Your companion asks one question at a time, helping you reason your way to the idea yourself.
Our philosophy, in one formula
Create your own world and anime companions. Let a story that inspires you give your learning a sense of purpose.
AI reads the textbook for you. A book won't meet you at your level, but AI can: it reads first, then teaches you at a pace you can follow. Your learning sweet spot grows many times over.
By a conservative estimate, S + A + M makes learning more than three times as efficient as reading and lectures.
Reason your way to each idea with a favorite companion by your side. Learning becomes as immersive as a AAA game.
Inside a lesson
Open a book,and a companionsits down beside you.
Every book comes with a Socratic companion. It explains clearly when it should, and more often asks question after question that leads you to reason the ideas out yourself. Here is a moment from a lesson.
Kira WalshProbability and Statistics · Ch 4 · Bayes’ Theorem
EndedRetrieval is the key to effective learning
Draw on memory,reason your wayto the answer.
Exams, practice, written reflection, explaining aloud, one-to-one questioning: different forms, one mechanism. The answer is no longer handed to you; you find it yourself.
Being toldThe answer is given to you. Soon, only a trace remains.
RetrievalYou find the answer yourself. That is why it stays.
Retrieval clearly works
So why do we stilllearn passively?
Because it is too slow, too hard and too expensive. Socratopia removes the three barriers, one by one.
Exam feedback comes lateEvery answer, immediate feedback
Your companion takes up each answer on the spot: right, and you go deeper; wrong, and it asks again from another angle.
Teaching aloud is hard to sustainCompanions and story keep you going
Learning becomes a journey with a purpose. You come back for the story and the companions.
Private tutoring costs too muchAI cuts the cost to one percent
One-to-one Socratic teaching no longer belongs to the few.
Keep retrieving. Knowledge stays.
Companions and story
Open a textbook,step into a world.
You decide the world, the story and your companions' characters. From campus life to the stars, let the story that moves you most give your learning a purpose.
01
Age of Sail
The captain hands you a sextant.
No landmarks out here. With only the sun and this sextant, how do we know our latitude?
Books in the library you could learn this wayReading the Oceans: A Field Guide to the World's SeasReading the Stars — A Guide to Astronomy
A tutor of your own
Once, the best teachersbelonged to the few.
Now a brilliant, patient tutor, always ready with the next question, sits beside every learner.
- Private tutor
- $30–70an hour
- Socratopia
- $0.20–0.40an hour
About the price of a cola an hour: one percent of a private tutor.
A letter from Socrates
To a fellow seeker,two thousand years on.
He called himself a midwife of ideas: he gave no ready answers, only questions, and helped people bring out what they already knew. Today that craft sits at your desk.
My friend,
My mother, you may know, was a midwife. I borrowed her craft — not for babies, but for ideas: drawing out, by question and patience, what each of us already knows but cannot yet say. I am told a small contraption now sits at your desk and does much the same. Unlike me, it won’t be sentenced to death for asking too many questions.
I think you'd like it.