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Comment by n4r9 | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure this resonates with university lecturers all over the Western world. The late writer and university academic Mark Fisher has some interesting points about this effect in his 2009 book "Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?"[0]. He saw it as an inevitable byproduct of the infiltration of neo-liberal ideology into the academic sphere. Setting targets and measuring performance indicators are justified with efficiency arguments, but ultimately cause an increase in bureaucracy and a decline in mental health.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism:_Is_there_n...

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I have often argued that "being realist" is a failure in and of itself. If people said "well, there's a king and that's what it is", we'd never have got to where we are now.

Ideologies (and ideas) are, in my view, stronger than facts, which often only represent the past, while ideas shape the future.

(these days the word "fact" is a bit of a trigger, but I thought about that well before all that jazz, and the current phenomenom seemed to prove my point to many of my friends)

Can't you be a realist while still being idealistic? Isn't that a bit of an advantage, too - seeing the world for what it actually is?

Searching for historical examples, JFK was both?

Fun fact: that's the original definition of the term Realpolitik, as coined by Ludwig von Rochau, a German writer and politician in the 19th century.

He said that the great achievement of the Enlightenment had been to show that might is not necessarily right. The mistake liberals made was to assume that the law of the strong had suddenly evaporated simply because it had been shown to be unjust. Rochau wrote that "to bring down the walls of Jericho, the Realpolitiker knows the simple pickaxe is more useful than the mightiest trumpet."

I've been reading "Realpolitik: A History" and I think there are some useful lessons for today.

Expressed in a very rough way:

I think one has to be realist about their tools and idealist about their goals. And the drive is the most important factor. If they're just going through the motions without intent, without ideal, it won't lead anywhere. The will to preserve (imo absurd[0]) or the will to change.

Of course, there isn't any one true model of thought. So I'm surely wrong.

[0]: I don't think anything can last, civil rights included, but things can come and go

Pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.

I think a person can be both, and indeed, must be both if they wish to change the world. I find that I have less and less patience for people with high-minded, admirable ideals, who refuse to do anything other than take the uncompromising, principled high-road. I've begun to realise these sorts of people are just self-indulgent narcissists, who fundamentally don't care about [the environment | racism | gender equality | defeating the lizard-people]. What they really care about is feeling good about themselves, having others think well of them and retaining a sense of moral superiority over others.

If one actually wants to achieve their ideals, I truly think the 'uncompromising high-road' approach is a footgun. I've seen it play out a number of times. The Australian Greens party, for example, voted down a carbon emissions trading scheme about 5 years ago because it didn't conform to their exact ideals. The result? They were eventually forced to accept a less stringent 'carbon tax', that was ultimately repealed about a year after it was enacted. And not once did I see any introspection, nor any comprehension that their 'principled stand' resulted in the worst possible environmental outcome. I can just imagine the self-congratulatory "we stuck to our principles, we can hold our heads up high" BS in their party room. Pity about the environment, but I guess that's beside the point.

I think that we're more likely to achieve the 'just' or ideal outcome when we address the 'is', not the 'ought'. We have to work with the situation that is in front of us; not the utopia in our heads. Don't get me wrong, having ideals is important: without a destination in mind you will find yourself on a road to nowhere. I consider myself an idealist. But I personally find that 'results' are much more satisfying than abstract ideals and lofty thoughts.

If you are a high-minded idealist, that's great. It's the first step towards a better world. But you should also honestly ask yourself: What is my true aim? Do I want to feel good, or do I want to do good?

Setting targets won't solve anything since this is a structural problem. You cannot leave those structures in place and expect a different outcome. That is just treating the symptoms.

In my view the solution is simple: instead of letting bureaucrats and administrators decide, let parents and students choose the classes and teachers they want. Those teachers that offer classes and a teaching style that students actually want will do fine, those that don't will have to find other jobs. Problem solved without artificial metrics that never work anyway.

Besides, it's the students money. Why shouldn't they be able to choose what they want to learn and who they want to learn from? I suppose you could make the authoritarian argument that the experts know better than you and should be allowed to force you take the classes they think best. But that kind of thinking is the root cause of the current problem.

This might be the start of a good approach, but I think it would largely reward popular teachers and easy classes. Back in university I would not have trusted myself to decide which were the necessary classes. With family, stress, work, etc. it would be too tempting to take the easy road. Maybe some combination of students and teachers...

I think rewarding popular teachers would be a feature rather than a bug. As for the too-easy problem, well, if you had to take a certification exam (like, for example, the bar exam) then you would have to choose the courses you thought would most likely help you pass.

My larger point was that the current educational system has stagnated and seems to be frozen in the late 19th century. It is highly--even actively--resistant to change. It is very expensive for the results it delivers. Whatever the right answer is (if there is one) requires thinking about the root causes of the problems and possibly fundamental change. Unfortunately, with topics like these people seem to want a different result without changing the underlying system that produces that result.

The problem with that is then who teaches will just become a matter of who knows the parents more and who gives good grades... There is some need for administration but not near the extent that exists. The waste of money is truly a large problem. My school district has spent millions in useless computers and radio towers that 1/40 of the school population will ever touch. Reducing the number of tests children take may help; I don't think giving parents and students free reign over teachers would be best.

> I suppose you could make the authoritarian argument that the experts know better than you and should be allowed to force you take the classes they think best.

I'm not sure that's especially authoritarian rather than just practical. I have a CS PhD focused on optimization and machine learning. I trust a student to mostly decide whether they feel like computer science is a good field for them to go into, but once they've made the choice to work on machine learning, they have very few useful opinions to offer. I don't care if the student thinks statistics or linear algebra are useful, boring, whatever. Part of what that money of theirs is buying is for someone like me to make the plan that gets them from where they are now to where they want to be.

I don't disagree with your point. I was mostly thinking of general education and the high school curricula.

On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of the PhD style program. It seems old-fashioned and possibly obsolete to me. I would prefer to see it replaced by something like, in the case you mention, an advanced certification in machine learning. I don't know the field well enough to say what such a certification might entail but maybe testing and some kind of project?

I think what you're describing is a need that's filled pretty well today by a master's degree.

I don't think the PhD is so much archaic as just overused. It is intended to signify that a person has demonstrated that they can contribute significant new knowledge to a field of study, and incidentally, that they can teach (graduate) university courses. Society probably needs far less of both those traits than it can supply people who want to do them.

Yes please. I want my kids to compete in the job market against the millions of people who would be taught science and evolution in the religious schools that would clearly emerge under such a system.

As if that isn't already happening under the current system. But, hey, why even think about change? The US educational system is already so good at improving, not letting institutional inertia block new ideas, offering better value for parents and students,...

Say what you want about the inadequacies of our education systems, but they have helped to deliver the amazing world in which we live today.

Let us not go throwing the good out with the bad in pursuit of some ideal that isn't within reach anyway. There is no perfect answer, but i'm personally wary of unintended consequences of radical change. Our social, political, and cultural survival may very well hang in the balance.

I came here to post the same book, I'd highly recommend it.

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