on the other end of the spectrum, you probably get more mega geniuses, but more occupational casualties if a kid has a feeling hed be a great painter, he might be right. he might be a painter that changes your civilization forever. you “lose” him by forcing him into his dads job

after a few generations of that, the craft might die i’m sympathetic, but it feels hypocritical for me to totally fall on that angle. when i was younger i found a book about an art form and knew i should pursue it. i didnt take my dads job. im still doing the same thing now.

the “traditional” answer is the first one. the kid gets to be about 12, he’s about to hit puberty and get very interested in … certain things. if he waits until he’s 20 to start studying traditional master saddle working or something, odds are lower he’ll get master status.

but, a lot of kids are going to be wrong about that inclination. for every mega genius, youre going to have a batch of people who “went for it” and failed: maybe through no fault of their own. plus, its a slightly unprecedented civilizational problem what you do with these people

some people will look back and correctly say, i would have been a better chef - im not an incredible carpenter. they’ll be left “holding the bag” - sorry. but the trade off is you can pass down an insanely high level of skill on average across time - maybe the only way to do that https://hell.twtr.plus/media/893841b03b767c2761fddfd2de87fbe80a7791b1e7639257733c424d08dc8115.file

every culture has to make a trade off in terms of children pursuing art. if you really want masters in a cultural art form, in general theyll have to start young. youll have to force them. you’ll get the results across time, but you’ll put some people in the “wrong slots”. … https://hell.twtr.plus/media/ea5cf7a78235b09349122a2ee5b8d6e06cc5ce01a6b2a2c03a88f5b7841ad5d8.file

new review for the book. also, we set up an email list recently. its primarily the comics, but i thought i would mention that it also includes small updates below them, such as recent things i’ve written or illustrated. previous comic below: http://nitter.poast.org/owenbroadcast/status/1757766978901594601#m https://hell.twtr.plus/media/5d03d023154a5b9e81362c26f4301a8aeaade9a9432cfaece112c82a8589c50b.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/2013d66e0ff12e9004e70e07579d4b766bf4d11a6ecc7a477307dc39a9df9d1f.file

thank you canada, very cool http://nitter.poast.org/owenbroadcast/status/1758915210813776067#m https://hell.twtr.plus/media/eae62933810f4c6dde100ebbaacc642671f3fb509f83f4a0c04f5a7b27eac5b0.file