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"1. What "bullshit" degrees people are talking about? Are they the liberal arts studies? If so, as a society do we not see value in the fine arts?" I don't see

"1. What "bullshit" degrees people are talking about? Are they the liberal arts studies? If so, as a society do we not see value in the fine arts?" I don't see value in graduating with 6 figure debt for those degrees. In the words of Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting: “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”

vaidhy 6y ago
I do not believe in this over-simplification. However, the point about going to debt for those degrees is a question specific to US at this point in time. We should talk about free college education or heavily subsidized one, but this same group here has been heavily against these ideas because they are socialist. However, happiest countries in the world seems to be mostly social democratic[1] and for one, if possible, I will happily trade my US pay for a lower pay, less worried life. On a side note, I have a feeling that US prefers a "dog eat dog world" because everyone here thinks they will be the ones doing the eating and caring for the underdog is a sign of weakness/waste of resources. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/03/20/ranked-20-happiest-countries-2020/#103598c97850 https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/03/20/ran...
- linuxftw 6y ago
  > We should talk about free college education or heavily subsidized one It already exists. It's called the internet. You can learn almost everything you need, and in much greater detail, than a traditional 'higher education' offered by a brick and mortar institution. The problem is only convincing the gate keepers.
  - 8bitsrule 6y ago
    There is no comparison. College is not a vocational school. Internet is not a library, more like acres of dusty piles of tattered and strewn books. More importantly, it's also a shitty source of: collegiality, constructive criticism, respect for scholarship, access to intelligently-vetted new experiences, and well-reasoned communication. What I remember most, and consider most valuable about my college years, is not the teaching/coursework. The net cannot begin to compare. Facebook is free.
  - pyuser583 6y ago
    That is simply untrue. You cant learn, for example, advanced cryptography outside a classroom.
    - simplesleeper 6y ago
      why couldn't you? of course you can
    - simplesleeper 6y ago
      what is stopping you from buying and reading books on cryptography, number theory, security protocols etc?
      - jason0597 6y ago
        School is about a person who knows more than you on a topic, being over your shoulder, and telling you "that is right", "that is wrong", "you should do this via this method", etc. School isn't just a funnel of knowledge being poured into your brain. It's about the people that teach you and verify that you are actually learning the right things. Sure, you can pick up books on cryptography, but who would you rather hire? A self-taught cryptographer, or a university-vetted cryptographer?
    - willcipriano 6y ago
      Applied Cryptography[0] is available for $18.97 for a used hardcover copy on Amazon. The only thing that doesn't come with that a classroom does is someone to hold you accountable to read it. [0]https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Cryptography-Protocols-Algorithms-Source-dp-0471128457/dp/0471128457/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid= https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Cryptography-Protocols-Algori...
      - pyuser583 6y ago
        One could memorize Applied Cryptography, and still not be qualified to create a new encryption algorithm. That requires advanced education. Additionally, Applied Cryptography is an outdated (“classic”?) book. It’s most recent introduction clearly states this, and refers the reader to a different book (“Cryptographic Engineering”) for more current information. Can you give me a bibliography of books readable by a person without an advanced degree, that would teach them how to create brand new, secure fully homomorphic encryption algorithm? Edit: my spell checker changed “homomorphic” to “homophobic!”
- daniel-s 6y ago
  Your list is a list of countries that also happen to be at the top of this one [1]. They are the countries with the most freedom and capitalism. People are generally happy when they're free to own property and become prosperous. [1] https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
  - vaidhy 6y ago
    I think you are confusing social democracy and communism[1]. I agree with you that people should be free to own property and become wealthy. However, I do not think it should come at the cost of removing social net for the less lucky. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
    - daniel-s 6y ago
      Feel free to disagree with me, but I believe I very well understand what "social democracy" is supposed to mean.
    - jedmeyers 6y ago
      Is that the same social democracy as in Russian Social Democratic Labour Party?
      - jason0597 6y ago
        No, it isn't.
- grandmczeb 6y ago
  > this same group here has been heavily against these ideas because they are socialist. This is a caricature. It's not much different than saying people are for free college because they're lazy and don't want to work for a living. > I have a feeling that US prefers a "dog eat dog world" because everyone here thinks they will be the ones doing the eating and caring for the underdog is a sign of weakness/waste of resources. I have a feeling the reason you think this way is because you haven't made a serious effort to empathize with the people who disagree with you.
- eezurr 6y ago
  hmm[0] If I was the leader of this country, I'd see placing market pressure on the citizens would coerce them to yield to market efficiency. That is to say, if people have to pay for college, it would push more people towards degrees that run the economic/productive component of this engine (due to the higher salaries from the demand). The wealth generated from this omni-cultural push will benefit the country, both it's leaders and it's citizens. Deep down in the depths of the human mind is a little chunk of the brain that is terrified of death and inferiority. This goop collectively bubbles up to the surface sometimes, taking the form of war. If this is one of the prices to pay to live in a country that no other country in the world could conquer, i'd say it's worth it. Human history is full of evidence that reality. [0]This comment is just a one dimensional thought experiment
