Critical Wisdom For Next Generation of Thinkers | Ben Nelson
📑 Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:03 Ben Nelson’s Background
14:28 The Process of Nurturing Wisdom
20:43 Impact of AI on Learning and Development
24:24 Application of Wisdom in Real-World Contexts
27:25 Curiosity & Childlike Wonder in Critical Wisdom
27:54 The Fallacy of Pre-Puberty Brain
32:42 Developing Critical Wisdom
36:11 Using Technology to Cultivate Wisdom
41:33 Technology as a Tool for Gaining Wisdom
45:15 Ben’s Magic
51:08 Conclusion
Disclaimer:
The content shared is to highlight the passion and wonder of our guests. It is not professional advice. Please read our evidence-based research to help you develop your unique understanding.
AI technologies have been utilized to assist in creating content derived from genuine conversations. All generated material undergoes thorough human review to ensure accuracy, relevance, and quality.
💕 Story Overview
In S4E4 of the @MAGICademy Podcast, we are joined by Ben Nelson, the founder of Minerva University and a visionary educator and innovator. In this episode, Ben discusses the critical importance of wisdom in learning and its application in real-world contexts, emphasizing that critical wisdom goes beyond rote memorization; it involves applying practical knowledge in novel situations.
Ben also shares his insights on how traditional learning models often fail to cultivate this essential skill, leading to a generation that is less-than-well-equipped for the complexities of modern life. He advocates for a shift towards nurturing critical wisdom (for both leaders and talents), which he defines as the appropriate application of knowledge in unfamiliar contexts. He highlights the need for lifelong learning as a means to adapt and thrive in an ever-changing world.
Magical Insights
Critical Wisdom: By fostering critical wisdom, individuals can better navigate the challenges posed by contemporary issues such as climate change, political instability, and cultural shifts. This holistic understanding empowers people to make informed decisions that consider both immediate needs and long-term consequences.
Childlike Wonder: The concept of children having a developed brain and being limited by the education system is not true. What is true is that children naturally ask questions and explore their surroundings without preconceived notions, which fosters critical thinking. This ability to question and explore can be harnessed to develop a deeper understanding of complex issues and foment critical thinking.
Leveraging AI: Leveraging large language model AI in education presents an opportunity to create more personalized and efficient learning environments. Educators can enhance educational outcomes by harnessing AI, but remembering the associated challenges that come with it.
Challenges: Some of the challenges may relate to effectively and creatively integrating these technologies into an existing educational framework; ethical concerns related to data privacy or specific algorithms; and coaches and talent developers also needing training to properly harness these tools and still maintain pedagogical integrity.
⭐ What’s Ben’s Magic?
He has a unique passion for education and the way people see it, and he’s on a mission to reform the way people look at certain concepts such as wisdom, education, information absorption, etc.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this episode shares different views on traditional education, thinking in general, critical thinking, and more, and contrasts these views with the more modern ones. And it invites us to think more about things. To analyze why we do things in a certain way, or why we keep doing things as previous generations showed us when some of them don’t even work or make sense. By analyzing and thinking critically we’re able to develop a critical wisdom that is valuable to pass on to new generations.
If you would like to stay tuned with our future guests and their magical stories. Welcome to join us.
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How to Accelerate the Skill in Learning and Applying Critical Wisdom
Key Frameworks for Maximize Learning
The Difference between a prepubescent brain and a post-pubescent brain
Using Technology to Unlock Critical Wisdom
What You Should Transform Knowledge into Real-world Action
Debunking Ken Robinson's Childhood Curiosity Myth TED Talk
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Haliq, M.I., Hikmah, N., Sudirman, Y., Muh. Idham Haliq, N., & Hikmah (2023). Increasing Learning Outcomes and Critical Thinking Skills Through Project Based Learning Strategy Integrated with Local Wisdom ’Dangke’ Approach in Science Learning. Edumaspul: Jurnal Pendidikan.;
Kosslyn, S.M., Nelson, B.S., & Kerrey, B. (2017). Building the Intentional University: Minerva and the Future of Higher Education.
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Ben founded Minerva in 2011 to nurture critical wisdom for the sake of the world through a systematic and evidence-based approach to learning. Since then, he has built Minerva University, ranked as the most innovative university in the world, and has developed the Minerva Project to help launch new universities or assist existing ones in transforming their education. Before Minerva, Nelson spent 10 years at Snapfish, where he helped build the company from a startup to the world’s largest personal publishing service. Serving as CEO from 2005 through 2010, Nelson began his tenure at Snapfish by leading the company’s sale to Hewlett-Packard for $300 million. Nelson holds a B.S. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
https://www.minervaproject.com/insights
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Jiani (00:00)
Welcome to MAGICademy Podcast today. And we have a very exciting guest, Ben Nelson. He is the founder of Minerva Project and Minerva university world's, number one, innovative universities you can ever, ever find. And whenever we're thinking about universities, it's usually very traditional. You go to a course, you take the course and then you do assignment and you take the grades and you graduate, but Ben has found a way that totally shifts how we should rethink and redo universities. So very excited that we have been here with us today. So we're going to have a very exciting conversation. Welcome to our podcast, Ben.
