Against Tulip Subsidies • Hacker News Board

Re: Against Tulip Subsidies

#71

Post by knagra » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 1:31 AM UTC

JesperRavn wrote: post #15

white-flame wrote: post #7

I take a more classical view on University: It never should be "job training". It should be about general life enrichment, beyond-industry research, philosophy about the world and its workings, and broadening horizons. Sure, people who went through that (ie, independently interested in, was recommended in or could afford it, and succeeded) tended to be more capable people. Let's roughly compare it to becoming an Eagl…

One problem with this approach is that most people consider "life enrichment" to be courses that are biased towards their own political viewpoint. Conservatives want students to have a basis in the history, literature and philosophy of Western Civilization. Liberals want to teach students to think "critically", i.e. to view Western Civilization through the lens of oppression and racism (and all other ism's).

I'm a liberal, and I got a BA in History from Berkeley. I studied European and American diplomatic history, with an emphasis on war. I mostly took classes on modern European and American history and classical European history. I urge others to take almost exactly the same courses at Berkeley. I currently read mostly American and European history, science, and literature.

One of my non-history courses at Berkeley was focused on Western Civilization and its construction of isms to frame the world in a manner more beneficial to the West. Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism - all defined against Christianity, which isn't an ism. Islam has had the political mobility and prowess to break the bonds of the conservative thinkers placing an ism on their lives. Sikhi is trying to do the same. That was probably the most liberally militant course I took at Berkeley.

Re: Against Tulip Subsidies

#72

Post by obstinate » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 1:36 AM UTC

rnprince wrote: post #55

obstinate wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in those countries, you are giving up four years of wages. The only reason any ordinary person does that is because they expect to get something out of it beyond mere life enrichment.

If you consider this argument fully, It's hard to defend retirement - or anything else people do without profit motives. I'm listening to music without any expectation of profit, giving up time I could spend making money. I consider this life enrichment. Actually, besides opportunity costs, I paid literal cash money to be able to do this.

Retirement is generally taken once you have "enough". I suppose you could argue that college is simply pushing back retirement -- taking some of that self enrichment time early -- but that is not a good analysis. See, when you retire, you already have obtained. When you enter university, you merely hope to.

The music analogy you tried makes no sense to me. You cannot work 24/7. You are not in any reasonable sense forgoing wages you could have earned by listening to music. If you quit your job to listen to music eight hours a day for four years, I would argue that you are either a fool or very wealthy, and I don't think I'd find many to disagree with me.

Re: Against Tulip Subsidies

#73

Post by Nomentatus » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 1:39 AM UTC

knagra wrote: post #69

Nomentatus wrote: post #65

I've just searched what are now 58 comments for the phrase "prisoner's dilemma" and got zero hits. WHAT! Higher Education is now a prisoner's dilemma, and that's really the point of the tulip article, even if he didn't use the phrase. Rational actors will want their children to have a college education and then higher degrees, even though everyone choosing that makes society worse off, not better off. Classic prisone…

Let's assume the situation with higher education is a prisoner's dilemma. I, as a player, decide not to go to college (cooperate), while everyone else decides to go to college (defect), resulting in me paying a sucker's payoff since my opportunities are reduced while those of everyone else are expanded. So far so good. Next, I decide to go to college while everyone else also goes to college (defect & defect), I pay a…

This is a misunderstanding of prisoner's dilemma, knagra - you're assuming that PDs have to be nearly identical to the original example, but actually only the relative outcomes matter to the definition, not an absolute gain or loss. You don't have to be punished, just get a worse result than cooperation/communication could have given you despite both parties acting rationally. And that's exactly the case (now, not I think 100 years ago) with higher education. Foregoing degrees for individual study or other alternative education (such as apprenticeship) and exams would cost everyone less, and result in a better result even for those who did well, in your retelling, by going to university. The economy wouldn't be hurt, it would gain, and those who filled the jobs now requiring unnecessary years of education could also be paid more, not just owe less. The only way to escape the PD classification is to deny the central thesis of Thiel and the Tulip article's author; and assert that higher education is not truly inefficient, so there are no great economic inefficiencies. A hard path by now, it seems to me! So QNED, after all.

To drive the point home, it's entirely possible to construct a PD with all outcomes being rewards, all outcomes being punishments, or a mixture of the two. You don't need prisoner's, see-through mirrors in an interrogation room, or prison sentences, or other punishments in order to create a prisoner's dilemma. Very complex situations can be prisoner's dilemma's, the bibliography of addumbrations of the concept is immense. Perhaps you mean that this is not ONLY a PD. But no-one ever thought, I've never entertained the notion that "PD" was a full description of any situation. Instead, it points out obvious inefficiencies despite individual rationality -precisely the "No Tulip Subsidies" author's point.

Re: Against Tulip Subsidies

#74

Post by Nomentatus » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 1:43 AM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #66

Nomentatus wrote: post #65

I've just searched what are now 58 comments for the phrase "prisoner's dilemma" and got zero hits. WHAT! Higher Education is now a prisoner's dilemma, and that's really the point of the tulip article, even if he didn't use the phrase. Rational actors will want their children to have a college education and then higher degrees, even though everyone choosing that makes society worse off, not better off. Classic prisone…

The top post [1] mentions the "Meditations on Moloch" post, which is basically a generalization of the PD/Tragedy of the Commons/arms race. I assume most posters are aware of the relevant dynamic. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9671686

PD shows up as one of ten examples of traps in that long article. Note too that not every local minima is going to be a PD, or even close! Equilibria are sometimes now confused with PDs, due to the publicity given to Nash's Equilibrium, but that's a popular confusion.

