Textbook manifesto (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#131

Post by Nullabillity » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 7:31 AM UTC

SolarNet wrote: post #66

wolfgke wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bought $70 books for my master's courses in Sweden that would have been $300 in the US (where I did my undergrad). The "invisible hand" of capitalism at work! I personally believe free markets ("invisible hand" of capitalism) work well in nearly all cases (yes, there exist cases of market failure, but these are IMHO rare). The problem rather is that copyright laws prevent a free market, since the copyright holder…

By that logic we should get rid of property, since the property holder has a monopoly on the property. I would put "(i.e. opposite of a free market)" sarcastically, but I'm being serious. Go read an economics text book on the definition of a free market, and while you are at it, what properties they have (muh freedom is not even a primary one) that make us want them so much, and what the requirements are (natural mon…

> e.g. if I built a house on my land that looks exactly like my neighbors, I still own my property and the house; but if I took their house and put it on my property I wouldn't

Uhm, no, that's exactly what copyright prevents (or tries to, anyhow).

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#132

Post by chrisseaton » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 7:46 AM UTC

ziikutv wrote: post #99

chrisseaton wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But 'the department' is nothing more than all the professors grouped together.

Yeah and one of them decided to venture into book writing, had connections and was friends with other professors... That's one way to sell that pig lipsticks. Edit: And incorrect about department = array(Professors)

That still doesn't make sense. If a department had a professor notable enough to write a textbook in a particular area, wouldn't they be teaching that course themselves? Rather than pressuring the other professor who is teaching it to use their book?

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#133

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 8:17 AM UTC

SolarNet wrote: post #66

wolfgke wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bought $70 books for my master's courses in Sweden that would have been $300 in the US (where I did my undergrad). The "invisible hand" of capitalism at work! I personally believe free markets ("invisible hand" of capitalism) work well in nearly all cases (yes, there exist cases of market failure, but these are IMHO rare). The problem rather is that copyright laws prevent a free market, since the copyright holder…

By that logic we should get rid of property, since the property holder has a monopoly on the property. I would put "(i.e. opposite of a free market)" sarcastically, but I'm being serious. Go read an economics text book on the definition of a free market, and while you are at it, what properties they have (muh freedom is not even a primary one) that make us want them so much, and what the requirements are (natural mon…

An important distinction between physical and intellectual property is that physical is naturally exclusive, while intellectual is not. If I use a house for something, you cannot use it for something else without disturbing me. On the other hand my using some technology does not prevent anyone else from doing the same. (Although I may prefer to have an exclusive right for obvious reasons.)

Maybe it could be a good idea to somehow recognize intellectual property as property but end that exclusive part. E.g. for books make publishing agreements public offers instead of private contracts. Just a wild idea, of course :)

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#134

Post by supremesaboteur » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 8:30 AM UTC

a3n wrote: post #115

supremesaboteur wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs. Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators.

No. Jobs are created from demand. There will be no cars sold in a neighborhood, and therefore no car dealerships, unless the people there have money to buy a car. If there are people there to buy a car, or a gallon of milk, then "job creators" will compete against each other to hire enough people to satisfy that demand, and take a cut of the revenue. No one creates a job. They satisfy a demand. Steve Jobs supposedly…

> No. Jobs are created from demand. There will be no cars sold in a neighborhood, and therefore no car dealerships, unless the people there have money to buy a car.

True. But when people want a car, they do not automatically fall from the sky.

> If there are people there to buy a car, or a gallon of milk, then "job creators" will compete against each other to hire enough people to satisfy that demand, and take a cut of the revenue.

And that is how they become rich. People get a car, or a gallon of milk. A few people get jobs selling cars or gallons of milk. Someone gets rich by opening a store or a car delership.

> Demand comes first, then jobs to satisfy the demand. And if a "job creator" could satisfy that demand without creating jobs, he'd do it. "Job creators" are not in the business of creating jobs, they're in the business of making money, however the current economic environment allows and demands.

And when we have all our needs met without people having to work, with machines taking care of all our necessaities, we can think about Universal Basic Income. Until then, enterpreneurs will have to hire people to satisfy demand.

