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The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)

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Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)

#221

Post by argonaut »

jghn wrote: post #204
Buge wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might depend on what you are hiring them for. If it's for research the elites might do better. But if it's for software engineering there might not be a difference.

That's possible, I can only speak to standard SWE type roles, and in those situations the inter-person variance is larger than the inter-institution variance.

Many of the top students at Berkeley, Stanford, MIT don't get standard SWE roles. They go to quant finance and make 300k straight out of undergrad. They go to PhD programs. They start a startup with YC. They do Google APM or something similar. They work as analysts in a VC firm.

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)

#222

Post by dlo »

wyager wrote: post #217
dlo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine a single person whose life would be better in any significant way with an extra $100. Not even a homeless person would find this quantity helpful over the long-term.

> I can't imagine a single person whose life would be better in any significant way with an extra $100. The fact that you chose to make this argument demonstrates you are using your evolved utility-heuristic hardware and not any sort of rational approach. What you are probably doing is doing is clamping the utility of $100 to zero ("not significant" is the key concept). Then your brain, which is already bad at multip…

Re: "It doesn't matter if the per-person amount is small. You have to multiply it by the number of people being affected (and your utility function's multiplier on their utility function)."

You are stating the opposite viewpoint without any support. And I don't agree with it.

Re: "It gives the wrong answer, which is why people think it's better to help a small charity case than do something that's mildly beneficial for a huge number of people."

I don't know why people are saying I think people should go to work for charities. This is totally a straw man argument, as my opinion is that charities often are a waste of talent.

Re: "It's true that $100 isn't much in the grand scheme of things for an individual. But all the utility you ever experience in your entire life is just the sum of lots of (arbitrarily) small utilities."

I agree. But the vast majority of people, especially in Silicon Valley, think this way. At least a few people should be tackling big problems. For example, as I mentioned elsewhere, we are deploying insecure IoT at scale, which is effectively building a weapon for our enemies to use against us. I'm hoping that someone is going to do something about this. Note that working on this problem is not entirely altruistic -- it is likely to be a very profitable endeavor.

There's a lot to address here. To be honest -- and I'm going to put this as politely as I can -- this discussion is not very interesting to me and I am going to bow out.

But in general, I will suggest that you stick to the facts. Calling someone, e.g. me, "irrational" is irrational. To turn it back to you, I think what you've done is you've learned about a theory in school (that I don't agree with) and you're merely checking to see if I'm in compliance with it. You should do your own thinking.

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)

#223

Post by argonaut »

aswanson wrote: post #172
argonaut wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to Berkeley for CS and knew people that went to MIT and Stanford, and I don't agree. You're right the curriculum is the same. Everything else is different. Just one example: lots of undergrads do research. They get to work (albeit basically as trainees) in some of the top CS labs in the world.

I think you learn more from your peer group than classes in college, so it's a good idea got try to get surrounded with the most talented cohort possible.

Exactly. After going to Berkeley, there are 10+ people at top tech companies who think I'm smart and would be more than happy to refer me if I needed a job.

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)

#224

Post by dlo »

wyager wrote: post #90
dlo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to Stanford, and I disagree. Sure, there are exceptions, but most fellow alumni I know are very boring. For example, many live in San Francisco, work for Facebook or Google, and do little of note besides the following: - have an "interesting" hobby - work out at the gym - hang out with friends at the bar or club - work on their career - start a "start-up" - travel - ... other very self-serving pursuits Most re…

> and do little of note besides the following: What do you think the average person in the world does? 99.9% of people are even more boring than the person you described. It's hard to find people who are more interesting than that. > other very self-serving pursuits There's no relationship between boringness and self-centeredness. It sounds like you might be incorrectly conflating "boring" with your own definition of…

If these people's personal statements reflected their true intentions for what they want to do with their Stanford education after they graduated, they wouldn't have gotten in regardless of how good their grades, test scores, and extracurriculars were. Stanford isn't for these people. They could just have gone to some other university, still achieved their personal goals, and made room for people who really mean it when they say they want to make a mark on the world.

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)

#225

Post by holyOrIonsBelt »

jondubois wrote: post #140

I graduated from one of the top universities in my country (top 50 in the world) and we learned pretty much exactly the same material as they did at MIT. In reality I don't think there is any significant difference in terms of education quality between the top #1 university and #100 for any given field. But the difference in terms of opportunities after finishing MIT vs finishing some other good university is massive…

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

It's not so much an issue of quality as it is brand recognition. I went to a top 20 State school, that is to say top 20 among State schools, and while, to me (if I can say so without sounding self-aggrandizing) that's a pretty good ranking, all told, not once in my life have I heard my school discussed in any media whatsoever as an intellectual powerhouse.

The top 'brands' get the largesse of the praise, and the lesser schools are left to fight for the scraps. I sense the balance shifting somewhat but nonetheless the attitude of 'if it costs more, it must be better' seems utterly pervasive.

I yearn to be proud of my education.

I yearn to be one of the 'cool kids', and I don't think it's because I have no sense of personal worth or that I am self-marginalizing. I simply think there is a crisis of hubris that we overlook in favor of pointing out instances where the 'have nots' do well.

For every kid from the hood who makes good, there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of upper management jobs handed to those who attend schools based on the meritocracy of wealth.

It is astonishing. It is the crux of why our cultural stagnation is reaching critical mass (see current President-elect for more on that topic, I mean seriously, who thinks Donny got into Wharton through acumen and not the bravado wealth affords the ineffably idiotic?).

My point is that your summary resonates hard with my own experience and I appreciate your perspective.

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)

#226

Post by dmichulke »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #131
dmichulke wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good proxy is market demand. If Apple releases an iPhone and 1bn people buy it they served the needs of at least 1bn people. Of course, a whole lot of poor people (probably the other 5/6 bn) won't be affected immediately but some years later they also start benefitting and today it's almost a (used) 100$ laptop per child equivalent (except for the poorest). You can argue the same way about mpesa, bitcoin and other…

"Market demand" does not optimize globally by default. Effects can be positive or (extremely) negative. Example: Global warming is a result of the "market", an unexpected consequence from decades of growth. It can only be countered by coordinated action. To get back to the topic at hand: The "elites" should be the ones who lead such a transformation instead of, say, just looking to advance their carreers.

The "elites" are the ones currently in charge (e.g., climate change, terrorism, monetary policy, ...) and I don't see them optimizing.

Just a few related questions: Who is going to define who are the elites? If you say the people, then we end up in a democracy just like we have already and yet, I cannot see any optimization.

What if climate change can be evaluated not only as a single metric but as a tradeoff? E.g., nuclear energy vs CO2? Or cost of each marginal ton of CO2 saved vs. the things you can do with the same money (e.g. a few cancer therapies). Are there even appropriate "elites" who are experts in all of the above areas?

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)

#227

Post by aswanson »

argonaut wrote: post #223
aswanson wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you learn more from your peer group than classes in college, so it's a good idea got try to get surrounded with the most talented cohort possible.

Exactly. After going to Berkeley, there are 10+ people at top tech companies who think I'm smart and would be more than happy to refer me if I needed a job.

Nice. If I had any sense in my high school years I'd have a Berkeley or Stanford pedigree. Eh, youth is wasted on the young...
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