep dive on the success of the Teal Fellowship. And he, he. [00:03:00] Posted the hit rate, like how many of these people, if there's 20 people in every class, you know, what's the rate at which people create, you know, unicorn billion dollar businesses. And, and, you know, his conclusions were like, wow, this hit rate is something like 7%, which in the world of venture capital is, is quite astonishing.

Michael Gibson: So, you know, there's this program out there that, that the world hasn't really heard about mainly because Peter Thiel is, is persona non grata. The media hates him, the publishing world hates him, and so no one wanted to hear this story. And since I was there and part of it, I, that was the story I wanted to tell.

Michael Gibson: So there's

Malcolm Collins: two things I wanted to discuss really quickly tied to what you just said. The second one we'll talk about next, which is, is how the media like tried to keep your book from being promoted. I think as much as it otherwise would have been given. You know how big the things you guys are doing actually are.

Malcolm Collins: But the first thing I wanted to talk about, which is really interesting is within Silicon Valley. So sometimes some of our listeners, they say they watch us to sort of understand what I guess, like elite society [00:04:00] thinking or whatever. With the fall of universities as good judges of people's competence the highest status symbol a young person can achieve.

Malcolm Collins: And I'd say that this is pretty universally agreed upon among the VC sort of class in Silicon Valley. Is getting into the Peter Thiel fellowship. It is a much bigger deal than, you know, having a Harvard degree or something like that among the young. And it's interesting because we've seen this repeatedly in terms of like new status symbols among youth where the highest form of status symbol comes from programs where somebody is giving the youth money like the new one is like the, the Atlas Fellowship's the Teal Fellowship, then it's probably the, the Atlas Fellowship. And it's because in, in a world where, and it's actually kind of crazy to think about it, that historically you would. We, we judge status on people would pay for that status, but now obviously status should be better judged on who's going to give you money.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, seriously.

Michael Gibson: [00:05:00] That's a, that's a really good point. I

Malcolm Collins: wonder if you had any thoughts on the fall of the current academic system and whether or not you think it still has utility.

Michael Gibson: I think hierarchies are, are best in a stable environment. Where they are hierarchies of competence. They have not degraded into corruption or incompetence.

Michael Gibson: And, and, and if it, let's say a hierarchy exists to solve a problem if, if, if it is still solving that problem and you can judge people based on merit accurately, then it can be stable over time. And, and, and, and with that comes visibility, intelligibility in the way people. Talk about their lives and careers.

Michael Gibson: And it, it just makes sense out there. And I think college fit that for a long time, but people didn't notice that it became corrupted and that it wasn't solving the, you know, the problem that used to solve and then maybe it's incompetent to, but nevertheless, like this lingering hierarchy that still has status, status and prestige is [00:06:00] there.

Michael Gibson: So people are entering it. Whereas in a chaotic environment, which is the environment of innovation. dynamism, creativity. These hierarchies should come and go just based on, on who is solving that problem best over some period of time. But yeah, that's what it's, God, there are so many issues here. I feel like I'm wondering, but the thing, what I'll say is there's like a difference between excellence and greatness.

Michael Gibson: Excellence is striving to attain high grades. in a, you know, an environment where there are assignments, essays, tests. These things are very legible, clear where and, and you can keep climbing up that hierarchy over the years. And, and maybe, you know, you become a Harvard grad road scholar. Good for you.

Michael Gibson: You're hired by the bureaucratic state professional managerial class. You'll make good money, but those types of people aren't the types of people who, you know, write. The next great novel or invent, you know, necessarily invent the next big company or something like that. [00:07:00] Creativity just comes from a different place.

Michael Gibson: So, you know, that's an old distinction. If I think about it, that goes all the way back to the Iliad. This is the fundamental conflict in the epic poem because it starts off. It's it's the conflict is actually not the main conflict of the story is not between. The, the Greeks and the Trojans. In fact, it's between two sides of the Greeks.

Michael Gibson: You have Achilles who represents greatness. He's widely recognized as the the, the swiftest, most lethal warrior. And yet he has to operate or work with this legitimate high status, prestige King, who's also an idiot. Agamemnon. And the conflict of the book is Achilles basically you know, shrugs like Atlas shrugs.

