Google Isn't Grad School | Hacker News Reader

Google Isn't Grad School

theatlantic.com

Not saying everything in this article is wrong, but I actually think the opposite is more true.

Google + Wikipedia + chatgpt + youtube are imperfect sources of knowledge, but they are vastly better than the no-knowledge people had in the days when credentialism was born.

It used to be an simple argument: "Is your job $PROFESSION? No? Then you probably know almost nothing about it." There's not much subtlety here, you literally won't know that profession's knowledge. There's maybe some osmosis if you're family with someone in the profession, but by and large: you just didn't know anything at all about it.

Now the argument is more subtle: Do you know this thing at a shallow wikipedia-level only? Is this thing a shallow subject that you could plausibly learn without being a practitioner? What's the difference between someone who has watched 30 videos on YouTube about installing a bathtub and someone who installs bathtubs professionally? It's some difference, but is it a lot? A little?

I get where this article is coming from: we all suddenly have this broader knowledge than we ever would have in the past, but it's not robust deep knowledge. But the answer isn't to counter it with "make sure you see their credentials or they know nothing". The answer is we need our model of expertise to accept a spectrum of expertise, rather than a binary choice like "got a degree in it or not"

Google is limited - but I don't have to pay for it.

Grad school is laudable, but it's too damn expensive!

What's a person to do?

EDIT: Why did you delete your thoughtful reply 34wtg?

EDIT EDIT: https://archive.is/EWAOO

The articles isn't really about grad school. It's just the headline.

The article is about how the internet allows non-experts to confidently assert inaccurate information. It suggests that we scrutinize the actual credentials of the people giving us that information, and go to the original source whenever possible. It also suggests that we all cultivate humility, and remember that we are not experts because we watched a video or read an article.

So that's what a person is to do. According to the article.

BTW, Here's my advice for cultivating humility on Hacker News. Go do a search for threads about FTX, Theranos, WeWork, and Moviepass from a few years ago, and see what the average Hacker News user had to say about them. You'll find skeptics, of course. But also plenty of users absolutely certain that there's something to these companies, and that the founders are merely playing a game of 5d chess, or something like that. It's a good reminder that we can all get things wrong, even when we're really sure about something. And a reminder that nobody is immune to being duped.

Thanks!

I admit once I saw the paywall I stopped.

Here's a link for those interested:

https://archive.is/EWAOO

This is a trap I am trying to get out of the habit of falling into. It's hard for me to say I don't know. This article reminded me that humility is recognizing when you are out of your depth—not weakness. With so many things to "know", it's critical to know the difference between the consequential and the trivial. What's really scary to me is when the actual experts aren't acting in good faith.

> EDIT: Why did you delete your thoughtful reply 34wtg?

New account. Somehow the flagging / banning system caught them. I vouched for his comment as it looks pretty good and relevant.

Vouching is basically an "anti-flag" on Hacker News. If you've got your settings to be on "show all", including banned comments / erased comments, then you have the ability to vouch. I think its a feature that unlocks above a certain karma, so you may have missed it in your settings the first time you registered for Hacker News.

> Grad school is laudable, but it's too damn expensive

And time consuming (with high opportunity cost.)

Fortunately you can find tons of great free course content online. And digital libraries, textbooks, papers...

And tons of open source software to examine/experiment with/build upon.

I have to give Google some credit though as I am partial to Youtube (lots of course and educational content) and Google Scholar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com