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Educated Fools

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Re: Educated Fools

#191

Post by mixmastamyk »

titanomachy wrote: post #95
tjr225 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I say all of this as someone making over six figures working from home in a situation I could have never imagined myself in ten years ago. I needed my degree; but just to get my foot in the door. I didn't learn much during the process itself other than to recognize the meta fact that I had to do it to get out of my current situation. This would have been a real problem for me financially if it didn't work ou…

It seems that a lot of people feel their degree was not useful. My studies were definitely far removed from what I now do for a living. However, I have not met (except on HN) any successful "knowledge workers" without a degree. I'm sure there are many factors contributing to that: smarter people are more likely to pursue degrees in the first place, companies may ignore otherwise good candidates since they lack a degr…

The management caste won’t allow it. They invested, therefore you must as well.

Re: Educated Fools

#192

Post by spangry »

realtalk_sp wrote: post #151

I read this and can't help but think that the real fools are the ones buying into the elitism narrative that the far-right has been peddling for years. It's a deliberate red herring exploiting the very human tendency to chafe at any perceived condescension. If people in the US primarily voted the issues (that matter and affect them) instead of on the basis of nonsense, Democrats would win by a landslide. Republican p…

> ...very human tendency to chafe at any perceived condescension.

> If people in the US primarily voted the issues (that matter and affect them) instead of on the basis of nonsense, Democrats would win by a landslide.

> The real fools are the people who continue to fall for this shit.

Gosh, it's hard to see where people get the impression that they're being condescended to. It's a pity they're so easily manipulated into voting against their own best interests.

Re: Educated Fools

#193

Post by mixmastamyk »

yodsanklai wrote: post #189
overgard wrote: post #43

I totally agree with the article, but to me the saddest part of all of this is I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. (I say that with a four year CS degree). Most majors, to be blunt, are pretty useless in terms of real world skills. The argument is "they teach you how to think". I don't know how you would even measure that, but it doesn't seem that true, especially since colleges are…

> I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. I can't talk for every majors but at least for STEM, you need to study hard for years to acquire solid foundations. I don't see how you can gather all the required knowledge by yourself.

You could and should, but probably won’t.

Re: Educated Fools

#194

Post by realtalk_sp »

spangry wrote: post #192
realtalk_sp wrote: post #151

I read this and can't help but think that the real fools are the ones buying into the elitism narrative that the far-right has been peddling for years. It's a deliberate red herring exploiting the very human tendency to chafe at any perceived condescension. If people in the US primarily voted the issues (that matter and affect them) instead of on the basis of nonsense, Democrats would win by a landslide. Republican p…

> ...very human tendency to chafe at any perceived condescension. > If people in the US primarily voted the issues (that matter and affect them) instead of on the basis of nonsense, Democrats would win by a landslide. > The real fools are the people who continue to fall for this shit. Gosh, it's hard to see where people get the impression that they're being condescended to. It's a pity they're so easily manipulated i…

The problem with your line of reasoning is that people voting Republican with their eyes wide open, fully understanding what the party is doing, would necessarily be even MORE foolish. Choosing to believe they're instead being manipulated is a more charitable interpretation of their behavior.

Also, I'm obviously just one person expressing an opinion. But yes, any Republican strategist worth his salt (and you seem like someone who might do a sparkling job of it) would squeeze this picked cherry for all it's worth. Ergo all liberals are condescending. Q.E.D.

Re: Educated Fools

#195

Post by claudiawerner »

krnsll wrote: post #4

Thanks for sharing this. The piece makes an urgent point that needs to be appropriately acknowledged. It falls in the vein of arguments I've come to term as "relational poverty" or "relational inequality" arguments (what Popper is presented as terming "moral inequality" in the piece) that most social science research I've come across has failed to or is ill-equipped to account for. I do recall Amartya Sen making a de…

Sen's work is closely associated with philosophical and economic concerns about exploitation, not just poverty, and I think it's a shame that's missed out on. J.E. Roemer was the main theorist of post-Marxian theories of exploitation, but I've observed that when the discussion centers around poverty rather than exploitation, the resulting theory is much more tame. Also related is capability theory and the various objections to purely negative liberty (something I've also noticed many people miss out on - to speak of liberty as if it is strictly a concept that belongs to the liberal tradition and no other tradition may use it, and to then claim that the only real kind of liberty is negative liberty).

Poverty is the kind of thing you can fix within the current system, or at least make attempts to alleviate. Exploitation and domination are not, which is why you will never hear an elected official talk about it as a systematic issue inherent to the current system - if they knew about the literature on the topic, they'd know they're powerless to do anything about it.

