To me the premise to this argument was always incomplete. It's true that college does not matter "to some people". You can always find individuals that will be successful whether they go to college or not. There's a reason Thiel hand picked the people that would get his money. He picked the best he could find because he knew that they had a better chance to succeed. If he really wanted to prove his point, he would have picked them at random from those that were slated to go to college anyway. To me he has not proven anything, college is still important to the great majority of people and telling people differently does not help society worse yet it makes it more difficult on those that follow his advice.
What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
51–60 of 67 posts
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#52Brilliant 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.
Seems to me the grandparent poster was using 'sociopathic' in a technical rather than pejorative sense, but it's true the word has become politicized. Perhaps 'hyper-individualist' would be a better representation of the philosophical dynamic at work.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#53Don't fix something that isn't broken.
Can the institutionalized top down approach to education have room for improvement? Yes. The education to economic output per student ratio can always improve (I don't have a number for this).
But the role diploma, degrees, certificates play as social credits that gives preferential treatment over the have-nots in terms of opening doors is understated.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#54Brilliant 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).
Look, Gawker was absolutely terroristic. Think about it, Mr. Thiel was closeted publicly, because it was noones business, and then Gawker outed him and his personal life for financial gain. They did it to others too. Mr. Thiel has said that Gawker was an isolated case for him, and it took him years to right wrongs..
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#55Earlier 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…
If you aren't personally motivated devote years of self-learning to complex and deep topics, you should stay in school and get a Phd?
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#56Earlier 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…
You can be motivated without going to school. It would take seconds to find curricula from major universities. You can find most textbooks for free on Libgen. You can talk to people over the internet and find better mentors than people you'd find in your local university. It's not isolating any more than going to the university and staying in your dorm reading textbooks is.
So, yeah. It seems like a completely correct view. My guess is that it will only become more and more correct with time, as the internet provides all the building blocks that colleges provide currently. The knowledge is already there. Credentials are there for some professions (Github > sheepskin). Networking is probably the hardest part, but hardly sounds undoable.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#57It's kind of a big claim, that the most important thing that people got from Thiel Fellowship was the network. If that's really and truly the case, then how is this different from the universities of old? I don't mean that as a challenge. I really do mean to pick it apart. You can argue that this one is more meritocratic. It's also blatantly clear that it had an admissions committee of one. Edit: And as someone else…
I think university networks are overrated a bit. When you're just one of thousands of graduates you need to bring more to the table than just having the same alma mater. All your peers are trying to leverage the same connections to fit through a skinny pipe. For every one time I leverage my college network I have 10 where I leverage my network I built after college.
That's true. Then what'd happen to the Thiel Fellowship if you were to scale it the same way? I think you can likewise make the argument that it's kind of an extra-fancy MBA.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fe…
I was going for the "lacking in empathy" description completely - and in description of specific endeavors, not individual people.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#59> 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.
Steve Wozniak went back to school (UC Berkeley, using an alias) and finished a degree. Though I suppose he's kind of a special case.
Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows
#60> 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…
I remember Bill Gates said in an interview that he still regularly takes online courses on subjects such as oceanography. People still love to learn, just, I don't think a formal college environment with grades and exams is necessarily a pre-requisite for learning. There are so many alternative mechanisms out there.
You can learn a lot casually. On the other hand, it is considerably less effective:
* Many people talk about forgetting things as soon as the test is over, but why would they remember it even that long without a test?
* A formal course is more than just reading the textbook; it's a guided tour by someone who is a professional teacher as well as someone working in the field. (Yes, some are bad. Most are at least middling and some a very good.)
* And then there is the whole issue of things you wouldn't study on your own if you weren't required to. A CS degree, for example, is more than a bunch of CS courses.