Michael Gibson: He's okay, wait, you're incompetent. You're treating me poorly and now I'm not going to fight in your war. And so I think maybe all societies have to find this balance between hierarchies of greatness and hierarchies of prestige where they're going to come into conflict where, you know, the old prestige ones need to fade away and be replaced by the [00:08:00] next wave of the great.

Michael Gibson: But over time, those newcomers become old timers and they become corrupt. So it's like we need a process that, that knows how to sift these things out. I continue. Yeah, no, sorry. That, I know that was like abstract and no, no, I love

Malcolm Collins: it. Well, I mean, it's also really cool that I think the, the whizzy academic system falling, I think a lot of people can see that that's happening, but it's not as clear to many people what's going to replace it.

Malcolm Collins: And it is cool that I think that you. Played a part in founding this new system, which is already beginning to be replicated, and I think will replace the academic system by the time that our Children are growing up as the primary status hierarchy for youth. Now, the 2nd question, which I thought was really interesting, because, you know, when we were talking with you.

Malcolm Collins: How resistant the major publications were to cover your book or the major sort of you know, you know, given how impactful your work is, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that a little bit about the suppression you have when you're in the Peter Thiel sort of

Michael Gibson: yeah, well, we had the haters of [00:09:00] the fellowship in 15 17 now over a decade.

Michael Gibson: So when the Thiel fellowship was first announced in 2010 I think in the same week we already had op eds in Newsweek and other magazines denouncing the program as the white man's NBA corrupting the youth, you know, getting them to focus on money and not, you know, the intangible rewards of reading great novels, something like that.

Michael Gibson: Then we had Larry Summers. former treasury secretary, president of Harvard, come out and denounce the fellowship as the, this is a quote, he says, it's the most misdirected philanthropy of the decade. He said that in like 2013 or 14. We had numerous bad articles written about us and just about every major publication, Scott Galloway, the, the bloviating.

Michael Gibson: Commentator on tech. He, he dumped on us. So that, that just occurred throughout the decade, but over that time we just had more and more success and I guess they, [00:10:00] those critics faded away. But when I came in, there was just silence. And then when I I had been writing some articles and this agent approached me about writing the book and I, I, I accepted it.

Michael Gibson: And he was an Englishman, he's based in London, and I think he didn't really understand just how much the press and the media and let's say the cultural establishment from Hollywood to you know, newspapers and so on, how much that had come to hate tech and in particular hate Peter Thiel. So Peter famously backed you know, lawsuit against Gawker, Hulk Hogan versus Gawker when that was revealed.

Michael Gibson: The media suddenly thought Peter, Peter was this evil billionaire stifling free speech. And then he supported Trump in 2016. And after both those things, yeah, I think that the intensity of the hatred just reached all new highs. So we, and we sent out the proposal for the book that was in 2021.

Michael Gibson: And I was shocked. We sent [00:11:00] it to 20 publishers, maybe six or seven wrote back. And here's another quote that is word for word. Someone wrote, Peter Thiel is evil and anyone who worked for him is evil. So we can't possibly publish this. Of course. A bunch of people. Yeah, they, they, they just did not like people.

Michael Gibson: Peter, then another six or seven said I, you know, someone was said, I went to Yale. I studied English literature. I think college is amazing. I disagree with this book. And then, you know, six or seven just passed because they said it wasn't for them. I ended up getting picked up by a small independent publisher encounter and they put out, you know, Mainly conservative libertarian ish policy wonk ish books tends to be very, you know, blend of academic think tank history sometimes, but this is the first non fiction, you know, story you know, I, I wanted to tell a story, I certainly wanted to touch on policy issues like higher ed and, and what might be done, but But I think it is the [00:12:00] first book I've seen them put out where it was like, okay, this is a story, a business story.

Michael Gibson: But yeah, that was a struggle and I think it, it represented that symbolic conflict. It was a, a, a symbolic. Example of this wider conflict between the old institutions in and things that are popping up here and there that are new and I guess threatening to the old order.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and it's really humorous if you're actually in the spheres because they treat Peter Teal like he's this big Machiavellian like a spider web, a master guy who's.