Re: Against Tulip Subsidies

#75

Post by knagra » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 2:09 AM UTC

Nomentatus wrote: post #73

knagra wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume the situation with higher education is a prisoner's dilemma. I, as a player, decide not to go to college (cooperate), while everyone else decides to go to college (defect), resulting in me paying a sucker's payoff since my opportunities are reduced while those of everyone else are expanded. So far so good. Next, I decide to go to college while everyone else also goes to college (defect & defect), I pay a…

This is a misunderstanding of prisoner's dilemma, knagra - you're assuming that PDs have to be nearly identical to the original example, but actually only the relative outcomes matter to the definition, not an absolute gain or loss. You don't have to be punished, just get a worse result than cooperation/communication could have given you despite both parties acting rationally. And that's exactly the case (now, not I…

I demonstrated that you could still get a worse result with mutual cooperation than you could with mutual defection, which violates the T > R > P > S condition for the dilemma to be a prisoner's dilemma in the strong sense. I demonstrated that at least two of the four possibilities are unpredictable. Mutual cooperation doesn't necessarily give you a better result than mutual defection. Mutual cooperation could give you a much worse result than cooperating while the other player defects. For example, you could get a college degree like everyone else and end up working at McDonald's with $50k in debt through mutual cooperation. But you could also just work at McDonald's without getting a college degree (and the $50k in debt) while everyone else gets a college degree.

QED, sir.

Re: Against Tulip Subsidies

#76

Post by knagra » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 2:22 AM UTC

Nomentatus wrote: post #73

knagra wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume the situation with higher education is a prisoner's dilemma. I, as a player, decide not to go to college (cooperate), while everyone else decides to go to college (defect), resulting in me paying a sucker's payoff since my opportunities are reduced while those of everyone else are expanded. So far so good. Next, I decide to go to college while everyone else also goes to college (defect & defect), I pay a…

This is a misunderstanding of prisoner's dilemma, knagra - you're assuming that PDs have to be nearly identical to the original example, but actually only the relative outcomes matter to the definition, not an absolute gain or loss. You don't have to be punished, just get a worse result than cooperation/communication could have given you despite both parties acting rationally. And that's exactly the case (now, not I…

Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Generalize...

I also wanted to say that several million people would be jobless if everyone decided not to go to college come August. The economy would be shocked by an influx of unemployed professors, etc. That would be a much worse state, relatively, than if some people continued to go to college, as I argued in my first comment.

And there are indeed many valid prisoner's dilemmas in the natural sciences. A clear one I recall is the example of grooming others that Dawkins offered in The Selfish Gene.

Re: Against Tulip Subsidies

#77

Post by logician76 » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:49 AM UTC

throwaway342526 wrote: post #16

logician76 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and his analogy is plain wrong. Bernie Sanders is saying to make the tulips free, not to give everybody enough money to buy them..

It's not wrong. Making something free means paying for it in a transparent fashion. Bernie Sanders is not talking about changing the institutional structure of college such that it somehow has no cost to provide. He is talking about the government paying that cost on behalf of students. I agree with free education, by the way. We currently spend our budgets on much less useful things. But let's be honest about what i…

Yes it is wrong, paying the cost of education at cost (for a government), or paying students to pay market prices (inflated by perception of value) is a huge difference. Which do you think Bernie Sanders was implying?

Re: Against Tulip Subsidies

#78

Post by throwaway342526 » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 3:32 PM UTC

logician76 wrote: post #77

throwaway342526 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not wrong. Making something free means paying for it in a transparent fashion. Bernie Sanders is not talking about changing the institutional structure of college such that it somehow has no cost to provide. He is talking about the government paying that cost on behalf of students. I agree with free education, by the way. We currently spend our budgets on much less useful things. But let's be honest about what i…

Yes it is wrong, paying the cost of education at cost (for a government), or paying students to pay market prices (inflated by perception of value) is a huge difference. Which do you think Bernie Sanders was implying?

Bernie is not suggesting nationalizing all american colleges. That would be absurd.

Re: Against Tulip Subsidies

#79

Post by randomdata » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 5:28 PM UTC

nmrm2 wrote: post #61

randomdata wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure I'm just misunderstanding you, but the logic doesn't seem to follow. If you can trivially test for a CS degree then you already have all the other testing that comes with a CS degree by association. Why would you take weeks or months to test everything in a CS degree when you already know a CS degree is present via your trivial test? > And no, discriminating based on credentials is not tantamount to racism.…

@randomdata -- "trivial" isn't "free". The test I proposed adds an extra hour of in-person interview time per candidate, and also substantially increases the number of viable candidates. > It may not be racism exactly, but still morally wrong for many reasons. That should be fairly obvious. Comparing discriminating based upon whether someone did four years of audited work with racism is... a somewhat extreme position…

> A degree is NOT something anyone is born with. It is something many people work very hard to earn.

But, again, you are automatically discounting everyone who worked equally hard to acquire their skills just because they don't have the right piece of paper. That is exactly the same as rejecting a female candidate on the assumption that because she is female, she probably doesn't have the necessary skills – and statistically speaking, in this case you'd be right – the number of female CS graduates is significantly lower than men.

So, if you're just playing the numbers game like you suggested at the beginning of your post, then why not reject all women?

Re: Against Tulip Subsidies

#80

Post by logician76 » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:22 PM UTC

throwaway342526 wrote: post #78

logician76 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is wrong, paying the cost of education at cost (for a government), or paying students to pay market prices (inflated by perception of value) is a huge difference. Which do you think Bernie Sanders was implying?

Bernie is not suggesting nationalizing all american colleges. That would be absurd.

In real life there are more possibilities in between 0 and 1.. Also look at how its done in other countries. Apparently americans can go to Germany to study for free in a recent article. Absurd indeed.