Apprentice
March 31, 2023
This paper is work in progress. I'd appreciate objections, logical and factual errors, feedback, and thoughts at jesse@gabel.is.
Introduction
The future is bright. Not inevitably. The future is bright if we choose human advancement. Knowledge is infinite. Knowledge drives human innovation. Innovation drives human progress. How do we discover knowledge and innovate?
Innovation can be both upstream and downstream of knowledge and vice versa. It often relies on the exchange of ideas and builds on top of previous discoveries. While there has been important and considerable catch-up growth in less developed parts of the world, substantial innovation and progress has been lacking in the last half-century or so. Whether the quality of life has increased or decreased is unintelligible.
Previous drivers of innovation are decaying while breathing room is stifled due to atavistic and novel regulations. Universities, once the foremost learning and knowledge generating institutions, transformed into degree-selling and graduate-minting gatekeepers to professional career success, research, slowing innovation inside and outside of its high-rising walls.
A Past, A Future
Historically, individual education for the privileged retained knowledge in closed circles, shutting the doors of opportunity to the majority of high-potential individuals in the less privileged classes, preventing a potent share of innovation and human progress.
The final stretch of the elite-to-masses shift of education in the last fifty years, however, lowered, averaged, and standardized educational quality to carry the masses from freshman year to graduation. More equality equaled less equity.
Nowadays, universities resemble prestige-seeking mimetic systems more than knowledge-discovery environments. They are zero-sum games, culminating too often in narrowly converged graduates. By the time the once curious students graduate, they tend to acquire similar metaphysical wants and career choices: high-paying, low value creation "safe" jobs. The high value creating deviators are more likely to thrive despite education than because of it.
Given expectations of technological progress, the less creative human work may well be replaced by machines and artificial intelligence in the near future. While the structured domains will be easily replaced, the non-structured, and artistic fields will gain in value. A renaissance of creative works, the imperfect, yet masterful human creations. That includes, conceiving, building, and managing products, organizations, and institutions.
Our current education system aims at explicit knowledge transfer and methodology mediation. It fails to transfer knowledge that lasts past graduation and its efficacy in methodology mediation is questionable due to the widening skill gap. Moreover, explicit knowledge retention becomes largely obsolete by technological advancements and increased accessibility.
On the flip side, tacit knowledge does become more important for humans. Tacit knowledge is best acquired through experience.
Historically, apprenticeships evolved as learning systems mostly in the trades, passing both explicit and tacit knowledge from one generation to the next. Masters take on beginners. Beginners grow into mastery, possibly refining their predecessors' methods, then handing them down to the next generation.
In 2011, the Thiel Fellowship institutionalized learning through experience by starting to fund small cohorts of unenrolled college-aged individuals. Thiel Fellows went on to create and share valuable work, such as starting billion dollar companies.
Over the last decade, micro to larger grant programs have sprung up across the USA. They allow a select few to engulf themselves in ambitious experiential learning projects instead of spending years to gain credibility before embarking.
Resources allow us to follow our curiosity. Curiosity is inherently motivating. Technology, mentorship, and strong networks inspire us, hold us accountable and provide guidance and support on our journey towards creating lasting value.
Problems, Solutions
A widening gap of inspiration. A widening gap of learning outcomes. Ballooning costs. The sclerotic institutions of higher education leave ambitious talent behind. The meritocratic grant and mentorship approach has enabled a small elite to follow their curiosity and share value. It's time to make learning through experience systematically accessible!
A Solution
A network that connects ambitious beginners (Apprentices) to experienced professionals (Mentors.) Apprentices follow either an independent path (Path A) or learn from within an organization (Path B.)
Path A
Apprentices choose a project focus and create a pitch. Mentors create a profile, laying out their availability and frequency, skillset and experience, and terms of investment or grant. Mentors discover Apprentices through their pitches; Apprentices discover Mentors through their profiles. Apprentice or Mentor requests a cooperation. If both parties agree, a call is scheduled to determine the scope of the project and support and sign a legal agreement.
Apprentice and Mentor speak regularly about the Apprentice's progress. The Mentor provides guidances and support, challenges the Apprentice to push further, and possibly opens doors.
After the project period, the Apprentice shares their value-creation on the network.
Path B
Apprentices choose a focus area and create a pitch. Organizations create a profile, laying out their apprenticeship offerings. Apprentices discover organizations through their profiles; Organizations discover Apprentices through their pitches. Apprentice or Organization requests a cooperation. If both parties agree, a call is scheduled to determine the scope of the apprenticeship and sign a legal agreement.
