johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

Wow, years later, even after her de facto demotion at Google, people still think she's some kind of product genius?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028615

This is a hilarious situation.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

Proof that I agree: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=788702

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

I hope you're still here!

  > Can you name some ways to actually do this? I'd love to hear about them, but have never actually seen a system like that.
  > Even if there was though, before you go yanking money out of the system, you should actually try to replace it.

All I'm getting at here is that today we have a single university system that generally operates a certain way (a policy that everyone out of high school should enter one of them, and at each university, students attend four years of classes graded A-F, then potentially attend grad school, and the university also houses researchers/professors), and there's nothing intrinsic to learning or doing research that requires all of these things. In other words, there could conceivably be a variety of different institutions that lacked one or more of the characteristics I mentioned, but it's hard for that to happen when the current system is so fully entrenched and subsidized. We could see more research-only labs, more teaching-focused institutions that have their own unique approaches (a la charter schools, Montessori, etc. in K-12), more institutions that integrate learning and research in a different way, or other arrangements I haven't thought of.

One example of something like this is simply universities 100+ years ago, when not everyone was encouraged to attend university. We all know about places like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. I see no reason more variety is not possible.

And you're right, replacing it would be hard, but one reason for that is all the money going into the system. What you're asking me to do is sort of like starting a car company while General Motors is being bailed out by the government. Still possible, I suppose, but more difficult when the other guy is being subsidized.

  > Recently a lot of academics have been pushing for open journals, even going so far as to boycott closed ones. Even this is fairly controversial. :(

Yes, this just shouldn't be controversial at all. In the context of a library, where the whole point is that everything is open, it certainly wouldn't make sense.

  > Sold by whom? Guidance counselors? Other students? I don't believe I've ever met a professor who thought that all, or even most research, is life-changing, or even very interesting. I just don't buy that you heard that from a reliable source.

I'm sure most professors are aware that not all university research is useful. But in principle, every Ph.D. thesis is supposed to be original and worthy of publication. We know most of them aren't really so great, but in theory they meet a certain standard. When you hear people push for more govt. funding for university research, you won't often hear them say most of it won't be useful. And anecdotally, I've seen a lot of people who are urged to get a Ph.D. without regard to the usefulness of what the student would be doing.

  > It's not only about privilege: schools are known by foreigners as a system that allows them to get to the US. In order for this transition to be effective, you'd have to supplant the educational system, then get everyone to know about your alternative system.
  > And besides that, the institutions that do the hiring are incredibly biased towards American schools.

What I mean is that if we had, for example, plenty of world-class research labs that were able to "hire" people into the country as easily as universities can admit foreign students, they'd still want to come. The bias you mention is understandable, but someone who'd worked in an American research lab wouldn't be affected by the "foreign school research" problem.

  > Oh man, I'd really love to believe that, but I just don't see it. Science is still pretty much a communal affair, and the mere availability of knowledge does not make science happen. You need a robust social framework to evolve it. I just don't see that in libraries.

You're right that it's often important for people to do research together. I'm just saying there are other ways to bring people together for science. Will your average local library suddenly become a major scientific center? Probably not, but I can envision something like a modern-day Library of Alexandria where great research happens, and I could see something like that being better than today's universities. Why not?

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

It looks like this whole story was manually pushed off the HN front page for some reason (or it was flagged and the sorting algorithm takes this into account?), but I just wanted to say while I'm here that I was really glad to read this particular subthread.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

  > What's the evidence that libraries serve the poor more than universities?

I take it you've agreed universities are skewed towards the middle class and higher in terms of direct enrollment (and this is easily verifiable). To counter this, you talked about indirect effects:

  > Maybe serving the middle class by producing a highly qualified workforce eventually helps the poor more than just throwing money at libraries.

How can you prove this? I don't think it's possible, but if you can I'm all ears.

  > Are you seriously claiming that university tuition is being increased simply to fund "questionable research" etc.?

I'm claiming one of the reasons university tuition is being increased is that we're in an environment where degrees are seen as being necessary, whether or not they are. In other words, degrees are being treated as an inelastic good. Therefore students are willing to pay whatever they can afford. As student loan limits increase, what students can afford to pay increases, so tuition increases as well. If even part of the tuition increases come from this, and your college president is making $1 million/year, I think it's fair to call that waste.

  > This is a product of the economic system we live and I fail to see how reducing university funding will solve this problem.