Ben Nelson (00:45)
Thanks so much for having me, very happy to be here.
Jiani (00:49)
Excellent. So for those people who haven't found you on the world wide web yet, how would you introduce yourself in 30 seconds?
Ben Nelson (01:00)
Well, I would say that I have a very unique privilege of being focused on reforming global education and that means to shift it from this very short-term transactional cram test for get model that we all know exists in high schools, universities, etc. to learning how to actually apply what it is that you've learned, to use it for the rest of your life. And that's really at the core of the Minerva mission.
Jiani (01:34)
Yeah. And it makes so much sense. Like whenever we're talking about education or in another word, like human development, learning skill development, it should be much more possibilities than just sit there and consume content and turn everybody into a consumer rather than a producer in this space of human development. So can you share with us, what was your kind of the origin story behind Mera? Project and what comes behind the name. You know, what does this name want to, what story does this name want to tell?
Ben Nelson (02:04)
Sure. Sure. The whole concept started actually when I was a first year student as an undergraduate 30 years ago. And I took a course about the history of the American university and why it looks so different from European universities at the time. Because effectively European universities were built to generate slaves. They were...
Jiani (02:26)
Hmm.
Ben Nelson (02:33)
they were generating people who were subjects of either the cross or the crown, either the church or the monarchy. Right. And that's why they live.
Jiani (02:44)
Where do the non-slaves go to school then? Not university, then what?
Ben Nelson (02:48)
Everyone was a slave. You have to forget that if you are living in medieval Europe, right, and you are a subject of a king, you're not a free person. Your life exists to serve the crown. And the idea of a modern society where the human him or herself is sovereign, that was a unique...
Jiani (02:50)
Hahaha!
Ben Nelson (03:17)
concept at the time that the United States was formed. And they needed a new kind of educational system around that. Not an educational system that taught you to do a thing in the service of your monarch or your church. But something that allows you to be able to, or a set of knowledge, what the Founding Fathers refer to as practical or useful knowledge, that you can apply no matter what it is you chose to do, because it was your choice. And you could say, hey, I'm going to one day be a shopkeeper, and the next day I may be a senator. Or I may be a farmer, and the next day I could be an ambassador. Or I could be a doctor, and then I could be president. And not only would you be switching careers radically,
Jiani (03:48)
Free will.
Ben Nelson (04:08)
when it was time for you to serve your country, serve your fellow country men and women, citizens. But you'd also be called upon to make decisions on who to vote for, to represent your interests. So you chose who is gonna represent your interests, which is a very different skill set than knowing how to farm or keep your shop, et cetera. And so the idea was that educational system that needed to teach you the various disciplines or arts that allowed you to be a free person or have liberty. And that is where the term the liberal arts came from. The liberal arts has nothing to do with the humanities or poetry or what we consider today to be fine art. It has everything to do with the practical or useful knowledge that you need in order to be a free and franchise citizen.
And 30 years ago, I realized that universities were no longer teaching those things. All they were doing was effectively teaching subject matter, like the old European universities did. But instead of in the American model teaching one subject matter, you taught one subject matter as your major, and you could dabble with a bunch of other stuff at your leisure. And I thought that was a big problem, because modern society
Jiani (05:06)
Mmm.
Ben Nelson (05:35)
today all over the world, doesn't even matter what kind of government you live under, overwhelmingly, people have choice. They have choice in career, they switch careers from time to time, they participate in their government whether or not they live in democracy or not, they are civically engaged, sometimes they protest, right? And so they need that practical knowledge more than ever.
But our higher education system today, not just in the United States, but all over the world, in many places where it's never reformed, is actually worse than it was conceptually, at least, at the founding of the country. And I thought that somebody had to do something about that. As I spent a number of years trying to figure out what that was, I came up with a concept of Minerva.
Initially as an idea on how to reform an existing Ivy League University And then years later when I couldn't implement these changes as an undergraduate I came back to it with the idea of starting a new Institution and the institution called Minerva after the Roman goddess of wisdom The Roman Republic was the original model that the founding fathers of the United States used to model American the American Republic so Minerva was
the patron goddess of that. In fact, you see in Washington, DC, iconography of Minerva dictating the constitution. And so it was very much that type of enterprise and they called it the Minerva Project because this was going to be the project for the rest of my life, to try to build an example university, Minerva University, that would enable other universities to be inspired by what we do.
and then to help them reform to adopt these more systematic approaches of teaching practical knowledge.
Jiani (07:30)
What are some key characteristics or values that Minerva exudes or carry on? What are some key values?
