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It's not even _correct_. It follows a list of people who had "no college", yet Kanye went to an Art Institute for painting before transferring to an English deg

It's not even _correct_. It follows a list of people who had "no college", yet Kanye went to an Art Institute for painting before transferring to an English degree in a state school and ultimately dropping out at the age of _twenty_. I'd hardly call that "no college".

groby_b 6y ago
The lack of correctness is plastered all over this. Random pick: "Illiterate sailors on a rickety ship overthrew a thousand years of university Aristotelian scholarship in 1492." Columbus was extremely well-read for his time. He also didn't overthrow thousand years of scholarship because pretty much anybody who cared (i.e. sailors) knew the earth was round well before Columbus. Erathosthenes computed its circumference sometime ~300BC. A college education with a focus on humanities and how to research things might have improved the theses :)
perl4ever 6y ago
But it's not a list of college dropouts either... And listing Jane Austen is odd - how would she have been able to, and why would one assume she wouldn't have benefitted? Why not list other people who weren't white males and didn't go to college in the 1700s? I mean, it obviously wouldn't feel right in support of the thesis, but why did these lists seem to make sense to the author? Edit: I was thinking maybe this is some sort of parody or satire or gotcha, and then I decided to check out the main page and I read: "We helped launch and run the Thiel Fellowship, working alongside Peter Thiel to identify and work with young founders building new technology" Which instantly repositioned the theses as validation in my mind of the general dislike of him that some people have. He may not be directly responsible, but I can't help feeling that if this is the sort of people who like him...
- notahacker 6y ago
  The irony is that few highly successful companies have been as closely linked with universities as Thiel's Paypal and its many senior recruits from his alma mater or his big investment in the Harvard Facebook. Outside that particular bubble, it wouldn't occur to anyone that investing in the person who doesn't have the Ivy League degree is Reformation-level radicalism. I looked at the bio of one of the GPs and chuckled as I spotted 'lectured at Stanford' and 'started Oxford PhD' alongside working with Thiel in the career highlights.

groby_b 6y ago

The lack of correctness is plastered all over this. Random pick: "Illiterate sailors on a rickety ship overthrew a thousand years of university Aristotelian scholarship in 1492." Columbus was extremely well-read for his time. He also didn't overthrow thousand years of scholarship because pretty much anybody who cared (i.e. sailors) knew the earth was round well before Columbus. Erathosthenes computed its circumference sometime ~300BC. A college education with a focus on humanities and how to research things might have improved the theses :)

perl4ever 6y ago

But it's not a list of college dropouts either... And listing Jane Austen is odd - how would she have been able to, and why would one assume she wouldn't have benefitted? Why not list other people who weren't white males and didn't go to college in the 1700s? I mean, it obviously wouldn't feel right in support of the thesis, but why did these lists seem to make sense to the author? Edit: I was thinking maybe this is some sort of parody or satire or gotcha, and then I decided to check out the main page and I read: "We helped launch and run the Thiel Fellowship, working alongside Peter Thiel to identify and work with young founders building new technology" Which instantly repositioned the theses as validation in my mind of the general dislike of him that some people have. He may not be directly responsible, but I can't help feeling that if this is the sort of people who like him...

notahacker 6y ago
The irony is that few highly successful companies have been as closely linked with universities as Thiel's Paypal and its many senior recruits from his alma mater or his big investment in the Harvard Facebook. Outside that particular bubble, it wouldn't occur to anyone that investing in the person who doesn't have the Ivy League degree is Reformation-level radicalism. I looked at the bio of one of the GPs and chuckled as I spotted 'lectured at Stanford' and 'started Oxford PhD' alongside working with Thiel in the career highlights.