Oddbean new post about | logout
 Maybe by changing the incentives? Bitcoin does that 🧡 I think as more people take accountability over themselves and their families via homeschooling, permaculture, homesteading, etc who gets the labels will change. 

The people with the beautiful farms, healthy animals & children will be the scientists, doctors, and educators we listen to. As more people stop going into debt for the clout associated with higher education and enslaving themselves to corporations for fiat things will begin to change. It’s just going to take time and hard conversations. 

W.E.B Dubois said it takes 3 generations to turn an agricultural family into an industrial one. So maybe it’ll take that long to unlearn all the mess that got us where we are. 
 I would like to believe this, but looking at the bitcoiners I know — great people though they tend to be, I’m not actually sure they rigorously challenge their own biases. 
Good parents and farmers make good neighbors; not always good scientists. 
 You’re right. It’s really disheartening how many bitcoiners I’ve met in real life who refuse to challenge their biases. It’s as if they don’t get what Bitcoin really means for the world. Fortunately, they’re not the ones with the power for change. It’s their children and the ones coming up under them. They will be the change agents. 

In his book, Dubois points out the first generation is the one that’s slow to change. The second is the one that embraces it with a resentment of the old so they move away from the first gen without turning back and the 3 gen is so far removed they don’t find value in the same things that the 1st gen did at all. 

Think of how beautifully different the world can be through your babygirl’s eyes. She’s going to have opportunities and experiences that we can’t fathom solely because of the trajectory you’ve put her on. If she learns healthy distrust at home it’ll empower her to grow, learn, and rectify things that were wrong for so long. The criteria for which she judges “scientist” “scholar” “academia” will be completely different from the one we had. I think that’s where the change happens.