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  On a side note, I have a feeling that US prefers a "dog eat dog world" because everyone here thinks they will be the ones doing the eating and caring for the underdog is a sign of weakness/waste of resources. The default or dominant culture in America is upper class cis het white male. Historically, yes, those people could pretty count on being the ones doing the eating. Women and people of color were the ones taking up many other roles and it was possible to sometimes care about them -- or just treat them like absolute crap while benefiting from a relationship to them because they had little to no recourse -- without that impinging on the professional part of your life where, by default, killer instinct could rule the day. I think part of what is messing things up is the rise in human rights for women and people of color. This is disrupting these historical patterns which have something of a tendency to carry forward. We are largely failing to ask "So, just what kinds of patterns actually work for a world in which we assume all adults have similar rights and opportunities?" Many people are quite oblivious to the many layers of baked in assumptions about, for example, how work gets organized and how we provide benefits to the people. It is largely invisible the degree to which we assume a man is doing certain kinds of work and there is probably a woman at home doing the cooking and cleaning and other "women's work." And I tend to get a lot of flak anytime I try to comment on it because I'm a woman and HN is overwhelmingly male, so people (seem to) think I'm some man-hating, feminazi who is intentionally shit-stirring or something and tend to not think I'm someone who has actively studied the space because of the ways it has negatively impacted my life, so I'm somewhat knowledgeable about such topics.
  - MaximumYComb 6y ago
    I became a single father when my youngest was a baby. I was juggling a baby plus a two year old and all that comes with it (obviously I couldn't breastfeed) with full time work. I saw the results of years of womens studies first hand. Zero services available to fathers of babies since every single government funded program was only for mothers. Being questioned about potential unsavoury activies because my two year old said they like wrestling at home with dad and everyone distrusts a father who is raising a baby by himself. How the entire gender studies academia misses that the culture in raising babies is hostile to men I don't know but I trust their professional opinions about as far as I can piss. EDIT: I'll flesh this out with an example of why I don't value liberal arts degrees. Approaching one Christmas I was struggling. My work didn't go on break until 5pm on the 23rd, I was juggling that plus parenting plus all the other tasks that go into preparing for a family Christmas. I stumbled across a news article that I would summarise as "We need to thank all the women that are working hard right now to make Christmas special for us". I emailed this journalist, a graduate of the liberal arts, and mentioned that there are a number of men out there in situations like men working towards the same goal and the gendered language can be harmful. The journalist reponded that it's mostly women so there isn't an issue with this language. The same journalist who writes about how we need to make STEM more hosptitable to women, etc. Her formal liberal arts education only taught her to see gender issues in one direction and didn't give her to critical ability to think about gender issues in a broader sense. So yes, I don't value when people have some parts of a liberal arts education.
subjctvtime8 6y ago
I didn’t get a CS degree. Just started programming when I was 8 or 9. I’m in the $200k/yr, house paid off, never had college debt, and 23 year-ish of gains in stocks following a “buy and hold” approach since the 90s. Apple at $8-$9/share right before that iMac was a good call. I also have deep and engaging conversations with mathematicians and physicists. I’ve tutored them in odd math they’ve simply never encountered. Unless collective resources are needed for something like a nuclear reactor design study, a whole lot of application doesn’t require the college debt. It’s almost as if we just need to agree on what some things are for social stability reasons, and we can debate the rest. Instead we seem keen to be filtered for willingness to go into debt on education and housing, so we can justify demanding $200k/year for something open source programmers do for fun. I’m pretty sure a whole lot of why we do things is satisfy social memes, and little to do with economic utility.
- sp527 6y ago
  If you’ve been working since the 90s and are only making $200k/yr in tech (less than the total compensation of some new grads going into FAANG), then you’re actually a case study on behalf of the value of a (good) CS degree.
  - nevertoolate 6y ago
    Funny to read about these salaries from Europe, where you can hire two pretty GREAT programmers from that money. For me it doesn’t tell anything about university degree AT ALL.
    - P_I_Staker 6y ago
      OP's perspective is clearly very skewed, even for the USA. $100-150k is considered absurd compensation for most of the country that isn't silicon valley.
  - subjctvtime8 6y ago
    Well, I don’t live in SF. Salaries are relative. Those grads haven’t been offloading overvalued investment properties bought in the 2010s. That paid off much cheaper properties from the mid-00s, which are much closer into the urban hub. Curious to see how much they’ll be worth as the move to rebuild the urban area as live/work/retail structures replace the houses there now. Even if this bubble bursts, they’re paid off (as well as the house I live in). I don’t make as much salary, but did mention I’ve been their stock. FAANG is making me rich otherwise. Given my more “midwestern” cost of living, I could probably retire. But again like I said I’ve been coding since I was a kid. It’s like speaking English and making a PB&J for me. I’d be doing it anyway. It’s like free money without the Silicon Valley bullshitshow.
P_I_Staker 6y ago
Yeah, that's my stance too, even though it can come off as arrogant. The way I'd put it is "don't finance an education that won't get you a good paying job". I know some of these degrees can get you a foot in to a job that doesn't pay crazy well, but is fulfilling... That's okay too. It's also okay if that's your passion and you get someone else to pay for it.
- alimw 6y ago
  Regardless of any impact on employability, it's pretty clear how society as a whole suffers when large sections of the public are so ill-versed in the general state of human knowledge that conspiracy theories flourish among them.

