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Comment by mikert89 | Hacker News Reader

Highly intelligent kids at 18 are ready for the real world. Its a waste of time to make them memorize random subjects

Good thing college is not about memorizing random subjects and you can choose whatever major you want that 90% of your courses are dedicated to! I’m not saying college is necessary for everybody but when you say that it’s an insult to people who have put in four years of work into learning something they’re passionate about. One can also grow in more ways than one “intelligence” through the college experience. I was a highly intelligent 18 year old but was severely lacking in my emotional maturity and self confidence which I learned a great deal through college.

I graduated high school and went out to the valley immediately in 1995. I did well but I eventually got to a point where the natural language and machine learning stuff I was doing required more advanced math and statistics than I had the ability to teach myself. I went back to college leaving my successful career to “memorize random subjects.”

One thing I learned in college was you learn what you put into it and I put everything into whah I was doing. I learned that learning was the most valuable thing one can do because the process of learning new “random subjects” teaches you how to understand how to learn and think. Being intelligent is perhaps necessary but it is absolutely insufficient. Not a single moment I spent studying in college was a waste of my time, none of it was “memorizing.” In fact one reason I didn’t go was I was bad at memorizing - and I learned in college I could derive equations from my understanding faster than memorizing if I really understood the subject.

I graduated summa cum laude at a top engineering computer science program and dropped out of graduate school to get into quant trading at a top shop on wall street and have since done a fairly complete tour of FAANG and adjacent as a distinguished engineer, building stuff you likely use every day.

I never would have had my career had I stayed working without an education. Knowledge and wisdom and learned through education and being taught by those who have explored things you haven’t. Ability and experience isn’t just mechanical knowledge of a technical subject or intelligence.

I’ve done both paths, and I strongly recommend people to never memorize random subjects but to dive into college and learn and understand everything in total depth, then carry that into life. There is no greater gift you will ever receive in the work world than the gift of knowledge and ability to learn and appreciate life in all its complexity you will learn in college.

It’s hard to be ready for a world you do not understand, and the world is a lot more than engineering or any other single subject.

Intellectually yes, but it's surprising how hard a lot of 18 years olds fail at basic adulting. I've been indirectly involved with apprenticeship schemes here in the UK that place 18 year olds at various companies as software engineers. There's no problem finding 18 year olds who are smart and can code, but the challenge lies in getting them to consistently show up to work five days a week. It's doable, but it requires a lot more mentoring and support than you might intuitively expect. Standard corporate work environments just aren't very flexible on this.

Now, maybe this particular scheme is targeting a small number of exceptional individuals who won't have a problem with this stuff. But it would be a big mistake to assume that a typical smart 18 year old is ready for a typical corporate job.

> Highly intelligent kids at 18 are ready for the real world

Highly-intelligent, disciplined kids should go to college. Others should go to trades, including coding and sales.

More pointedly, we live in a democracy. A population ignorant of the classics, of history, of the law, and only obsessed with personal practical concerns is going to do what such populations always do: swing populist and burn down any institution they don't understand because what isn't instantly comprehensible is obviously the work of the devil.

Waste of time for who? The corporation?

I suppose if all you are interested in are productive slaves, I can see why skipping education would be seductive.

DOGE university

Department Of Greatest Education? :)

If "memorizing random subjects" is all college is to you, or all learning is to you, then yeah, probably is a waste of time.

Does a computer science major or engineering degree really need history or humanities classes? Sure, it might make more rounded humans but they are completely unnecessary. However, most colleges require these unnecessary classes to get a STEM degree.

I've been thinking recently about Hannah Arendt's description of Eichmann. He was good at doing his job, but had no ability to understand that he was doing a job that no human being should ever do.

I think about this in the context of the DOGE goons, who are so happy to show off their technical skills in the service of dismantling humanitarian aid to starving people.

The people that Palantir hires will have tremendous power in this world. I hope that they have the ability to think critically about the impact of what they are doing and why they are doing it. Learning the humanities helps with this.

Well, it's impossible to know if Eichmann really thought about the ethics of his job. With regards to his trial, it didn't matter anyway. Every captured Nazi official claimed they were just a cog in the machine and had to follow orders. The judges rightfully dismissed this, because otherwise Hitler would have been the only one responsible (how convenient!). They were all put on trial for their specific actions and decisions.

My take from Hannah Arendt's work is that normal people will do evil things if they think they can get away with it.

a acredited canadian engineering degree requires a technical writing class, law class, and stats.

otherwise, you get to pick one non-engineering course out of the whole degree.

i did a CS degree on top of a mech one, and all i had to do was the math and CS courses.

> Does a computer science major or engineering degree really need history or humanities classes?

CS majors are members of society so absolutely without a doubt yes.

My degree is in aerospace engineering. Worked in aer0space for 8 years, then became a programmer.

Yes, you really need history and humanities.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

It’s the difference between getting an education and learning a trade… so yes.

Intelligent kids at 18 are easier to indoctrinate.

Corporations love that.

"What the deuce is [the solar system] to me? You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work." (c)

Like how to analyze requirements, how to document their work, or even how to problem-solve during debugging.

One thing I discovered during decades of teaching at university. 18-year olds have little skill planning. Our first-year course had one-week assignments, but one more in-depth two-week assignment. This was at a time when students used computer labs, rather than their own equipment. During the first week of the bigger assignment, the labs were empty. About three days before the due date, the labs started getting busy. The night before the due date, students were waiting all night to get at a computer, and a delegation of students went to the Department Head to demand much bigger labs.

The following year, we used the same bigger assignment, but demanded that the students hand in the work for the first half of the assignment by the end of the first week (the markers were told just to check that it had been handed in, but not to mark it). Due date came along, and the overwhelming part of the class handed in acceptable work on time.

One thing that four years of university, perhaps including a study skills course, teaches you is how to manage multiple due dates with several concurrent projects in various stages of completion.

Saw a meme on this exact logical fallacy of the 'well-trained dog'.

Panel 1:

Human standing, arms out stretched in a shrug saying, "Why should I study science, biology, mathematics, and physics? It is useless, I will never use it. I will not be a scientist."

Panel 2:

Same human with a rageful expression saying, "5G gives cancer. Vaccines have Mind Control Chips for the new world order. The earth is flat. I saw it on YouTube."

Albert Einstein credits the humanities with his successes in physics.

> "Otherwise he with his specialized knowledge—more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow men and to the community. "

> "This is what I have in mind when I recommend the 'humanities' as important, not just dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy."

> "Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included."

https://www.nytimes.com/1952/10/05/archives/einstein-stresse...

Some things however require experience, not just intelligence.

Also working on a surveillance machine should have a proven system of values to be aware where boundaries are being overstepped ... Oh wait, maybe that's the point.

Couldn't you also argue that all education is a waste because it involves (some) memorizing? If I look back at what I learned during any stage of my life it's never any of what I "memorized", but it's all important stuff.

Ready for the real world, no. Ready to forever exist in a corporate bubble, apparently.

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