Ben Nelson (07:40)
Yeah. So the most important is really our mission. So Minerva exists to nurture critical wisdom for the sake of the world. So if in that there are three really crucial components, the first one is this idea, the centeredness around critical wisdom. Critical wisdom, well first wisdom in general, is knowing what to do in a situation you've never encountered before. That's what a wise person is.
Right? A wise person is not just somebody who knows what to do because they've had that exact same thing happen to them. That's just memory. Right? That's not wisdom. Wisdom is to be able to see a new situation, one that you haven't seen before, but still know what to do. And it's exceedingly difficult. Now, it's particularly difficult not because it just takes years to make mistake after mistake until you see the pattern recognition.
Jiani (08:10)
We need...
Ben Nelson (08:34)
But even more so because when wisdom happens naturally, as we encounter it normally, people don't know why they know these things. They can't really explain because it's just a pattern recognition that their brain made subconsciously. Oftentimes, critical wisdom is one that is explicable, that you can explain to somebody else. You know why it is that you are wise.
you know how to construct the solution, how to deploy that practical knowledge in the ways that matter when you encounter them. And so the core idea of critical wisdom is really the most animating factor around Minerva. The first part about it is nurturing, right? Critical wisdom cannot just be handed down. It's not something that I can just tell you, right?
Jiani (09:28)
need to
Ben Nelson (09:32)
Hey, I tell you these things, now you're wise. Doesn't work that way. I can nurture you. Right, I can nurture you. It would be great if that were possible, but you actually have to become wise yourself. And so you have to go through processes to learn, to understand, to internalize, to apply until you actually know what it means to be wise. And so the process of nurturing that wisdom
Jiani (09:32)
You need to do it. Yeah.
We hope, because helping easier, it's much easier.
Ben Nelson (10:02)
is crucial. And then to what end? Most institutions think about their learner as the product or the customer, right? And they say, no, you know, we have to think worry about our learner, make sure they graduate, make sure they complete, right? We owe it to them. I don't think about that.
Jiani (10:22)
Because that's what was being measured. That's what being measured by the, you know, the certification and the accreditation.
Ben Nelson (10:30)
Correct. People look at the metrics. Exactly. Everybody looks at how many people did you bring in? How many people graduated, et cetera. We think about our responsibility to society as a whole. Right. Why do we nurture critical wisdom so that somebody can become a banker? I don't care about that. So that, you know, some one person gets the slot in dental school, whereas another person doesn't, who am I to determine who should go to dental school and who shouldn't?
My goal is to make sure that those who have critical wisdom are making decisions of consequence. That means decisions that impact the lives of others more than their own, hence for the sake of the world. There is no place anymore in the modern era to make decisions that are win-lose, because ultimately we're too connected. If anything,
we should have learned from COVID or from the various conflagrations that are happening around the world. There are no winners when there is conflict. It's only loss. It's only a degree of loss. Right? There's no winner from economic turmoil. There's no winner from health turmoil. There's no winner from a war and the collateral damage isn't just the warring parties. It's everybody.
The whole world, because Russia decided to invade Ukraine, the whole world paid more for their bread. There were ramifications all over the world. Now, of course, the ramifications were the most severe in Ukraine, but it doesn't isolate anybody. And so we have to think about solutions that are holistic as opposed to...
Jiani (12:21)
Mm.
Ben Nelson (12:23)
piece by piece. And so if you're gonna deploy critical wisdom, you really have to orient people to understand, again, our core value, that we are in a human project, that we're not in a tribal project, we're not in a country project, we're not in a community project. That may have made sense 10,000 years ago. You had your tribe, those were your people. What happened in the tribe next door didn't really matter. Certainly what happened in the tribe 100 miles away didn't matter.
Jiani (12:36)
Mm.
Ben Nelson (12:53)
Right, and that's where you were to survive Today's tribe is everybody And we've got to think about that dynamic or we're going to repeat bigger and bigger disasters with greater frequency
Jiani (13:08)
Hmm. So as we cultivate and develop those critical wisdoms in current and future generations, and also like current leaders across organizations, Fortune 100, Fortune 3000, you name it. The first step is cultivating and nurturing that sense of wisdom. What's the second and third step?
Ben Nelson (13:32)
Well, the first step in and of itself is very involved, right? Because wisdom is multifaceted, right? You know a lot of people in life, just think about the number of people you know, encountered, young, old, et cetera. Think about how many people you know who are truly wise. Usually, it's very few. And then think about in what ways are they wise? They're rarely similar.
Jiani (13:36)
is.
Ben Nelson (14:01)
Right? So usually as you put together or various pieces of knowledge, practical knowledge, different people as they acquire them by accident, acquire different kinds of practical knowledge. Some people are extremely wise in aspect number one and somebody else may be very wise in aspect number two. And sometimes there's overlap and sometimes there isn't. So the project of nurturing critical wisdom is a very long one. And you can...
oftentimes add more and more components to it. So that is one aspect which is really, really important. The second, however, is you have to enable the learner to translate their wisdom to action, to application, to the real world. Because if it just maintains a theory or being cerebral, then you can't actually demonstrate the value
of your wisdom to anybody else. So a core component after you attain the frameworks that allow you to be wise is for you to have practice in applying them in the real world and then seeing what happens when the application of those frameworks encounter the complexity of life. And as you continue to go through that process, you become more and more able and ready.
