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Self-Education and Self-Investment

The Future of Work and Education in an AI World

[The video version of my interview on the Hannah Frankman Podcast is above. Here are the audio versions on Apple Podcast and on Spotify.]

In the age of AI, traditional education is OUT, and self-taught AI skills are IN…

Within a year or two, the office job market will look radically different than it ever has, as AI washes over most workplaces.

How should young people change their plans for education as this AI tsunami crashes over the workplace?

In my interview with Hannah Frankman–a rebel maven of alternative education–I make a controversial claim:

In the age of AI, going to college will be a massive financial and career harm for most students, particularly those taking on significant debt.

(The exception is students who want to go into a field like law, which requires an academic credential and/or licensure, such as law, engineering, or medicine–though these fields are being upended by AI as well.)

Why?

Colleges have already demonstrated that they intend to keep young people away from AI either partially or fully, saying that using AI tools is “cheating.” Overpaid college deans correctly see AI as a threat to their business model.

(And yes, colleges are for all intents and purposes businesses–and ruthless ones at that–despite their fig leaf of non-profit status.)

Point blank: any young adult who has been kept away by their teachers and professors from learning about AI tools urgently, will be irrelevant to the job market next year, let alone in four years.

Students simply do not go to college (and take out large student loans) to become economically irrelevant, and they should not. So education needs to be rethought from the ground up as AI dominates every area of our economy.

What Young People Should Do Instead…

November 15, 2023 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

Social Survivalism: Cultivating High-Trust Networks Before Disaster Strikes

On Oct 8th, with ~7 hours notice, I–along with much of Northern California–learned that electricity would be going out for possibly a week. It was a preventive power-outage to avoid catastrophic climate-related wildfires like the ones in the last few years.

This highlighted for me why, of the myriad things I procrastinate on, disaster prep was not a good one. (Especially because I also live directly on top of the Hayward faultline in Berkeley.)

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company site was down due to all the people frantically checking for info. (Hey PG&E, maybe investing in more bandwidth during emergencies would be a cost-effective move?)

From the spotty information (rumors?) I could get online I learned water could go out during this time as well.

Frantic trip to Home Depot for flashlights, batteries, candles, water jugs, first aid kits. Shopping carts full of non-perishables at El Cerrito Natural Grocery (oh God so Bay Area!)–prepping for Armageddon, gluten-free.

Filling car gas tank (could serve as a generator for devices.) Filling up bathtub and every container in the house with water. Making last-minute calls saying I may be out of touch (info online said cell towers would work, but ya never know.)

Seeing how much my life seemed like it could upend with the possibility of ~7 days without basic civilizational utilities, and the degree to which I was reduced to a nervous ninny, brought to mind a series I wrote a while ago but never published on topics related to the end of civilization as we know it. Now seems like a good time to share it!

Social Survivalism:
Cultivating High-Trust Networks Before Disaster Strikes

October 20, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

Finding Your Life’s Treasure Map: The Small Changes That Change Everything

One day many years ago, 47-year-old Steve Cooksey asked his wife to take him to the emergency room, and he collapsed the moment he got there. They put him in a wheelchair and, suspecting the symptoms of diabetes, took his blood sugar reading. It was at 740 mg/dl, which is off the charts. (A normal range, at fasting level, is around 80-130.)

Steve passed out a few times in the ER, and the doctor told him he was on the verge of a full-blown diabetic coma, a medical emergency that can be fatal. They kept him in ICU for four days with all kinds of IVs stuck in him before they could get his blood sugar down to a safe level.

“My lifestyle up until that point, in one phrase, was ‘sedentary sloth,’” Steve told me. “My normal breakfast was going to Bojangle’s Chicken ‘n Biscuits and getting a couple of biscuits with their sweet tea and Bo-tato Rounds® [hash browns]. Then I’d go out to lunch I’d get bread and rolls and buns, and I’d eat spaghetti. If I wanted to eat ‘healthy,’ I’d get a big-ass salad, but I’d use the sugary salad dressing. If we went to fast food, I’d get a big Subway sub, with juice or Gatorade or Pepsi. My lunches were full of carbs. For dinner, I’d stop and eat a Big Mac or a Big Fish sandwich, with French fries and sweet teas. I was feeding that carb addiction 16 hours a day. At my peak, I was around 235 lbs [at a height of 5’10”]—and that was not muscle.”

As they let him out of the hospital, the nurse gave him a copy of the Food Pyramid to put in his pocket and told him to keep his eating below 2,200 calories.

That was the only dietary advice any medical professional at the hospital gave him after he nearly died.

“When I heard that, I thought, ‘That’s basically like I eat now!’ I could still eat bread and cookies and drink juice on the diet they were recommending to me.” Instead of rejoicing at this freedom, Steve suspected there was a deeper issue here. He intuitively felt that there must be some link between all the sugar and carbs he was eating, and his blood sugar issues, even though the hospital doctors assured him there was none. He began looking into the matter–and what he found changed his life.

August 1, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

The Secret of Grounded Confidence

When I say the “secret” of grounded confidence, I mean both that there’s a secret to gaining it (which I’ll be sharing below)… but also, that grounded confidence itself is a secret!

What do I mean?

Well, when you hear the phrase “gain confidence,” what comes to mind?

Maybe you think of some kind of pep-talk, from a mentor, coach, “motivational speaker” or “transformational leader.”