The Apprentice is assigned a Mentor from within the Organization. The Apprentice acquires tacit and explicit knowledge through working at the Organization and learning the skills required. The Apprentice and Mentor speak regularly about the Apprentice's progress. The Mentor provides guidances and support, challenges the Apprentice to push further, and possibly opens doors.
After their apprenticeship, the Apprentice may be offered a job at the Organization.
Operations
Connecting Apprentices to Mentors or Organizations.
Handling the legal side and money flows of grants and investments.
Providing the infrastructure for pitches, profiles, mentorship, and apprenticeships at Organizations.
Providing the infrastructure for networking and sharing and engaging with Apprentices' project outcomes.
Partnering with selected Mentors and Organizations.
Finances
The network takes a small fee on top or cut off the invested money.
Value for Mentors
Contribution to value creation, innovation, and human progress by facilitating next-generation high-potential individuals.
Return on investment in Apprentices.
Transferring wealth and knowledge for purposes they see fit.
Apprentices become Alumni and eventually Mentors themselves. They'll give back and enable the next generation and so forth. In this mimetic system, mentoring becomes an ideal to strive for.
Problem: Learning
Standardized teaching is to the individual learner what communism is to the economy: an idealized, ignorant approach to an inherently complex and unpredictable problem.
University curricula aim at a pre-defined outcome and are therefore a deficient mode of career preparation for the individual. Students converge on a singular point, their degree.
The mimetic system of college masks natural interests with the zero-sum game for accolades and prestige. Knowledge is taught that students most often don't retain past graduation. Furthermore, infinitely growing knowledge makes high volume knowledge transfer anachronistic.
The internet is picked with generously accessible resources, such as open online courses. Explicit knowledge is losing its significance with technological progress and increased accessibility. However, tacit knowledge gains importance as artificial intelligence becomes proficient in the less creative human work.
Non-objective search tends to outperform objective search in unknown domains. With the technological progress and impact on the human workforce in mind, following one's curiosity through project-based learning while supported through Mentors doubles down on Apprentices' strengths equipping them with tacit, transferable abilities to find solutions to future problems on their own. Mentors provide a secure base, instilling confidence and providing reassurance. The Apprentices acquire the skills, confidence, and agency to tackle unimaginable future challenges.
Carving out one's own path is inaccessible. Working on one problem of humanity deeply framed in a project, supported through resources and mentorship makes this path accessible.
Problem: Network
Arguably one of universities' biggest value is the network that students acquire during their time on campus. While putting peers into one room creates likely more mimetic rivalry than mingling with professionals of different ages and experiences, the connections formed tend to prove valuable over time.
Apprentices will be connected to experienced professionals—their Mentors. They will also share their projects with their fellow Apprentices via an inspiration board, having the opportunity to inspire each other and engage with each others works instead of entering a destructive competition.
By learning from within Organizations, Apprentices are able to make industry contacts and gain work experience early on.
Problem: Labor market
Universities are effective in that they're still a trusted third-party institution that sends signals about its graduates to the labor market.
Colleges hold a monopoly over trust in the inexperienced and uncredentialed. They are an expensive and time-consuming networker and trust guarantor by selling degrees that send positive signals to the labor market.
Nevertheless, higher education is not career-oriented and the skill gap is widening. Learning from within an Organization or by pursuing exploratory work projects proves more valuable due to the acquisition of tacit knowledge.
Introducing apprenticeships at smaller organizations, partnering with the established ones, and building a network of Alumni to tap into for hiring carves an ecosystem over time. An ecosystem to tap into for hiring Apprentices. They'll have obtained work experience and build a portfolio. Showing, not telling their credibility and removing the middleman for trust in the labor market. Trust through action vs. universities trust through papers.
Problem: Finances
The costs of higher education are ballooning while quality stagnates at best. Reducing the time spend learning while financing through grants, fellowships, apprenticeships, and future earnings proves to be significantly more efficient in time and money. The financial burden is taken from the parents, giving the children more agency over their professional careers, making learning opportunities more equitable.
A faster path to creation and trust allows young people to create value earlier in life, potentially increasing innovation and groundbreaking discoveries. Moreover, being involved in the financing gives the Mentors skin in the game and holds them accountable.
