What Happened to the Thiel Fellows • Hacker News Board

Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows

#61

Post by mcguire » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 11:18 PM UTC

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #3

It'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…

The network is the important part, I'm given to understand, about YC.

This article and the Thiel Fellowship are implicit admissions that it's not what you know, but who. And that entrepreneurs don't need to know things, only people.

Whichmay go towards explaining why they tend not to address fundamental problems.

Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows

#62

Post by danielam » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 12:33 AM UTC

The trouble with modern universities is that they often conflate what are at least three separate concerns: intellectual formation/pedagogy, job training and research. Typically, when you ask someone why they want to go to college or why they did go to college, the automatic answer that they've been taught to give is "to get a job" (otherwise, you're going to "work at McDonald's"). The result, broadly speaking, is that these three concerns compete with each other, causing the university to suffer in the process.

Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows

#63

Post by zachlatta » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 2:18 AM UTC

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #3

It'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…

Hey, I'm part of the program.

The fellowship's community is one of the few places I've found people like me, my age, who are so obviously better than me that I feel out of place being in the same room.

As with all communities, the quality of people vary (regardless of how you define quality), but the fellowship has the highest concentration of smart young people that I've ever experienced.

I never went to university and don't have that as a point of reference, but I have a hard time believing I'd find a similarly concentrated group anywhere else.

Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows

#64

Post by azinman2 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:42 AM UTC

davidivadavid wrote: post #56

azinman2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 correc…

Pirating textbooks can be done in college or not in college, just as you can buy textbooks in college or not. But if you're not in college, then you most likely won't know what to buy, and certainly won't have anyone to explain it all to you in depth.

It is difficult for most to self-motivate 4+ years worth of self-study in isolation. Few would do that on their own. Further, getting a random stranger to mentor you for any real period of time is a difficult proposition without anything in return. Typically this only happens in extreme cases such as if you are a superstar and "worth their time."

If all you do is stay in your dorm and never venture out, then you're not getting much out of what the university offers, so that's not particularly relevant. You can also just not attend any classes either but that's not much of a comparison.

You're also ignoring majorly important components such as opportunistic learning from peers, being motivated by your environment, and having others guide you through subject matter when you don't know what you don't know. The internet cannot replace any of that as effectively.

Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows

#65

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 8:09 AM UTC

throwaway2016a wrote: post #45

maverick_iceman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, j…

[deleted]

Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows

#66

Post by davidivadavid » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 10:25 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #64

davidivadavid wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 correc…

Pirating textbooks can be done in college or not in college, just as you can buy textbooks in college or not. But if you're not in college, then you most likely won't know what to buy, and certainly won't have anyone to explain it all to you in depth. It is difficult for most to self-motivate 4+ years worth of self-study in isolation. Few would do that on their own. Further, getting a random stranger to mentor you fo…

Guess what, people in college don't know either what textbooks you should buy. Maybe they're the teacher's favorite textbook, or a textbook the teacher wrote him/herself. Will that be the best textbook for you? Maybe. Maybe not.

Regardless, as mentioned before, if you think colleges do choose the best textbooks, you can find what textbooks they're using very easily.

My experience is that the best thing you can do is sample many textbooks and keep the ones you like best and are most likely to learn from.

That few people are willing to self-motivate for 4 years doesn't invalidate the possibility of doing it. I would also question the necessity to study for 4 years to learn most subjects.

The point about staying in your dorm is that if you're studying (i.e. not going out with your friends), it doesn't matter whether you're doing it at home or in a college dorm. You can socialize in other ways.

Serendipitous learning happens outside of colleges too. Etc. Etc.

Having been through college, and having learned a lot of things on my own, the only thing I think (some) colleges provide is just sheepskin prestige. If you want to work for a company that screens based on what university you went to, don't make the mistake of skipping that part. Learning-wise? I don't think it makes much of a difference.

Re: What Happened to the Thiel Fellows

#67

Post by sextus_prop » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 12:49 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #60

vivekd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 middl…

> Many people talk about forgetting things as soon as the test is over It could be argued that when learning specifically for a test people tend to forget things asap, because things learned this way now carry with them a spirit of something being forced on you.

>but why would they remember it even that long without a test? If you learn something that bores you, sure. But I claim that when you learn not for a test you would properly inspect things and their domains and try to get insights into them, their necessity to the object being studied and so on.