“Why do I have to study?”
It is a question that everyone threw at an adult at least once during their childhood, only to never receive a proper answer.
How would you answer the children of today?
“It’s so you can get into a good school and get into a good company.”
These words, which used to be the absolute correct answer, have long since passed their expiration date.
With the explosive evolution of generative AI like ChatGPT, many of the things we used to call “ability” are about to be replaced by machines in the blink of an eye.
Memorization of knowledge, logical thinking, programming, translation, summarizing, and even creative writing.
How much persuasion does the teaching “Study and gain knowledge” hold today, when we can access the world’s knowledge with a single smartphone?
What does the teaching “Think logically” mean in an era where the world’s best AI can instantly produce the optimal solution?
What I am introducing this time is the book “The Book of Adventure: Unlearning in the AI Era” (Bōken no Sho) by Taizo Son, a serial entrepreneur who also participated in the launch of Yahoo! JAPAN.
This book is not merely a business book, nor is it just an educational theory book.
Facing the powerful impact of AI, it is a record of a grand adventure that fundamentally overturns the concepts we have believed in—such as “education,” “ability,” and “success”—and re-questions “how to live as a human being.”
1. The True Identity of the Factory Known as “School”
At the beginning of the book, the author confronts us with a shocking fact.
“Schools were not originally created for the sake of children.”
Many people believe that school is “a place that develops children’s potential and raises them to be able to live respectably in society.”
However, if we unravel history, the Prussian education system (in what is now northern Germany), which is the origin of the current school education system, was designed during the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century to “efficiently train obedient soldiers who follow orders and factory workers.”
A System for Mass-Producing “Excellent Sheep”
Time is divided by chimes, everyone faces the same direction, listens to what the teacher (manager) says, memorizes the correct answer (manual), and is evaluated by scores (quality) on tests.
This is exactly the factory assembly line method itself.
This system was extremely rational in the post-Industrial Revolution society.
This is because a large number of workers who possessed uniform knowledge, maintained discipline, and worked without complaining were needed.
However, times have changed.
In the modern era where AI and robots are rising, the ability to “perform exactly as told” and “move according to the manual” has become the lowest value.
Because machines can do all of that far more accurately and far faster than humans.
“Isn’t current education just trying to raise children into ‘excellent sheep’?”
This question pierces deeply into our hearts.
While telling children “so your job isn’t taken by AI,” aren’t we actually forcing them to study desperately to acquire “the abilities AI is best at”?
2. The Collapse of Meritocracy
We have believed in “Meritocracy” for a long time.
It is the faith that “if you make an effort and improve your ability, you can succeed and be happy.”
This faith permeates everywhere, from school grading to corporate promotion systems, and the entire social hierarchy.
However, the author predicts that this meritocracy is the very cause of modern people’s suffering and will collapse in the AI era.
AI Renders “Ability” Valueless
Many things considered “high ability” until now were information processing capabilities.
Fast calculation, good memory, skilled logical construction, translation ability…
These are all areas where AI excels most.
Even for the bar exam for lawyers, national exams for doctors, and MBA exams, AI is starting to hammer out scores that surpass humans.
As long as “ability” is the axis of competition, humans will sooner or later lose to AI.
Then, if ability loses its meaning, what remains?
The author says this:
“Being ‘meaningful’ will become more important than being ‘useful’.”
Until now, becoming a “useful person” was required.
However, AI will do the “useful” things.
From now on, “what is meaningful to you” and “what moves your heart”—these internal personal values, or “Meaning,” will become the center of life and society.
3. The Practice of Unlearning
The core theme of this book is “Unlearning.”
This is not simply “Re-learning.”
In Japanese, it is sometimes translated as “manabi-hogushi” (loosening learning), but its essence lies in “discarding the knowledge, common sense, success experiences, and thought habits you have acquired so far once and for all.”
Uninstall the Old OS
A strong OS (operating system) created by past experiences and education is installed in our brains.
“If you go to a university with a high academic ranking, you’re safe,” “If you join a big company, you’re a winner,” “Working hard through suffering is a virtue”…
These OSs were optimized for the high economic growth period or the social environment of the 20th century, but they are completely incompatible with the new reality of the AI era.
Trying to learn new apps (skills) on top of an old OS will only cause system errors.
Unlearning is the task of uninstalling this old OS.
It involves pain. Because it means denying the values you believed in, the efforts you piled up, and a part of your identity.