Jiani (15:21)
Hmm.
Ben Nelson (15:31)
to make those decisions or to inform those decisions that affects the lives of many other people. And so that process requires the foundation. It requires you to have the ability to understand the frameworks and apply them broadly. But the project of deploying wisdom doesn't stop at the end of a formal education.
Jiani (15:39)
Hmm.
Mm.
Hmm.
Ben Nelson (15:56)
it has to actually begin during your formal educational process, but then has to continue for the rest of your life. And so if you really think about those steps, that's really what's crucial.
Jiani (16:04)
Just like the lifelong learning. I see. And I mean to ask you this very basic question. What does a wise person, like what is wisdom? What is critical wisdom? And you say like, you know, making the right decisions at the different situations and can you, is there any like...
quantifiable parts of that.
Ben Nelson (16:32)
If you want to have the technical definition, at least in our book, the technical definition is that wisdom is the appropriate application of practical knowledge in novel contexts. Okay, so that means that you are in a novel context, you're in a situation you've not been in before. You are able...
to correctly or appropriately decide what cognitive tool or piece of knowledge you will apply in that situation and you apply it well. That is what wisdom is, right? So you know, a kid is jumping on a bicycle without a helmet and you say, you know, you should put your helmet on. Right? Now,
That's not really wisdom, that's just knowledge, right? But if somebody is thinking about, huh, let me go and play American football, right? And bang my head against other people without very good protection, somebody should say, you know what? That's unwise.
Jiani (17:25)
Hehehehe
Ben Nelson (17:49)
It's unwise because head trauma is really not a very good thing, right? And we understand how head trauma works, etc. We wear helmets when we ride bicycles in order to protect us from head trauma. And when we purposefully inflict head trauma over and over and over again, it can have some pretty deleterious effects long run. So that's the ability to take a piece of knowledge that you know from one context.
Jiani (17:55)
Hehehehe
Ben Nelson (18:17)
which is not requiring wisdom, it's just because you know it. And then think about, well, how do I actually apply that in a very different context? So knowing to make that connection, that analogy, and then knowing the implications of it, or at least hypothesizing the implications around it, helps you understand, hmm, that's a good example of applied wisdom.
Jiani (18:43)
Hmm. I think as you were talking about this example, that reminds me one of the most recent example is AI, like the AI just came out of, well, it's AI has been here for a long time and going through their ups and downs and recently, um, just become popular and it's been posting a lot of questions and are seeking wise decisions and wise leaders in terms of like, how would AI impact learning development in the
workplace, how would AI impact all kinds of careers? What is the wise application and perspective when you're looking at AI and how can we apply that in this innovative situations with this innovative tool?
Ben Nelson (19:31)
We have to understand a few things. We use AI as a catch-all term. But it's like asking, how does electricity help? AI is a very large catchment. The part of AI that we are most animated about right now because of the great advances that have been made in it over the past 18 months is the idea of a large language model.
artificial intelligence. What does the large language model do? A large language model is actually does what it sounds like it does. It takes a giant amount of language based information, right, sometimes visual information etc., but an existing set of information and it is able to compile it and put it together
in extraordinarily deep ways. And so you can go and ask a large language model to say, hey, tell me a reason why you should do X. Now give me the counter argument. And it will be able to go and look at everything that is ingested in literature, which is enormous, billions of pieces of data.
and it can provide you an exceptionally clear and usually good answer on both sides. You can even ask it, well, what's more likely to be true? And it will look at the literature and look at everything that is out there and say, well, you know, this concept is mentioned 60% of the time and this concept is mentioned 28% of the time and therefore you've got a two to one likelihood that this is more likely than the other.
Jiani (20:58)
Hmm.
Ben Nelson (21:15)
Doesn't exactly say that, but it can in theory.
However, that's not thinking. That is taking a flat view of the world, even if it says, hey, you know, this is a more credible source than that source is, and just presenting you what is broadly known. What it can't do is say, look, the majority opinion is this. There's a pretty strong minority opinion, which is that.
Turns out they're both wrong. And here's why. That's thinking. That is general artificial intelligence in theory should be able to do that. Our intelligence with the right frameworks and tools is able to do that. But we do not have those tools by accident. We have to be taught these tools. We have to be able to use them. In a large language model,
can get us out of the business of compilation and analysis of information, especially as it gets more and more accurate over time. But artificial intelligence requires us to be even more expert at reasoning, maybe even more expert at discernment, be even more expert at coming up with combinations of information to create new knowledge.
rather than rely on the knowledge that's already out there. And so that is the major project of education of humans moving forward.
