Education

What if education became the heroes journey—realisation of pain to realisation of agency?

The 2026 Split

Based on 2026 predictions, education divides:

Credential Factories	Agency Accelerators
Degrees and tests	Portfolios of shipped work
What to know	How to act
Static job descriptions	Self-directed value creation
Institution-gated knowledge	Open access + coaching
Compliance	Initiative

The only robust career of the future is entrepreneurship. Not employment in a static job description—self-directed value creation.

Agency as Curriculum

Agency accelerators explicitly teach:

Capability	What It Means	How You Build It
Initiative	Starting without permission	Ship something before anyone asks
Resilience	Recovering from failure	Fail publicly, iterate openly
AI Fluency	Working with AI, not against it	Use AI to extend capability, not replace judgment
Building	Shipping real things	Four years of projects > four years of classes

This is the game as education.

The Heroes Journey as Curriculum

The progress journey maps to educational stages:

PAIN (awareness of problem)
    ↓
SEARCH (exploring solutions)
    ↓
DISCOVERY (finding the path)
    ↓
PRACTICE (building capability)
    ↓
MASTERY (flow state)
    ↓
TEACHING (multiplying impact)

See Crypto Agency for a worked example: League 1 (Awareness) → League 5 (Coach).

Social Coordination: Tapping Into Talent

The old model: institutions discover and credential talent. The new model: networks surface and coordinate talent.

Old	New
Admissions committees	Portfolio visibility
Grades signal ability	Shipped work signals ability
Professors teach	Coaches unlock
Classmates compete	Masterminds coordinate
Diploma at the end	Reputation compounds continuously

Crypto enables this: On-chain credentials, token-incentivized learning, DAO-based masterminds, reputation that travels with you.

The Coaching Model

A great coach sells belief in untapped potential, then guides you towards realizing it.

The Economy

Humans need to transform the world to survive (unlike other animals that try to find ecosystems that support them), this transformation requires more than just physical resources.

Knowledge comes in two main categories:

1. Knowledge about the nature of the world (science) - understanding what exists and how it works
2. Knowledge about how to change the world (technology) - understanding how to transform both physical and social aspects of our environment

This knowledge exists in three distinct forms:

1. Embodied knowledge - Knowledge embedded in tools and materials (like a skillet), where you don't need to know how to make the tool to use it
2. Codified knowledge - Knowledge that exists in symbolic space as codes, recipes, formulas, algorithms, and manuals
3. Knowhow - Knowledge that exists in people's heads that can't be easily explained or transferred through conversation, requiring extensive practice, growth experiments.

Potential is realized through effectiveness of transformation of state, and driven by advancements in technology. Knowing where resources are located and how to use them is driven by knowledge.

What makes modern economies powerful is not that individuals have become smarter than historical figures like Adam Smith or Isaac Newton, but rather that we've developed systems for dividing knowledge among different people and then recombining it when needed. This "division of knowledge" allows societies to use much more knowledge than any single person could possess.

Curriculum and Capabilities

What capabilities will be most valuable to adapt to the future?

Coaching Personalizes Teaching

A great coach sells belief in untapped potential, then guides you towards realizing it.

Incentives and Culture

Humans need to learn to think differently](/docs/systems/) to realize our [point of difference to engineered intelligence.

Problems

How will educational institutions remain relevant in the era of AI and onchain credibility?

Education needs to be targeted at helping people navigate challenges they are likely to face in the future. Best lessons come from practical experience.

• Irrelevance
• Bloat
• Credentials
• Interpersonal Growth
• Institutionalised Daycare

Context

• Better Practice Space
• Education Software
• Meaningful Work
• Marketing
• Problems Index

Links

• The Wildness of Children