I'm Back - Please Reply
your Saturday roundup
I’m back from my break spending time with my family. One thing to mention: When I ask a question below it is not just rhetorical! Please comment or hit reply. The email comes straight to my inbox. I love your input.
Professionally, I focus on creating social benefit startups. In my Saturday morning emails I share what I’m learning and thinking. Topics range from better living and parenting to business and philosophy.
Curious Learning is Hiring. I mentioned that Curious Learning, the edtech nonprofit where I’m on the board, was ready to scale and raising money. I’m excited to share that with additional funds they are now hiring. Do you know a great Head of Engineering or Data Analyst? This is a global search and an opportunity to improve the literacy of millions of people. Please send great people their way.
What Use is Blockchain? The narratives about blockchain technology have shifted over time. The US regulators seem to have concluded it is for fraud and money laundering. My view is that there are many potential positive uses although the best one is authentication and data integrity. It is extremely valuable to have a shared history. Given our political environment and generative AI, we need the ability to verify that a piece of content came from a particular person or organization. Media when created should be hashed and saved to a widely-used public blockchain. Digital camera manufacturers should include this as a feature. To be clear, the hashes would be public, not the contents of the media. Maybe public figures should have their public statements videoed with their own hardware to create a record of what they actually said. And we probably do want a distributed largely adopted identity verification system. I haven’t studied World Coin or Democracy Earth Foundation enough to know if they are the solutions, but something in this direction seems good to me. What are you seeing done along these lines?
Depression and ADHD. At my wife’s suggestion, and to be a better prepared parent, I’m reading up on depression and ADHD. I’m almost done with Taking Charge of ADHD and Adolescent Depression. Both feel like textbooks. If you have any other suggestions on what I should read or listen to, please let me know. Things of note:
Although ADHD and height are both ~80% heritable we don’t yet know the specific genetic variations that cause ADHD. Depression has a strong heritable component as well.
In defining ADHD, I think that someone with ADHD has a less active executive function.
I wonder the extent to which ADHD is a way of paying attention that is better suited to more threat-filled or less structured environments. For example, by not blocking out “distractions”, someone with ADHD may have quicker reactions to urgent events in an emergency. Rather than punishing kids for not being interested in sitting still and listening to boring lectures, should we figure out another approach to learning?
ChatGPT’s summary of depression treatments is surprisingly coherent. Anyone spot inaccuracies?
Until next time,
Miles
One poorly utilized barometer in formal education is that people tend to be visual, audio or kinetic learners. Listening to lectures is essentially audio only, with possibly some visual. So many people are kinetic learners or a combination of kinetic/visual, etc. They need to interact with the subject to really comprehend it. Audio (lectures) might be the overall weakest way to teach. I do not believe schools test for whether a student is an audio, visual or kinetic learner. Think about how accelerated learning might be if three approaches were offered, one for each type of learner, and students were divided into classes based on that instead of current standards for perceiving IQ.
Another key is brain development. Consideration should be given to revising the age that students begin school. First grade curriculum as we know it should not be offered to anyone under age 6-1/2. You can literally see a child's brain wake-up to abstract concepts at certain ages, ages not necessarily aligned with current education curriculum. It is like pulling teeth to help a child "learn" something and then all of a sudden they get it. This is a brain development issue, not a result of dedication (although dedication is also a good thing). Sadly, the child and parents fall into a cycle of frustration and self doubts about ability. Education is not fun or inspiring because the child got pushed into the system way too young. This experience follows them throughout their student career. The brain continues developing well into our 20s.