Malcolm Collins: Controlling everything but from behind the scenes so much so that we've even been caught up in this we got called up by a comedian who is pretending to be a reporter and they wanted to do a thing on us and we're like, yeah, we're actually like after he's talking to you, you guys seem so like normal and not evil.

Malcolm Collins: Like he was really surprised. I don't think the comedy piece. Because he thought that we were so much nicer than he thought we would be. And he's but you know, everyone's gonna, they hate you because of those, those Peter Thiel connections. [00:13:00] So, so our connection there is Simone used to be the managing director of TOT Dialogue, which was a secret society thing that was originally founded by Peter Thiel.

Malcolm Collins: Tentative long term connection. This was back in his Aron Hoffman days. So it's founded by Peter Thiel and Aron Hoffman together. But anyway, so, so he was talking to, because you have that, everyone is always like, how could you have possibly In any way tied to the sphere of this villain. And what's crazy is that you're in these sort of circles.

Malcolm Collins: He actually just isn't that involved with a lot of his projects. And he definitely is not as a web spider mastery sort of

Michael Gibson: operator. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So that was something I wanted to portray in the book was just, I had the fortune. Of working with Peter for directly for him for five years. He's an investor in 1517 and we are friendly and meet every so often.

Michael Gibson: And, and the derangement syndrome around Peter in the media and the way they portrayed him, everything from, I mean, they, they make him [00:14:00] seem like he's this volt rational Vulcan who. has no feelings whatsoever. And then there is what you're pointing out is funny. They do always want to portray him as this, this mastermind chess master who, who sees six moves ahead.

Michael Gibson: And one of the funnier moments I've had with Peter was I, I said that to him, this was during the Gawker. The time of when it was revealed, he, he backed that lawsuit and he asked me, he said, Oh, what do you think of the, the coverage? And I said, Oh, you know, it's so interesting. No one wants to debate you on the constitutional issues of privacy versus speech.

Michael Gibson: Instead, they're just obsessed with portraying you as this chess master operating from the shadows, seeing six moves ahead. And then Peter says to me, but I am.

Malcolm Collins: I love it. So actually this happened in my life was a different cultural group. So I was the director of strategy of the ventures, which was the most successful early stage venture capital firm in Korea during the period.

Malcolm Collins: And we were [00:15:00] always getting into fights with the government to the extent that the fund was eventually shut down by by government action over something that was later proven to be completely falsified and the courts admitted it was all falsified. But anyway, a lot of people in the US are like, why were you in this conflict with the government?

Malcolm Collins: Politically, why were you? So toxic. And it was like, well, we came up with this really crazy investment strategy, which is we would invest in people who had dropped out of college or who didn't go to good colleges. And in Korea, these people are persona non grata much more so than they are in the United States.

Malcolm Collins: And We were seen as sort of disrupting societal order in helping people that shouldn't get rich, get rich, because in Korea, the society is so much more hierarchical, bolds and the chi bolds, it's much more somebody getting a bunch of money out of nowhere, especially somebody who dropped out of college, is genuinely seen as a social ill.

Malcolm Collins: What is interesting, and I think Peter Thiel, where he's actually been most successful is in identifying incompetent [00:16:00] people who do not fit into the game of bowing to the, the systems of power in our society right now. So a lot of the time, these people would be filtered out. They'd be filtered out.

Malcolm Collins: Sometimes at the lead institutions, they'd be filtered out of being allowed to write books or run funds, but he's able to look past all that. And because of that, he has access. To a much wider and often a much more honest talent pool than anyone else can access.

Michael Gibson: Yeah, got it. Yeah. That's funny about Korea.

Michael Gibson: One, one of the cool interactions that I've had with my book being out in the world is I was doing a zoom discussion with some people who had read it and this happened off Twitter. So the link went out to all sorts of people and this young man who called it was actually a soldier in the Korean army.

Michael Gibson: And he was calling from this base somewhere in Korea and he wanted to let me know that he's having the best time reading out passages of my book to his bunkmates in the army and they're laughing their asses off and they couldn't believe that [00:17:00] someone was saying what I was saying in the book or, you know, all the things we've touched on about, okay, maybe college isn't best for, and I think that's right, you, you, you, they are just manic for, University the university path in Korea.

Michael Gibson: So the heresy is just even more hilarious to the few or shocking to others.

