Are these the blood donors?
What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
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Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#42Brilliant technical minds denied the opportunity to gain awareness of the world through liberal arts exposure, are that much more easily pushed into working towards essentially sociopathic endeavors (like making it easier to sue media outlets wealthy people don't like out of existence).
As a former literature grad student I was liking where the first clause of your sentence was headed, but then you ruined it with the sort of denunciatory name-calling ("sociopathic") that the HN guidelines ask you not to do in comments here. We're trying for a discourse in which people don't hit each other with such sticks, so please don't bring them in to conversation.
I took the OP to mean "lacking in empathy, contextual awareness, and premised on a specific—and potentially very damaging—notion of capitalism." Based on the interviews I've read and the description of the Thiel fellows, this seems like a fair characterization, if hyperbole.
Rather, I think "sociopathic" is deficient in that it underplays the structural determinants of such behaviors, while placing judgment on the fellows themselves. That's not fair—they are basically high schoolers, often without the cultural capital and social analytical skills conferred by top schools.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#43> none of the successful dropouts ever went back to school. Bill Gates didn’t go back. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t go back. To go back would imply personal failure. I suppose if you view college solely as a means to an end (success), then sure; however, a liberal education has value in and of itself. But I suppose the above thinking is what we get when we make college a prerequisite for secure employment. People go to col…
That isn't a very empathetic perspective. Consider perhaps that it has nothing to do with ego and nothing to do with thinking that college has nothing to teach you. Instead, it might be the case that these individuals think either or both of:
1) Yes, college could teach me a lot, but my resources (time and prime years) are finite, and I'm willing to make a tradeoff that forgoes some valuable elements in favor of an arrangement that helps me achieve my personal goals
2) College is not an option for me because it's incompatible with the reward centers in my brain and things like entrance exams, prerequisites, and the rigor and structure of academia are environments in which I flounder, not thrive.
There are many experiences in life that have value, but it is up to each individual to decide for themselves what they should pack into a few short years. It could just as easily be argued that the egoism is on the other side of the table for being so dismissive of alternative paths to success.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#44> none of the successful dropouts ever went back to school. Bill Gates didn’t go back. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t go back. To go back would imply personal failure. I suppose if you view college solely as a means to an end (success), then sure; however, a liberal education has value in and of itself. But I suppose the above thinking is what we get when we make college a prerequisite for secure employment. People go to col…
An alternative view is: "If you're already successful, everything you could learn at a college you can also learn out of college (see: the internet)".
Yeah, that was Bill Gates' answer. He takes "classes" all the time. @4:35
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-10-17/the-david-ru...
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
For example: I have an undergrad degree in computer science. I hope to one day be successful enough to get an MBA from MIT or Harvard. Both $100,000+ for a two year program. That may sound funny because if I can afford that tuition without a giant lifestyle change (like selling my house)[1] it means I've already made it, so why do I need to even get the MBA? In fact the average salary for an MBA grad from one of thos…
I'm curious why you would do an MBA if not for career advancement. I can see someone going back to school to study something like mathematics/literature because they love the subject but not MBA.
> I can see someone going back to school to study something like mathematics/literature because they love the subject but not
I happen to like business! Kind of like if I decided to go into Medieval Literature. That fact an MBA is useful to my career is second to that I enjoy it.
With that said, if it does help me grow my next company larger without having to hire a CEO, or if it gets me a CTO job at a fortune 100, just a nice bonus.
Also, a lot of MBAs are a little smug when they talk to Software Engineers. Like "You need me." It would be nice to throw that back at them. Granted I know us Software Engineer throw it the other way just as often. Every technical founder things they don't need a business founder. And every business founder thinks they can outsource the job of technical founder.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
For example: I have an undergrad degree in computer science. I hope to one day be successful enough to get an MBA from MIT or Harvard. Both $100,000+ for a two year program. That may sound funny because if I can afford that tuition without a giant lifestyle change (like selling my house)[1] it means I've already made it, so why do I need to even get the MBA? In fact the average salary for an MBA grad from one of thos…
I'm curious why you would do an MBA if not for career advancement. I can see someone going back to school to study something like mathematics/literature because they love the subject but not MBA.
You can't imagine someone being as interested in business as others are in math?
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#47Just another front in Thiel's continued war against education. You need an education and experience in order to make the kinds of meaningful breakthroughs we need these days; the valley pushes the college drop-out mythos a little too much.
You need knowledge and smarts, one is given by your genetics the other is free online. "The liberal education" is granfalloon pushed by a rent-seeking administrative and professorial class. When we outlawed IQ tests for employment, we became unable to train engineers and other high-IQ professions in house, as minds capable of doing these jobs are rare, companies need to pre-filter before investing resources. As unive…
I think you're right that there is a sleight-of-hand in the modern higher educational system: given that most of the substantive knowledge is publicly available (e.g. I can download any textbook I want), they really offer something different than technical knowledge. I think that the real product is networks: if you attend a top university, you trade money to be placed with a bunch of very smart people with lots of social capital, and the credentials conferred upon graduation give you access to to other networks afterwards (professional, social, and more often than not, some hybrid of the two).
Where I disagree strongly with the above "granfalloon" critique of liberal education is that I think it's a side effect of bringing together people from geographically disperse regions and widely varying values and backgrounds and making them live and work together. Profs just offer a framework to think about it, especially relating it to a historical context.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#48What a vapid puff piece. For example:
> It became one of the most elite credentials for young entrepreneurs.
Umm, really? "Elite" in the classical sense of "drawn out of the larger pool", sure, but in the sense of somehow being better than the run of the mill group, I don't see it.
> none of the successful dropouts ever went back to school.
Famously Michal Dell did to make his mum happy. Woz, under an alias.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
An alternative view is: "If you're already successful, everything you could learn at a college you can also learn out of college (see: the internet)".
That would be an incorrect view. First, few are so motivated that they'd devote years to self-learning at the same scale as university provide. Next, it would be difficult to put together a cohesive curriculum for yourself because you don't know what you don't know. Relatedly, understanding the arc/trajectory to pick it difficult, and to do it all alone with no guidance means there's no one qualified that you can ask…
Everything you say is true, but you can still do it if you're that way inclined. As long as you don't mind poverty and social exile :-)
Career-wise this has been a terrible life choice for me and I advise people to go to college for precisely the same reason you do. On the other hand career and material gain are only one aspect of life, I can't say with conviction that I really wish I'd done anything differently.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Often employers foot the bill
Yeah, unfortunately to do that I would have to leave startup life and go work for a corporation which is not a tradeoff I'm ready to make.
Startups are just baby corporations. You want to be the business equivalent of a kindergarten teacher. I don't mean that in a pejorative way, mind - sounds like a perfectly sensible career path to me if that's what you enjoy.