Jiani (22:51)
And I also read a research like if we keep using what AI has produced and feed the AI, it starts to the intelligence starts downgrade because it's like self recycling without human input. It's going to be like, yeah. Yeah.
Ben Nelson (23:08)
Correct. And look, and in some regard, you have to understand why that would be. Because there are some pieces of knowledge where the divergent points of view are silly. Right? So, for example, people who still believe that the earth is flat. Right? There are people who believe the earth is flat. That is a stupid idea. It's just dumb.
And even though that concept is out there, you could imagine that a self-referential AI will eventually just dump out those nut job claims and say, look, you know what? The earth is not flat, it's round, and here we go. And here's all the reasons why, and well, it's a fact, et cetera. So, and sometimes you wanna get rid of junk. The problem is there's an enormous amount of things that are generally accepted
which are false, right? Either because we don't know them yet or because they're popular to believe even though they're not true, because the press has picked up on an idea, because it's been amplified or published or people with big megaphones say some things. I'll give you a very simple example from the science of learning. There is a, in most places you go, there is an accepted principle that people learn in different ways.
Right? Learning style, it's called, right?
Jiani (24:35)
Learning styles. I was thinking about the same thing.
Ben Nelson (24:40)
Learning styles is a fallacy, right? It's just empirically not true, right? But most people talk about learning styles as if it is true, right? Now...
Jiani (24:44)
Ha ha
And GBT constantly produced writings about learning styles. I'm like, uh, okay.
Ben Nelson (24:57)
Correct. So you could imagine that if GPT doesn't know how to value expert opinion versus not, that eventually, if it was self-referential, it will only reference that people have learning styles, and it wouldn't reference the fact that learning styles are nonsense. So there's a reason why things would occur that are positive, but then there are those negative side effects. And we have to think about that. And again, this is why.
human intelligence or general intelligence is so important.
Jiani (25:27)
Yeah. And as let's kind of come back to the kind of the previous question we've been talking about, the critical wisdom. So in the process of cultivating the critical wisdom, what role do you think curiosity or childlike wonder play? Or is there a space for that? Or is...
Ben Nelson (25:46)
Yet another fallacy. So, Ken Robinson, may he rest in peace, had this TED Talk video that said, oh, we're born with this great curiosity and the system beats it out of us and it's totally terrible and we've got to get back to childhood curiosity, all the rest, empirically false. It's total false. It's complete nonsense. But because it was on a TED video, everybody is like, oh.
Jiani (26:06)
Real-
Ben Nelson (26:11)
Ted said it, therefore it's true. No, it's not true. It's just empirically not true. The reality is that a pre-pubescent brain, right, is wildly different than a post-pubescent brain. Right, you just think, yeah, sorry. So, pubescent means before puberty versus after puberty. Puberty, the time when you develop from a child into an adult, roughly between...
Jiani (26:26)
What can you define the term? What's it? What does that mean?
Ben Nelson (26:38)
the ages of 10, 11 to 14, 15 or so, right? The puberty, right? Now, we know this is a fact. So as an example, right? When you meet an individual who has learned a foreign language at the ages of four, five, six, seven, right? Or has been an immigrant, you cannot tell.
Jiani (26:44)
Mm.
Ben Nelson (27:06)
that language is not their native language, right? If you meet their sibling who is 10 or 11, when they first learn that language, they will have an accent for the rest of their lives.
That is because of the nature of how we learn, right, at different stages of our brain development. Right. And so that's that is actually a great fallacy that we have to go back to the kind of brain we had in before puberty in order to be able to be creative or unlock things, etc. It's also because
We don't really understand what creativity is. Right? Creativity is largely the ability to assemble what you know into things that are unknown or that are unknown to you. Sometimes the greatest creativity comes from deep expertise. Right? And so it's not that you are a child.
and you are like curious about everything, and then you're drawn to something like, oh, now I've come up with this amazing thing. Children say some amazing things. They also say a lot of nonsense, right? Now we recognize sometimes the interesting things as we remember them, right? But you can't equate children as this like amazing creativity machine, because oftentimes,
Jiani (28:28)
Hmm.
Mmm, yeah.
Ben Nelson (28:44)
kids are copying, they're copying poorly, they don't understand what they're saying, they make a claim which for us we ascribe meaning to that they didn't mean, right? And so it's, and it's also a fantastical thing. It's like saying, here's an Olympic athlete, right? And we want the Olympic athlete to be able to go back and become a master musician.
They're just different skills that the body is able to do at different phases of life. And so this idea of wonderment and curiosity as a purview of the prepubescent brain is just there's nothing could be further from the truth. You could be interested or disinterested in a lot of different areas. Now you are much more able
Jiani (29:32)
So.
