No one cared about my spreadsheets

That bad justification for choosing a very wrong tool for the job does not instill confidence for other logic employed by the author.

“I used the tool that obfuscates my work that I’m trying to get others to review and buy in on because I consider myself hopeless at clearer tools and don’t want to even try. Why will no one engage with my obfuscated work?”

I mean even he admits he made and corrected a ton of mistakes in his beast of excel. It’s absurd to think anyone would want to wade through that mess.

Intentional or not, if one makes it impractical and unreasonable to crosscheck ones work then critics shouldn’t be expected to unravel it to point to the internal error. They only need to point to external evidence in the contrary.

I think, in part, Caplan has made a fairly classic error in attempting to figure out the optimal strategy for an individual within an existing system, where small numbers of individuals deviating generally doesn't matter, and then using those results to make a policy recommendation about how to change the system en masse in a way that will radically change the system. His spreadsheets don't answer many questions I might have about such systemic changes, for example, would the reduction in college graduates reduce our nation's economic competitiveness? If it did, how would that effect overall quality of life for average Americans? I don't find compelling answers to these questions in his spreadsheets (nor his book).

This is not an attempt to defend the system as it exists now but I think Caplan does a much better job outlining a problem than making his case for a solution.

> otherwise none of the skills or knowledge are transferable.

While I understand the source of this statement and why people often say this, I'm not entirely sure I agree with this, at least anecdotally.

For example, I have a degree in Theater. Which, on the surface, doesn't transfer well to, say, software engineering or law or accounting or teaching or social work.

But is that really true? To pick a popular theatre-related discipline, consider what an actor does:

- They show up on time (to scenes, to rehearsal, to performances)

- They can memorize vast amounts of material in a relatively short period of time verbatim

- They work well with others

- They work well individually

- They can take direction

- They can take constructive criticism

- They meet deadlines under pressure (the show must go on!)

- They can put themselves in other people's shoes (Method acting, ftw)

- They know how to do research (how does a 1940s soldier talk, dress, walk, act?)

- They are comfortable speaking in front of groups

- They can speak clearly and enunciate appropriately (especially good in a remote world with fuzzy tech!)

And so on and so forth...

I don't really care what industry you're in, those are desirable qualities for ANY hiring manager! I would be THRILLED if candidates metaphorically walked through the door with evidence of those skill sets under their belt! This is the holy grail of "soft skills" that everyone looks for, whether you're a doctor or a restaurant manager or a postal worker.

I've had a lot of jobs in my career, but I've never in my life walked onto a job and known everything I need to know. There's a LOT of on the job training -- so much that I might as well be taking a boot camp at every new job!

And so from that perspective, someone who walks in with a theater or really any kind of arts or social science degree and a modicum of Python under their belt is a very, very attractive hire to me. I can teach you our framework of choice and how to run tests and how to use Jira, but I don't have time to teach you how to learn or how to communicate or how to take direction.

Anyway, my two cents.

Fascinating to think that all you have to do is get 43 out of 100 people in South Africa degrees and it will be Finland.

On the other hand, I often see studies where I'm quite curious to reproduce it and I just can't. Just today: saw a 2007 study from a university finding a correlation between sleep quality (deep sleep phase duration) and exposure to a GSM-frequency signal for 3 hours (a long, but not unusual/absurd, phone call) before sleep, even though the participants could not tell better than chance whether they had been exposed... would love to see if that reproduces even though the p value was not bad, but I just don't have the people nor the radiation calibration equipment nor the sleep lab nor anything.

Even so much as a survey is hard to properly reproduce, definitely more than a day's worth of work if you need to go out and find a random pool of surveyees. Opening up a spreadsheet in your favorite software sounds fairly approachable by comparison, assuming it has no fancy university-level mathematics in it.

Whether it is fun to talk to people for a survey vs. sit through pages of arithmetic is a whole other question, though.