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I'm about 2/3 of the way through AntiFragile, and so scoffing at the whole idea that academic institutions or scholarly study produce or contribute to progress

I'm about 2/3 of the way through AntiFragile, and so scoffing at the whole idea that academic institutions or scholarly study produce or contribute to progress at all. What we need is not more academics, but the reinstatement of the apprenticeship system.

inflatableDodo 7y ago
I guess that depends on your idea of progress. To be honest, reinstating the apprenticeship system sounds a little circular and also quite difficult to achieve, now that companies have got used to not bearing the cost of education in a lot of areas. You'd either have to regulate business massively, or shut down a lot of public education. I'd be more inclined to try something novel, like an international federated organisation dedicated to free education and open research, or something.
barry-cotter 7y ago
> Two characteristics of a city are systematically associated with the appearance of significant figures who grow up there: whether the city is a political or financial center, regardless of its population, and whether the city is the location of an elite university. The effect of these latter two variables is quite large. As the last column indicates, being a political or financial center increased the expected number of significant figures by 64 percent, holding everything else constant, while having an elite university increased that expected number by 184 percent. Human Accomplishment: Charles Murray, page 369 More generally this critique ignores the second industrial revolution altogether. The U.K. shows progress outside universities is possible, as does the preceding industrious revolution, where water and wind power and the beginnings of steam happened with minimal involvement from universities but progress in chemistry and electricity generation and electrical engineering was absolutely a product of the technical university system. That’s why Germany was at the forefront of this era of rapid progress and the U.K. wasn’t despite its huge initial advantage in capital.
mattkrause 7y ago
You know how academia works, right? It and the trades are the only apprentice systems going…
- pmyteh 7y ago
  This is true. A PhD is very close to an apprenticeship model: study at the feet of an expert doing simple work, prove your competence (master's degree/prelims) to start working on your own account under supervision, finally submit masterwork (PhD thesis) to be counted as an expert yourself.
Nasrudith 7y ago
And yet that is the opposite of what has contributed to success. Countries can do without apprenticeships and have success. They cannot do without academia and do the same. Even if there are useless members within the whole system can still be positive. The whole model of venture capitalism is technically very wasteful from all of the failures - but the outsized successes more than pay for the failures. It is a common mistake in a pattern of thinking that "If I cannot understand how it works then it must be bad." By all means question and be skeptical but assuming that is an increasingly bad heuristic as specialization grows.

inflatableDodo 7y ago

I guess that depends on your idea of progress. To be honest, reinstating the apprenticeship system sounds a little circular and also quite difficult to achieve, now that companies have got used to not bearing the cost of education in a lot of areas. You'd either have to regulate business massively, or shut down a lot of public education. I'd be more inclined to try something novel, like an international federated organisation dedicated to free education and open research, or something.

barry-cotter 7y ago

> Two characteristics of a city are systematically associated with the appearance of significant figures who grow up there: whether the city is a political or financial center, regardless of its population, and whether the city is the location of an elite university. The effect of these latter two variables is quite large. As the last column indicates, being a political or financial center increased the expected number of significant figures by 64 percent, holding everything else constant, while having an elite university increased that expected number by 184 percent. Human Accomplishment: Charles Murray, page 369 More generally this critique ignores the second industrial revolution altogether. The U.K. shows progress outside universities is possible, as does the preceding industrious revolution, where water and wind power and the beginnings of steam happened with minimal involvement from universities but progress in chemistry and electricity generation and electrical engineering was absolutely a product of the technical university system. That’s why Germany was at the forefront of this era of rapid progress and the U.K. wasn’t despite its huge initial advantage in capital.

mattkrause 7y ago

You know how academia works, right? It and the trades are the only apprentice systems going…

pmyteh 7y ago
This is true. A PhD is very close to an apprenticeship model: study at the feet of an expert doing simple work, prove your competence (master's degree/prelims) to start working on your own account under supervision, finally submit masterwork (PhD thesis) to be counted as an expert yourself.

Nasrudith 7y ago

And yet that is the opposite of what has contributed to success. Countries can do without apprenticeships and have success. They cannot do without academia and do the same. Even if there are useless members within the whole system can still be positive. The whole model of venture capitalism is technically very wasteful from all of the failures - but the outsized successes more than pay for the failures. It is a common mistake in a pattern of thinking that "If I cannot understand how it works then it must be bad." By all means question and be skeptical but assuming that is an increasingly bad heuristic as specialization grows.