4 ms·

The world is far more complex today, and many more professions require an advanced education. The vast expansion of academia has drawbacks, but it was necessar

The world is far more complex today, and many more professions require an advanced education. The vast expansion of academia has drawbacks, but it was necessary.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Indeed, and just in population terms the scale isn't even comparable anymore. Consider the 1920s, 1930s etc when academia produced famous luminaries like e.g. Bertrand Russell or Tolkien or Wittgenstein or Gödel or Whitehead or Heidegger or etc. etc. etc. The population of the world was 1/4 of what it is now -- but even more so the world of academia was closed to probably 99% of that world population ... if you lived outside Europe or North America ... forget it. If you were a woman? Nope. Not from a northern European ethnic background? Not upper class? Also forget it. So in reality the pool of possible candidates was very small who could rise up through this "meritocracy." It was a very defined small fish tank. Easy to look into the tank and see the biggest fishes.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  Note how you have no trouble enumerating famous academics from pre-1960s. Shouldn’t we have much more such famous people, if your theory is true that institutional obstacles kept a lot of geniuses out? What are the „luminaries like e.g. Bertrand Russell or Tolkien or Wittgenstein or Gödel or Whitehead or Heidegger“ of today? There should be many more! The progress of science should speed up, the number of groundbreaking papers should grow. Yet the opposite is true [0]. Could it instead be that progress in science is driven by a few geniuses, and 95% of academia nowadays is just a mechanism of turning grants into (often fraudulent) papers [1], suffocating the institution of university as a byproduct? [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x [1] https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    You either didn't bother reading what I wrote, or you're just interested in hearing yourself speak or both.
    - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
      It seems to me you didn’t grasp what I wrote, which is unsurprising.
      - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
        keep on with the fantasy, UberMensch. It's pretty funny.
efitz 2y ago
Citation needed. Because of the glut of degrees, many jobs now use a college degree as a filtering mechanism. This is not at all indicative that a degree is needed to be successful at the job. Likewise some professions do the same. A doctor does not need a college degree; they need a medical school degree; medical schools force them to get both. Same for law school (side note: it is possible to practice law in a few US states without a law degree but you must effectively apprentice for a period of time). For most of human history the primary way people learned job skills was apprenticeships; I think we would be wise to return to this model.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  College decrees are used as a filtering mechanism because that is one of the last remaining methods that have not been made illegal by Civil Rights Law. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-...
  - whoknowsidont 2y ago
    ...except for all the other methods that still exist and are quite excellent. It's the damn civil rights laws preventing us from using preconceived knowledge! That's definitely what's been holding us back.

The world is far more complex today, and many more professions require an advanced education. The vast expansion of academia has drawbacks, but it was necessary.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago

Indeed, and just in population terms the scale isn't even comparable anymore. Consider the 1920s, 1930s etc when academia produced famous luminaries like e.g. Bertrand Russell or Tolkien or Wittgenstein or Gödel or Whitehead or Heidegger or etc. etc. etc. The population of the world was 1/4 of what it is now -- but even more so the world of academia was closed to probably 99% of that world population ... if you lived outside Europe or North America ... forget it. If you were a woman? Nope. Not from a northern European ethnic background? Not upper class? Also forget it. So in reality the pool of possible candidates was very small who could rise up through this "meritocracy." It was a very defined small fish tank. Easy to look into the tank and see the biggest fishes.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
Note how you have no trouble enumerating famous academics from pre-1960s. Shouldn’t we have much more such famous people, if your theory is true that institutional obstacles kept a lot of geniuses out? What are the „luminaries like e.g. Bertrand Russell or Tolkien or Wittgenstein or Gödel or Whitehead or Heidegger“ of today? There should be many more! The progress of science should speed up, the number of groundbreaking papers should grow. Yet the opposite is true [0]. Could it instead be that progress in science is driven by a few geniuses, and 95% of academia nowadays is just a mechanism of turning grants into (often fraudulent) papers [1], suffocating the institution of university as a byproduct? [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x [1] https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  You either didn't bother reading what I wrote, or you're just interested in hearing yourself speak or both.
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    It seems to me you didn’t grasp what I wrote, which is unsurprising.
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      keep on with the fantasy, UberMensch. It's pretty funny.

efitz 2y ago

Citation needed. Because of the glut of degrees, many jobs now use a college degree as a filtering mechanism. This is not at all indicative that a degree is needed to be successful at the job. Likewise some professions do the same. A doctor does not need a college degree; they need a medical school degree; medical schools force them to get both. Same for law school (side note: it is possible to practice law in a few US states without a law degree but you must effectively apprentice for a period of time). For most of human history the primary way people learned job skills was apprenticeships; I think we would be wise to return to this model.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
College decrees are used as a filtering mechanism because that is one of the last remaining methods that have not been made illegal by Civil Rights Law. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-...
- whoknowsidont 2y ago
  ...except for all the other methods that still exist and are quite excellent. It's the damn civil rights laws preventing us from using preconceived knowledge! That's definitely what's been holding us back.