Accelerating Expertise Development

In the 17th century, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz envisioned a calculus ratiocinator—a universal method of reasoning that could reduce complex arguments to calculations, so that if two people disagreed about something, all they'd have to do would be to turn a handle a couple of times to get the answer.

While we're not building this exact system, we are inspired by the ambition to make reasoning more structured, transparent, and accessible. Modern schooling was never intended to do this, as the philosophy of education was shaped by the Enlightenment idea that knowledge is something to be delivered rather than discovered. Schools became factories for transmitting facts, not workshops for building thinking skills. Students learned to absorb information, not to reason through problems or show their work in ways others could follow and verify.

Elite education has always focused on developing cognitive abilities, not just transmitting information. While most students memorized content, the privileged learned techniques like the art of memory—using mental imagery to dramatically expand their recall capacity. In imperial China, future leaders mastered dialectical reasoning through structured analysis, learning to break down complex problems and build rigorous arguments. These weren't mere academic exercises but practical tools for enhancing intellectual performance. Such methods have existed for centuries, available only to a select few. Today, we're working to democratize these powerful learning technologies and make them accessible to everyone.