It's a product of the system we live in because we created and subsidized that system. Lowering the subsidy is the first step to solving the problem. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3608680

  > You said people can't do anything of value without a college degree

This is completely false. I did not say anything of the kind. In fact, I'm making the exact opposite point, so now I'm wondering if you understood what I was saying at all. I said universities are "fostering an environment where people are expected to have degrees before they can do anything of value".

  > yummyfajita's claim, if valid, is a much weaker one than yours.

No, I was referring to this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3608628

yummyfajitas directly counters the same claim I was referring to.

  > That's not what I'm claiming.

No, that is exactly what you claimed. You said, word-for-word, that it "would've been impossible [for me to publish the article] without all the academic research into computing and networking systems in the last few decades".

  > If you want to claim all of this research could have been done in some different setting

Yes, I'm claiming there is more than one way to do research. Your claim, that what was done was the only possible way to do it, is extraordinary to me. And again, that is what you're claiming when you say it "would've been impossible" for me to publish an article on the internet.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

  > the idiots who made that movie used very similar language to the OP
  > immediately assume assume the OP was one

Come on. This is an obvious case of unwarranted guilt by association. For the record, I've never seen Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and from briefly looking up what the film is about, I don't think I'd agree with it at all.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

We really need to separate certification/credentialing from education.

Agreed. I was giving possibilistic the benefit of the doubt. If some need access to a lab to fully learn a subject, that's something that should be addressed. If not, great.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

  > terrible article
  > Awfully muddled thinking
  > right-wing propaganda
  > laughably poor argument
  > propagandist rant

All of the above were unnecessary. I'll address the rest of your comment now.

  > First, there's an implicit value judgement that "serving the poor" is better than serving the "middle class".

Typically, when cuts are being made, people across the political spectrum prefer to cut services for the middle class before cutting services for the poor. Most people agree that cutting services for the poor is a last resort. I am not arguing here that this is necessarily correct or that you have to agree, but that is the reason for the emphasis on "serving the poor" when discussing cuts to government programs.

  > Universities are constantly wasting huge sums of money?

Administration costs, questionable research, credentialing, etc. That huge increase in tuition costs is going somewhere, isn't it?

  > And why is the student loan system a criticism of the university rather than the financial aid system currently practiced in the US.

They are part of the same system. The connection between the increase in student loan limits and the increase in student tuition has been noted many times. See elsewhere in this thread.

  > Who says people are expected to have degrees before they can do anything of value? Many of the most important innovators of our times do not have college degrees. And certainly nobody is erecting an unnecessary barrier to "individual prosperity".

In addition to what monochrome and yummyfajitas have said, anywhere you look, you can find job listings for relatively simple, entry-level positions that unnecessarily require university degrees. Ever since we started pushing the idea that everyone should go to college, we've seen a signaling arms race where you'd better get a college degree or face being passed over for someone else who did -- whether or not the job really needed someone with a degree. This is the unnecessary barrier. Now you have to spend money and time to get a degree just to keep up. If you can't do that, you're worse off.

Yes, many great innovators do not have college degrees. They help prove my point.

  > Granting certifications to a few doesn't improve their prospects at the expense of others.

Of course it does. yummyfajitas has covered this already.

  > would've been impossible without all the academic research into computing and networking systems in the last few decades

You're suggesting the only possible way to do this kind of research is through the university system as currently structured. This is an outlandish, unsupported claim, and you denigrate the people who performed this research by claiming they could only have done it within the modern university system.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

I agree hands-on learning in a lab is important. I'm not suggesting everyone should stop this and only read books instead. But learning in a lab doesn't need to be tied to a $100,000-$200,000 four-year university degree program. As a society, we should be able to make this much more accessible. (I don't mean we have to literally put labs in libraries. I mean everyone should be able to learn this way cheaply, in the same spirit that a library makes information accessible for free.)

CS students are very lucky. We have mailing lists, IRC, HN/proggit, stackoverflow, good tools, documentation and tutorials freely accessible. These resources aren't as plentiful or accessible for other STEM majors.

You're right, and we should fix that. People interested in other STEM fields shouldn't be forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars and four years to gain access to this knowledge.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

To be perfectly clear, I'd love to cut military spending, bailouts, drug war spending, etc. This article was about a state funding issue, but I'm fine leaving that aside, since ultimately it's all government spending.

In the first place, libraries are a great repository of knowledge. But knowledge does not equal production, and whether you or I or anyone else here wants to admit it, a tremendous amount of stuff has been invented, either totally, or almost totally, as a component of university research.

