Speaking truth to power is how tyranny gets extirpated before it can enslave, murder, become unstoppable. It’s why free speech is so important. Teaching truth to children is how we create an army of fearless speakers (and seekers). It is freedom’s top of funnel, to stop the rise of the omnipotent deceiver and its sheeple, the camps and prisons, Big Brother, desaparecidos, the Matrix, maya.
Balaji Srinavasan does the world a great service in his encyclopedic hyperlinked online opus, The Network State (TNS), by providing a cogent and annotated summary of politically manufactured vs. technologically verifiable truth (History as Trajectory— Political Power and Technological Truth). The recent pandemic of top-down false narratives and the censorship of skeptics should persuade even technophobes to peruse this section of TNS. It’s easy to forget that the pursuit of truth (a serviceable definition of science) has always been central to human progress, while historically power structures (be they religious or state leviathans) reflexively distort truth to benefit their team. Parsing reality from propaganda is the fundamental life hack, like Neo becoming omnipotent in the Matrix. Even just understanding that power tends to spread lies in service of itself and that truth is often the first fatality of any power struggle is an indispensable filter to avoid becoming just another fleeced sheep.
Minimum Viable Truth
I have fathered five sons and have a sixth due in July and so I think a lot about the minimum viable truth that is my paternal obligation to impart to my children. Add to this the early mortality that runs in my family (my father died at 54, my older brother at 48, my maternal grandfather at 50) and I am filled with an urgency to figure out a pedagogy that grafts my memes to my sons’ genes before I cark it off this simulated coil (I’ll be 55 this summer).
When asked about my MVT approach, I sum it up with the phrase: “Quick to learn and hard to kill.”
The second part is martial arts, hunting, gun safety, growing food, startups, building, camping, etc.
The first part is trickier: learn what? What’s the MVT of early childhood education. So far I’ve got: Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Cognitive Biases, Markets, and Sales.
My insight about power-brokered technological truth in TNS is that it’s essential for these concepts to be taught to children whose parents aspire to manifest TNS concepts. The leviathans of State and Religion are not going to stop passing off their self-serving distortions as truth via indoctrination in schools. For the transition posited in TNS to be viable, the seeds of its memes need to be sown in the fertile minds of children as early as possible. Else TNS will just become something weird nonconformist parents do, like hot yoga or plant medicine.
TNS Family Planning
Novel notions like the ones that populate TNS are often first embraced by the young and childless. It’s natural for youth to bristle and strain against strictures and structures put in place by long-dead founding fathers and mothers. It’s also natural for parents who have benefited from established power structures to impose them on their offspring without question.
But when it comes to starting a new polity to compete/coexist/symbiote with the leviathans of god and state, generational continuity is indispensable. Most TNS creators and memelords are young and not yet thinking of having children, but without a growing population of adherents to its ideals and ideas, TNS is a dead e-letter. Think about Joseph Smith and the indoctrination of children via The Book of Mormon. Or Elon Musk’s brood and Synthesis School. TNS traction requires teaching kids what’s true.
The community that will most benefit from making the concept of decentralized and verifiable vs. force-fed truth kid-friendly are TNS creators and memelords who are or expect one day to be parents. Without TNS-aligned early childhood education, children of Network State founders and members will not understand the moral and tech innovations of their parents' Startup Society or Network Union, i.e. there is no automatic TNS citizenry by birth as with the nation state, no ritual baptism, catechism, bar/bat mitsvay or circumcision, as with religions.
Wise Wonderful Whys
My youngest son, a five year old, has long had an imaginary friend called Wise. At least that’s how we thought it was spelled until he told us recently that its Whys because his friend is always asking Why things are as they are. Proud moment for Papa Parsa.
As a parent who actively engages in my sons’ learning, I understand the challenges of teaching children in a world riddled with distractions, lazy thinking, and outright lies. It starts with the obvious falsehood that the Little House on the Prairie model of education is the only valid one for learning— a gathering place with professional teachers. It continues with the fiction that what is taught via centralized education is true, rather than being that most serves the teachers’ employers, unions, and their political allies. Homeschooling and school choice are actively fought by the status quo of centralized education and for very obvious reasons that stem from a desire to maintain power, control, and influence.
Parents often worry that non-traditional schooling will be to the detriment of their kids, whether because the children won’t be sufficiently socialized or that they will otherwise be at a disadvantage. In my experience, the opposite is true for anyone who takes some time to think about it, something that Naval Ravikant elegantly describes in this tweetstorm on education.
