Popup Masterclass Today: Human Superintelligence Mental Models
TLDR
Human Superintelligence Masterclass: Anand Rao will be leading a masterclass at 12-2pm EST today, Tuesday, December 17, for mental model club members and paid subscribers to this newsletter. This class is a solid intro to the Augmented Awakening subscriber course that Anand is leading in 2025.
About Anand: Anand is the best coach I’ve ever worked with on multiple levels, and he has spent over two decades evolving and refining a meta-model of Human Superintelligence that has had a profound impact on my life. You can learn more about his work at Developmental Mastery.
Join The Call: The live and on-demand call is for paid subscribers only. If you’re already a paid subscriber, the Zoom link to join is at the bottom of this email. If you’d like to become a paid subscriber, click below:
Why Human Superintelligence
Somewhere along the line, we as a society have come to conclusions about:
What intelligence is
How to measure it (grades, IQ tests, standardized tests, entrance exams)
How to learn and what learning is
What humans are capable of
What if…
What if what we think is peak human intelligence is simply a hill that’s part of a larger mountain?
What if we can grow faster and farther than we can even fathom?
What if we can grow indefinitely?
These possibilities have fascinated Anand for 20+ years.
But unlike most people, he did two things differently with this interest.
After graduating from Cambridge University (the Harvard of UK) with a degree in theoretical physics and then a master’s in engineering, Anand…
Became obsessed with using an engineering and science-based approach to recursively improve human intelligence.
Designed his career to focus almost all of his time on exploring human potential.
Consequently, over the next 30 years, Anand spent the majority of his time and attention:
Learning the most effective change work methodologies across the world
Intensively studying with master coaches in person
Reading 2,000+ books across dozens of topics
Synthesizing intellectual, emotional, somatic, energetic, and mystical perspectives
Identifying opportunities to improve on those approaches
Improving and integrating them
Applying them to his own life
Then as a coach to support others on their journey
More specifically, Anand became fascinated by exploring how Human Superintelligence could be implemented in a tangible and measurable way. Toward that end, he explored recursion as a way to bootstrap this possibility.
Intelligence recursion is a fascinating concept.
Most people use their intelligence to get outcomes in the world, but not necessarily in a way that increases it. Recursion is unique because it means using your increased intelligence to increase your intelligence even further. Thus creating a virtuous cycle where the pace of your development increases exponentially. Recursion is a concept that Anand came across in several fields:
Engineering (subroutines calling themselves / merge sort)
Math (knot theory as a branch of topology)
Neurolinguistic Programming (Anand trained directly with the co-developers of the field)
Meta-Programming (Robert Anton Wilson)
Learning (Gregory Bateson’s levels of learning)
When recursion is applied to artificial intelligence, it leads to an intelligence explosion known as Artificial Superintelligence. Understanding the significance of Artificial Superintelligence is the reason why all of the leading frontier model companies are spending billions of dollars to be the first to develop. While everyone is exploring the potential of AI, few have seriously explored the potential of Human Superintelligence to the extent that Anand has.
I’m Also Fascinated By Human Superintelligence
I’ve also spent my whole life exploring my own potential, sharing what I learn with others through speaking, a book, courses, coaching, and now this newsletter.
I also believe that we are barely tapping our human potential, which I write about in We Do Actually Use Less Than 10% Of Our Brain, According To Research.
About 10 years ago, I became fascinated by learning how to learn and spent thousands of hours studying and teaching mental models related to it.
Last year, I started to see how big of a role that AI could play in the evolution of human potential, and I wrote an article that explored Human Superintelligence in December 2023.
More recently, both Anand and I came across and loved John Stewart’s book, Human Superintelligence: How you can develop it using recursive self-improvement. The more people who are looking at this and coming from different angles, the better.
Bottom Line
If you’re looking for elegant models and practices that can predictively change the trajectory of your life and help you tap into a deeper level of your unique latent potential, then I think you’ll love this session.