Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Era of the Autodidact Is Here (2018)

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–76 of 76 posts

Re: The Era of the Autodidact Is Here (2018)

#71

Post by squircle »

jhbadger wrote: post #16
lazyant wrote: post #3

Everybody is self-taught. If you went to university (for example), the professor was there to set the curriculum and force you to study (things that otherwise you didn't know were important or didn't want to pick on your own). Teachers helping with a student's question is a very small fraction of learning. We learnt x because we practiced x ourselves.

And the ultimate university degree, the PhD, is all about learning how to learn. It's unlikely that you will continue to work on the project you did your dissertation on where you spent 3 to 6 years becoming an expert on in grad school. The point wasn't getting the knowledge, it was developing the skills to get up to speed on a new topic quickly.

> The point wasn't getting the knowledge, it was developing the skills to get up to speed on a new topic quickly.

Well, then how do we qualify "this", and help future expert-generalists immediately find a niche and start pursuing meaningful work? (Not that "work" is the end-all, because we hopefully work-to-live and not the other way around.)

Re: The Era of the Autodidact Is Here (2018)

#72

Post by squircle »

throwanem wrote: post #58
leetrout wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I should start lying about my lack of a degree like a real con man. Nah. The world needs more people with principles and strong moral character.

...to exploit.

Perhaps. But let's assume those of us who've "made it" are generally acting in good faith (because a world-system built on sand will never last) and not simply slaves to their hind brain.

Re: The Era of the Autodidact Is Here (2018)

#73

Post by squircle »

ghaff wrote: post #55
cjbgkagh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was asked not just for my GPA but the specific grades for all of my university courses >10 years prior even though I had worked in FANG for many years. The recruiter apologized for it and said the directive came from HR.

Idiocy. It's probably not literally true that I couldn't get my hands on my grades somehow but I certainly wouldn't have them anywhere handy. Let's not even talk about the fact that not only my grades but my majors would mostly be irrelevant to any job I took today.

HR is not your friend. "Human resources" -- guffaw! Of course, the Human behind the desk is more than their role.

Conversely, I've met brilliant people living on the street because [trauma]--who can't get a leg up because they're stuck in a proverbial catch-22 where bureacratic desk-jockeys can't help (even if they want to) because those of us working in state/corporate jobs love kicking the can.

I hope future generations figure out how to get shit done.

Re: The Era of the Autodidact Is Here (2018)

#74

Post by squircle »

raverbashing wrote: post #47
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #24

The deep irony of praising autodidacticism in lieu of getting a degree is that one has to be a world class autodidact to succeed in a Ph.D program and that a university is stuffed to the brim with resources to support that autodidacticism: libraries, lab facilities, experts, etc. for both graduate and undergraduate studies. And not in just in one field, but dozens and dozens of fields. A real autodidact would be in s…

Yes Except for the @ss-kissing, the unnaturally inflexible academic environment, the pressure for publishing, etc Then academia becomes hell

Well, then it's time to reinvent academic publishing. (Personally, I've found off-the-cuff personal blogs can be far more insightful than oh so many stuffy academic articles I've read. If there's one thing about programming culture I've gleaned: those of us who connect the rubber to the road actually know something about knowledge-production.)

P.s. I think you can say "ass" on the internet. Hell, in 2024, you can practically kiss ass on the internet.

Re: The Era of the Autodidact Is Here (2018)

#75

Post by kkfx »

Allow me to reformulate the title, it's the era of the of the destruction of school systems, as a result people try to learn alone since they found no other option...

The daughter of a friend have started a II-level master in economics and the faculty demand her a PERSONAL laptop to take IN-PERSON exams, when I raised a couple of eyebrows hearing (and reading) that, she say "but they say they have a proctoring system" oh, sure... If we are degraded at such point it's normal try to learn alone. The issue is that learning alone is harder, you can easily take more wrong routes and have to correct them after a while, you can learn things who appear to be good but they are not and so on, long story short it's doable but less effective than a properly guided process by others who have already studied something and so they can create a better path and better distill knowledge and philosophy.

Re: The Era of the Autodidact Is Here (2018)

#76

Post by throwanem »

squircle wrote: post #72
throwanem wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...to exploit.

Perhaps. But let's assume those of us who've "made it" are generally acting in good faith (because a world-system built on sand will never last) and not simply slaves to their hind brain.

That seems a very bold assumption these days, as indeed does that that this particular world-system is not in fact built on sand.
Post reply on HN