Re: Educated Fools

#196

Post by luckylion »

gen220 wrote: post #54
Despegar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We took away your unions and safety net, but by golly, we'll protect your "dignity." Organized labor may not have been targeted explicitly like by Republicans, but Democrats haven't really been a friend to them either [1]. Both parties have been on board with the neoliberal agenda for 40 years. [1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/democrats-paid-a-huge...

Yeah, when you expand your scope of analysis to include the labor movements of other nations, it’s striking how anemic and disenfranchised organized labor has been in the US. Unions in other countries have historically been a voice of the people, and don’t have a lasting allegiance with any political party or movement. I have no idea why American unions collapsed; perhaps, it was justified in the moment, but the pres…

I can't speak for other countries, but Germany's unions are very closely tied to the social democratic party. So much so, that there's a ~70% overlap in membership at the functionary level, while the average worker is somewhat further removed from the party (they're currently polling at ~15%).

While not as extreme, the result is similar as well over here: knowledge workers make a lot of money, blue collar workers cannot afford to live in the large cities. The elite consists primarily of lawyers, political scientists and teachers, and the mocking of the lower class (with a hint of paternalist "we cannot let them be free, they don't know what to do with freedom") is palpable.

Re: Educated Fools

#197

Post by claudiawerner »

mar77i wrote: post #90
wisty wrote: post #18

I think this essay is missing a discussion on the theories of what make university graduates better paid. The two main theories are: 1. Human capital. People learn stuff at university which makes them more valuable workers. 2. Credentialism. Universities select (or pass) people who were already going to be valuable. Now let's look at what we might mean by "valuable": 1. You can fool hiring managers into thinking you'…

To an employer, this seems kind of missing the point: you spent your time at college. Did you do real work yet?

As someone who's about to graduate with an MEng degree: No, I haven't done real work yet, and I hope that most employers don't share this attitude which gets me in a catch-22. I need to have worked to find work, but to work I need to have found work. The only option seems to be these "graduate jobs", a large percentage of which demand arcane tests modelled after IQ tests and tedious timed calculator tests in order to even consider me.

Graduated with 70%+ with the title "Master of Engineering"? Not good enough, do an IQ test to get the job. Write a compiler for a self-designed embedded language for your final project? Not good enough, you forgot how to concatenate lists in MATLAB. Oh, and you don't get to find out your prospective salary until you have an offer; until then, you'll be happy to know it's "competitive", whatever that means.

At this point, I'm not sure if I'd recommend anyone go to university unless they want to stay in academia or something. I'm not convinced it's worth the hassle if this kind of job search is the end result, and if you're going there for knowledge, you're better off not getting yourself into debt with a 4% interest rate.

Re: Educated Fools

#198

Post by KineticLensman »

gen220 wrote: post #54
Despegar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We took away your unions and safety net, but by golly, we'll protect your "dignity." Organized labor may not have been targeted explicitly like by Republicans, but Democrats haven't really been a friend to them either [1]. Both parties have been on board with the neoliberal agenda for 40 years. [1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/democrats-paid-a-huge...

Yeah, when you expand your scope of analysis to include the labor movements of other nations, it’s striking how anemic and disenfranchised organized labor has been in the US. Unions in other countries have historically been a voice of the people, and don’t have a lasting allegiance with any political party or movement. I have no idea why American unions collapsed; perhaps, it was justified in the moment, but the pres…

> Unions ... don’t have a lasting allegiance with any political party or movement

Not true in the UK - the unions have a strong relationship with the Labour party, in terms of providing funding and endorsement of leadership candidates. Indeed, in its original form [0] the Labour party was created as the political wing of the unions. Many unions automatically took a cut of their members' subscriptions as labour party funding.

Battles between the unions and the Conservative party have been key a feature of UK politics, e.g. the Miners' strike in the 1980s [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners%27_strike_(1984–85)

Re: Educated Fools

#199

Post by lurcio »

Despegar wrote: post #17
analog31 wrote: post #13

In my view, education has begun to act like wealth, because education is a form of wealth, and the productivity divide between wealth and work is increasing. Still, I'm skeptical of the whole idea, because it just seems too convenient for Republicans to drive a wedge between the Democratic party and the working class based on a perceived social division rather than real policy: We took away your unions and safety net…

>We took away your unions and safety net, but by golly, we'll protect your "dignity." Organized labor may not have been targeted explicitly like by Republicans, but Democrats haven't really been a friend to them either [1]. Both parties have been on board with the neoliberal agenda for 40 years. [1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/democrats-paid-a-huge...

The “Neoliberal agenda” didnt surface in search results for me. Anyone have a link to a copy please, I’d be most grateful.
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