vaidhy 6y ago

I do not believe in this over-simplification. However, the point about going to debt for those degrees is a question specific to US at this point in time. We should talk about free college education or heavily subsidized one, but this same group here has been heavily against these ideas because they are socialist. However, happiest countries in the world seems to be mostly social democratic[1] and for one, if possible, I will happily trade my US pay for a lower pay, less worried life. On a side note, I have a feeling that US prefers a "dog eat dog world" because everyone here thinks they will be the ones doing the eating and caring for the underdog is a sign of weakness/waste of resources. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/03/20/ranked-20-happiest-countries-2020/#103598c97850 https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/03/20/ran...

linuxftw 6y ago
> We should talk about free college education or heavily subsidized one It already exists. It's called the internet. You can learn almost everything you need, and in much greater detail, than a traditional 'higher education' offered by a brick and mortar institution. The problem is only convincing the gate keepers.
- 8bitsrule 6y ago
  There is no comparison. College is not a vocational school. Internet is not a library, more like acres of dusty piles of tattered and strewn books. More importantly, it's also a shitty source of: collegiality, constructive criticism, respect for scholarship, access to intelligently-vetted new experiences, and well-reasoned communication. What I remember most, and consider most valuable about my college years, is not the teaching/coursework. The net cannot begin to compare. Facebook is free.
- pyuser583 6y ago
  That is simply untrue. You cant learn, for example, advanced cryptography outside a classroom.
  - simplesleeper 6y ago
    why couldn't you? of course you can
  - simplesleeper 6y ago
    what is stopping you from buying and reading books on cryptography, number theory, security protocols etc?
    - jason0597 6y ago
      School is about a person who knows more than you on a topic, being over your shoulder, and telling you "that is right", "that is wrong", "you should do this via this method", etc. School isn't just a funnel of knowledge being poured into your brain. It's about the people that teach you and verify that you are actually learning the right things. Sure, you can pick up books on cryptography, but who would you rather hire? A self-taught cryptographer, or a university-vetted cryptographer?
  - willcipriano 6y ago
    Applied Cryptography[0] is available for $18.97 for a used hardcover copy on Amazon. The only thing that doesn't come with that a classroom does is someone to hold you accountable to read it. [0]https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Cryptography-Protocols-Algorithms-Source-dp-0471128457/dp/0471128457/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid= https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Cryptography-Protocols-Algori...
    - pyuser583 6y ago
      One could memorize Applied Cryptography, and still not be qualified to create a new encryption algorithm. That requires advanced education. Additionally, Applied Cryptography is an outdated (“classic”?) book. It’s most recent introduction clearly states this, and refers the reader to a different book (“Cryptographic Engineering”) for more current information. Can you give me a bibliography of books readable by a person without an advanced degree, that would teach them how to create brand new, secure fully homomorphic encryption algorithm? Edit: my spell checker changed “homomorphic” to “homophobic!”
daniel-s 6y ago
Your list is a list of countries that also happen to be at the top of this one [1]. They are the countries with the most freedom and capitalism. People are generally happy when they're free to own property and become prosperous. [1] https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
- vaidhy 6y ago
  I think you are confusing social democracy and communism[1]. I agree with you that people should be free to own property and become wealthy. However, I do not think it should come at the cost of removing social net for the less lucky. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
  - daniel-s 6y ago
    Feel free to disagree with me, but I believe I very well understand what "social democracy" is supposed to mean.
  - jedmeyers 6y ago
    Is that the same social democracy as in Russian Social Democratic Labour Party?
    - jason0597 6y ago
      No, it isn't.
grandmczeb 6y ago