Problem: Motivation & Inspiration
A group of peers striving for the same object creates mimetic rivalry (aka college). A cohort of individuals striving for their unique objects cross-pollinates Apprentices with inspiration. Apprentices are physically apart most of the time, encouraged to exchange ideas with other mentees and professionals alike.
Motivation is downstream of natural curiosity and support. Being agentic and working with core motivational themes is fulfilling.
Restricted influences are necessary to keep the delusional state of early ideas going. While incumbent institutions prevent the unfruitful ideas from growing, they also stifle those that seem so, but turn out as great outcomes.
After their project end, Apprentices' value creations are published to the network. Other apprentices, mentors, and interested people can engage with it. They can critique or pick up on it. Thus, it's a treasure hunter network. People follow up on what's interesting to them and build a portfolio over time.
Case studies
Jane has been fascinated with biology, specifically longevity. When it's time to apply for college, she finds out about Apprentice. Instead of sitting in a classroom for years before, being able to follow her curiosity, she decides to look for Mentors on Apprentice. She finds a Mentor doing in research in a lab with her interest. They connect and she starts her apprenticeship the summer after high school. After two years, she's supported the researcher doing research and published her first two papers in the field. She get's offered a research position at a prominent lab. By having Apprentices instead of students, university researchers can be freed from teaching, spending more time on their research and being supported by Apprentices instead.
John has been programming since he was 13. He's built a little health application helping him to stay on top of a chronic disease. When he discovers Apprentice, he feels inspired to work on improving his application. He pitches his idea on Apprentice. An app developer and Mentor likes his pitch and after agreeing on the details, John receives a monthly living stipend for six months and additional resources to develop his app and release to the public. His app turns out to be a success. After less than a year, he's raising capital to grow its offerings and build a company out of it.
From here
The scientific revolution was started by a few dozen people writing letters. A network connecting Apprentices to Mentors and Organizations lays the foundation for accessible, scalable, curiosity-based education. It's a path to fulfilling lives of individuals. A chance to increase the odds of innovation. A venture towards a brighter future.
Human progress relies on the cooperation of people. So does this venture. If you liked this sketch of a solution, I'd love hearing from you. If you disagree with the arguments, I'd also appreciate a message. If you'd like to contribute to bringing this vision into reality, please reach out to me: jesse@gabel.is.
Thanks to Helmut and Patricia for reading drafts and providing helpful feedback.
This paper is work in progress. I'd appreciate objections, logical and factual errors, feedback, and thoughts at jesse@gabel.is.
Introduction
The future is bright. Not inevitably. The future is bright if we choose human advancement. Knowledge is infinite. Knowledge drives human innovation. Innovation drives human progress. How do we discover knowledge and innovate?
Innovation can be both upstream and downstream of knowledge and vice versa. It often relies on the exchange of ideas and builds on top of previous discoveries. While there has been important and considerable catch-up growth in less developed parts of the world, substantial innovation and progress has been lacking in the last half-century or so. Whether the quality of life has increased or decreased is unintelligible.
Previous drivers of innovation are decaying while breathing room is stifled due to atavistic and novel regulations. Universities, once the foremost learning and knowledge generating institutions, transformed into degree-selling and graduate-minting gatekeepers to professional career success, research, slowing innovation inside and outside of its high-rising walls.
A Past, A Future
Historically, individual education for the privileged retained knowledge in closed circles, shutting the doors of opportunity to the majority of high-potential individuals in the less privileged classes, preventing a potent share of innovation and human progress.
The final stretch of the elite-to-masses shift of education in the last fifty years, however, lowered, averaged, and standardized educational quality to carry the masses from freshman year to graduation. More equality equaled less equity.
Nowadays, universities resemble prestige-seeking mimetic systems more than knowledge-discovery environments. They are zero-sum games, culminating too often in narrowly converged graduates. By the time the once curious students graduate, they tend to acquire similar metaphysical wants and career choices: high-paying, low value creation "safe" jobs. The high value creating deviators are more likely to thrive despite education than because of it.
Given expectations of technological progress, the less creative human work may well be replaced by machines and artificial intelligence in the near future. While the structured domains will be easily replaced, the non-structured, and artistic fields will gain in value. A renaissance of creative works, the imperfect, yet masterful human creations. That includes, conceiving, building, and managing products, organizations, and institutions.
Our current education system aims at explicit knowledge transfer and methodology mediation. It fails to transfer knowledge that lasts past graduation and its efficacy in methodology mediation is questionable due to the widening skill gap. Moreover, explicit knowledge retention becomes largely obsolete by technological advancements and increased accessibility.
