131–140 of 314 posts
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It's not just that they aren't cheap. They don't exist yet.
What do you think roomba is, if not a house-cleaning robot? ED: yes, they're not perfect but give it about 20 years. I'm pretty sure we won't have human cleaners by then.
Have you ever had a cleaning job?
A Roomba isn't going to solve your cleaning needs, not even by a longshot.
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If all a radiologist does is pattern matching, the market would've replaced them with techs a long time ago. If not in the US, this would've happened in at least a few other countries.
What else do you think a radiologist do?
Also what's your evidence that there's no relation between college degrees and automation? What we know for a fact is that wage growth for people without college degrees has been flat or negative for the past eight or so years, while people with college degrees have seen some wage growth. Note, this can't be explained by illegal immigration because the number of undocumented immigrants has stayed constant or declined since the beginning of the Obama-era.
This person has a bunch of essays but he comes across as an sad person who doesn't believe in civil rights for women. In an eassy on his website [1], he says "Men have natural abilities and disposition towards leadership. To deny this, to mandate equality of results, to push women into masculine roles, to domesticate and feminize men, only results in misery for both men and women. Universal suffrage elections are vir…
Also, the main point preceding the quote that men and women may have different natural dispositions is a reasonable one. He only oversteps by implying men are better leaders, a claim that may be defensible under some very specific definition of "good leadership" but is mostly just inflammatory in this case.
I think the author of this post is making the same mistake that a lot of other people (particularly smart folks) make whenever they are thinking about the ills of modern education system and what can be done to improve it. Like Peter Thiel and others, I don't think they understand how and why students are failing in classrooms today. Take for example the author's suggestions on how school systems can be improved: Cre…
Can you really expect high school students to perform well in online classes? Does it matter? At what point do we put the failure of the student on the student? Education being unaffordable is a broadly sympathetic position. Not getting an education because you couldn't be troubled to take advantage of a free education is an unsympathetic position. You're giving too much credit to students, they don't know what is be…
Sympathy is besides the point. Look at the bigger picture: if US citizens are unprepared for the jobs the world economy demands, the country fails economically, putting it in the position to be exploited by others.
Education is important. This weird attitude that college is worthless somehow is not illustrated in the numbers: earning potential, mate selection, general career advancement.
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Maybe it does, but that's perhaps not the point. The point, at least in this case, is that the author is counting on being treated as a serious thinker at the table of ideas. He is relying on our good faith to promote ideas that are fundamentally incompatible with the existence of exactly the kind of dialogue he's being given on this site. Do not think, should he win, that he will afford you the same charity. Critici…
Ok but still youre not arguing what he said, youre arguing what he is. To me, thats the dark path. It's intellectually dishonest. This is what generally annoys me about the social justice scene: its always about silencing or shunning people, never about engaging them.
I do not do this out of hand, or on a whim. I've read this person's writings before, and have made a genuine attempt to read him charitably.
> its always about silencing or shunning people, never about engaging them.
Shunning, maybe. I don't think it's inappropriate to stop a conversation that you know is going to be used as a weapon against you later by someone with truly onerous views. I don't have an obligation to engage with people whose only interest in engagement is to use it a token of their ideological legitimacy. Silencing, never.
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Did you actually read the article? Or even the paragraph? It's not arguing against civil rights for anybody.
This author is, in fact, against civil rights: > Universal suffrage elections are virtually always a bad idea. The process simply polarizes the population, and causes everyone to believe in myths and propganda. There is no way that the results of an election can be channeled into the subtleties needed to make good government and good policy.
I think the author of this post is making the same mistake that a lot of other people (particularly smart folks) make whenever they are thinking about the ills of modern education system and what can be done to improve it. Like Peter Thiel and others, I don't think they understand how and why students are failing in classrooms today. Take for example the author's suggestions on how school systems can be improved: Cre…
What you're really pointing out is that people are different. Some need more structure than others. For whatever reason, I'm a pretty motivated person. Remote work is great for me because any time I can save is more time I have to do the list of things I want to get done that day. My wife OTOH, requires structure. She's smart and works hard, but if she was left to work at home she would procrastinate until the 11th h…
...and I'm not sure what evidence lead them to believe that "most companies" in silicon valley have discovered that remote doesn't work, but I'm willing to bet it's anecdotal.
The author makes a lot of great points here but I took issue with this sentence: All jobs that currently require a degree, should instead require a knowledge test. The employer should not care how the knowledge was obtained, just that the applicant has the knowledge. I would argue that the degree does provide some value beyond what can be easily tested in an interview setting. I'm not sure if it is the only way but t…
I wouldn't want to live in a building made to 19th century safety and efficiency standards, and while I'm sure some people can teach themselves how to design and build modern buildings, I'm also sure that a good way to get up to speed is to go to school for architecture or civil engineering. Ditto with law and mechanical engineering.
I'm also wary of anybody claiming software engineers and computer programmers don't need a degree or other training. Software quality in general is really crappy, and I'm skeptical the solution is less education.
Lots of interesting ideas here, but also some wacky or condescending assumptions about other people's lines of work. Let's take two: TRUCK DRIVERS: They don't just move big rigs around. They also need to keep detailed log books, plan out routes, pass inspections -- and know how to talk civilly and constructively to DOT inspectors. An eighth grade education will not get you there. Especially on the last part. The back…
> Trucking companies rightfully insist on a high school degree... Not sure about these days, but ~10 years ago, my friend's family's company did not require a high school degree. To your point, however, I know this because he specifically complained about dealing with under educated employees. From some rudimentary googling, it seems requiring a HS degree is the norm, but there are plenty of cases of forgoing the deg…
If I remember right, he found that the GED was a good way of recognizing sound minds that had been too stormy to finish high school (prison population in particular), but that the social issues that limited some high-school dropouts' opportunities did not go away with this new certificate.
In the spirit of OP's main argument, there's room for a lot of cheaper/faster alternatives to college, especially for a lot of middle-skill positions. I like that part of the argument a lot. I'd just urge that we think harder about ways of helping candidates master the social/interpersonal skills that affect long-term success and employability. For now, it feels as if a face-to-face component is needed, too, beyond the technical skills that can be conveyed online.