> this same group here has been heavily against these ideas because they are socialist. This is a caricature. It's not much different than saying people are for free college because they're lazy and don't want to work for a living. > I have a feeling that US prefers a "dog eat dog world" because everyone here thinks they will be the ones doing the eating and caring for the underdog is a sign of weakness/waste of resources. I have a feeling the reason you think this way is because you haven't made a serious effort to empathize with the people who disagree with you.
eezurr 6y ago
hmm[0] If I was the leader of this country, I'd see placing market pressure on the citizens would coerce them to yield to market efficiency. That is to say, if people have to pay for college, it would push more people towards degrees that run the economic/productive component of this engine (due to the higher salaries from the demand). The wealth generated from this omni-cultural push will benefit the country, both it's leaders and it's citizens. Deep down in the depths of the human mind is a little chunk of the brain that is terrified of death and inferiority. This goop collectively bubbles up to the surface sometimes, taking the form of war. If this is one of the prices to pay to live in a country that no other country in the world could conquer, i'd say it's worth it. Human history is full of evidence that reality. [0]This comment is just a one dimensional thought experiment
DoreenMichele 6y ago
On a side note, I have a feeling that US prefers a "dog eat dog world" because everyone here thinks they will be the ones doing the eating and caring for the underdog is a sign of weakness/waste of resources. The default or dominant culture in America is upper class cis het white male. Historically, yes, those people could pretty count on being the ones doing the eating. Women and people of color were the ones taking up many other roles and it was possible to sometimes care about them -- or just treat them like absolute crap while benefiting from a relationship to them because they had little to no recourse -- without that impinging on the professional part of your life where, by default, killer instinct could rule the day. I think part of what is messing things up is the rise in human rights for women and people of color. This is disrupting these historical patterns which have something of a tendency to carry forward. We are largely failing to ask "So, just what kinds of patterns actually work for a world in which we assume all adults have similar rights and opportunities?" Many people are quite oblivious to the many layers of baked in assumptions about, for example, how work gets organized and how we provide benefits to the people. It is largely invisible the degree to which we assume a man is doing certain kinds of work and there is probably a woman at home doing the cooking and cleaning and other "women's work." And I tend to get a lot of flak anytime I try to comment on it because I'm a woman and HN is overwhelmingly male, so people (seem to) think I'm some man-hating, feminazi who is intentionally shit-stirring or something and tend to not think I'm someone who has actively studied the space because of the ways it has negatively impacted my life, so I'm somewhat knowledgeable about such topics.
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  I became a single father when my youngest was a baby. I was juggling a baby plus a two year old and all that comes with it (obviously I couldn't breastfeed) with full time work. I saw the results of years of womens studies first hand. Zero services available to fathers of babies since every single government funded program was only for mothers. Being questioned about potential unsavoury activies because my two year old said they like wrestling at home with dad and everyone distrusts a father who is raising a baby by himself. How the entire gender studies academia misses that the culture in raising babies is hostile to men I don't know but I trust their professional opinions about as far as I can piss. EDIT: I'll flesh this out with an example of why I don't value liberal arts degrees. Approaching one Christmas I was struggling. My work didn't go on break until 5pm on the 23rd, I was juggling that plus parenting plus all the other tasks that go into preparing for a family Christmas. I stumbled across a news article that I would summarise as "We need to thank all the women that are working hard right now to make Christmas special for us". I emailed this journalist, a graduate of the liberal arts, and mentioned that there are a number of men out there in situations like men working towards the same goal and the gendered language can be harmful. The journalist reponded that it's mostly women so there isn't an issue with this language. The same journalist who writes about how we need to make STEM more hosptitable to women, etc. Her formal liberal arts education only taught her to see gender issues in one direction and didn't give her to critical ability to think about gender issues in a broader sense. So yes, I don't value when people have some parts of a liberal arts education.

