Self-educated People Who've Made a Difference • Hacker News Board

Re: Self-educated People Who've Made a Difference

#31

Post by radu_floricica » Mon, Jan 18, 2010, 9:06 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #9

radu_floricica wrote: post #6

The issue is not the instruction you get at an university, but the environment. If obesity is contagious, education is so much more so.

For those who need to be infected that may be true sometimes. But to go to university you have to endure 12 or 13 years of school where everything imaginable is done to stifle any interest you may have had before.

We're not ideal superhumans. For any one of us, being in a stimulating environment makes us better. And a library unfortunately doesn't provide it. Not that books aren't a good companion at any time.

Re: Self-educated People Who've Made a Difference

#32

Post by Locke1689 » Mon, Jan 18, 2010, 9:41 PM UTC

This misses one of the more important roles of a degree. The degree isn't to show you that you know what you're doing, it's to show everyone else that you know what you're doing.

Whether or not that ends up being true is something else, but I tend to believe that you get out of a good university what you put into it.

Re: Self-educated People Who've Made a Difference

#33

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 19, 2010, 5:02 AM UTC

j_baker wrote: post #25

dagw wrote: post #10

It seems like a number of people on that list are authors and artists. Those are fields where university education has never really been of any significance. It would be more interesting to see a list with those and similar professions removed. Secondly a couple of them are very dubious,for example Chuck Yeager didn't attend college, but calling him self educated is a bit of a stretch as it ignores all the training a…

What makes you say that? Of course college education is important to authors and artists. Of course, I would bet that it's easier to make it in those fields without a degree than in programming.

[deleted]

Re: Self-educated People Who've Made a Difference

#34

Post by Locke1689 » Tue, Jan 19, 2010, 5:05 AM UTC

noarchy wrote: post #4

A lot of the people on that list at least went to college. It was a lot easier to get away with this back then, whereas today no one will even look at you unless you have a diploma of some kind (in most fields, at least). I am far more impressed with the ones who never even started, or who never even finished the equivalent of high school. A good number of people on the list are entrepreneurs, too. Even today, you ca…

Agreed. The very fact that Bill Gates and Paul Allen both attended Harvard meant that they got some of the benefit. They certainly weren't complete autodidacts -- they got some of the best secondary education in the country beforehand.

Re: Self-educated People Who've Made a Difference

#35

Post by fauigerzigerk » Tue, Jan 19, 2010, 1:47 PM UTC

radu_floricica wrote: post #31

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who need to be infected that may be true sometimes. But to go to university you have to endure 12 or 13 years of school where everything imaginable is done to stifle any interest you may have had before.

We're not ideal superhumans. For any one of us, being in a stimulating environment makes us better. And a library unfortunately doesn't provide it. Not that books aren't a good companion at any time.

You're implying that schools are a stimulating environment. For me they were the exact opposite and universities perpetuate the same mind numbing system.