5 ms·

You could just look at the data in the spreadsheet instead of speculating? I kinda think this is exactly part of the point he is making.

civilized 5y ago
Or you could.
- mjfl 5y ago
  - thekashifmalik 5y ago
    lmao This cracked me up more than it should have!
    - ask_b123 5y ago
      Honest question, why is this funny?
  - civilized 5y ago
    My keyboard and mouse are broken. This is actually true. I'm typing this on a phone.
- luma 5y ago
  The person to which you are responding isn't asking a bunch of questions that, presumably, was answered by the author in the OP. You were. I'd suggest reading the article again as I think you've missed the critical point: the data points in one direction, and he has provided mountains of it. It doesn't align with what you've been told all of your life, so instead of looking at the data you argue from the basis of ignorance by engaging what you feel to be "common sense". In doing so, you are doing the exact thing the author is writing about.
tsimionescu 5y ago
If someone said they came up with a spreadsheet that quantitatively proves that Homer's Odyssey is a worse piece of art than the Mona Lisa, would you go through their quantitative analysis, or simply dismiss their argument on the face of it? Education's value to society and the individual is inherently unquantifiable with today's tools. Maybe someday we will have a mathematical model of the human mind and a theory of socio-economics that can actually handle such things, but we are extremely far from anything of the sort.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  Are you saying you wouldn't take a look at this spreadsheet? I definitely would. Though I don't think it's possible it would certainly be interesting to see someone try, and if it failed to be interesting I could entertain myself by writing a comment explaining how they had failed. You say that education's value is "unquantifiable" but that's not quite even wrong. The question isn't "What is the ineffable value of education?" But rather, "How much should we be spending on education?" and that is perfectly quantifiable. Indeed, we spend some quantity of money on education currently - should we spend more or less?
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    The discussion of how much money to spend on education should not be done based on some expected value of education. It should instead be done by polling various interested parties on how they feel about current the current education system, what resources they are missing (if any), what types of spending are not producing useful results etc. You don't have to quantify the expected value in order to decide on costs - this is only done as a reductionist homo economicus type model. For a more direct example, when deciding to go watch a movie, do you do some computation of how much your net worth will increase by virtue of seeing the movie, and compare that to the ticket price? Or are you simply acting on practically unquantifiable subjective feelings of enjoyment about the movie, and comparing the price to entirely different goods (e.g. you probably wouldn't go if the ticket price is 10000$, because you can buy other things you feel are much more enjoyable/important with that kind of money).

civilized 5y ago

Or you could.

mjfl 5y ago
- thekashifmalik 5y ago
  lmao This cracked me up more than it should have!
  - ask_b123 5y ago
    Honest question, why is this funny?
- civilized 5y ago
  My keyboard and mouse are broken. This is actually true. I'm typing this on a phone.
luma 5y ago
The person to which you are responding isn't asking a bunch of questions that, presumably, was answered by the author in the OP. You were. I'd suggest reading the article again as I think you've missed the critical point: the data points in one direction, and he has provided mountains of it. It doesn't align with what you've been told all of your life, so instead of looking at the data you argue from the basis of ignorance by engaging what you feel to be "common sense". In doing so, you are doing the exact thing the author is writing about.

tsimionescu 5y ago

If someone said they came up with a spreadsheet that quantitatively proves that Homer's Odyssey is a worse piece of art than the Mona Lisa, would you go through their quantitative analysis, or simply dismiss their argument on the face of it? Education's value to society and the individual is inherently unquantifiable with today's tools. Maybe someday we will have a mathematical model of the human mind and a theory of socio-economics that can actually handle such things, but we are extremely far from anything of the sort.

ALittleLight 5y ago
Are you saying you wouldn't take a look at this spreadsheet? I definitely would. Though I don't think it's possible it would certainly be interesting to see someone try, and if it failed to be interesting I could entertain myself by writing a comment explaining how they had failed. You say that education's value is "unquantifiable" but that's not quite even wrong. The question isn't "What is the ineffable value of education?" But rather, "How much should we be spending on education?" and that is perfectly quantifiable. Indeed, we spend some quantity of money on education currently - should we spend more or less?
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  The discussion of how much money to spend on education should not be done based on some expected value of education. It should instead be done by polling various interested parties on how they feel about current the current education system, what resources they are missing (if any), what types of spending are not producing useful results etc. You don't have to quantify the expected value in order to decide on costs - this is only done as a reductionist homo economicus type model. For a more direct example, when deciding to go watch a movie, do you do some computation of how much your net worth will increase by virtue of seeing the movie, and compare that to the ticket price? Or are you simply acting on practically unquantifiable subjective feelings of enjoyment about the movie, and comparing the price to entirely different goods (e.g. you probably wouldn't go if the ticket price is 10000$, because you can buy other things you feel are much more enjoyable/important with that kind of money).