subjctvtime8 6y ago

I didn’t get a CS degree. Just started programming when I was 8 or 9. I’m in the $200k/yr, house paid off, never had college debt, and 23 year-ish of gains in stocks following a “buy and hold” approach since the 90s. Apple at $8-$9/share right before that iMac was a good call. I also have deep and engaging conversations with mathematicians and physicists. I’ve tutored them in odd math they’ve simply never encountered. Unless collective resources are needed for something like a nuclear reactor design study, a whole lot of application doesn’t require the college debt. It’s almost as if we just need to agree on what some things are for social stability reasons, and we can debate the rest. Instead we seem keen to be filtered for willingness to go into debt on education and housing, so we can justify demanding $200k/year for something open source programmers do for fun. I’m pretty sure a whole lot of why we do things is satisfy social memes, and little to do with economic utility.

sp527 6y ago
If you’ve been working since the 90s and are only making $200k/yr in tech (less than the total compensation of some new grads going into FAANG), then you’re actually a case study on behalf of the value of a (good) CS degree.
- nevertoolate 6y ago
  Funny to read about these salaries from Europe, where you can hire two pretty GREAT programmers from that money. For me it doesn’t tell anything about university degree AT ALL.
  - P_I_Staker 6y ago
    OP's perspective is clearly very skewed, even for the USA. $100-150k is considered absurd compensation for most of the country that isn't silicon valley.
- subjctvtime8 6y ago
  Well, I don’t live in SF. Salaries are relative. Those grads haven’t been offloading overvalued investment properties bought in the 2010s. That paid off much cheaper properties from the mid-00s, which are much closer into the urban hub. Curious to see how much they’ll be worth as the move to rebuild the urban area as live/work/retail structures replace the houses there now. Even if this bubble bursts, they’re paid off (as well as the house I live in). I don’t make as much salary, but did mention I’ve been their stock. FAANG is making me rich otherwise. Given my more “midwestern” cost of living, I could probably retire. But again like I said I’ve been coding since I was a kid. It’s like speaking English and making a PB&J for me. I’d be doing it anyway. It’s like free money without the Silicon Valley bullshitshow.

P_I_Staker 6y ago

Yeah, that's my stance too, even though it can come off as arrogant. The way I'd put it is "don't finance an education that won't get you a good paying job". I know some of these degrees can get you a foot in to a job that doesn't pay crazy well, but is fulfilling... That's okay too. It's also okay if that's your passion and you get someone else to pay for it.

alimw 6y ago
Regardless of any impact on employability, it's pretty clear how society as a whole suffers when large sections of the public are so ill-versed in the general state of human knowledge that conspiracy theories flourish among them.