Ben Nelson (29:40)
to absorb information at an early age. But it's much harder for you to make sense of it. So that's a very, very big difference. You cannot teach a normal, pre-puberty human to be wise. Because you cannot teach somebody who does not have a fully developed brain
to make the kinds of connections that are already difficult to make for somebody who has a fully developed brain. And so that period of puberty is really crucial to make a transition from one phase to the
Jiani (30:17)
Hmm...
Hmm. And so I will circle back the question to the critical wisdom. And you said that usually takes longer time for us to develop that critical wisdom and post puberty, I guess, because that's where based on what you said, we can, if we're interested, we can still absorb a lot of information, and our brain will be much more able to make wise decisions.
Is there a way to potentially expedite the skill in learning and applying critical wisdom in a vastly changing environment? Um, because the question behind that is like, the world is changing so fast. It's much, much faster than previously. And we feel like we have to apply critical wisdom almost every day. So how, how do we.
Ben Nelson (31:14)
Correct.
Jiani (31:19)
expedite that potential process? Does curiosity play a role? Does interest play a role? What's...
Ben Nelson (31:20)
But well, it's.
Well, the most important thing is dedication to actually learning and applying. So the most important factor is the commitment to learn and to incorporate those frameworks of thinking into your day to day. That just and look, expedite. Everybody says, hey, let's wave a wand and you know, every there's no test for wisdom.
Jiani (31:51)
I'm sorry.
Ben Nelson (31:53)
There's no, you know, one day workshop that'll make you wise. It just doesn't work that way. Learning happens through spaced, deliberate practice. That's how our brains work, our post-pubescent brains. You need to be exposed to an idea, apply it, then apply it right away, then apply it with a little bit of space, a little bit of more time that has passed, and a little bit more.
again and again and again, and that's per concept. And not only do you have to space it out, you have to move it from context to context deliberately. Right? You have to apply it when you create your own work. And then you have to apply that same idea when you critique somebody else's work. You have to be able to apply it when you think on your feet. You have to be able to apply it when you have time to be deliberative and weigh the idea over time. You have to be able to apply it when you...
are voting versus when you're reading the news versus when you're doing your job versus when you're in interpersonal interactions with friends or family members. Same concept, different ways of applying them. That just takes time. Now the acceleration is a Minerva model allows a high school graduate, if you take a Minerva high school curriculum or a college graduate, if you take a Minerva college graduate, to have
an order of magnitude more frameworks than who we consider to be wise at 80. That's a massive acceleration. But it requires years of study. Right. It just doesn't require decades of accidental learning.
Jiani (33:35)
and application.
So fast forward, as we look into the future with continuously exciting development of technologies like AI, virtual reality, simulation, neural like machine brain networks and all that, based on your perspective and your experiences, if you look into the future, how would practical wisdom can potentially be cultivated, developed and expedited leveraging?
without being a slave of those technologies, but like master them and leverage them for that particular purpose. How would that look like?
Ben Nelson (34:16)
Well, I mean, look, first and foremost, there are ways in which technologies are gonna be deployed that we can't imagine right now. But broadly, how do you use technology to further a cause? You use technology not in order to do the things you're currently doing, but to unlock things that were until that point impossible to do. That's a really important differentiation.
So if you think about meaningful technology, the introduction of the internal combustion engine, didn't allow, like the big impact wasn't that it allowed you to go to the corner grocer faster than a horse and cart. That wasn't the point. You know, you could go from your house
Jiani (35:08)
Hehehehe
Ben Nelson (35:10)
in 1870 just fine. You could walk, right? Yeah, was it more comfortable when it's raining? If it was a 15 minute walk, do a two minute drive? Sure, right? That wasn't the killer app, right? Traversing distances that you couldn't traverse before, having greater levels of safety, right? Connecting people and enabling
Jiani (35:14)
I'm sorry.
Ben Nelson (35:39)
the kind of community growth, right? Enabling cities to be more and more functional, enabling the concept of the suburb to exist, where you have people live further away from their work geographically and then condense together. Those were the implications of the internal combustion engine, plus I'm sure many others of people who know the space that I don't.
the same question needs to be asked of these technologies. It's not, well, what are we already doing and how will these things allow us to do it in a different way? I always told, oh, virtual reality is so great because you can fly through the pyramids in Egypt. Well, guess what? You've been able to put in a CD-ROM in the 1980s into a computer, right?
and have a very rich graphical interface that showed you the insides of the pyramids, nobody used it. It's not that compelling, right? And so we can't just pretend that the technology is going to be the solution. The question is what is it that we're trying to do, and then how can the technology facilitate it in a way that without that technology it was
Jiani (36:45)
Hmm.
Ben Nelson (37:04)
up until point impractical or impossible.
Jiani (37:07)
Hmm.
