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There's a lot more to life than technical/engineering fields. The pay is just complete crap. If you don't mind being broke and living on welfare, by all means

There's a lot more to life than technical/engineering fields. The pay is just complete crap. If you don't mind being broke and living on welfare, by all means, get that liberal arts degree.

scottlocklin 8y ago
One of the guys running DE Shaw has a psychology degree. One of their early hires had an undergrad degree in English romantic poetry. Pretty sure they're doing OK. IMO most talented/flexible degree per year studied is electrical engineering. Best degree is no degree though. One Vitalek or Bram Cohen is worth 10000 Harvard computer science graduates.
- jki275 8y ago
  That's like saying don't bother studying so you can get to the NBA. For the unicorns that can pull that off, sure. For the other 99.9999999999999% of the population of the planet it's really bad advice.
  - scottlocklin 8y ago
    I consider virtually all the time I spent in higher education to be wasted. The actually educational pieces of a Ph.D. in physics; probably about 2 years worth of effort, using existing didactic techniques. Probably a year if you did it right -then maybe another year to work on a problem. Einstein getting his Ph.D. when he was 21 was considered normal once. "Higher education" is mostly make-work for pedants and busy work for students; the result is pretty similar to what high school was 100 years ago. It's also a form of dysgenic population control, and a way of growing debt peonage among the more intelligent half the of the population, which is probably useful for social control. I've considered trying to raise a bunch of little Vitaleks myself, just to see if it can be done. Cathedral scholar style. While his and, say, Bram's output is exceptional: I think one of the big reasons it was is they never went to college. Greatest individual systematic trader I know: same story -he never want to college either. Also your sigdifs are way off. I bet you learned that in collitch. ;-)
    - jki275 8y ago
      No, it's called hyperbole. It's used to make a point.

There's a lot more to life than technical/engineering fields. The pay is just complete crap. If you don't mind being broke and living on welfare, by all means, get that liberal arts degree.

scottlocklin 8y ago

One of the guys running DE Shaw has a psychology degree. One of their early hires had an undergrad degree in English romantic poetry. Pretty sure they're doing OK. IMO most talented/flexible degree per year studied is electrical engineering. Best degree is no degree though. One Vitalek or Bram Cohen is worth 10000 Harvard computer science graduates.

jki275 8y ago
That's like saying don't bother studying so you can get to the NBA. For the unicorns that can pull that off, sure. For the other 99.9999999999999% of the population of the planet it's really bad advice.
- scottlocklin 8y ago
  I consider virtually all the time I spent in higher education to be wasted. The actually educational pieces of a Ph.D. in physics; probably about 2 years worth of effort, using existing didactic techniques. Probably a year if you did it right -then maybe another year to work on a problem. Einstein getting his Ph.D. when he was 21 was considered normal once. "Higher education" is mostly make-work for pedants and busy work for students; the result is pretty similar to what high school was 100 years ago. It's also a form of dysgenic population control, and a way of growing debt peonage among the more intelligent half the of the population, which is probably useful for social control. I've considered trying to raise a bunch of little Vitaleks myself, just to see if it can be done. Cathedral scholar style. While his and, say, Bram's output is exceptional: I think one of the big reasons it was is they never went to college. Greatest individual systematic trader I know: same story -he never want to college either. Also your sigdifs are way off. I bet you learned that in collitch. ;-)
  - jki275 8y ago
    No, it's called hyperbole. It's used to make a point.