(Those in latter two groups sell expensive seminars where you jump in chairs all weekend, scream in groups, and hear inspiring stories about other people who took the upsell seminar and now live on yachts, etc…)

These forms of “confidence” are like jolts of coffee… good for a few hours, or even days (hey, that’s some strong coffee!) But then the crash comes… and you need the next external fix.

In contrast, grounded confidence is based on:

A back-and-forth dialogue between inner confidence, and improvement in external results.

(The last part–external results–is where the “grounded” part comes in.)

Let me tell you a little story about grounded confidence, and how to gain it.

March 4, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

You Are a Contrarian Investment

Most people who haven’t already “made it” are lucky to have a few people who truly have rock-solid, investible faith in them. Maybe their parents (if they’re lucky!) Maybe a few really close friends, or a mentor they’ve been lucky to find.

But in a typical lifespan–before you’ve “made it,” however you define that– the main person who is going to have faith in you is you.

That means, before you’ve reached the level of success you desire in life, investing in yourself is a form of contrarian investing. (Investing that goes against the crowd.) And a form that I think is much more doable, valuable, and safe than contrarian investing in the markets.

February 21, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

The Dirty Secret of the BS Investment Industry

If you’re wondering how you will provide for you and your family’s financial security in the future, you’ve probably considered saving money in your IRA or 401(k), and investing it in broad mutual funds tracking the US markets. Or you may have already done this.

If so, you’ve probably been lulled in by the personal finance industry’s PR that, “in the long run, the US stock market has gone up 7% per year annualized, after inflation.”

Sounds great, right? 7% per year is a doubling of your assets roughly every ten years. Just stick that money in there, don’t touch it again (“buy and hold,” or “passive investing”) and watch your wealth double every 10 years! (That’s a 12-fold increase over 40 years!)

The problem is, there’s a dirty secret to the investment business–one that the people selling you this BS advice don’t want you to know, because it would put them right out of business.

February 19, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

The Key to Fool-Proof Investing

The key to fool-proof investing is truly internalizing the implications of the following unsettling fact.

Most people are fools when it comes to evaluating their own talent in many of their own skills. (Including, as we’ll see in a moment, investing.)

Unfortunately, chances are, that includes us.

Studies show that 95% of people believe they are “above-average” drivers.

February 15, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

What Socrates Knows About Investing That You Don’t Know…

There’s a strong case to be made that the two sentences I’m about to share with you are the most influential in the entire history of Western philosophy.

They were uttered during the trial of Socrates for “corrupting the youth” in Athens, 399 BC–according to the version recounted by his disciple Plato.

According to Plato, Socrates said–while commenting on a negative run-in with a supposedly wise man of Athens:

“Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is–for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know.”

A basic reformulation of this, is that a fool can become wise, simply by knowing that he’s a fool. For he is then wiser than the most other people, who are also fools, but don’t realize that they are.

What does all of this have to do with investing?

February 9, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

The Story of the $100 Million Urinal

The most valuable urinal the world has ever known was created in New York City in 1917.

It had no diamonds in it, nor any precious stones at all. It was not made of gold or platinum, but of porcelain, just like every other urinal. In fact, in every respect, it was just like every other urinal, into which the common men of the time were relieving themselves in the public bathrooms around the world.

In 1917, an artist calling himself R. Mutt signed his name to such a urinal—said to be a Bedfordshire model bought at a foundry showroom on Fifth Avenue—and submitted it to an exhibition organized by the Society of Independent Artists, paying their $6 fee. Even though it was a nonjuried exhibit, open to anyone who paid the fee, the Society’s board took the extraordinary step of exercising jury powers. They turned down Mr. Mutt’s submission as not being art and returned the urinal to him with a rejection slip.

November 28, 2017 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

Drop Out of The System, Drop Into Success – The Dartmouth Lecture

[Below is an edited transcript. There is also an audio version available for streaming and download at the bottom.]

I’m going to open with a statement that I guarantee that every one of you in the audience is going to find shocking.

I think every one of you students in the room here should consider dropping out tomorrow.

Obviously I don’t mean that in the literal sense. If I did the people here at Dartmouth who brought me in to speak would get fired tomorrow, and I don’t want that. So what the heck do I mean?

I’ve spent the day here on this lovely campus, and one of the messages I’ve heard from various people—both students and faculty—is that there’s a kind of track going on here. It’s not unique to Dartmouth, but maybe it’s more pronounced here. That is a track of doing well in school, then coming here and doing well at Dartmouth, then going on to a “respectable” profession. The professions I’ve heard are really popular here are management consulting, investment banking, and law. So the picture I’ve gotten is of a place where young people are brought on a track from a young age and then are put into a “tracked” career.

I’m not trying to single out Dartmouth here. I went to Brown, where it’s pretty much the same thing. We have a slightly different relationship to conventionality there, but most of the people are still being groomed for, and going into, these kind of “traditional” careers.

When I say you should consider dropping out, I don’t mean that you should consider dropping out of this institution. Please don’t do that! However, I do think you should consider dropping out of that “track” I mentioned. What I hope to accomplish by the end of this talk is to instill in some of you a broader perspective on the range of careers that are possible for you after you leave this institution—which will still allow you to lead a happy, comfortable, and successful life.

May 11, 2014 by Michael Ellsberg

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