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It seems quite obvious to me there is a lot of growth left with information being close to free now - and much of the adult world still being VERY poorly educat

It seems quite obvious to me there is a lot of growth left with information being close to free now - and much of the adult world still being VERY poorly educated. The current children that replace them will be much more educated due to free information. I don't see how this doesn't create a huge jump in productivity in the developing world (~50% of the population).

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
Good point, I remember seeing a report a little while ago about literacy rates even in the U.S. and they were surprisingly bad (a quick lookup on Wikipedia shows "According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level") That said, I'm not sure it's a guarantee that kids will be more educated and productive. I spent quite a bit of time in Africa (Kenya and Cameroon for projects, Uganda for holiday) last year and many people are relatively highly educated (e.g. local university degree) but still cannot get work, access to finance to start their own biz and be productive, or as soon as they make some money their business will get taxed (legally or illegally) to death. So other factors beyond education holding folks back, and even if it was just enabled from online learning, I think we'd see much more takeup of MOOCs and the like. Edit: Grammar
captainbland 4y ago
I think a big - maybe huge and insurmountable - barrier to this is the sheer amount of junk attention sinks and outright wrong information on exactly the same medium that the good, free information is on.
- stouset 4y ago
  I remember being naïve and thinking the Internet would solve the issue of spreading high-quality information far and wide. What I (and I think many others) completely neglected to realize was that it also made misinformation exponentially easier to spread.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Misinformation is not making people worse programmers or worse engineers or worse doctors or worse lawyers at the same rate (or higher) that good information is making more people better. Misinformation is mostly affecting a relatively small portion (~10%) of the population that is predisposed to believe conspiracy. It's not like your BiL who thinks Lizard People are running the world would've won the Nobel prize in Physics if it weren't for that Facebook post by your aunt that rotted his brain. Information as a whole is good (so far).
  - stickfigure 4y ago
    I think the misinformation risks are overstated. Qanon-ers are a tiny part of the population. Even antivaxers are a distinct minority. Good information wins out, even if the process is not perfect.
    - esrauch 4y ago
      Are there more Qanon-ers or Coursera users though? Even if the risks are overstated (which I'm not sure about) it seems like the amount of quality learning happening online rounds to zero. Even narrowly, I'm not sure that more true information about vaccines is spread online than false information, partly because I think it's actually pretty low amount of true information being spread. Ten years ago there was a lot of optimism that moocs we're going to bring education to the masses, make $40k/year tuition entirely obsolete, but that seems to basically have entirely failed.
      - stickfigure 4y ago
        I think you're defining "quality learning" too narrowly. Coursera, Kahn Academy, et al are great but for real-world practical learning nothing beats the millions of videos on youtube on how to change the headlight on your 1998 Toyota Tercel or how to build a drip irrigation system or how to install DD-WRT on your old router or how to cook birria or how to operate a grigri. It's amazing living with what seems like all human knowledge on tap. We haven't quite reached the point where you can call out "Tank, I need a pilot program for a B-212 helicopter" but damn it sure gets closer every year.

atlasunshrugged 4y ago

Good point, I remember seeing a report a little while ago about literacy rates even in the U.S. and they were surprisingly bad (a quick lookup on Wikipedia shows "According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level") That said, I'm not sure it's a guarantee that kids will be more educated and productive. I spent quite a bit of time in Africa (Kenya and Cameroon for projects, Uganda for holiday) last year and many people are relatively highly educated (e.g. local university degree) but still cannot get work, access to finance to start their own biz and be productive, or as soon as they make some money their business will get taxed (legally or illegally) to death. So other factors beyond education holding folks back, and even if it was just enabled from online learning, I think we'd see much more takeup of MOOCs and the like. Edit: Grammar

captainbland 4y ago

I think a big - maybe huge and insurmountable - barrier to this is the sheer amount of junk attention sinks and outright wrong information on exactly the same medium that the good, free information is on.

stouset 4y ago
I remember being naïve and thinking the Internet would solve the issue of spreading high-quality information far and wide. What I (and I think many others) completely neglected to realize was that it also made misinformation exponentially easier to spread.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Misinformation is not making people worse programmers or worse engineers or worse doctors or worse lawyers at the same rate (or higher) that good information is making more people better. Misinformation is mostly affecting a relatively small portion (~10%) of the population that is predisposed to believe conspiracy. It's not like your BiL who thinks Lizard People are running the world would've won the Nobel prize in Physics if it weren't for that Facebook post by your aunt that rotted his brain. Information as a whole is good (so far).
- stickfigure 4y ago
  I think the misinformation risks are overstated. Qanon-ers are a tiny part of the population. Even antivaxers are a distinct minority. Good information wins out, even if the process is not perfect.
  - esrauch 4y ago
    Are there more Qanon-ers or Coursera users though? Even if the risks are overstated (which I'm not sure about) it seems like the amount of quality learning happening online rounds to zero. Even narrowly, I'm not sure that more true information about vaccines is spread online than false information, partly because I think it's actually pretty low amount of true information being spread. Ten years ago there was a lot of optimism that moocs we're going to bring education to the masses, make $40k/year tuition entirely obsolete, but that seems to basically have entirely failed.
    - stickfigure 4y ago
      I think you're defining "quality learning" too narrowly. Coursera, Kahn Academy, et al are great but for real-world practical learning nothing beats the millions of videos on youtube on how to change the headlight on your 1998 Toyota Tercel or how to build a drip irrigation system or how to install DD-WRT on your old router or how to cook birria or how to operate a grigri. It's amazing living with what seems like all human knowledge on tap. We haven't quite reached the point where you can call out "Tank, I need a pilot program for a B-212 helicopter" but damn it sure gets closer every year.