6 ms·

The assumption does not hold with more information. First, self teaching processes filter out idiots too, since idiots can't self teach. P(qualified | (no deg

by LPTS 18y ago

The assumption does not hold with more information. First, self teaching processes filter out idiots too, since idiots can't self teach. P(qualified | (no degree + autodidactic)) > P(qualified | (Degree + little self teaching ability))

dhimes 18y ago
True, but it's getting "more information" that is costly. If someone else can do it for you, so much the better. Personal recommendations are the best source (if you know and trust the recommender).
- LPTS 18y ago
  Maybe it just seems to me like an investment obviously worth paying.
Goladus 18y ago
For those following along at home, the unpretentious word for "autodidact" is "self-taught"
- eru 18y ago
  Is autodidact such an unusual word in English? (I would find a perfectly acceptable - but I am not a native speaker though. That's why I am asking.)
  - maximilian 18y ago
    Its the first time i've ever seen autodidact(ic). I assumed it meant self-taught based on context, probably like most of the others.
    - eru 18y ago
      OK, probably I only know all the weird words you never actually use.
      - mark-t 18y ago
        That actually happens a fair amount with non-native speakers, since our uncommon words are sometimes very similar to their common words. For example, an italian recently called me ascetic, and I had to look it up.
        hhm 18y ago
        "Autodidacta" is the most common way to say "self-taught" in Spanish.
        DougBTX 18y ago
        I love how English is quite happy to absorb new words, even if the English speakers only know a subset! Back in school, we were warned about "faux amis", words which sound like they'd be right to an English speaker, but very much out of place to a native French speaker. I think in English we'd just accept any and all alternative meanings and let context sort it out, who's up for some creative reading?
  - helveticaman 18y ago
    Yeah, in Spanish it's not unusual or fancy.
    - Hexstream 18y ago
      In French (autodidacte) it's pretty much the canonical word for that concept, too (French is similar to Spanish in lots of ways).
- erdos2 18y ago
  The only thing pretentious about 'autodidact' is the use of the word 'pretentious' to characterize a common vocabulary word.
  - gnaritas 18y ago
    It's not really that common, most people wouldn't know what it meant so it is a bit pretentious. Most people really would just say "self taught".
    - gruseom 18y ago
      It's not at all pretentious to use a well-defined word whose meaning is precisely appropriate. To anyone who needs convincing of this I recommend a large stack of Christopher Hitchens. What's pretentious is using big words to impress others. Most people who do this actually end up not using such words correctly, since nuances of meaning are hardly their primary concern. Edit: what I really object to is your implied criterion that anything beyond what "most people" would say must be pretentious. Lord help us if we're supposed to go by "most people".
      - gnaritas 18y ago
        I think Richard Feynman would disagree with you, and his plain spoken manner is a symbol of how to be smart without being pretentious. Using uncommon words appropriately doesn't make them any less pretentious unless you really don't know they're uncommon, and Christopher Hitchens, whom I very much like, is hardly someone associated with being unpretentious. Hitchens certainly doesn't suffer fools well.
        gruseom 18y ago
        So anything beyond what's common is pretentious? As I read the definition of the word, that's just wrong. On the other hand, looking things up in a dictionary to find out what they mean is so far from common that, by your definition, I'm being pretentious just for doing so. Edit: your invocation of the name of Feynman strikes me as gratuitous (oops, I'm being pretentious there) and a textbook example of appeal-to-authority (or rather, it would be one, if you actually were quoting him or had the right to speak for him). Edit 2: what on earth does "suffering fools well" have to do with being pretentious or not?
- rw 18y ago
  It's not pretentious just because you don't know it. "Autodidactic" sums up a phrase using just one word. Basically it comes down to this: Having a larger vocabulary allows you to spend more time communicating and less time talking. Just like abstracting functionality away inside functions allows you to spend more time solving problems and less time (re)writing code.
  - DougBTX 18y ago