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#135

Post by robjan » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 9:06 AM UTC

richardbatty wrote: post #110

cbhl wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this doesn't apply to every case, this certainly affected me as a university student: 1. Mandatory online assignments for credit that require a code from a new textbook. (Usually because then the professor doesn't have to grade the assignments.) 2. New editions of textbooks every year, where the order of chapters or questions is shuffled, requiring you to have the latest edition of the textbook in order to do a…

Oh right, I think a big difference is that in American courses it seems that there is one course textbook, and the assignments are taken from that. Our courses weren't designed around a textbook. For us, assignments (both problem sheets and essay questions) were written by our tutors. They came with a reading list that would include a selection of relevant articles, books, and textbooks, but there was no single one t…

UK redbrick graduate here. My courses mostly followed textbooks as well. The library usually had enough stock for 10% of the student body to have a copy at any one time.

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#136

Post by worldsayshi » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 9:19 AM UTC

dctoedt wrote: post #80

worldsayshi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I was in an international class, the study language was english, the textbooks were American. Extremely dense and horrible to read tombs. In my early courses most of the material was in swedish. Textbooks were a tenth of the size and had at least some personality. Some of them were quite enjoyable. Those were readable.

s/tombs/tomes/ [0] [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tome

Thanks for the correction. Seems it's too late to edit though. Guess the somewhat suitable typo will have to stand. :)

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#137

Post by smoyer » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 10:06 AM UTC

"Before long, the students learn that they shouldn’t even try. The result is a 1000-page doorstop."

My oldest two are through college and learned that they shouldn't just purchase the list of books dictated by their classes. As stated by the article, many times the textbooks were not required to pass the test. If I had to estimate, I'd say they spent half as much as their fellow students on textbooks.

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#138

Post by thanatropism » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 11:56 AM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #124

thanatropism wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've had lots of classes that worked like this, particularly my Calculus I/II classes where there was a textbook but homework from it was just suggested, not collected, and the lectures were entirely sufficient to understand the material and do well on the exams. I'm guessing the exams were easy but you didn't learn much calculus.

I definitely learned calculus from the Calculus classes. I took calculus 3 recently for credits with no difficulty remembering anything relevant from 1/2. Some things I could give right now off the top of my head are the definition of an integral/derivative, squeeze theorem, mean value theorem, integration by parts, epsilon delta definition of a limit, second/third derivative tests, and a lot more. Test me with somet…

So what's the basic idea behind Taylor series? (A "proof sketch", or even a sequence of theorems relying on each other building up to the lightbulb step.)

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#139

Post by elviejo » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 12:37 PM UTC

Nullabillity wrote: post #131

SolarNet wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic we should get rid of property, since the property holder has a monopoly on the property. I would put "(i.e. opposite of a free market)" sarcastically, but I'm being serious. Go read an economics text book on the definition of a free market, and while you are at it, what properties they have (muh freedom is not even a primary one) that make us want them so much, and what the requirements are (natural mon…

> e.g. if I built a house on my land that looks exactly like my neighbors, I still own my property and the house; but if I took their house and put it on my property I wouldn't Uhm, no, that's exactly what copyright prevents (or tries to, anyhow).

Again that is the difference between parents and copyrights. With a patent you can't make a copy. With copyrights you can't claim you made something. For example if I see a dress in a magazine I can make one, what I cannot claim is that it is Dolce and Gabbana...

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#140

Post by kbutler » Mon, Apr 10, 2017, 1:09 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #104

supremesaboteur wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs. Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators.

> Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs. Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get the tools necessary to secure and maintain sufficient initial and recurring quantities of material assets; jobs with sufficiently high pay do that (but not all jobs have sufficiently high pay), though they aren't the only thing that could. > Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators. No, jobs are creat…

Different jobs have different levels of net benefit to society.

For example, paying someone to "dig a ditch and fill it in" gives that person work, but is a zero-sum game - transferring wealth between people, but not increasing the total pie (total well-being), at least without considering the psychological benefits of work (and exercise!).

Similarly, breaking windows to create jobs for window repairmen creates jobs, but is negative-sum - it benefits window repairmen, but reduces the overall pie. You're better off just giving money directly to window repairmen.

In contrast, some jobs increase the total wealth, and can benefit both the worker and the people willing to pay for the work to be done. (positive sum).

Some positive sum jobs increase the total wealth more or less than others, for the amount of money invested (spend $, increase total wealth .01% or 1%?). Similarly, the net gain of the work may be distributed differently (does the purchaser receive more of the surplus or the provider?)

Focussing purely on jobs ignores the cost - is society better off if I employ 100 people to do the work that 1 person could do?

The best way we've found to increase total well-being is to allow people to pay for what they want, rather than having government mandate jobs to be done.