Kenneth Stanley - Interestingness, Novelty Search vs. Objectives in Education & Learning

Follow Kenneth on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kenneth0stanley and check out his website!

Subscribe to Scaling Knowledge: https://scalingknowledge.substack.com

Follow James on Twitter: https://twitter.com/experilearning

Follow Moritz on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MoritzW42

0:00 - Intro 

1:02 - Why are objectives flawed? What does it mean for the education system? 

14:48 - What feedback have you gotten from students/parents/teachers/administrators? 

21:37 - How can students implement non-objective driven search book while in school? 

31:21 - What is the role of curiosity in non-objective driven search? 

39:55 - Is our nose for the interesting innate? Is it fixed ability, or can it improve/get worse over time? Does the education system worsen it? 

49:25 - How does novelty search accumulate complexity? 

59:36 - Can following your interests just cause you to spin your wheels, not making any significant progress? What is the risk-reward tradeoff in novelty search

1:11:27 - Startups and non-objective search. 

1:19:40 - Homeschooling - balancing non-objective driven learning with objective-driven learning. 

1:28:11 - Knowledge accumulation in society and open-endedness. 

1:35:11 - Creating networks/communities to facilitate open-ended search in education and beyond. 

1:48:51 - How to adapt to the mindset of non-objective search and taking risks? 

1:55:15 - Would privatization of the education system help? How can we measure whether an open-ended system is making progress? 

2:04:37 - Minimum criteria and open-ended systems. Observing rather than measuring open-ended systems. 

2:09:16 - Closing comments