Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He was truly very dull, something he himself admitted You may wish to rethink this.
You'll have to give me good reasons to. No, downvoting is not one.
Was not the linked article sufficient?
MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”
191–200 of 281 posts
Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's surprising that it's taking so long. The wealthiest have always found ways to preserve their wealth and Ivy League institutions have played a role in that. Take some smart people, a lot of people that are good at fitting the mold that looks best, mix your rich kids in there and call the paint one color. Remember, George W. Bush (all politics aside, just looking at him in terms of intellectual prowess) graduated…
What do you really know about George W. Bush? http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/
Assuming that that article is correct, all that proves is that smart people often make dumb decisions, which we've known for a long time.
Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”
#193I have had the idea lately that liberal arts universities should be replaced with a year or two of critical thinking, logic, and emotional intelligence training.
These are the skills necessary to enter the "modern" economy outside of STEM and trades, where the most valuable skills are thinking and emotional intelligence (relationship development and management).
Link up with progressive employers who recognize the value of this training and are willing to take on young graduates and unleash them on their own internal domain knowledge for a couple of years.
Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's surprising that it's taking so long. The wealthiest have always found ways to preserve their wealth and Ivy League institutions have played a role in that. Take some smart people, a lot of people that are good at fitting the mold that looks best, mix your rich kids in there and call the paint one color. Remember, George W. Bush (all politics aside, just looking at him in terms of intellectual prowess) graduated…
What do you really know about George W. Bush? http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/
It's actually better for GWB's legacy if he was an easily manipulated simpleton. If he's truly a secret (to all observable evidence) genius, that also makes him a heinous war criminal and corrupt crony capitalist.
Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That used to be the case, but now corporations require you to pass their own exam before they hire you. You mean an ... interview?! Ok, that was purposely obtuse, but I don't see how an extension of a company's interview process (ensuring, through their own testing, that candidates meet the proper qualifications without school bias) is a bad thing. Or how it signals an 'inevitable disruption of modern higher ed'. W…
I think we are still quite a long way away from removing the school bias. In my experience, the large tech companies actively recruit from select few universities (and prefer applicants from those universities). The resume screeners / sourcers are biased to look for top schools also. They often don't want to risk spending time on a candidate from a school with which they are not familiar. Most qualified applicants ne…
We don't need to remove school bias. We need to create new/better schools that others can trust will put out better results than what comes out of universities.
I can't tell you how much I have urged, at times forced, my friends in CS who didn't learn programming since 7th grade (me) to do more before they graduated. Those who listened and did an intensive summer apprenticeship with a student founded web agency I worked at previously have progressed to the point where you probably couldn't tell they came from my university (which, is to say you probably never heard of it and if you got to know it, you wouldn't think very highly of it).
Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you really know about George W. Bush? http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/
If Bush is that smart, what does that tell us about his questionable decisions on other things? Why start a war in Iraq based on WMD's that weren't there, and a government that was not in league with Osama bin Laden? Why start dragnet surveillance? Why let the CIA torture people? Why do the ridiculous tax cuts at the same time we're spending big dollar on a war? If Bush is that smart, he must have good motives for th…
I can't see any scenario where deciding against extending surveillance in that manner is the wrong decision for the executive: the potential downside of not doing it is very high (in the event of an actual attack you will be hit by your opponents for endangering the public); the potential downside of doing it is only criticism from the very small number of voters who take communication privacy very seriously.
Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have not joined the university you are not part of the "in" group. There is a perception among people that if you attend a "prestigious" university that you are smarter than someone who attends a community college. I find that crazy. Both teach basically the same thing. If they are both accredited, then it is almost indistinguishable. Who would you think is smarter off the cuff, a Harvard graduate, or someone…
> Both teach basically the same thing. They should, but they don't. Teachers make a difference. I'm at a mediocre university and watching MIT lectures has made me realize I'm missing out on literally mountains of knowledge. Never mind the qualification process, spending several years with intelligent people (both students and faculty) makes a huge difference.
Keep in mind that any videos you're seeing are out there because they're mostly very good examples of lectures. Any large research university has lots of classes with very poor lectures. Not to say that the material isn't in depth and peer/TA interactions aren't valuable but don't assume YouTube and OCW are representative of lecture quality.
Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”
#198I think what we need are apprenticeships. I.e. a prominent research group hires kids after the remedial first two years of traditional college curriculum (or something like it plus a couple of years in an entry level job), and has them work on the actual problems at hand, filling the knowledge gaps as needed. It is no longer possible to know much of anything, so we should specialize and diversify at the same time, me…
How is this different from existing internships? Or are you suggesting that they be made graduation requirements?
Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's surprising that it's taking so long. The wealthiest have always found ways to preserve their wealth and Ivy League institutions have played a role in that. Take some smart people, a lot of people that are good at fitting the mold that looks best, mix your rich kids in there and call the paint one color. Remember, George W. Bush (all politics aside, just looking at him in terms of intellectual prowess) graduated…
What do you really know about George W. Bush? http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/
Bush?
When asked a question, he'd never give an answer that illustrated a deep depth of analysis.
Now he certainly could have done the analysis all the time, but he never spoke about it so I did not have any insight into was his thinking process was.
Now, I never thought he was dumb but his persona of well-mannered everyman never slipped even one bit, so if it's a mask, I have no idea what is beneath it. He could be average or a genius or low intelligence with extreme charisma. I don't know.
Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you really know about George W. Bush? http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/
If Bush is that smart, what does that tell us about his questionable decisions on other things? Why start a war in Iraq based on WMD's that weren't there, and a government that was not in league with Osama bin Laden? Why start dragnet surveillance? Why let the CIA torture people? Why do the ridiculous tax cuts at the same time we're spending big dollar on a war? If Bush is that smart, he must have good motives for th…
I've always been a believer that smart people can come to very different conclusions on how to do things.
Just look at the number of people who fall within the Alan Kay camp of mutable state vs those who like Haskell.
Look at those who think Lisp should have ruled the world versus those who believe Prolog just never had a fair shake.
There's a bunch of issues that reasonable people can reasonably disagree on.
Granted when it comes to politics I believe all motivation is hidden because ture radicals can't win the vote by coming out and telling people they plan a revolution. They have to claim to be only slightly off center, then continually reframe the issue till people begin to see things their way.
Guantanamo Bay was a great example. If you'd asked Congress "do you want to authorize a secret camp to torture dissidents just offshore from the continental USA?" then they would have said no. Yet now that the camp exists, the question has been shifted to "Do you want to close our black-ops torture camp, and move all those people with grievances (legitimate or not) against us to your home state's prison system?"
Now even Congressmen who hate torture feel unwilling to go down in history as the one who let 'terrorists' into gen-pop, even if in fact our prison system is perfectly capable of handling dangerous individuals (like all the homegrown terrorists we have).