    You're certainly right about abstraction being useful. My fist thought was that the simple-English for autodidactic here would be "self-taught", being aware of unnecessary abstractions, though the subtler meaning is closer to "someone who will teach themselves". Simply saying "self-taught" wouldn't have had the right connotation: instead of "clever and driven", it would have been, "but what have they missed?" and we would have missed out on this interesting off-topic sub-thread!
    - LPTS 18y ago
      I thought there was a difference where self taught would be "I did teach myself this thing" and autodidactic would be "I have the personality trait of continually teaching myself new things." Only one of the dictionaries I checked made this fine grained (and relevant) distinction explicit though.
- rms 18y ago
  Anti-intellectualism will be the death of us all.
  - falsestprophet 18y ago
    Using that word may not be pretentious, but -- worse -- it is bad form. An intellectual might object to the word's use in this context simply because it is bad writing. The goal of writing to communicate. Unnecessarily using obscure words clouds communication. In this case, I don't think the using "autodidact" was necessary. It did not add to brevity or cadence or coherence. It was a mistake. The only thing worse than an anti-intellectual is a bad intellectual.
    - LPTS 18y ago
      I feel like I'm in junior high getting bullied for being a nerd. I'm so sorry for using a big word. In the future I'll try and limit myself to a fifth grade reading level (maybe reaching rhetorical, which is a fancy word for a skillful kind of speech, heights of seventh or eighth grade level) so that the idiotic (for you mouth-breathers, idiotic is a big cloudy multisyllabalic way of saying dumb that fails to add brevity, or cadence or coherence) Techcrunch half of this forum can follow along without having to use a dictionary to find a word they don't know. "Autodidact" is obscure? WTF? Where is this coming from? Did everyone come here right after watching the American Gladiator contest? Did we get an influx of Time Magazine readers? For me, the goal of writing here is to practice at playing with ideas. If, in playing with ideas I use words that are (maybe, a little) obscure, and I fail to communicate to people who seem to me like idiots, well, I'm fine with that. Great, actually. If only the failure to communicate ran both ways. I'm done being autodidactic. I'm going to put down my books and go watch some soap operas and sitcoms until I figure out how the idiots here think.
      - timcederman 18y ago
        ...and then you 'defend' yourself by finishing up with statements like that? Wow.
    - rms 18y ago
- raganwald 18y ago
  You are correct, but note that just because "self taught" is unpretentious, it is not necessarily the case that "autodidact" is pretentious.
yummyfajitas 18y ago
Agreed completely. But how do you get more information cheaply? Remember, all you know is P(qualified| resume says autodidactic)= P(qualified | autodidactic) * P(autodidactic | resume says autodidactic) . The second term can easily kill you. Do you trust everything people put on their resume? On the other hand, P(degree | resume says degree) is probably close to 1, since a degree is so easy for an HR person to check. Look, I've got nothing against hiring good people who have no degree, and I certainly don't think a degree proves much (my current students prove that conclusively). If you know you have such a good person, hire them, ignore the degree. I'm just pointing out that the game is to find the good people. And that's a bit tricky to do. [edit: by this way, in the interest of clarifying, what you want to optimize is not candidate quality, but (candidate quality - search costs). Don't ignore the search costs term.]
- xlnt 18y ago
  There are lots of other cheap filters that companies do not use. For example, "Have you read Ayn Rand?" This question may well have better predictive power than a degree. And it's not hard to verify if the person is lying about whether they've read some at all. Or, "how many blog posts do you have about programming?" Again this is easy to verify.
  - xenoterracide 18y ago
    who's Ayn Rand? and why must you be a blogger to be a programmer? These are silly questions imho.
    - xlnt 18y ago
      The degree question is also silly, but has non-zero predictive capability. So do these. Certainly they rule out plenty of good programmers, but the issue is: do they leave plenty of good programmers, and a higher quality pool of remaining applicants? If good programmers read Rand or write blogs at a higher rate than bad programmers, then it works, even if it's frequently wrong about individual people.

