No one cared about my spreadsheets • Hacker News Board

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#291

Post by zaarn » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 9:58 AM UTC

edanm wrote: post #247

periheli0n wrote: post #244

Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. One side effect of the economisation of education is the desire to quantify and standardise "academic quality". For example, setting minimum pass rates for modules, which ultimately l…

> Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. I'm a big fan of education. However, when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more…

Paying a lot of money into education prevents homelessness! Educated people are more likely to find an income than people who have less knowledge of the world. And it's not only purely educating people, it's also about providing supportive services, such as job finding programs, mental health counseling, etc etc. By spending more on education you may spend less on homeless right now but you can prevent people from becoming homeless.

And on top of that, you can also reform how homelessness works in your country. In Germany, having a home is a fundamental right, why is it not in America? By burderning the government with sheltering you and giving you a postal address, a lot of hurdles for reentering the job market are simply taken away, reducing the need to spend much.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#292

Post by spdionis » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 10:02 AM UTC

burrows wrote: post #243

henrikschroder wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme and figures of speech, then ask two questions: 1) How artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered and 2) How important is that objective? Question 1 rates the poem's perfection; question 2 rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining the poem's greatness becomes a relatively simple matter. If the poe…

Right. But I didn’t assert that all things can be gainfully modeled. I suggested that the non-specific incompleteness of a model isn’t a compelling reason not to use the model.

The person you were arguing with is saying that it's a compelling reason to not use the model because, I quote, the conclusions of the model are "batshit insane".

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#293

Post by periheli0n » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 10:09 AM UTC

edanm wrote: post #247

periheli0n wrote: post #244

Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. One side effect of the economisation of education is the desire to quantify and standardise "academic quality". For example, setting minimum pass rates for modules, which ultimately l…

> Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. I'm a big fan of education. However, when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more…

> There is no way around the idea that education, like everything else, costs resources, time and money, that can be spent on other things. It's a totally valid thing to wonder whether it's the best use of that money there is.

Judging the benefit of education only on the financial bottomline is bound to underestimate its real value.

For example, a democracy can only function if citizens are able to process complex information to base their voting decisions on. Therefore it is in the interest of a democratic country that citizen have access to education, and that they can afford it.

> when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, more money for healthcare, etc.

Education is correlated with health and longevity. Also, educated people are more likely to make sane life decisions and plan ahead. Therefore, by subsidising education, one likely reduces the number of homeless and the cost of public health.

But none of this is expressed in the calculation that measures the "value" of education by the personal financial gain an individual can achieve. Therefore I argue that this measure is not suitable to measure the value of education.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#294

Post by regularfry » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 10:13 AM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #291

edanm wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. I'm a big fan of education. However, when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more…

Paying a lot of money into education prevents homelessness! Educated people are more likely to find an income than people who have less knowledge of the world. And it's not only purely educating people, it's also about providing supportive services, such as job finding programs, mental health counseling, etc etc. By spending more on education you may spend less on homeless right now but you can prevent people from be…

The same argument applies if you pick a different alternative, though. Money you choose to spend on education (with all its knock-on effects in homelessness, public health, employment, and so on) is money you can't spend on street cleaning, road maintenance, whatever, but also the investment you're making via education in the future homelessness problem is money you can't spend on acute homelessness problems today that can't be reached by education because it's too late for the people involved.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#295

Post by Brian_K_White » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 10:25 AM UTC

tryptophan wrote: post #125

Brian_K_White wrote: post #77

In another HN post recently a commenter said something about the stock market, and they invoked an image of people collecting money from Brownian movement. It struck me that comment was excellent and insightful, and was only possible because both the commenter and myself were once taught something that neither of us uses in our day jobs, and may never have learned through any normal self-driven persuit. The more I he…

That comparison doesnt even make any sense. Brownian motion is fully random and doesn't have an underlying direction like the stock markets do(up).

That randomness was exactly the concept they intended to convey, and is valid in that context.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#296

Post by saint_fiasco » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 10:36 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #255

I have not read the book (it's the first time I heard about it), but I'm confused by what the title of the book seems to imply and what people here say about the book. I suspect that much of the discussion here seems to boil down to the same misunderstandings. What sort of education is Caplan talking about? Primary, secondary, tertiary? The title seems to imply all education, but I guess that is not the case? Does he…

Caplan is talking about all education, but he says each kind has different value. In short he believes k-12 is useful as daycare, and college is useful as a signal of how smart and hard working and conformist you are. He believes those benefits are not worth the massive subsidies. Moreover, the signalling thing doesn't work if everyone is pushed to go to college because it turns into a Red Queen's race.

He praises vocational schools in some other countries, where only a minority of students go to college and therefore employers don't demand college degrees for simple jobs like they do in the US.

The spreadsheet he mentions, that he complains nobody ever looked at, includes the costs and benefits to both society and individuals. I didn't read the spreadsheet either, but in the book he says that the cost-benefit analysis is positive for smart individuals (if you can go to college and get a degree you should go, for selfish financial reasons) but negative for societies because of all the subsidies.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#297

Post by randomsilence » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 10:36 AM UTC

periheli0n wrote: post #289

randomsilence wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. The monetary value itself is useful to everybody who makes a decision. A student at least invests their own time into that education. Shouldn't they know how valuable that education…

> The monetary value itself is useful to everybody who makes a decision. But I think the real value of education can't be expressed in monetary terms alone. Educated people tend to live longer and healthier. They tend to make more rational financial decisions and plan their lives with more foresight. In a democracy it is essential that the voting population is educated and able of processing complex information, othe…

Of course you need educated people for a democracy. That's why the old generation dedicates enough funds to educate the next generation.

Regarding the value of education. If it has a value, why can't it have a monetary value? At one point in your life, you have shifted the majority of your time from learning to making money. You can only make that decision rationally if you have put a monetary value on your education.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#298

Post by lukifer » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 10:36 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #255

I have not read the book (it's the first time I heard about it), but I'm confused by what the title of the book seems to imply and what people here say about the book. I suspect that much of the discussion here seems to boil down to the same misunderstandings. What sort of education is Caplan talking about? Primary, secondary, tertiary? The title seems to imply all education, but I guess that is not the case? Does he…

With the caveat that it's been a few years: while he touches on primary education, he spends more time on secondary. The focus is less on individual ROI, but societal efficiency and policy: the core premise being that most secondary education is poor at increasing "human capital" (marketable skills, retained knowledge), and is instead valuable to employers because a college diploma is predictive for desirable hiring traits: conscientiousness, conformity, and grit.

I have many disagreements with Caplan, particularly on economics, but I found it a worthwhile read.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#299

Post by IshKebab » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 10:37 AM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #269

edanm wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. I'm a big fan of education. However, when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more…

> when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, Not everywhere. Next to no homeless people here in Scandinavia yet education is universally available at almost no cost to the student. The US is richer both in absolute terms and per capita so lack of money is presumably not the reason for the diffe…

> Next to no homeless people here in Scandinavia

Hmm I wonder why such a cold and rich region has no homeless people...

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#300

Post by jwr » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 10:37 AM UTC

I don't care about your spreadsheets. But it's not because I don't care about quantitative assessments, it's because I believe you can't measure everything quantitatively (and put in monetary terms, and make decisions based on that).

As an example, much of the trouble we are in today is caused by insufficient education. Climate change denial, avoiding vaccinations, electing idiots as leaders, religious fundamentalism, wars and conquests, lack of rationality in decision making (ahem!) — all these effects would be lessened if we were better educated and more rational.

Unless you model the entirety of human civilization in your spreadsheets, they just aren't enough.