[Samseau]

(02-29-2012 03:56 AM)Entropy Wrote:  

(02-28-2012 02:38 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

And how do you know if you had skipped college you wouldn't have had more money/time to learn how to do research from actual professionals even better/faster?

Considering around half of history's great scientists never went to a university, I'd say you aren't looking at the big picture here.


College used to be a good choice, a good place to learn. Now it's a bad place to learn. Three reasons college is a joke:

1. High tuition (so you'll be forced to work more to pay off debts)
2. Gen-Ed requirements (bullshit courses you have to take in order to get a degree, thus costing you more time and money)
3. Peer-review system (so there's almost no originality in science or published work anymore)

Before the advent of these events, college was good. But no longer - the modern man is better off without "education". He will be better read, more original in thought, and less indebted had he just educated himself.

Are you engaging in a sophistry play just for the fun of it?
I have to ask, because when i look at your arguments, i was thinking: this lad is surely joking.

1. Your counter-factual argument is anemic. I dont feel like elaborately dissecting it right now.
2. Your critique of peer-review system is misplaced. Yes, there is a shitload of originality and breakthroughs in science every month. Grab "NATURE" or "SCIENCE" journal or search "pubmed" database.
3. Historical scientists educational background? Look at the educational background of Nobel prize winners in science or Fields medal winners in Mathematics.
4.There is merit in general education: a man has to be complete. You should not be a narrow technical person. Reading the history of scientific advances(especially the biographies of scientists) you can clearly see just how much things outside of science inspires scientific breakthrough. Multidisciplinary studies is essential.
5. Formalized science education stunts intellectual creativity and development? Seriously? Now i know you are just trolling.

For all the claims of being a well-rounded person, it doesn't seem you've studied intellectual history. Especially the history of science. You think what's published today in NATURE or SCIENCE is groundbreaking? We haven't had major groundbreaking scientific research done since the atomic age.

General-eds in college is a neat idea in concept, but in practice serves nothing except to waste a student's time.

But I take great issue with this:

Quote:

5. Formalized science education stunts intellectual creativity and development? Seriously? Now i know you are just trolling.

I'm sorry, you are just wrong. The initial great thinkers, Plato and Socrates, never went to school.

Nor was Descartes, Rousseau, or Augustine educated in any formal sense.

Einstein's major contributions came from the learning he had outside of school:

Quote:

When Einstein was ten years old Max Talmud (later changed to Max Talmey), a poor Jewish medical student from Poland, was introduced to the Einstein family by his brother, and during weekly visits over the next five years he gave the boy popular books on science, mathematical texts and philosophical writings. These included Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Euclid's Elements (which Einstein called the "holy little geometry book")

Quote:

His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but Einstein clashed with authorities and resented the school's regimen and teaching method. He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict rote learning. At the end of December 1894 he travelled to Italy to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using a doctor's note.[16] It was during his time in Italy in 1895 without formal schooling that he wrote a short essay with the title "On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field."

This is just from wikipedia.

Feynman and Newton have similar stories as well, and this is just an account of guys who actually spent time in the system. There are countless others: medieval philosophers, enlightenment scientists, roman engineers, British sailors (who made innovations w/seacraft), French mathematicians, who never had any sort of meaningful formal education.

Free your mind from the shackles of the modern education system, and only then will you achieve anything.