> Theodore H. Smith wrote:
>>>>> It also demonstrates that your at least persistent enough to
>>>>> accomplish and acquire one instead of just waving your hands and
>>>>> shouting "bullshit" at it.
>>>> But not smart enough to realise that you can acheive more outside
>>>> of
>>>> the academia? Must be a very useful kind of intelligence, smart
>>>> enough
>>>> to be persistant at what others tell you is a good thing, but not
>>>> smart enough to question if it is REALLY a good thing.
>>> Ah right you have to have NOT had a degree to realize that.
>>
>> Nope. Honestly the main thing University seems to teach is arrogance.
>> The belief that you know more than you know, which usually shows up
>> when you encounter an area new to you. The tendancy to copy other
>> people's ideas and believe that you are really really clever and
>> superior, for having copied someone else's ideas, despite that you
>> can
>> invent nothing. That sort of thing.
>
> Wow. Thanks for the free psychoanalysis. Did I do something in
> particular for you to start insulting everyone you don't even really
> know?
>
> I mean, not having a degree must automatically mean you're on par with
> everyone below your own social strata, right? Just like having a
> degree
> means the opposite?
>
> Or maybe you're just looking to denigrate people on this list who have
> degrees? Did someone with a degree take a <deleted> in your coffee
> when
> you weren't looking so now you're on a mission to insult people?
>
> Oddly enough, I have a degree, a minor and a major in two different
> areas actually, and at the same time I don't really give a damn if the
> guy at the next desk has a degree or not as much as I care about
> whether
> they have more than the intelligence of a horsefly and I can work with
> them to get the job done, much as I don't care if they drive a
> porche or
> a ten year old Honda.
>
> I've known plenty of people with little or no degree yet much ambition
> and drive to get ahead in the world. I've known people with degrees
> in
> CS who couldn't recognize a Bash prompt or know what rooted means,
> and I
> know people making twice my salary who panic when their desktop icon
> layout changed slightly. I guess it takes all kinds.
>
> If you have an issue with someone who happens to have a degree maybe
> you
> should consider they're just a jerk, and it doesn't come from having a
> degree or their academic experience or lack thereof.
I must have touched a nerve.
Anyhow, bringing you back to the facts. Here's the conversation:
Some guy: "perhaps someone with a CS degree can help"
Charles: "yeah I have a CS degree, I can help"
Me: "You don't need no stupid degree to help, in fact here is a better
neater faster easier to use version that I did despite that I have no
degree and never felt the need for one".
OK, so I am deliberately provocative. Provocative or not, my point is
valid. It's not that I have an issue with people who have CS degrees,
anymore than I have an issue with degrees in art or media studies.
It's an issue with people who assume it has any benefit.
The entire academia is based around dominance and control of
resources, simply. It has it's roots in the elite aristocracy trying
to corner all forms of learning for themselves. The academia is
especially good at this when it comes to resources that can't be
shared, like particle accelerators or medical equipment. Early
pioneers like Faraday were stifled and trodden upon, for their lack of
aristocratic inheritance, treated as slaves despite their superior
intelligence. Thankfully Faraday's cruel "master" died and so he was
then set free to do important work. That's all the academia does
really, try to strangle learning, just like Faraday's work early work
was strangled.
You could say that he did all work in the academia, however... you
could also argue that he had no other place to do it in. And would
have wasted less years if dominant rich powerful stupid people did not
hold him back.
If those systems of power can't dominate learning and access to
resources needed to learn, then the systems of power dominate the
recognition of having learned. If you don't have the degrees, some
people refuse to recognise you.
Where this system of dominating learning falls down, is in computing,
a resource that anyone can get access to.
Personally, I think communities are a far more effective way to learn.
There is no dominance, no controlling of resources. People share. The
early teachers such as Aristotle taught in this manner. Thinkers were
free to come and go, and didn't have to pay money or submit to dogma,
as long as they had the right attitude.
--
http://elfdata.com/plugin/
"String processing, done right"
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