I had a thought a while back about how education systems are somewhat bad proxies for the type of work you want to do. There are many factors aside from just pure method that determine good fit, such as degrees of freedom, number of collaborators, market saturation and maturity, and feedback cycle lengths, etc.

These vary greatly in “real life” but are almost always restricted in education systems. For instance, simple things like “there is a right answer to this question”, “you can finish this task in less than a week” and of course “an older more experienced person will judge your work” are true in school but vary greatly in the wild.

I’ve found that people’s true passion axes mostly aren’t aligned with specific sub-fields (like say theoretical astrophysics, improv jazz saxophone), but tend to orient themselves towards higher level features. As someone who used to think that narrow specialization is paramount, this realization is incredibly liberating (also kinda missing from PGs post – I think he’s missing or glossing over an important aspect here).

> education systems are somewhat bad proxies for the type of work you want to do

Is that because that doing the actual relevant work is the way to find out? If so, maybe making the app more like a game where it tries to simulate things like that

> higher level features

Yeah, thats kind of along the lines I was thinking. Not specific roles but types of thought process, and now that you mention it, types of impact

The whole idea is about uncovering what unique gems a teenager (or adult even) has, rather conforming them to a predetermined framework

I like the idea, but it’s quite broad. It’s essentially what school is supposed to do.

Yeah true. I don't know the scene in the schools but I have read a lot about how math education is pretty dismal, at least in the USA, depending on the teacher

Maybe theres a way for an app to help someone who does have a math aptitude to realize that they do and that math is fun and not a bunch of rote memorization of formulas

And repeat for like.... a bunch of other types of thought

But you're right, it is pretty broad, so maybe best to start with a specific field

There are apps like Brilliant that focus on math, so maybe that fills that niche, or maybe theres something that else could be added to it in terms of helping someone explore the raw thought processes involved

Maybe you could devise a test that, when completed, can detect where their natural strengths lie. I imagine such a test would be somewhat lengthy. That could easily be turned into an app and marketed.