Comment by mymythisisthis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mymythisisthis | Hacker News Reader

Lots of business are converting to delivery. I think this is good. The warehouse style of store, prevalent since the 1960s is an outdated model.

Schools are moving more courses online. Another major upgrade.

The restaurant experience hasn't been rewarding for a long time. People should learn to cook at home. Experiment with fancier cuts of organic meat.

Movie theaters have been terrible for decades. Sticky floors, too many commercials, overpriced food. Now many film festivals are moving online.

Fast fashion was just a way of getting people to buy poorly made clothes from sweat shops.

So much of the crap people bought recently was just excessive junk; causing an environmental disaster.

We should just pay people to stay home and learn new skills. Why not pay people to taking online biology courses though the pandemic? There should be a startup that pays people to stay home and take biology courses. Exams can be online and for real verification done over video conference with an examiner. The startup then can get a % of your salary when you start working. Or, be paid through advertising from medical companies.

If you think moving school online is a "major upgrade", you're sadly mistaken outside of a few niches. K-5th grade is really difficult to do. It requires a full time parent at home (which is not tenable for many families), and it's hard to have the curriculum be virtualized. This age range requires a lot of literally hands on teaching.

Even older grades have trouble with virtual learning. Plus an important part of school is learning socialization skills. That's pretty hard to do online. Plus teachers will need more than a few weeks to adjust; curriculum development isn't trivial, and teachers would need to be retrained to use the new pedagogy.

As the father of two, and someone who cut his teeth in online learning, it sounds great to say move "more courses online", but the reality is quite different.

I think the last point is rooted in some modern ideas about what it costs to develop and deliver an education.

Our education system cost (At least in the States) is absurdly overpriced and most of that money is not going to the professors.

You don't need to pay people to take biology courses. You need to pay people UBI so that they could choose to take biology courses. Then you only need a (relatively) modest amount of money to design the course, pay the graders, and deliver the content.

While working as an adjunct I got paid maybe $5k in total? For developing and delivering a new online Bioinformatics course for two semesters. What's sad is I actually got paid a bit more than other adjuncts.

While the pay could be increased to make it better it still doesn't require turning students into a revenue stream for % of their salary over X years.

> You don't need to pay people to take biology courses. You need to pay people UBI so that they could choose to take biology courses. Then you only need a (relatively) modest amount of money to design the course, pay the graders, and deliver the content.

I agree with your sentiment, forcing people into Biology is entirely the wrong approach--I was and I detested my HS level classes, and even most of my lower division classes in University as it was mainly just rote learning--but because I met a Community of students and professionals online when I was still in HS I got to learn what research they were focusing on and it intrigued me enough to go to the BS level, all while attending upper division University lectures in various subjects during my Junior/Senior years of HS.

While I'm a proponent of UBI, I still think a concerted effort is needed to make the Life Sciences appealing to the masses; I personally subscribe to the Biohacker and Community Science approach, and having (wet) lab extensions built into local community libraries would go so much further.

I've been out of the Industry for 8 years now, but I'd gladly volunteer and teach Plant Science and some Molecular biology labs for free if we had UBI and I could offset some living expenses. I know of 3 or so recent biology grads who wish they could do the same.

I think we're on the same page. Now I don't have the wet lab background (I come from comp sci and did a bioinformatics m.s.). But yea, if I had just a little money to be able to dedicate a consistent amount of time to developing courses I'd do it.

I've tried my hand at doing it completely free a few times, but when it doesn't pay the bills the effort quickly gets put on the backburner.

If you and/or those recent grads start putting something together feel free to reach out and I'd love to contribute. My github username is the same as my HN username and you can get everything else from there.

Life Sciences would be appealing to the masses if it paid better, more like Computer Science does. It would pay better if there were a need for more people to do Life Sciences.

But isn't there something to be said about the kind of human experiences each of the "outdated" industries you mentioned provide? Namely schools, stores, going to movie theaters with friends, etc. People like seeing and being around other people. Some really, really don't, but most do. Moving the majority of activities indoors forever will have a negative impact on the psyche of the most people.

I agree that what most people buy is junk and that there is waste in the spaces you mentioned. But I'm not sure how "natural" is will feel for people to do all that isolated in their homes with a small amount of people indefinitely...

What I see happening. People are indoors and pursing something that they are really interested in. Maybe knitting, trumpet playing, etc. They are connected with new people online who share the same interests as them. In a few months people will be connecting in person with these people. Modernity will do what modernity always does...connect people who have distinct, unique, interests together. As a society I think that we've outgrown the idea of just going to a movie theater and hanging out with friends. I think that the older model society will re-emerge...fraternities, social clubs, members only places, hackerspaces. Let's say you get passionate about a hobby right now, lets say playing an instrument. You'll want to find a safe space to meet. Maybe a few people will pitch in some cash and just rent a space to turn into a private hangout club. With the coming recession space will become cheaper.

You really think everybody is enjoying being isolated inside, alone, with no human contact, no mass gatherings like concerts or games?

> As a society I think that we've outgrown the idea of just going to a movie theater and hanging out with friends.

This is an antisocial and unhealthy perspective. We've yet to see the mental health ramifications from this extended period of isolation. We're not built to sit inside by ourselves all day. Even as great as online connections can be, they are no replacement for the real presence of a human being. Saying we've "outgrown" it is preposterous.

In some societies people don't have much a say of what they do, who they hang out with, what jobs they do. In a small rural society everybody was/is expected to conform. Modernity lets us hangout with people that we share interests with. This crisis will push that even further. We'll hang out more with people that share our interests, and less just hanging out randomly.

>Moving the majority of activities indoors forever will have a negative impact on the psyche of the most people.

So does industrialization as a whole, but I'm not for rolling that back either. Ride the ennui all the way to posthuman psyches. c:

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