I think one thing that I can think of, I'm trying to kind of bring it down to your previous example, where you were talking about like practical wisdom, I'm saying critical wisdom. And I think one part of it is like when you're thinking about potentially condense it, you're talking about like apply the wisdoms across different contexts, purposefully. So one idea I was like thinking about when you're just talking about
Versatility could be, Versatility can potentially design a interactive scenario where all these contexts and all these situations can be purposefully designed. And then we can train people through those scenarios so they can potentially be exposed to a multitude, a wide multitude of scenarios and contexts to practice their transfer of.
practical wisdom in different situations, that could potentially condense like a one month course into potentially like a week if they get exposed to that context.
Ben Nelson (38:03)
Correct?
Well, unclear, because why would that technology enable you to do that? So right now, for example, if you want to give somebody that multitude of experiences, you can give them a case study, you can have them go into their backyard, you can assign them things. The rate limiting factor isn't the generation of ideas, because you generate ideas and then you can use them with multiple learners. It isn't...
Jiani (38:37)
Mm.
Ben Nelson (38:38)
The delivery of ideas to people, you can just tell them, do this, then do this, then do that, is how long does it take for the brain to experience and process? That's the rate limiting factor, right? Now, there may be a technology in the future.
Jiani (38:43)
Hmm.
Ben Nelson (38:56)
that allows us to talk directly to neurons and tell them, you know, up a millionth of an inch this way and over and all of a sudden program, you know, enhanced, put the, what is it, you know, that new company that Elon Musk just launched, read the first, right, the chip in the brain. So that may short, may provide a significant shortcut at some point in the future. That is a technology which is.
Jiani (39:05)
Ha ha
Yeah, neural link, something like that, like a chip.
Ben Nelson (39:25)
Let's just say highly nascent right now.
Jiani (39:27)
much very interesting much more to explore the more that we know the more that we don't know that's the beauty of nice so thank you so much ben i think we've before we move to the magic portion of this conversation let me do a brief recap for our audience so far we've talked about ben's story and his founding missions behind manoa and why what where this manoa
Ben Nelson (39:34)
Exactly right.
Jiani (39:55)
kind of word come from, it's come from the wisdom, the god of wisdom and how he emphasizes and emphasizes on the importance of the critical wisdom, the sort of wisdom that can be applied and make good wise decisions in innovative situations and leveraging what we already know, create something that we don't know or make decisions that's in an unknown environment. We also talked about
the concept of AI, how could potentially AI or virtual reality or other type of technology can potentially impact and potentially expedite the learning journeys for people to acquire those sort of critical wisdom. And another thing that really stood out is that the ability to make decisions for the mass for people that's other than ourselves and the decisions for the human community
the society and because we are living in a interrelated world right now and anything that we do is going to be impacting for everybody else. So the decision is never a single factor. It's like a multi-factor. So that's quite, that's very important perspective for all of us to get to familiar with as we move into the new world where new technologies and new changes will happen.
part of the conversations I would ask you, Ben. I know we're talking about like pre-puberty and post-puberty brand and how that's different. I think age 11 is right post-puberty. So we have a fairly functional, like a functional brand. So my question would be, what did Ben enjoy creating or doing in time disappeared when you were around 11 or post-puberty times?
Ben Nelson (41:47)
Well, post puberty is usually about 13 or so. So a couple of years later, 13, 14. What did I enjoy creating? I like to perform by telling jokes when I was a kid. So when I was a kid, I don't really tell jokes anymore, but back then I loved humor. And to me, I didn't like to create jokes.
Jiani (41:54)
So.
Ben Nelson (42:15)
I didn't have that skill to put them together, but I liked embellishing and performing in telling jokes. And so I enjoyed that creative outlet at that age.
Jiani (42:29)
That's interesting. I think humor has a strong power, like healing, but also like getting people interested, overcoming cognitive overloads, potentially when in the learning process. I think it has a huge benefit. That's great. And then was there any particular challenge that you have to go through to become who you are, Ben Nelson as of 2024?
Ben Nelson (42:56)
Uh, well, I mean, I don't know about challenge, but when I, when I was, um, uh, when I was going to college, I noticed that I, I kind of reflected on my time in high school. And I realized that I grew quite a bit. Um, I changed as a person and I said, you know, I'm, when I look back at.
Jiani (42:58)
among many challenges.
Ben Nelson (43:22)
myself when I was 14, 15, 16, 17. I wasn't upset with who I was at the time. But today, today being when I was 18, and I looked back, I said, you know what? That 16 year old was kind of a moron, right? Which, you know, most young people would look back at their younger selves and say, oh, well, I didn't know a bunch of stuff. And now I know more. I say, you know what?
Jiani (43:48)
But we're doing our best when we're 16.
Ben Nelson (43:50)
It wasn't a judgment call. It was just I had I had grown and I made a rule for myself When I went to college, I said listen to me. I'm these conversations myself strangely enough. I said look I Want to challenge myself so that at any point when I'm in college I would could pause
and think about who the individual was that occupied my body 12 months before. And if I recognize that person, I'm doing something wrong.