by LPTS 18y ago

dhimes 18y ago

True, but it's getting "more information" that is costly. If someone else can do it for you, so much the better. Personal recommendations are the best source (if you know and trust the recommender).

LPTS 18y ago
Maybe it just seems to me like an investment obviously worth paying.

Goladus 18y ago

For those following along at home, the unpretentious word for "autodidact" is "self-taught"

eru 18y ago
Is autodidact such an unusual word in English? (I would find a perfectly acceptable - but I am not a native speaker though. That's why I am asking.)
- maximilian 18y ago
  Its the first time i've ever seen autodidact(ic). I assumed it meant self-taught based on context, probably like most of the others.
  - eru 18y ago
    OK, probably I only know all the weird words you never actually use.
    - mark-t 18y ago
      That actually happens a fair amount with non-native speakers, since our uncommon words are sometimes very similar to their common words. For example, an italian recently called me ascetic, and I had to look it up.
      - hhm 18y ago
        "Autodidacta" is the most common way to say "self-taught" in Spanish.
        DougBTX 18y ago
        I love how English is quite happy to absorb new words, even if the English speakers only know a subset! Back in school, we were warned about "faux amis", words which sound like they'd be right to an English speaker, but very much out of place to a native French speaker. I think in English we'd just accept any and all alternative meanings and let context sort it out, who's up for some creative reading?
- helveticaman 18y ago
  Yeah, in Spanish it's not unusual or fancy.
  - Hexstream 18y ago
    In French (autodidacte) it's pretty much the canonical word for that concept, too (French is similar to Spanish in lots of ways).
erdos2 18y ago
The only thing pretentious about 'autodidact' is the use of the word 'pretentious' to characterize a common vocabulary word.
- gnaritas 18y ago
  It's not really that common, most people wouldn't know what it meant so it is a bit pretentious. Most people really would just say "self taught".
  - gruseom 18y ago
    It's not at all pretentious to use a well-defined word whose meaning is precisely appropriate. To anyone who needs convincing of this I recommend a large stack of Christopher Hitchens. What's pretentious is using big words to impress others. Most people who do this actually end up not using such words correctly, since nuances of meaning are hardly their primary concern. Edit: what I really object to is your implied criterion that anything beyond what "most people" would say must be pretentious. Lord help us if we're supposed to go by "most people".
    - gnaritas 18y ago
      I think Richard Feynman would disagree with you, and his plain spoken manner is a symbol of how to be smart without being pretentious. Using uncommon words appropriately doesn't make them any less pretentious unless you really don't know they're uncommon, and Christopher Hitchens, whom I very much like, is hardly someone associated with being unpretentious. Hitchens certainly doesn't suffer fools well.
      - gruseom 18y ago
        So anything beyond what's common is pretentious? As I read the definition of the word, that's just wrong. On the other hand, looking things up in a dictionary to find out what they mean is so far from common that, by your definition, I'm being pretentious just for doing so. Edit: your invocation of the name of Feynman strikes me as gratuitous (oops, I'm being pretentious there) and a textbook example of appeal-to-authority (or rather, it would be one, if you actually were quoting him or had the right to speak for him). Edit 2: what on earth does "suffering fools well" have to do with being pretentious or not?
rw 18y ago
It's not pretentious just because you don't know it. "Autodidactic" sums up a phrase using just one word. Basically it comes down to this: Having a larger vocabulary allows you to spend more time communicating and less time talking. Just like abstracting functionality away inside functions allows you to spend more time solving problems and less time (re)writing code.
- DougBTX 18y ago
  You're certainly right about abstraction being useful. My fist thought was that the simple-English for autodidactic here would be "self-taught", being aware of unnecessary abstractions, though the subtler meaning is closer to "someone who will teach themselves". Simply saying "self-taught" wouldn't have had the right connotation: instead of "clever and driven", it would have been, "but what have they missed?" and we would have missed out on this interesting off-topic sub-thread!
  - LPTS 18y ago
    I thought there was a difference where self taught would be "I did teach myself this thing" and autodidactic would be "I have the personality trait of continually teaching myself new things." Only one of the dictionaries I checked made this fine grained (and relevant) distinction explicit though.
rms 18y ago
Anti-intellectualism will be the death of us all.
- falsestprophet 18y ago
  Using that word may not be pretentious, but -- worse -- it is bad form. An intellectual might object to the word's use in this context simply because it is bad writing. The goal of writing to communicate. Unnecessarily using obscure words clouds communication. In this case, I don't think the using "autodidact" was necessary. It did not add to brevity or cadence or coherence. It was a mistake. The only thing worse than an anti-intellectual is a bad intellectual.
  - LPTS 18y ago
    I feel like I'm in junior high getting bullied for being a nerd. I'm so sorry for using a big word. In the future I'll try and limit myself to a fifth grade reading level (maybe reaching rhetorical, which is a fancy word for a skillful kind of speech, heights of seventh or eighth grade level) so that the idiotic (for you mouth-breathers, idiotic is a big cloudy multisyllabalic way of saying dumb that fails to add brevity, or cadence or coherence) Techcrunch half of this forum can follow along without having to use a dictionary to find a word they don't know. "Autodidact" is obscure? WTF? Where is this coming from? Did everyone come here right after watching the American Gladiator contest? Did we get an influx of Time Magazine readers? For me, the goal of writing here is to practice at playing with ideas. If, in playing with ideas I use words that are (maybe, a little) obscure, and I fail to communicate to people who seem to me like idiots, well, I'm fine with that. Great, actually. If only the failure to communicate ran both ways. I'm done being autodidactic. I'm going to put down my books and go watch some soap operas and sitcoms until I figure out how the idiots here think.
    - timcederman 18y ago
      ...and then you 'defend' yourself by finishing up with statements like that? Wow.
  - rms 18y ago
raganwald 18y ago
You are correct, but note that just because "self taught" is unpretentious, it is not necessarily the case that "autodidact" is pretentious.

yummyfajitas 18y ago

Agreed completely. But how do you get more information cheaply? Remember, all you know is P(qualified| resume says autodidactic)= P(qualified | autodidactic) * P(autodidactic | resume says autodidactic) . The second term can easily kill you. Do you trust everything people put on their resume? On the other hand, P(degree | resume says degree) is probably close to 1, since a degree is so easy for an HR person to check. Look, I've got nothing against hiring good people who have no degree, and I certainly don't think a degree proves much (my current students prove that conclusively). If you know you have such a good person, hire them, ignore the degree. I'm just pointing out that the game is to find the good people. And that's a bit tricky to do. [edit: by this way, in the interest of clarifying, what you want to optimize is not candidate quality, but (candidate quality - search costs). Don't ignore the search costs term.]

xlnt 18y ago
There are lots of other cheap filters that companies do not use. For example, "Have you read Ayn Rand?" This question may well have better predictive power than a degree. And it's not hard to verify if the person is lying about whether they've read some at all. Or, "how many blog posts do you have about programming?" Again this is easy to verify.
- xenoterracide 18y ago
  who's Ayn Rand? and why must you be a blogger to be a programmer? These are silly questions imho.
  - xlnt 18y ago
    The degree question is also silly, but has non-zero predictive capability. So do these. Certainly they rule out plenty of good programmers, but the issue is: do they leave plenty of good programmers, and a higher quality pool of remaining applicants? If good programmers read Rand or write blogs at a higher rate than bad programmers, then it works, even if it's frequently wrong about individual people.