Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A generation of American men give up on college

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

721–730 of 824 posts

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#721

Post by WalterBright »

nradov wrote: post #476
Frost1x wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame the extreme penetration of capitalism everywhere. We've created a culture where everyone thinks like a business and looks to do the minimal effort for the maximal compensation. If you don't do this, "you're dumb" (and, unfortunately, maybe there's some truth to this). In a culture obsessed with looking for exploitation opportunities at every corner, what do we expect? Everyone is running so "lean" and "effici…

People living in communist cultures also looked to do the minimal effort. Sometimes less than minimal if they could get away with it. Human nature.

The allure of communism boils down to the promise of getting something for nothing. Of course that never works out.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#722

Post by WalterBright »

mhh__ wrote: post #710
WalterBright wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Ohm's Law is taught the first day of 4 years of an EE degree. Ohm's Law should be part of your soul, not something a cheat sheet is needed for. 2. The 3 versions of the formula are obvious to anyone who remembers high school freshman math. It's barely even algebra. Carrying that cheat sheet signals you know neither electronics nor the most basic algebra. Maxwell's Equations, however, get introduced in 2nd or 3rd y…

Then a smug physicist will walk by with either the the equations of quantum electrodynamics or Maxwell's equations in terms of differential forms on their t-shirt Besides, EEs usually cheat by assuming a sinusoidal solution anyway.

The physics t-shirts I've seen had the Schwarzchild Radius formula on them.

Physicists assume the pointless mass.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#723

Post by WalterBright »

staysafeanon wrote: post #696
WalterBright wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you run, say, the telephone wires through the same holes, they'll pick up a maddening 60 Hz hummmmmmmmmmm. You're screwed because when this is discovered, the house is finished, and it gets very very expensive to rewrite it. The closer the low voltage wires are to the high voltage ones, and the longer the distance, the more hmmmmmmm they'll pick up.

This isn't the main reason running low and high voltage through the same conduit is not code compliant though. The reason you don't mix low/high in the same raceway is because if exposed low/high voltage conductors come in contact with each other, the low voltage cable has a much higher chance of catching fire.

I didn't think of that. It makes sense. I did think about the low voltage wire picking up enough voltage from induction to damage equipment.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#724

Post by WalterBright »

RubberbandSoul wrote: post #185
mih wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why shouldn't one run low voltage wires through same holes as AC wires ?

I'm guessing it's because the AC voltage will introduce noise on the DC low voltage current. But like everything else it depends. Is the DC feeding something like a lightbulb or a fan? Then it probably won't matter. Does the DC feed something that has a good low pass filter or is it an expensive AC cable with good shielding? Then it might also not matter. None of the above should be considered be professional advice…

If the DC is feeding your telephone, it matters a log. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm that never ends.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#725

Post by confidantlake »

tchaffee wrote: post #655
edmundsauto wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that companies also want an objective hiring process, because otherwise employee bias will seep in. The fact that these two issues are in opposition (plus the general recruiting pipeline issues) are why this is such a difficult problem to solve.

> The problem is that companies also want an objective hiring process Usually only at a very superficial level. Enough to comply with the law. And to be fair, some companies do have good intentions with a little extra effort and money put into diversity efforts. A truly objective hiring process would take into account that Joe and Charley who both got the same results on the coding test are not equally qualified if J…

But looking at what a candidate can do is objective. Trying to compare how tough each one had it is extremely subjective. Is being a woman harder than a minority? Is having a low iq harder than being poor? Being a single parent harder than being addicted to alcohol?

Maybe Charley had depression and anxiety and never made any friends while Joe is outgoing and did allowing him to form study groups easier. Maybe Charley's parents insisted he become a lawyer and he never touched code until college. Maybe Charley has a speech impediment, maybe he is ugly, maybe he is on the spectrum, maybe, maybe, maybe.

We are here to judge how someone can do the job, not go through their life history trying to judge how much harder or easier they had it than someone else.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#726

Post by DenisM »

harimau777 wrote: post #658
zepto wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the silent majority of progressives Really, from what I can see all of current progressivism is compatible with his approach. The silent majority of people who would have called themselves progressives a decade ago are silent because they are silenced and called racists or just right-wing if they question the new orthodoxy. Ergo, the people you are referring to as a silent majority are no longer included as progres…

I think that the issue goes both ways. Modern conservatives have adopted a strategy of ignoring or exploiting discrimination and inequality. So if someone cares about addressing those issues, then the current progressives are the only game in town.

