Macho Madness
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Suddenly glad I didn't click Cerium's link.
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PoliGAF 2016 |OT3| You know what they say about big Michigans - big Florida
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Mrs. Manky
Banned
Damn, that reminds me. There is a decent-sized population of obviously Muslim people and brown people that would be mistaken for Muslim by the ignorant living in Downtown Cleveland, along with students at CSU, CWRU, etc. I hope they stay safe during the convention.
User 463088
Banned
No, it's this phrase:
No lies detected.
Ohio is like the black hole where hope goes to, if not die, but get a bit depressed for a while.
I think I know the UK equivalent: a charming place by the name of Slough.
They both fall under "states I am aware exist and that is all I can say for certain"
eBay Huckster
Member
just spent most of the day on a bus through indiana on sunday, can confirm this.
that state is indianapolis and then 3 hours of nothing in either direction
If people want essays I can do essays.
I want to push back on this in two ways. First, I think that to some extent "follow your dreams" education is how you best teach certain "essential and fundamental skills". Second, I think it'd be a good idea to at least subsidize education even if the benefits were purely personal.
1. Most people I did my mechanical engineering degree with say that they don't really use anything they learned in college on the job. At best they can look back and say that there's about a semester's worth of stuff they learned about mechanical engineering that's useful to them now. And this is a pretty practical sort of degree. So what's going on here? Are big oil companies just hiring shiny credentials that don't mean anything? Does the degree just show that you can learn the sort of thing they want you to learn on the job? I think that last thing is almost right, but it's not that the degree proves that we had this capability all along. A lot of what we learned in the course of getting the degree was how to learn mechanical engineering type stuff.
But actually I don't think that the really valuable skills we got out that program are very specific to mechanical engineering. No doubt it's useful to have practiced on things that look at least a little like what you end up working on in a job - physical intuition is useful - but the core skills here are basically just what we lump together as "critical thinking" with an emphasis on modeling messy systems with math.
To wrap this part up, I'm just going to summarize the rest without trying to be very persuasive. I think this "critical thinking" is very valuable. I think it's very hard to teach critical thinking directly, and that one of the best ways to do it is to encourage students to analyze things they enjoy or are passionate about. Student engagement is what really makes the difference between a value-adding education and a waste of four years. It is better to have a student get an English degree if they really enjoy thinking about literature than to have them get an engineering degree if their only goal is to get that piece of paper at the end. They end up with more useful skills with the English degree.
2. As liberals I expect we mostly agree that there's room for the state to engage in at least soft paternalism. It is worthwhile to encourage people to lead better lives. This is only really problematic when people are disagreeing about what's "better". So I think that the state should absolutely do more to encourage people to become more sophisticated liberal arts thinkers.
What's nice about saying "everyone should be better at history, at philosophy, at English" and so on is that virtually everyone agrees that there are things that it's really important to have a good handle on. Almost everyone thinks that "Does God exist, and if so what is God like?" is a really important question worth serious consideration. Obviously we care about right and wrong, and this matters not just for our personal lives but for public policy - everyone thinks that it's important to have a considered opinion on abortion, on gay marriage, etc. Likewise everyone agrees that understanding history is really useful for making decisions today.
But here's the thing: while the man on the street will tell you that abortion is a really important issue and it's important to think through it carefully and getting the right answer matters a lot, if you actually ask him to discuss the issue he will disappoint. Most people are morons about this stuff. But they don't think they are! What we've got is Dunning-Kruger on an epic scale. People think that, for example, philosophical thinking is really really really important. They just don't recognize that they're terrible at it and they don't realize that that's what universities call "philosophy". So, paternalism. It's not that I think this person would be better off with some philosophy. It's that philosophy would make this person better off by his own lights, and he doesn't realize that because he's Dunning-Krugering hard, basically. This is kind of the old evangelist's analogy about the skydiver's parachute being broken and only you realizing it, except better because everyone agrees in this case that there's a parachute and that it's really important that it be working, and only you've gone to parachute school. Educated people can be very confident that they're not just imposing their values on the masses - the masses will tell you that they value careful thinking on all kinds of issues - and that what's going on is just that people don't realize that certain kinds of education are necessary in order for them to achieve their own goals (in part because they don't realize that right now they are failing to achieve those goals).
I've gestured at why this might be useful to society as a whole beyond it being useful to almost every person in society individually, but I think really the individual gains here are so large given the importance that almost everyone places on the questions that they're currently doing a terrible job of answering that we'd get a massive social welfare boost even if there were no implications for voting or whatever.
I want to push back on this in two ways. First, I think that to some extent "follow your dreams" education is how you best teach certain "essential and fundamental skills". Second, I think it'd be a good idea to at least subsidize education even if the benefits were purely personal.
1. Most people I did my mechanical engineering degree with say that they don't really use anything they learned in college on the job. At best they can look back and say that there's about a semester's worth of stuff they learned about mechanical engineering that's useful to them now. And this is a pretty practical sort of degree. So what's going on here? Are big oil companies just hiring shiny credentials that don't mean anything? Does the degree just show that you can learn the sort of thing they want you to learn on the job? I think that last thing is almost right, but it's not that the degree proves that we had this capability all along. A lot of what we learned in the course of getting the degree was how to learn mechanical engineering type stuff.
But actually I don't think that the really valuable skills we got out that program are very specific to mechanical engineering. No doubt it's useful to have practiced on things that look at least a little like what you end up working on in a job - physical intuition is useful - but the core skills here are basically just what we lump together as "critical thinking" with an emphasis on modeling messy systems with math.
To wrap this part up, I'm just going to summarize the rest without trying to be very persuasive. I think this "critical thinking" is very valuable. I think it's very hard to teach critical thinking directly, and that one of the best ways to do it is to encourage students to analyze things they enjoy or are passionate about. Student engagement is what really makes the difference between a value-adding education and a waste of four years. It is better to have a student get an English degree if they really enjoy thinking about literature than to have them get an engineering degree if their only goal is to get that piece of paper at the end. They end up with more useful skills with the English degree.
2. As liberals I expect we mostly agree that there's room for the state to engage in at least soft paternalism. It is worthwhile to encourage people to lead better lives. This is only really problematic when people are disagreeing about what's "better". So I think that the state should absolutely do more to encourage people to become more sophisticated liberal arts thinkers.
What's nice about saying "everyone should be better at history, at philosophy, at English" and so on is that virtually everyone agrees that there are things that it's really important to have a good handle on. Almost everyone thinks that "Does God exist, and if so what is God like?" is a really important question worth serious consideration. Obviously we care about right and wrong, and this matters not just for our personal lives but for public policy - everyone thinks that it's important to have a considered opinion on abortion, on gay marriage, etc. Likewise everyone agrees that understanding history is really useful for making decisions today.
But here's the thing: while the man on the street will tell you that abortion is a really important issue and it's important to think through it carefully and getting the right answer matters a lot, if you actually ask him to discuss the issue he will disappoint. Most people are morons about this stuff. But they don't think they are! What we've got is Dunning-Kruger on an epic scale. People think that, for example, philosophical thinking is really really really important. They just don't recognize that they're terrible at it and they don't realize that that's what universities call "philosophy". So, paternalism. It's not that I think this person would be better off with some philosophy. It's that philosophy would make this person better off by his own lights, and he doesn't realize that because he's Dunning-Krugering hard, basically. This is kind of the old evangelist's analogy about the skydiver's parachute being broken and only you realizing it, except better because everyone agrees in this case that there's a parachute and that it's really important that it be working, and only you've gone to parachute school. Educated people can be very confident that they're not just imposing their values on the masses - the masses will tell you that they value careful thinking on all kinds of issues - and that what's going on is just that people don't realize that certain kinds of education are necessary in order for them to achieve their own goals (in part because they don't realize that right now they are failing to achieve those goals).
I've gestured at why this might be useful to society as a whole beyond it being useful to almost every person in society individually, but I think really the individual gains here are so large given the importance that almost everyone places on the questions that they're currently doing a terrible job of answering that we'd get a massive social welfare boost even if there were no implications for voting or whatever.
Driving through Indiana is how we've learned 90% of what we know about how sensory deprivation affects the human brain.
Eh, I am thinking of Clinton '08 supporters more than current supporters. There was a lot of "DNC CONSPIRACY!!!!!" that happened in 2008. 2016 isn't really fair, because it's easy to be a good sport when your team is thrashing the other one.
It's the procedural lawsuit from December. Basically it's nothing (the DNC even responded that they are "amicably" working it out with Sanders' people), but people want to blow it up as a "Sanders is a TRAAIIITTTOORRRR" bullshit.
Also, can I either be head of NASA or The Sports Czar? Ivy for DNC Chair btw.
Prediction: IIRC, Dems who voted for Hillary in the primary voted 83 Obama / 16 McCain in the General. Of Bernie voters who vote in the general, I bet that less than 16% of bernie primary voters vote for the GOP candidate.
Why is Ohio so universally regarded as awful (a rhetorical question)? It's not a deep red state and sits on fertile land and borders a great natural resource (the great lake system). It's not devoid of decent sized cities.
I swear if there was some international eminent domain system then some U.S. States would be stripped from America and given to other peoples who could doubtlessly make better use of them. Imagine what a great power Singapore would be if they had mere sovereignty over Alabama and Mississippi.
I swear if there was some international eminent domain system then some U.S. States would be stripped from America and given to other peoples who could doubtlessly make better use of them. Imagine what a great power Singapore would be if they had mere sovereignty over Alabama and Mississippi.
I am sorry that you met with such a terrible fate.
Thank you for that, really good essay.
I must admit I don't think about this issue often enough to form a proper opinion, so it's always great to read thoughts like this.
eBay Huckster
Member
Considering it's only $75,000 i'd think the DNC could just pay it and not be much worse for wear. As far as it helping Bernie with his whole "convince the Superdelegates" strategy, it's hugely bad. Of course, that's considering he actually believes that strategy and isn't just still in this because of ego and hoping to get a few more dollars out of poor college students and Redditors.
shinra-bansho
Member
I think it's fine to consider the non-monetary social benefit, (although it's still a concept of economics ultimately) that education can provide. As a society we already consider that to warrant some degree of subsidy. But we're talking about a complete subsidy of this higher education; and under that scenario I don't think a case can be made that the benefit is worth this cost.
This isn't to say I don't think higher education shouldn't be more affordable and accessible, but I think it's still needs a fundamental overhaul.
We're also talking about the practicality in the current situation, or at least I prefer to. I think it's a nice idea, in a world where we have a surplus of resources to enable someone to pursue their personal interest in medieval pottery storage. But we don't live in that world, and those resources are better spent elsewhere.
I somewhat recall in reading about the benefits of trade, although I could be recalling entirely wrong, that a large part of inflationary pressure despite the reduction in cost of goods is the escalating cost of services like health and education. New disruptive approaches to delivery could change this, but in the more near term, I don't expect costs to become more rather than less manageable.
Heh, I feel like we did this before. I'll essay back if I have time later or maybe just respond on our super secret modchat.
I mean I don't really disagree, as you know, that the core skills that make for employable people aren't restricted to certain fields. But rather I think the way much of higher education is currently structured means that they aren't really serving this purpose well regardless of field.
I can speak to this a bit. I got an Electrical Engineering degree and it's mostly the same. You learn critical thinking skills and problem solving throughout the coursework. Sometimes you do learn calculations that you will actually use on the job, V=IR (Ohm's law) is something that does get a lot of real use, but for the most part even if you need to do calculations you've never done before you have the mental tools to figure out how to do them.
And sometimes you don't and you ask people for help and then you learn. Knowing when you don't know something is important too and that can come from repeatedly working on different types of problems and furthering critical thinking skills.
User 463088
Banned
More astronauts have come from Ohio than every other state. There's something about living here that, literally, makes the cold, dead vacuum of space more appealing than Ohio.
At least in space you can avoid hearing that all of Cleveland's sports teams have humiliated themselves again
eBay Huckster
Member
technically, if they launched from florida, does that mean they really wanted to get away from florida?
In an even more practical sense, I have like 5 guys on my floor all cross training in departments they'll never really deal with on their day to day for years to come. Yet exposure at least benefits them to know what their work provides down the pipeline and often people come back with new ideas on how to improve their own process through said exposure. Kaizen production is a blast.
Education is nothing more than the opportunity to become a well rounded individual, sure it's not always useful, but broader experiences are useful often enough to warrant investing. You never know where the next big idea might stem from.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Its just dull as shit, really. I'm from the midwest and there's not even a hostility towards Ohio or Indiana so much as a complete apathy (outside of sports)
OrangeGrayBlue
Member
No, it means that the prospect of being as far from Ohio as possible is Florida's saving grace.
User 463088
Banned
I mean, there's nothing really terrible about Ohio. The weather is totally shit. A lot of the people suck. There are big packets of rednecks, but that happens everywhere. We once had a river catch fire. Cleveland's sports teams are a national joke.
But, we have Ohio State and we're not Michigan.
But, we have Ohio State and we're not Michigan.
eBay Huckster
Member
Tell me more about this river, I'm intrigued.
User 463088
Banned
StopMakingSense
Member
This is a bit overblown. Today was the filing deadline, and while they are still working out a settlement with the DNC, they wanted to have this as an item on their side of the negotiation.
Good call
I say, that certainly is something. Not a proper state for a river at all, my goodness no.
OrangeGrayBlue
Member
To your credit, I've driven across the country twice and there were worse places than Ohio.
I'm looking at you, Kansas.
They got away from Ohio, but then they ended up in Florida, so at that point they made the only rational choice.
Honestly, the only thing that drives me crazy here are the winters, and we've had a super mild one this year. (Thanks, El Nino!) We've got one of the best water systems in the country, a superb hospital network, extensive beautiful parkland, some great museums, and it is dirt-ass fuckin' cheap to live here. There's plenty of problems, but a lot of those problems are nearly everywhere.
And when the freshwater wars begin, we will own all of you.
Particle Physicist
between a quark and a baryon
Wait, what? The data they breached and stole from Hillary?
... If this is true, they have successfully and completely lost me. Wow
User 463088
Banned
So my Kos diary is still on the Rec list.
I also managed to do 3 hours of phone banking today for Queen, mainly to WA, as that's the numbers they fed me.
I also managed to do 3 hours of phone banking today for Queen, mainly to WA, as that's the numbers they fed me.
User 463088
Banned
This winter has been insanely good. It was basically nothing at all. Not that I'm complaining mind you. I've been thinking about moving somewhere out west, though. I was planning on going back to Florida, but I'm thinking of Cali or Washington at the moment. It's a work in progress, but I want to get out of Ohio. (Or at least move to Columbus or something).
Great work, you're the real MVP here
I wish I could donate. Damn being British
Marry me, become naturalized and vote? We'll just run it by Kyle first. My man has to give me permission.
I like this plan. Wouldn't want to come between you and your Bernie Bro tho.
I'll never be able to call him anything other than that I don't think
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