The problem TNS parents face with teaching the core TNS concept of truth to kids is the problem that all homeschooling parents must dispatch: materials and time.
TNS School
The solution to the TNS early education problem is to adapt TNS concepts, starting with the key idea of truth, to be accessible for kids. This is critical since centralized schooling, whether public or private, are increasingly woke madrassas that promote novel concepts of gender, sexuality, and race theory, all with a subtle anti-tech/science bias.
Early on as a parent I had cause to correct one of my sons’ schoolteachers about the meaning of the word "innovative." As a tech startup founder and investor, the error jumped out at me, since I live and die by identifying how Founder Energy can be transformed into fast-growing startups. The teacher had given homework where the “correct” synonym/meaning for innovative was “unusual.” I pointed out this was incorrect, but she stood her ground, explaining that in the context it had that secondary meaning. I taught my sons the correct meaning, but what if I hadn’t taken the time to review the homework? That was when I started cobbling together “Papa School.”
Proactive parents won’t find it difficult to put together a compelling alternative to public/private/parochial school education. Here’s a WIP resource list that’s worked well so far for my sons (oldest is 11):
Math: Khan Academy
Science: Brilliant, Veritassium, Kiwi Kits.
Entrepreneurship: Paul Graham Essays, Naval Podcast
Coding: Replit 100 days of Code.
Cognitive Biases: Youtube Videos.
Strategy: Chess
As with anything, the solution to making TNS memes digestible is trial and error, experimentation and iteration. I’m kicking the process off next week by assigning a paragraph per week from the Technological Truth section to by two oldest boys to discuss during our weekly “Papa School” synchs.
Wonder School
If you’ve read my previous Essays produced for TNS Creators Cohort #3 (Essay Generator, Expat State, or Land of Our Own) you know what comes next: a Startup Society dedicated to productizing a TNS for kids curriculum and eventually a TNS-inspired education system based on technological truth. A startup is the easiest way I know to build the MVP for the TNS MVT.
During the idiotic lockdowns and school closings mandated by the powers that be during the recent pandemic, I funded a young female entrepreneur to develop a learning pod startup at my house. She called it Wonder School because her thesis was that outdoor project-based learning with kids interacting with the wonders of nature was the best approach. The startup didn’t go anywhere (yet?) and the founder returned to the U.K. after completing her masters degree at USF, but she demonstrated that there’s big demand for alternatives to centralized education. With School Choice measures on State ballots all over the U.S., there’s market validation and opportunity, i.e. tailwinds for Wonder.
(You can check out the original learning pod startup here.)
It starts with a community united by the TNS early education meme and a closed-loop coin, a reward token (WON) to incentivize contributors. I’ll contribute my bare bones Papa School TNS education efforts and all sales proceeds will go to a BTC treasury governed by onchain WON voting.
Eventually, a paid TNS lesson plan (purchasable with WON or BTC) will provide everything a TNS parent needs to teach their kids the essential difference between political and tech truth in a digestible format.
A TNS-aligned homeschooling curriculum is a foundation for the next generation to be armed with the tools to distinguish truth from misinformation.
Win with Wonder
The true upside of the TNS meme subject of this essay is the ability to liberate the next generation from the shackles of lies in service of power. Children who understand the difference between manufactured and technological truth will be equipped with the knowledge to make informed decisions.
If you’re a TNS-inspired early childhood educator, join to add your resources and information to the repository and participate in the dogfooding, as well as the creation of guides, newsletters, and other paid services.
Earn WON for helping Wonder grow. Redeem the WON you earn for access to the Wonder Startup Community’s coin-gated Discord and Monthly Meetups, or to apply to be a Co-Founder.
Call for Co-Founders.
Share this essay with TNS Creators and Memelords, especially parents.
Join the embryonic Wonder School Community to collaborate, and earn upside.
And if you feel Founder Energy rising in you at the thought of building a fast-growing, cashflow-generating startup that makes it easy for parents to teach TNS to their kids, well then please apply to be a Wonder co-founder.
Teachers, students, parents, children-- this is an opportunity to seize the means and memes of education and forge a new pedagogy based on truth, not lies, decentralized, not requiring faith in god or state, technologically verifiable, not imposed via manufactured consent.
Parents (present and future) of TNS unite! We have the world to explain to our kids and nothing to lose but the lies of the State.