Malcolm Collins: Well, what I, what I, what I found the parallel there is I think in the U S we can see how comical it is. That oh yeah, if you see this talent pool that everyone else is ignoring, of course you're going to do well. Like it's the easiest arbitrage opportunity in the world.

Malcolm Collins: And then in the U S you're like, well, what have you invested in people who sometimes have conservative opinions? It's Oh, that's a, that's a, that's a spicy take. Definitely don't do that. Yeah. Really the position that we have lost venture capital funding for our school. For being publicly conservative, this is something that actually happened to the US people.

Malcolm Collins: They're like, Hey, we just can't be seen as identifying with conservatives. And also in the nonprofit space. This is something we consistently saw. We were working for a [00:18:00] big nonprofit at one time. And I don't want to say which one this was, but they basically said when they found out that we had You know, a conservative history that we couldn't work for them anymore because it was too dangerous for, for their work to continue to get funding.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because so many of the power structures in like the nonprofit space within the U S are just completely. And as we, as we point this out within nonprofit structures, if you have like when people go into nonprofits, they typically have two motivations. Some of them are interested in making the world a better place.

Malcolm Collins: And some of them are interested in playing like status signal hierarchy, moving up within sort of this, this. Status of society, the people who are interested in making the world a better place, you know, they need to split their time within the nonprofit between social politics and actually trying to do something efficacious.

Malcolm Collins: Whereas the people who care only about personal status, they can spend their entire time on politics within the organization. And so within these large bureaucracies, they always end up winning and controlling these organizations. Which is, I think how this group has gained so much power.

Michael Gibson: [00:19:00] Yeah, that's, it does become a system of control and exclusion.

Michael Gibson: Yeah. And I think our, the derangement of our institutions into. You know, the woke madness, left wing knee jerk ideology. It's, I guess it does, it does it for the wise investor. It may create an orbit, an opportunity, but, but it is sad to me that this has become a, a way to exclude. I think, I mean, I'm not going to cry too much over my.

Michael Gibson: But it is interesting to me that I, I've received no reviews. I couldn't get anyone from normal publications to review the book. I think it's because of this affiliation with Peter Thiel, these ideas, maybe the conservative publisher. I think that all has to be factored in, in, into it. It's like clear.

Michael Gibson: And then, and then, I mean, look at Twitter. It doesn't even have to be. It's like pretty clear now that, you know, shadow band conservatives were being shadow banned and pushed out.

Simone Collins: One [00:20:00] concept that I really liked from the, I mean, like it's in the title is this concept of the paper belt. Like we grew up with the concept of the rust belt. This is the, you know, industrial heart of America. And now so much is being run by. The paper belt, which is essentially like the media knowledge workers and sort of like clustered around, around the East coast.

Simone Collins: Right. You'd roughly define it that way. And it's, the book is a lot about subverting this, right. It's about what could come next where, you know, after sort of like publishing your book and being attacked by the paper belt or resisted by it. I mean, part of me is yeah, the paper belt is 100 percent on fire.

Simone Collins: It's extremely dysfunctional. It's like sabotaging itself and yet you can feel its power, right? Like we can feel the heat, like

Michael Gibson: I can't pretend that it's. It's burnt to the ground and, and also, yeah, my mom pointed out to me, she's wait, your, your book is called paper belts on fire and you're upset that no one on the paper.

Michael Gibson: All right. I was like, you're right, mom. It's fair enough. But, but I [00:21:00] think the lingering status and prestige of these institutions is strong and they're not totally incompetent and corrupt. I think they're, they're still. doing important things like governing the country or providing some, you know, media and, and so on.

Michael Gibson: I, I, I think there is a sense in which, yeah, people ask me like, why didn't you just self publish? Who cares? I think, yeah, I'm not quite sure these old institutions are completely dead and I need to, or wanted to operate within them in order to get the word out, but I get it if they, if they don't want my message coursing through their veins.

Michael Gibson: The, yeah, I, the paperbell is this configuration of power on the East Coast from Washington D. C. to New York to Boston other people have called it the Sell a court or I 95. You know, there are other names for these things. But the thing that stood out to me was that they are indeed paper based everything from the U.

