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I am absolutely overflowing with computer science PhDs from IBM, CA, and academia. I would give away 10 pompous entitled know-it-all Computer Science PhD types

by dollar 13y ago

I am absolutely overflowing with computer science PhDs from IBM, CA, and academia. I would give away 10 pompous entitled know-it-all Computer Science PhD types for just one single self-taught know-it-all. Maybe the real problem is that your over-achieving self-taught know-it-all types are unchallenged and agitated by your basic curriculum. Maybe the education system in this country is so abysmally broken, that professors waste their time criticizing talented students on the Internet, while those talented students sit unchallenged in boring basic classes they should not have to take in the first place.

vault_ 13y ago
Chill out a bit. Classes are for more people than the self-taught know-it-all's in the room. Most of those people attend the class because they want to learn the "basic curriculum" and they probably aren't interested in listening to some self-taught guy argue with the professor. The author of the article is not condemning people for being self-taught; he's condemning them for being arrogant. I would self-identify as a self-taught know-it-all and understand the behavior he's talking about in the article: pointing out minor inaccuracies in things the professor says, answering every question (to the exclusion of others being able to answer), and asking irrelevant "questions" largely just to demonstrate how much better you are than the other students. It's really not that hard to realize that this behavior is disruptive and avoid it.
- dollar 13y ago
  Arrogance is a disruptive personality characteristic whether the individual is an academoc or self-taught, and no one likes a know-it-all of any type. However, the behaviors you describe are extremely common among gifted and talented individuals, and are part of the reason that such individuals often struggle in the general student population (and real life). Often that talent, enthusiasm, and zest for sharing knowledge that these people possess is interpreted as arrogance. It's no excuse for the behavior - clearly quirky talented types must live in society - but it does mean that the education system should account for these individuals and help them down the road. But it doesn't. The system fails miserably in this regard, and the author of this article needs to realize he is part of the problem.
BruceIV 13y ago
One tendency of the arrogantly self-taught that the poster didn't mention is that they don't know what they don't know (and aren't willing to learn, because they know it all already). Even though the majority of the course is well below their competence level, they miss out on some critical foundational things, but persist in their arrogance. As an illustrative example, I was a graduate TA for an undergrad algorithms course this term. I spent two days after the course ended arguing about the final assignment grade with one of these self-taught know-it-alls - the problem was a dynamic programming problem which could be solved in quadratic time, and which the student had solved recursively in exponential time. He repeatedly insisted that his solution was "mostly correct", and that he should get some points for it, and I explained three times the theoretical reasons why he was wrong. Eventually I also pointed out that his solution was about one trillion times slower than my reference solution on an instance of size 50 (mine ran imperceptibly fast, his hit the 30 second timeout) - I don't even know the words for how much slower it was on the largest test case (of size 2000). Students like that may have talent, but without the humility to realize they have something to learn from others, I'm sure they'll end up putting code like that in production and costing their employers real money.

by dollar 13y ago

vault_ 13y ago

Chill out a bit. Classes are for more people than the self-taught know-it-all's in the room. Most of those people attend the class because they want to learn the "basic curriculum" and they probably aren't interested in listening to some self-taught guy argue with the professor. The author of the article is not condemning people for being self-taught; he's condemning them for being arrogant. I would self-identify as a self-taught know-it-all and understand the behavior he's talking about in the article: pointing out minor inaccuracies in things the professor says, answering every question (to the exclusion of others being able to answer), and asking irrelevant "questions" largely just to demonstrate how much better you are than the other students. It's really not that hard to realize that this behavior is disruptive and avoid it.

dollar 13y ago
Arrogance is a disruptive personality characteristic whether the individual is an academoc or self-taught, and no one likes a know-it-all of any type. However, the behaviors you describe are extremely common among gifted and talented individuals, and are part of the reason that such individuals often struggle in the general student population (and real life). Often that talent, enthusiasm, and zest for sharing knowledge that these people possess is interpreted as arrogance. It's no excuse for the behavior - clearly quirky talented types must live in society - but it does mean that the education system should account for these individuals and help them down the road. But it doesn't. The system fails miserably in this regard, and the author of this article needs to realize he is part of the problem.

BruceIV 13y ago

One tendency of the arrogantly self-taught that the poster didn't mention is that they don't know what they don't know (and aren't willing to learn, because they know it all already). Even though the majority of the course is well below their competence level, they miss out on some critical foundational things, but persist in their arrogance. As an illustrative example, I was a graduate TA for an undergrad algorithms course this term. I spent two days after the course ended arguing about the final assignment grade with one of these self-taught know-it-alls - the problem was a dynamic programming problem which could be solved in quadratic time, and which the student had solved recursively in exponential time. He repeatedly insisted that his solution was "mostly correct", and that he should get some points for it, and I explained three times the theoretical reasons why he was wrong. Eventually I also pointed out that his solution was about one trillion times slower than my reference solution on an instance of size 50 (mine ran imperceptibly fast, his hit the 30 second timeout) - I don't even know the words for how much slower it was on the largest test case (of size 2000). Students like that may have talent, but without the humility to realize they have something to learn from others, I'm sure they'll end up putting code like that in production and costing their employers real money.