On the flip side, tacit knowledge does become more important for humans. Tacit knowledge is best acquired through experience.
Historically, apprenticeships evolved as learning systems mostly in the trades, passing both explicit and tacit knowledge from one generation to the next. Masters take on beginners. Beginners grow into mastery, possibly refining their predecessors' methods, then handing them down to the next generation.
In 2011, the Thiel Fellowship institutionalized learning through experience by starting to fund small cohorts of unenrolled college-aged individuals. Thiel Fellows went on to create and share valuable work, such as starting billion dollar companies.
Over the last decade, micro to larger grant programs have sprung up across the USA. They allow a select few to engulf themselves in ambitious experiential learning projects instead of spending years to gain credibility before embarking.
Resources allow us to follow our curiosity. Curiosity is inherently motivating. Technology, mentorship, and strong networks inspire us, hold us accountable and provide guidance and support on our journey towards creating lasting value.
Problems, Solutions
A widening gap of inspiration. A widening gap of learning outcomes. Ballooning costs. The sclerotic institutions of higher education leave ambitious talent behind. The meritocratic grant and mentorship approach has enabled a small elite to follow their curiosity and share value. It's time to make learning through experience systematically accessible!
A Solution
A network that connects ambitious beginners (Apprentices) to experienced professionals (Mentors.) Apprentices follow either an independent path (Path A) or learn from within an organization (Path B.)
Path A
Apprentices choose a project focus and create a pitch. Mentors create a profile, laying out their availability and frequency, skillset and experience, and terms of investment or grant. Mentors discover Apprentices through their pitches; Apprentices discover Mentors through their profiles. Apprentice or Mentor requests a cooperation. If both parties agree, a call is scheduled to determine the scope of the project and support and sign a legal agreement.
Apprentice and Mentor speak regularly about the Apprentice's progress. The Mentor provides guidances and support, challenges the Apprentice to push further, and possibly opens doors.
After the project period, the Apprentice shares their value-creation on the network.
Path B
Apprentices choose a focus area and create a pitch. Organizations create a profile, laying out their apprenticeship offerings. Apprentices discover organizations through their profiles; Organizations discover Apprentices through their pitches. Apprentice or Organization requests a cooperation. If both parties agree, a call is scheduled to determine the scope of the apprenticeship and sign a legal agreement.
The Apprentice is assigned a Mentor from within the Organization. The Apprentice acquires tacit and explicit knowledge through working at the Organization and learning the skills required. The Apprentice and Mentor speak regularly about the Apprentice's progress. The Mentor provides guidances and support, challenges the Apprentice to push further, and possibly opens doors.
After their apprenticeship, the Apprentice may be offered a job at the Organization.
Operations
Connecting Apprentices to Mentors or Organizations.
Handling the legal side and money flows of grants and investments.
Providing the infrastructure for pitches, profiles, mentorship, and apprenticeships at Organizations.
Providing the infrastructure for networking and sharing and engaging with Apprentices' project outcomes.
Partnering with selected Mentors and Organizations.
Finances
The network takes a small fee on top or cut off the invested money.
Value for Mentors
Contribution to value creation, innovation, and human progress by facilitating next-generation high-potential individuals.
Return on investment in Apprentices.
Transferring wealth and knowledge for purposes they see fit.
Apprentices become Alumni and eventually Mentors themselves. They'll give back and enable the next generation and so forth. In this mimetic system, mentoring becomes an ideal to strive for.
Problem: Learning
Standardized teaching is to the individual learner what communism is to the economy: an idealized, ignorant approach to an inherently complex and unpredictable problem.
University curricula aim at a pre-defined outcome and are therefore a deficient mode of career preparation for the individual. Students converge on a singular point, their degree.
The mimetic system of college masks natural interests with the zero-sum game for accolades and prestige. Knowledge is taught that students most often don't retain past graduation. Furthermore, infinitely growing knowledge makes high volume knowledge transfer anachronistic.
The internet is picked with generously accessible resources, such as open online courses. Explicit knowledge is losing its significance with technological progress and increased accessibility. However, tacit knowledge gains importance as artificial intelligence becomes proficient in the less creative human work.
Non-objective search tends to outperform objective search in unknown domains. With the technological progress and impact on the human workforce in mind, following one's curiosity through project-based learning while supported through Mentors doubles down on Apprentices' strengths equipping them with tacit, transferable abilities to find solutions to future problems on their own. Mentors provide a secure base, instilling confidence and providing reassurance. The Apprentices acquire the skills, confidence, and agency to tackle unimaginable future challenges.