Michael Gibson: S. Dollar to a diploma at Harvard or M. I. T. And what when I learn more about, you know, [00:22:00] I was deep into cypher punk you know, blogging and essays. And I certainly retain a lot of that that rebellious vibe from You From the cypherpunk era, but I also just learning a lot about, you know, why was bitcoin created?

Michael Gibson: How does the blockchain architecture work? And, and I, I came to see that it is very much against these paper based trust institutions because if you, if you are relying on paper, whether it's a diploma or a dollar, there's an institution that has to be trusted to verify that that piece of paper has value.

Michael Gibson: That it signals something that it's meant to signal that it hasn't been corrupted or watered down. And, and then that institution validates it. And so that was interesting to me that the paper is tied to the performance of the, of these institutions that, you know, because we have to. You know, we have to trust them, and it seems to be the case that diplomas don't signal what, you know, these schools claim they do, and that the U.

Michael Gibson: S. dollar doesn't signal what the government necessarily wants it to[00:23:00] so that, that, that stood out to me, and I wanted to run with it, that I think we do have a I think institutions are in decline, in decline It's hard to know how to turn them around. Our, our attempt in the book is with the book that I wanted to depict is, okay, what is it?

Michael Gibson: Okay, here's the analysis, the critique of the decline, but what can we do outside of it that that's creative and inspiring? And I think stories are the best way to inspire people. No,

Simone Collins: totally. I'm curious also how far away you think we are from the next thing, whatever it is exactly, after the paper belt, like the network state or this more decentralized world.

Simone Collins: Because it's, it's interesting, I don't know, with the pandemic, right? We got a lot of hope. We're like, Whoa, this could happen really fast. These things are falling apart quickly. You know, you read like Zyhan's, the end of the world is just the beginning. And we're like, Holy s**t, like everything's going to change.

Simone Collins: And, and then, you know, things kind of stay the same. No, we're really impatient. You know, it's been like zero times since the pandemic actually hit. [00:24:00] What are your thoughts? Do you feel like we're close? What do you think the future like tipping

Michael Gibson: points are going to be? Maybe let's just focus on the institution of school and education.

Michael Gibson: I think. All what you just said is true in that category. The pandemic came and parents came to see that they couldn't trust. the bureaucrats or the teachers when it came to you know, providing an education to their children or just, you know, being nice people or even being open, right? There were some unions that extended the you know, closure of the schools and so on.

Michael Gibson: So I, I, a lot of anger and frustration among parents started to, to pick up. And then we saw greater movement into either school choice at the state level can, you know, just cut checks to people to Send their kids somewhere else, but also homeschooling. I think I haven't seen the numbers, but it just seems to me that, you know, more and more people are doing these things and written politicians are running on that issue.

Michael Gibson: But like you said, the legacy institutions are still strong. And every parent I talk [00:25:00] to who isn't, you know, normie parents, like their dream is still, you know, just, they judge themselves. on how good of a parent they are by, you know, how their children make their way through, you know, K through 12 into, into universities.

Michael Gibson: So given that that is still so mainstream and just the main path, I think there's a long way to go now. I, but it's okay, we've made a little progress. We've seen how the institution is failing, but people are still buying into it. I think we just need more and more success stories just have to keep building on.

Michael Gibson: You know, the, the stories about people who are outside of it. I love what you all are doing in terms of you're another new entry into the field. Okay. Can we help younger people earlier and doing different things? And, and maybe they don't go to college or maybe they do, but they have a greater. Focus and commitment to something specific.

Michael Gibson: I think that, that if we build on this, then okay, I don't know. I can't put a time range on it, but maybe 10, 20 years, we'll start to see a [00:26:00] substantial number of people who choose that path. Okay. That would

Simone Collins: be amazing. Okay. If we like make good

Malcolm Collins: alternative systems. Yes. Yeah. I think something you're missing is If you look at young people today, like if you look at our generation, right, like people had already begun to separate out of the system to the extent where when I look at the people now who have achieved like disproportionate wealth in our society or disproportionate positions of power, many of them were in these you know, 1, 000 people, 2, 000 people chat rooms in like the early rationalist less back when I was in Silicon Valley, you know, 20 years ago, right? If I look today, a lot of people can look and they can be like your channel, are these communities you're swimming in are like really small communities that doesn't mean that.

