Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School • Hacker News Board

Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

#121

Post by cynicalkane » Mon, Sep 27, 2010, 1:41 PM UTC

elblanco wrote: post #102

cynicalkane wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the Good Will Hunting fantasy about how you don't need a good education, just natural intelligence and motivation. Maybe that's true for some people, but to say that a good liberal arts school is worth the same as a community college is completely absurd. And it's more true, not less true, for a class such as "Western Civ".

I wasn't aware that people go to one school for their engineering classes, then haul ass across the country to a liberal arts college for their history electives. That notion seems absurd. :) If you want to major in History (and enjoy the really bad pay-scale that comes with that), you'll probably get the best education at a liberal arts school, but the cost-benefit analysis is even worse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_college

I don't think there are any good engineering colleges or universities that are not also liberal arts schools, and many good liberal arts schools offer engineering.

Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

#122

Post by nitrogen » Mon, Sep 27, 2010, 7:08 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #120

nitrogen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non sequitur. Your second statement does not follow from the first. First you state what medical care is not, then as an example, state something else medical care is not that appears unrelated to the first. More constructively, saying that medical care cannot help with obesity is unnecessarily restricting the definition of medical care. Further, obesity is a factor in life expectancy, so measuring life expectancy is…

I responded to someone who attempted to show the quality of medical care in a country by looking at the countries life expectancy. The problem I pointed out is that many factors play into life expectancy with medical care being one of the many[1]. From what I have read obesity leads to many early deaths and people who are obese have a much higher rate of disease. The US is one of the more obese countries and is far m…

In my (admittedly terse) response I was trying to say that medical care, or perhaps more appropriately health care, should include preventive care, such as obesity reduction. I suspect that health-related death has a much greater influence on life expectancy than accidents or crime, even if the US homicide rate is 8.7 per 100000, but would accept compelling evidence to the contrary.

Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School

#123

Post by ahoyhere » Thu, Sep 30, 2010, 8:15 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #109

ahoyhere wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000x YES on the "aim high stuff is nonsense." It's cargo-culting, pure and simple. Copying the way an accidental empire was built is as silly as building a straw plane in the hopes that the real plane will come back. Or buying Aeron chairs and a foosball table. As Basho once wrote, "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." That said, can't agree with you on the statement that a lif…

Careful there. I put "lifestyle" in quotes due to my own rejection of the prevailing VC-driven silicon valley disdain for lower-growth businesses. FWIW I also feel like HN is pretty well balanced on this issue as well (at least compared to SV at large). However ambition is ambition, let's not redefine the word as a means of affirmative action. I never made a value judgement that every business should have endless amb…

Late to the party but, that word (ambition) doesn't mean what you think it means. It only means "a strong desire to do or achieve something" -- it doesn't pass judgment on how "big" that thing is.

By your (faulty) definition... for you to want to own a world-class airline is ambitious. But for Richard Branson, it's a deal brokered over lunch. See the problem?