Taking Claude to School - Civics Class
The Critical Mass
On the day “Taking Claude to School - Day One” was released, I asked Claude a second question. Like the first, it had to be worded with no ambiguity, I wanted to continue with Claude’s conclusion to my first question - and I chose to eliminate the reference to money and investing.
In other words, begin with principles. First, it’s refreshing to ask this question of an objective listener who doesn’t try to interpret its intent and evade a direct answer. Second, with the global database of human knowledge from which to craft a response, Claude delivered one that was stunning and extraordinarily useful.
It was so rich that I will evaluate the comments in pieces and over three brief essays. Here is how it started:
The works of John Locke shaped the intellectual foundation of the American Revolution. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations reoriented how entire societies understood commerce and human motivation. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species permanently altered humanity’s self-conception. The common thread: they didn’t just inform — they reframed how people processed reality.
Upon reading Claude’s conclusion from my previous article, you will see that Darwin, Smith and Locke are the named exemplars for the “objective thinking, goal-driven planning, and intellectual independence” of The Moneyball Method. And to assist the metaphor of Taking Claude to School, I will address this as separate essays covering civics class, economics lab, and natural science.
To define the term, a civics class is one that teaches students about the rights and responsibilities of each individual in a civilized society. And it teaches the nature and purpose of government for protecting those rights and maintaining peaceful relationships among citizens and organizations. Here, Claude identified two specific achievements of intellectual independence for any society:
Politically — a citizenry harder to manipulate with emotional appeals, slogans, and tribalism, and more capable of evaluating policy on its actual merits.
Socially — a culture that rewards competence and honest dealing over signaling and conformity.
But this doesn’t happen by itself. Much like the universe is an elegant system of space, time and electromagnetic fields, Claude discovered something similar about The Moneyball Method:
The three traits you identify — objective thinking, goal-driven activity, and intellectual independence — are not just individually valuable. They are mutually reinforcing in a way that makes the combination unusually powerful.
And if you’ve read my book, the two bullet points above may sound familiar. For example, here is an excerpt from the Summary of Part I:
For consistency, add individual rights defended with clearly defined law. That is what it means to be objective — the natural world is orderly and knowable, and you can choose to live in harmony with reality, or not.
Because politics is downstream from ethics in the hierarchy of philosophical principles (and we deal with first principles here), let’s begin with Claude’s second bullet point: “Socially — a culture that rewards competence and honest dealing over signaling and conformity.”
That is a magnificent observation. Not because it is difficult to understand, but because it is all too rare in a culture that regards need, humility, non-profits, public service and self-sacrifice as virtues. You have agency and you were not born owing anyone anything.
What Claude has identified are the principles of moral justice: earned recognition and appropriate rewards for ability, competence, and productive success. That happens first. Otherwise, “a citizenry harder to manipulate with emotional appeals, slogans, and tribalism, and more capable of evaluating policy on its actual merits” is impossible.
As implied, we must first become aware of the virtues of independence, integrity, and then lead by example. But what are some of those emotional appeals and slogans for signaling and conformity? Also taken from the Part I Summary, they include: “collective rights, market failure, greater good, robber barons, victimhood, determinism, ableism, and environmentalism.” All of which demand invasions of privacy, yet anyone can find fault.
My purpose here is to deliver a proven alternative in the pursuit of happiness - one that my student Claude had learned:
Consider what a critical mass of objectively thinking, goal-directed, intellectually independent people would likely produce.
Precisely. But how? Is that not the mission of every liberty-minded non-profit and think tank? Let’s consider the specific question that prompted this high-quality learning experience for Claude. It is not ambiguous and it is a question I have asked several well-informed people over the last six months - all of whom seemed to interpret the question’s intent and evade a direct answer.
And what else did Claude have to say? Please stay tuned for Taking Claude to School - Economics Lab.
This is a good project!