Carving out one's own path is inaccessible. Working on one problem of humanity deeply framed in a project, supported through resources and mentorship makes this path accessible.
Problem: Network
Arguably one of universities' biggest value is the network that students acquire during their time on campus. While putting peers into one room creates likely more mimetic rivalry than mingling with professionals of different ages and experiences, the connections formed tend to prove valuable over time.
Apprentices will be connected to experienced professionals—their Mentors. They will also share their projects with their fellow Apprentices via an inspiration board, having the opportunity to inspire each other and engage with each others works instead of entering a destructive competition.
By learning from within Organizations, Apprentices are able to make industry contacts and gain work experience early on.
Problem: Labor market
Universities are effective in that they're still a trusted third-party institution that sends signals about its graduates to the labor market.
Colleges hold a monopoly over trust in the inexperienced and uncredentialed. They are an expensive and time-consuming networker and trust guarantor by selling degrees that send positive signals to the labor market.
Nevertheless, higher education is not career-oriented and the skill gap is widening. Learning from within an Organization or by pursuing exploratory work projects proves more valuable due to the acquisition of tacit knowledge.
Introducing apprenticeships at smaller organizations, partnering with the established ones, and building a network of Alumni to tap into for hiring carves an ecosystem over time. An ecosystem to tap into for hiring Apprentices. They'll have obtained work experience and build a portfolio. Showing, not telling their credibility and removing the middleman for trust in the labor market. Trust through action vs. universities trust through papers.
Problem: Finances
The costs of higher education are ballooning while quality stagnates at best. Reducing the time spend learning while financing through grants, fellowships, apprenticeships, and future earnings proves to be significantly more efficient in time and money. The financial burden is taken from the parents, giving the children more agency over their professional careers, making learning opportunities more equitable.
A faster path to creation and trust allows young people to create value earlier in life, potentially increasing innovation and groundbreaking discoveries. Moreover, being involved in the financing gives the Mentors skin in the game and holds them accountable.
Problem: Motivation & Inspiration
A group of peers striving for the same object creates mimetic rivalry (aka college). A cohort of individuals striving for their unique objects cross-pollinates Apprentices with inspiration. Apprentices are physically apart most of the time, encouraged to exchange ideas with other mentees and professionals alike.
Motivation is downstream of natural curiosity and support. Being agentic and working with core motivational themes is fulfilling.
Restricted influences are necessary to keep the delusional state of early ideas going. While incumbent institutions prevent the unfruitful ideas from growing, they also stifle those that seem so, but turn out as great outcomes.
After their project end, Apprentices' value creations are published to the network. Other apprentices, mentors, and interested people can engage with it. They can critique or pick up on it. Thus, it's a treasure hunter network. People follow up on what's interesting to them and build a portfolio over time.
Case studies
Jane has been fascinated with biology, specifically longevity. When it's time to apply for college, she finds out about Apprentice. Instead of sitting in a classroom for years before, being able to follow her curiosity, she decides to look for Mentors on Apprentice. She finds a Mentor doing in research in a lab with her interest. They connect and she starts her apprenticeship the summer after high school. After two years, she's supported the researcher doing research and published her first two papers in the field. She get's offered a research position at a prominent lab. By having Apprentices instead of students, university researchers can be freed from teaching, spending more time on their research and being supported by Apprentices instead.
John has been programming since he was 13. He's built a little health application helping him to stay on top of a chronic disease. When he discovers Apprentice, he feels inspired to work on improving his application. He pitches his idea on Apprentice. An app developer and Mentor likes his pitch and after agreeing on the details, John receives a monthly living stipend for six months and additional resources to develop his app and release to the public. His app turns out to be a success. After less than a year, he's raising capital to grow its offerings and build a company out of it.
From here
The scientific revolution was started by a few dozen people writing letters. A network connecting Apprentices to Mentors and Organizations lays the foundation for accessible, scalable, curiosity-based education. It's a path to fulfilling lives of individuals. A chance to increase the odds of innovation. A venture towards a brighter future.
Human progress relies on the cooperation of people. So does this venture. If you liked this sketch of a solution, I'd love hearing from you. If you disagree with the arguments, I'd also appreciate a message. If you'd like to contribute to bringing this vision into reality, please reach out to me: jesse@gabel.is.
Thanks to Helmut and Patricia for reading drafts and providing helpful feedback.