> Modern conservatives have adopted a strategy of ignoring or exploiting discrimination and inequality

Are you saying that conservatives today are more likely to engage in "exploiting discrimination and inequality" than conservatives yesterday? Or what did you mean by "modern"?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#727

Post by teawrecks »

zepto wrote: post #716
teawrecks wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you seriously suggesting that slavery happened ‘naturally’? Are you seriously suggesting that humans aren't naturally occurring? Are you suggesting that there is something inherent about the "Portuguese, British" etc that gave them the power and influence needed to enslave other races? Of course not. Randomly populate a geologically non uniform landmass with humans, and over time some will exploit natural advan…

> Are you suggesting that there is something inherent about the "Portuguese, British" etc that gave them the power and influence needed to enslave other races? Of course not. No. I’m saying they made a conscious choice to enslave other races , just as abolitionists eventually made a conscious choice to oppose it. > You're saying that even though we can clearly see how past societies drew their lines when determining…

> You stop enacting race based policies, and you take steps to counteract the impacts of past racism on people in the present.

But by definition, that's not what ignoring race does.

> This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge that racism was a cause.

By definition, that's what "rotating the line to be orthogonal to race" does.

> However black people are not the only ones who have suffered from impediments. Racism is one cause, but there are others.

> A person who is struggling today should be helped regardless of their own skin color or the skin color of the grandparents.

Agreed, that's why I said: "We can see the lines that history drew. Lines based on race, based on geography, based on gender, etc. and I think it would be ignorant of us to ignore the existence of any of those lines. It's not an either/or situation."

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#728

Post by effingwewt »

jasonboyd wrote: post #623
effingwewt wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Survivorship bias with a N=1 doesn't change the absolute fact that most if not all degrees are worth far less than the debt taken on. Why your personal story is pertinent here is beyond me, OP was talking about the person in the article. It's not dramatic at all when we have 1.73[1] trillion in student loan debt, with an average of 39k each student. Starting your professional career years in debt is the definition of…

Claiming survivorship bias really makes it sound like we are talking about something much riskier than getting a college degree. I didn't survive, I planned. I got a two year degree from a local community college for a fraction of the price that those same credit hours would have cost at a university. I then went on to a modest in-state University to complete my four year degree. I can't put a sexy Ivy League college…

Oh I completely agree it can be done. But let's consider- did you have children? Were you able to love at home? Did you have to work full-time? Did you need financial aid? There are just a whole lot of variables here.

If you go to college broke, and come out in debt, and are then in debt for years after (I don't know offhand the average) then yes that's crippling debt. When figured against future earnings and actual take-home profit, how will those numbers work out for someone like that? Chances are, not well. Not everyone can just 'learn to program' to get a cushy 120k+/yr job. Also some people with families take longer than 2 years just for an associates degree. This is really survivorship bias wkth N=1.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#729

Post by effingwewt »

pwthornton wrote: post #409
effingwewt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean of the choice is between that and crippling debt and a useless degree, he's making the objectively smart move. The fact that they were able to buy things while living at home just drives the point home even more- he would not have the disposable income to make those purchases for many years if he decides to go to college.

He works as a landscaper in Minnesota, which I presume does not offer robust employment year round. Even if he could work all seasons doing landscaping, his pay would come out to $26,000 a year, assuming he takes no days off. I am not sure this is a smart move. It seems like he is hoping his music career pans out, but we aren't given a lot of insight into his talent level there.

I mean it doesn't necessarily mean staying at whatever job forever.

But a well-paying trade like Electrician, especially commercial pays better than many degrees.

We need a bootcamp for schools, there is just too much of a bullshit moat around degrees IMHO.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#730

Post by mbrodersen »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #186
atoav wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article (and others) just show that American men are starting to put their efforts into places that do reward them; namely, the trades and entrepreneurship. Good point. I did not intend to argue otherwise. To go into trade is not an irrational reaction on an individual level — quite the opposite in fact. What I did argue however, was that making it hard for people to get a higher education is not a good thing f…

You have still missed my point. The American dream was an effective, real thing for a long period of time. Most Americans today are descendants of poor immigrants that worked hard and gave their children a better quality of life. This wasn’t “a lottery” and your characterization of it as such is both historically misinformed and just ideological in nature. As I said, the issue is that this hard work no longer results…

You are not getting his point. You are taking about what was. He is talking about what aught to be.
Post reply on HN