The fear of admitting “I am nobody” and “my old methods won’t work.”
However, the author speaks gently.
“Only by letting go can new things come in.”
It is into the empty vessel that the breath of the new era, true curiosity, and free ideas flow.
4. Adventure and Play—A Return to Humanity
After discarding the old OS, how should we live?
What the author proposes is “Play” and “Adventure.”
“Play” is the Ultimate Form of Learning
AI cannot “play.”
If given a purpose (task), AI produces the optimal solution, but it does not spontaneously perform purposeless acts, wasteful acts, or acts that are simply fun.
But look at human children.
They play infinitely with just a stone without being taught by anyone.
They don’t think “How is this useful?” They immerse themselves simply because “it’s fun” or “I’m curious.”
And within that play, they learn laws of physics, nurture creativity, and learn communication.
This impulse of “I don’t know if it’s useful, but I just have to do it” is the source of innovation and a sanctuary unique to humans that AI cannot mimic.
An Adventure into a World Without Correct Answers
School education was training to reach a prepared “correct answer” in the shortest distance.
However, in real life, and in the future to come, there are no correct answers.
Stepping out into the wilderness without a correct answer, without a map.
You might fail, you might get lost, but proceeding according to the curiosity of “I want to go see.”
That is “adventure.”
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
As per Alan Kay’s words, the coming era belongs to those who create “the future they desire” while playing, rather than preparing for “a predicted future.”
Test scores, academic backgrounds, and existing authority do not matter there.
All that is needed is your naked self and inexhaustible curiosity.
Mindset Design Insight—Connection with the Universe, Time, and Consciousness
Finally, I will delve deeper into the message of this book from the perspective of Mindset Design.
Do Not Live “Someone Else’s Time”
From the perspective of this site’s main theme, “Attention and Time = Life,” following the existing education system and meritocracy is nothing other than living on “rails of life designed by others (others’ time).”
The model case of “go to a good school, join a good company, and live on a pension in old age.”
This is a “factory worker’s life cycle” convenient for society’s operators, and it is highly likely not the life your individual soul desired.
The greatest benefit AI brings is not the replacement of labor.
It lies in forcibly confronting us with the question, “What are we living for?”
When liberated from the curse of “he who does not work, neither shall he eat” (the Protestant work ethic), we may finally be allowed to use our lives (time) purely for our own joy.
Unlock the 95% Unconscious
The practice of Unlearning links completely with the “rewriting of the subconscious (unconscious)” repeatedly preached in Mindset Design.
95% of our actions are unconscious automatic driving.
As long as that automatic driving program is written by “school education” or “social conventions,” no matter how much you consciously think “I want to live freely,” the unconscious keeps applying brakes saying, “I have to do it properly,” “I’ll be laughed at if I do something strange,” or “It’s over if I fail.”
The “learning-loosening” Taizo Son speaks of can be said to be the work of removing these unconscious brakes one by one and regaining one’s original OS—the pure curiosity and sense of omnipotence like that of a newborn child.
It is very similar to meditation. A process of letting go of distracting thoughts (social noise) and listening to one’s inner voice in the silence.
“Play” in This Moment, Now
The educational mindset of “endure now for the sake of the future” has kept stealing “now” from us.
However, life is nothing but a sequence of “now.”
“Play” means immersing yourself in the act itself (the present) without making the result (the future) the objective.
When we forget time and are engrossed in something, we enter the “zone.”
At that time, regrets of the past and anxieties about the future vanish, and there is only the pure joy of “living.”
No matter how much AI evolves, it cannot replace this “feeling of being alive (qualia).”
That is the final fortress of being human, and perhaps the meaning of our existence in this universe.
Conclusion: Small Adventures You Can Start Today
“The Book of Adventure” is not a book that incites you to “Come on, quit your job and go around the world!” the moment you finish reading it.
(Of course, you can do that if you want to.)
What is important is to start small “unlearning” and “adventures” in your daily life.
- Walk a different path than usual.
- Try swallowing the words “Thinking from a common sense perspective.”
- Seriously play the game your child is obsessed with together, without criticizing it.
- Dig deep into the question “Why?” that wells up inside you, instead of ignoring it.
Such small “deviations” will eventually crack the solid wall of common sense and lead you to a new world.
Now, let’s set out on an adventure.
Have you thrown away your map?
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