Our Mission<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
To maximise the degrees of freedom \u2014 the room a person has to think, choose, and grow \u2014 for as many people as possible, across time and space.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Science explains how<\/em> the world works. Philosophy asks why<\/em> \u2014 why we use what we learn, and who it serves. ArtaQuest teaches the two together, because each one without the other is incomplete. Philosophy with no science drifts. Science with no philosophy becomes only a tool \u2014 and a tool is easily turned to power over people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An AI is trained to minimise entropy \u2014 to collapse a world of possibilities into its single most likely answer. Used as a tool, it is powerful. Used as a substitute for thinking, it quietly narrows the range of what we believe is possible. The habit of thinking for yourself is exactly what it cannot hand back to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ArtaQuest is a non-profit. Any surplus is reinvested in course development, the platform itself, and bursaries for learners who cannot afford the course fee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n ArtaQuest is built around one skill: thinking for yourself<\/strong>. The world is loud with confident answers \u2014 institutions, algorithms, peers, even friends \u2014 and most of them want agreement, not argument. Real understanding starts in the other direction. It starts by holding a claim long enough to ask why should I believe this?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So every course on ArtaQuest does three things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You are not here to memorise our lectures. You are here to argue with them in your head, and to discover where you actually stand. The grade we care about is whether your own thinking sharpened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most platforms learn what you already agree with and feed you more of it. That is divide-and-conquer dressed up as personalisation. The longer you stay inside one feed, the smaller your world gets \u2014 and the surer you become that everyone outside it is wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ArtaQuest does the opposite. When our recommendation surface notices what you push back on, it sends you back to exactly that. Not what you liked \u2014 what you disagreed with<\/em>. Sit with it again. Find the strongest version of the argument you rejected. This will sometimes annoy you. That is the point. We do not need to keep you scrolling \u2014 we need to keep you thinking. That is why we are not-for-profit.<\/p>\n\n\n No fee should ever stand between a learner and a credential they have earned. Our bursary programme waives the course fee entirely for learners who demonstrate low income \u2014 the only requirement is one supporting document. Learn how to apply<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ArtaQuest is run by its founder, alone and on purpose: no employer, no government, no corporate backer, no organisation setting the agenda. The plan is to sustain the platform through course fees and the 97% \/ 3% instructor split, with no outside dependency. Donations today fund the bursary pool and early operating costs \u2014 and we accept them only from independent individuals, never from religious organisations, governments, corporations, tech and AI companies, political groups, or agenda-driven foundations. The full list of restricted sources is on our Donate page<\/a>. The fewer the ties, the fewer the conflicts of interest \u2014 and the freer the work stays to point at one thing only: helping people think for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each year we publish a financial statement showing donations received, bursaries granted, operating costs, and the bursary fund balance. It is posted on our Donate page<\/a> and available to anyone on request. We believe transparency is the only honest form of authority: an institution unwilling to open its finances to public view has not earned the right to teach anyone how to think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arash Ashrafnejad<\/strong> I was born in Tehran on 15 February 1994. I’m the middle kid — I have two sisters — raised by a single mum who taught French and English. I loved physics most of all, and as a teenager I competed in Iran’s national olympiads. I have lived most of my life abroad — across Malaysia, Turkey, and Canada. I started teaching very young, and learned that teaching something is the best way to understand it deeply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had one goal \u2014 to figure out how the universe works, and why \u2014 and I followed it upward. From gases to galaxies, then to circuits and information systems, then to machine intelligence, and finally toward biological intelligence: the universe’s masterpiece, the matter with the most degrees of freedom, the most conscious entropy. That climb led me to artificial intelligence, and I moved to Montr\u00e9al \u2014 one of the places where modern AI was built \u2014 to study it for a PhD. I passed the qualifying exam, but the more I saw of how these systems are trained, the more they worried me. An AI is trained to minimise entropy \u2014 to collapse a world of possibilities into its single most likely answer. That makes it confident, often overconfident: it hands you that answer before you have even finished your question, and points everyone toward the same one. Slowly, this can weaken our consciousness \u2014 our ability to think for ourselves \u2014 and, by narrowing the variety that change depends on, it could even harm our evolution over time. It also burns a great deal of energy, with a serious climate cost. The danger looked less like the science-fiction fear of machines taking over, and more like people quietly choosing to let the machine think for them. As a researcher, I had no answer to this. As a teacher, I thought I might. So I left the PhD and returned to education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had been building it the whole time. I helped found Neuromatch Academy<\/a>, an online school for science, and my most recent work was at the Center for Rigor<\/a>, on how to make science itself more honest. Both taught me the same lesson. Science explains how the world works, but on its own it does not ask why \u2014 why we use what we learn, or who it serves. That question belongs to philosophy. Without it, science becomes only a tool \u2014 and that is how it earns its bad reputation: not because it is wrong, but because, lacking the why, it is so easily turned to domination and the suppression of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ArtaQuest is built to put the two back together: fundamental physics and humanitarian philosophy, the how and the why \u2014 knowledge meant to serve everyone, for generations to come. It is a free platform, and I run it alone, on purpose: no employer, no funder, no organisation telling me what to teach. That keeps it honest, and keeps it focused on the mission. It is the same one I have set for my own life: to maximise the degrees of freedom, or entropy, for all beings that will ever live, across time and space. And the second law of thermodynamics ensures that time itself will serve this mission. So our success is only a matter of time…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n Questions? Visit our FAQ & Contact page<\/a> \u2014 or email support@artaquest.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ArtaQuest Foundation is a registered Alberta non-profit teaching at the intersection of religion (the Why) and science (the How). Free courses, optional certificates, independent of grants and AI consensus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138324856,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaquest.org\/nb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaquest.org\/nb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaquest.org\/nb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artaquest.org\/nb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138324856"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artaquest.org\/nb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/artaquest.org\/nb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7782039,"href":"https:\/\/artaquest.org\/nb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9\/revisions\/7782039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaquest.org\/nb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The two halves<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Why now<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Governance<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How We Teach<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Against the Algorithm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How It Works<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Bursary Programme<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Independence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Transparency<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nFrom the Founder<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Arash](\"https:\/\/artaquest.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/arash-ashrafnejad-founder-1024x1024.jpg\")
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Founder · ArtaQuest Foundation<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n