And unbeknownst to me, between that moment, well, even before, until the age of 26, that was always true. Now, what I didn't know was that at 25, your frontal lobe is fully developed in your brain. And so it is true that you are constantly a different person, right, in that period, and especially if you're focused on your own internal development.
Now, one of the reasons why I say that is that today, there is this bizarre trope that people use about being their authentic selves or being, you know, who they are, etc. At the ages of 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. That is the most awful, toxic, regressive idea possible.
you should always reject who you are because you want to be a better person. Right? And the argument of even now at my age, I mean, it's not like at 26, I stopped evolving. It's just that the rate of evolution slowed down. But even today, when I think of myself, I'm 48 years old today, when I think of myself at 38, I don't recognize that person, and I don't want to recognize that person. Right? Because if I did,
then how am I becoming a better human? Right? Why would I be self-satisfied and think, especially at an even younger age, oh yeah, I got it all figured out. You have that attitude, you can't be wise. It is impossible. Because the definition of being wise requires you to be able to process the world around you using tools that you didn't have before.
Jiani (46:17)
Hmm.
Ben Nelson (46:18)
And so you are going to change. You're going to change your values. You're going to change your perspectives. And that's a good thing. Heaven forbid if I today had the exact same values I had as a 16 year old.
Haven't forbid if anybody at the age of their late 40s had the same value as they had at a 16 year old. Right. It's not a good thing. And we've got to encourage people to reserve judgment. Right. Rather than just say, oh, I'm right. And I am who I am and leave me alone, etc. And allow them to grow. Allow them to change. Allow them to experience. Right. And then.
Once their frontal lobe is fully developed, as their rate of growth starts to slow naturally, okay, now I get a little bit more comfortable about, okay, this is the nature of, you know, where I lean. Of course, there are things that are similar, there are things that are similar to me today as they were when I was a teenager, but it's a smaller and smaller amount, right? And it's important that we encourage that in people, as opposed to make it
a crisis or a challenge rather than thinking that you know at some point in time you wake up and now you know who you are. Just think it's silly.
Jiani (47:39)
I think as long as we're genuinely interested in growth and develop and driven by our innate curiosity or desire to grow, automatically as we grow, we are being authentic and we are developing our own pathway. So being authentic is not a status, like it's not like it's like a movement.
Ben Nelson (47:55)
Exactly. Right.
Exactly right.
Jiani (48:05)
Love that. I love that. So I know the magic may seem like, ah, you know, once you have the magic or you don't have the magic and I think integrating into what you're saying, it's like it's always evolving. So what is your evolving magic?
Ben Nelson (48:19)
Well, you're asking the wrong person about magic. I was I was I grew up is told there is no such thing as magic. But but I do look we oftentimes talk about talk about the Minerva magic and what and what Minerva magic is all about. And to me, magic centers on profound insights. Moments of magic are moments when you
Jiani (48:24)
Hahaha
Hahaha
Ben Nelson (48:47)
see a truth that you'd never seen before that has profound impact. And that often comes from a combination of deep understanding and connection from the area of understanding to another field or another piece of data, right? That is not in the linear path.
To me, that's the kind of magic which is central to what we do at Minerva, what we teach, but also in how people experience Minerva, when there are these moments that come together of just exceptional beauty, and that beauty is attained by that marriage of deep expertise and connection to a seemingly unrelated piece of information or field.
Jiani (49:41)
Beautiful.
I'm just thinking that information is so beautiful. And
Ben Nelson (49:46)
Thank you.
Jiani (49:47)
I know we're a little bit over time, but there's another question. So when you're talking about this Minora magic and you do, you also do like consultations, helping corporate partners to solve unresolved challenges. So what do you think, how do you usually kind of implement or practice those sort of Minora magic?
within a workspace or among leaders, among decision makers.
Ben Nelson (50:19)
Yeah, you know, we teach, you know, in our undergraduate program, for example, 80 different frameworks, more than 80 different frameworks for students that they repeat in context after context. When we enable our partners to do professional learning or executive education, we may teach three of them or four of them or five of them, right? Because you don't have years.
for somebody to learn everything. But you make interventions in providing those frameworks for lenses that they can apply repeatedly right away. And so it's very much a similar process, just at a smaller scale or a smaller scope, if you will, than it is for somebody who can devote three, four years just to their growth of their intellect.
Jiani (51:09)
That's beautiful. So yeah, so thank you so much, Ben, and it's been a wonderful conversation. You get me like thinking constantly, and I really love how you are talking about the magic of how the deep insight, cross discipline, cross dimension, and everything just kind of evolve and form like a beautiful deep insight. This is wonderful. So thank you so much for sharing your time with us and today on our podcast. And...
For those who are interested to get to know Ben, get connected with Ben, his information will be in the show notes below. So we encourage you to connect and hopefully this community will grow and we will bring a huge benefit for more and more people in our human village, human global village. Thank you, Ben.
Ben Nelson (51:57)
So thanks for having me.