Malcolm Collins: They aren't disproportionately bringing in some of the smartest people. Like when we're in Silicon Valley and I look at things like the Atlas fellowship and it was really shocking to us because we had a number of people go through our school and every single one of them also then went to the Atlas fellowship completely [00:27:00] independently of us.

Malcolm Collins: And, and what that showed me is that we are. When we're out there sourcing, being like, I want the smartest kids in the U. S. And we have two people who are doing this sourcing. They keep finding the same kids. And all of these kids kind of know each other already. So I do think we live in a world where the smartest people with ambition and with individual agency are actually coalesce outside of the old power system.

Malcolm Collins: That's the first thing you need. That's the first big step, whatever comes next.

Michael Gibson: Yeah, very, very good point. And, and actually I, I said COVID is one of these catalysts for, for pushing people out of schools, but we haven't even touched on the. The woke madness and the ideological indoctrination where I think quite moderate parents don't even want to have to deal with this stuff now.

Michael Gibson: And maybe that'll accelerate as well. Yeah. We're hearing it

Simone Collins: a lot. Well, another thing that I've seen, which does suggest to me, [00:28:00] maybe things are moving fairly fast is many very high achieving college age people we know now. Have enrolled in prestigious universities when they get in because they feel like that piece of paper will help them and it probably still will, but they're also completely phoning it in they're like, I'm not going to the classes.

Simone Collins: I'm just teaching myself. This is a complete waste of time. I'm literally here. So once that generation starts raising their own kids are they, are they going to pay for that when they know what they did? I don't know. And so maybe

Malcolm Collins: that's who this person is. But one of our close friends recently got into Harvard for graduate school and she was like, I really don't want to go what's the point?

Malcolm Collins: And I go, look, you just get the flip of paper. Okay. Like you don't need to go to classes. You don't need to do anything.

Michael Gibson: And there's an old joke that it's easier to. What is it? It's harder to get into Harvard than to fail out of it. That makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: Well, well, I, I, I came close with my Stanford MBA a couple of times.

Malcolm Collins: Not failing out, [00:29:00] but I, I guess I always hate to piss people off. I think,

Michael Gibson: well, one other issue is, I think, is just how bad schools are. And so it's tough for... People to really judge the quality of things when, when it's not clear what difference it makes. But it could be the case and that maybe methods of instruction.

Michael Gibson: And methods of building curiosity improved so much that the people who are outside the system are just so clearly far ahead along these dimensions that other people in the system are like, Oh s**t, I got to get out. I mean, I think like people obviously switch from Uber to Lyft because it was just so wonderful and magical to be able to call a car, right?

Michael Gibson: Such a big improvement on the old medallion system, paper based system. That that they, they moved, but now, you know, education is so expensive and then it's not even clear how much of a difference it'll make, you know, people just want their kids to be with other kids who are pro social and pro learning.

Michael Gibson: But you know, when it comes to methods of [00:30:00] instruction, no one's really good at judging these things. But what if you did send your child to a school and they learned calculus in three months instead of a year? I think, you know, people, if they saw that, they'd say, well, all right, I want to send my kid there, but we just don't have that yet.

Michael Gibson: Well, our school is going to do

Malcolm Collins: that when I guarantee you, I just wish we could develop it a little faster. Anyway, I have had so much fun talking with you in this, in this work. We'll definitely do another episode with you. I would direct people to your book. I would also direct people to things that you're running, you know, if you know, a really young, smart person who's working on big ideas, stuff like the 1517 fund are actually, or, or the deal fellowship are.

Malcolm Collins: Where it is for the next generation and, and, and for our young viewers who are just like, yeah, but I can't, what do you mean you can't like being a genius in a meaningful context is about having individual agency and being able to go out there, search for opportunities and execute on the opportunities you're searching for.[00:31:00]

Malcolm Collins: And so, you know, just remember that, remember to not forget to

Michael Gibson: try. Yeah. Anyone out there reach out 15, 17 fund. com. We have a. Submission form on our website that we answer and you don't even have to be starting a company. We just want to meet people who are attracted to, you know, this vibe and this world and these ideas.

Michael Gibson: Yeah. Nice. Thank you so

Simone Collins: much, Michael.

Michael Gibson: Yeah. Thanks for having me on.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe