Opera and Education

thanks. i laughed. though to be fair people who went to college and didn’t focus much on their major but kept reading library books are generally more interesting to talk to than grinds who focused on their major.

I’ve found graduates from the humanities to be much more interesting than people from the sciences. A lot of the people who went through science education were highly-focused grinders; unless you have something to say about their area, they have nothing to contribute. Often, they have nothing to contribute anyhow, preferring to talk trees not forests.

A lot of people graduating from the humanities, however, have those degrees because of a huge amount of intellectual dilettantism.

How is the observation that educated people are more interesting (i.e., more intelligent) incompatible with the signaling theory of education? You like talking to smart people, and 95% of smart people go to college.

The relevant question is, which of educated vs. uneducated do you prefer in conversation partners, holding intelligence constant? I would much rather have lunch with a brilliant person who passed on college to jump into the start-up world than a brilliant person who grinded four years to graduate 98th percentile in their bachelor of commerce.

And what about Razib’s example of a bright student who coasted through classes and spent their time reading library books and blogs? I would place that person in between the above two, and I think you’d agree. If we fix intelligence, their is a monotonic decrease in interestingness, the more someone invests in official education.

At heart I think we worry a little what the motivation would be, if people were not actually compelled to go to school. Most days I like to think the motivation for self-education and seeking success are high. But rather than worrying about too many boring people, I worry about the numbers of people who think there are only a few people to look up to, to seek out or to benefit from, which is what often happens in the scarcity of success. And I go on imagining that in a world where we educate because we want to, more of us can eventually depend on more of us, instead of less.

“I argue that the social benefits of education are grossly overrated.” Well, let’s distinguish (as you do) between *education in useless subjects, useful only for signaling* and *education in interesting and valuable material*–sufficiently interesting and valuable to justify the cost of acquiring it, apart from its signaling function, if any. It’s the lack of the latter kind of education in other people that renders them boring, though the really serious situation would be its lack *in you*, making you *boring to yourself*!

But why should the world revolve around me?

But it does. Why, I don’t even fully exist unless i am posting a comment here. I have a shady impression of existence when I visit and trigger a page view. Otherwise, nothing.