I don't mind admitting some useful things have come out of universities. But this doesn't mean we need to continue propping up the university system as it exists today. You admit it has many flaws. There are plenty of ways to bring smart people together to learn and do research. They could be nonprofit; they could be separate from teaching or integrated with it. You could even call them "universities" if you like. But there's no reason they have to resemble the current monster.

True, most research in universities is either pointless or close to pointless, but that's the Zipf curve. The ideas that are big are really, really big.

Sure, but the university system isn't sold that way. We're meant to believe the research done in universities is all useful.

People come from all over the world to study here, and when they do, they sometimes stay here. Do people come to America to study at libraries?

Universities have special privileges when it comes to fostering immigration. If America had world-class research centers with the same privileges, people would still love to come here and they'd be able to do so.

The last thing I wanted to point out is that the fact that libraries are a useful repository of knowledge does not mean that it will make people productive. Universities are not good at this either, but the consistent usership of public libraries is pitifully small. The fact that they exist does not mean that people will use them.

As you point out, universities aren't very good at this. Maybe a lot of people won't use libraries, and many who do won't be very productive. But as you suggested in one of your other points, the instances that pay off really pay off. And libraries do this much more efficiently than universities, in terms of money spent. There are a lot of university students burning tens of thousands of dollars without learning very much.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

The top story on Hacker News right now, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3607217 (also the link I start the post with), explains one of the problems with doing that. As many important functions move online, the library is one place someone without a computer and computer skills can use to gain access to the online world.

Libraries also provide a meeting place for the community, access to librarians, and many free classes.

I do agree it makes less sense now for libraries to have large physical collections. The shift to an online library seems inevitable there. But access to this from local libraries is still important.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

Thank you, and I agree with you. I'd hope nearly everyone agrees with what you said.

The way I see it, libraries are so incredible, and so important, that even the mighty university should be cut before libraries are.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

Respectfully, I don't think I've done what you say I've done. I say "they're not the same thing" because, as I said in the post, a lot of people lump them together as "investing in knowledge for society" or the like.

I didn't set out to identify a library's strengths. I believe many of the university's supposed strengths are actually better applicable to libraries.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

While this post focuses on universities and libraries, and I'm serious about preferring university cuts to library cuts, obviously there are plenty of other things that could probably be cut first.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

Yeah, it's hard to attack libraries. They're one of the best examples of a truly equitable program I can think of. I'd much rather cut even university funding: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3608264

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

I'm not trying to be pedantic here. If this actually did get blown up the way I describe, it'd be indicative of some serious problems in journalism today.

johnnybgoode

14 yıl öncediscuss

I really hope this works. It'd be fantastic to see this become a reliable way to fund new adventure games, especially if they're from Tim Schafer.

johnnybgoode

15 yıl öncediscuss

Is this a defense for Android's poor responsiveness (often blamed on a lack of hardware acceleration), or is there some other context I'm missing?

Doesn't this make Android look even worse? I.e., "Android already has hardware acceleration but still doesn't seem to perform very well" means any hope of flipping some magical GPU acceleration switch and instantly fixing the problem is gone.

johnnybgoode

15 yıl öncediscuss

I'd be curious to learn more about your thinking on this. A few years ago you were heading in the other direction -- i.e., you were talking about how people could or should start companies at younger and younger ages.

pg, May 2005: "The three big powers on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Average age of their founders: 24. So it is pretty well established now that grad students can start successful companies. And if grad students can do it, why not undergrads?"

pg, now: "Someone who can start a successful startup at 19 can do it as well or better at 22."

It seems this logic can be extended to say people should wait even longer. Someone with a few years of experience at 26 should be able to do a better job of starting a company than someone at 22.

So I'm interpreting this as a major change in your thinking. It certainly isn't a crime to change your mind; I'm just curious about how and when it happened.

johnnybgoode

15 yıl öncediscuss

I don't think you understood my post at all. Instead it looks like some Mac fanboy(s) somewhere made you angry, and you're responding to me as if I'm one of them.

johnnybgoode

Submissions

Save the Libraries. Cut University Funding Instead.

Jobs's nine-digit Dropbox offer — media loved it, but wasn't true?

Sega Brings Awkward Fun to the Restroom

Clearwire Launches 4G WiMAX Network in Silicon Valley

Warn HN: 8 GB iPod touch not upgraded to 3G S components (only 32/64 GB)

10 Immutable Laws of Security

US Patent 5255452 (or: Why Michael Jackson was a Hacker)

Tell HN: Arch Linux logo copied, issue resolved

16GB Mechanical Memory Key

Ask HN: The HN karma paradox

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