keiferski

Kind of a misleading title. I would call this creating a dashboard through which you interact with social media. Which is a good idea, and conceivably a lot easier to build nowadays with AI. I'd even expand it to the internet at large, using RSS or something like it.

Having some kind of notification system would be helpful as well, since most platforms are actively trying to minimize the accounts you follow and replace them with their algorithmic suggestions.

I think that’s a small part of it, but it’s not how the critics usually frame it.

It’s almost always criticized because it costs more, doesn’t guarantee a good job, etc. and not because supposed educational standards have fallen. As if the people reading the NYPost were so invested in the quality of education at Berkeley…

I’d even bet that educational standards could be near zero, but as long as the degree guaranteed a high-paying job, those same people wouldn’t care at all about the education.

For sure, I don’t think less of people that decide it’s not financially worth it. In many cases it’s not.

But I don’t like it when people then rationalize that decision into “it actually sucks anyway,” because IME that’s not true.

In my personal experience, I studied philosophy in college, and have continued reading books off-and-on since.

There really is no book replacement for being in a class of 5-10 philosophy students, arguing about Kant or metaphysics for 3 hours, or in having a professor rip your paper apart and highlight every flaw in an argument. It just won’t happen if you’re self-studying.

Big assumption that the average citizen’s opinion has any effect on what the government spends money on. It’s pretty easy to campaign on not doing X and then proceed to do X once you’ve won the election.

I think that influence is a handful of classes at best. Unless you’re suggesting that every university in the United States has no educational value anymore, and has been replaced with a Fox News caricature?

I don’t think it’s merely being around other young people. There are classes on topics that you will never ever come across in a job context, yet will have a major impact on your personality, mind, etc.

If someone says they can replicate the college experience by reading books at home, they frankly don’t know what they are talking about.

Let me use a metaphor.

Let’s imagine a Michelin star restaurant that has rave reviews. Everyone loves it. It’s affordable, too, which helps its popularity.

But over time, the restaurant increases its prices. The food remains exactly the same: absolutely delicious. But now the prices are 10x what they were before. And so naturally the discussion becomes: “I’m sure it’s good, but is it worth the cost?”

A rational response to higher education would be similar. Except that’s not how most people, or at least media articles, frame it. Instead of saying “the food is good but it’s not worth the cost,” they just deny that it is delicious in the first place. It’s a very particular kind of short-sightedness that has its roots in the anti-intellectual cultural history of America.

Okay so isn’t the solution then to increase standards, not to undermine the concept of college?

I really don’t get what articles like this one are proposing. Instead of having an institution like Berkeley, we ought to just give students some YouTube videos?

Like I said, it’s very often just anti-intellectualism and culture war nonsense.

These articles never ever bring up the long history of anti-intellectualism in the United States. College may indeed be getting less “worth it” in pure financial terms, but it’s certainly ironic that many people only had a high view of them in the first place because of the supposed financial benefits. Now that those financial benefits are less certain, out comes the anti-intellectualism again.

A more rational society would acknowledge that higher education is a good thing, and therefore try to make it affordable, not try to undermine it entirely.

I don’t get this reasoning at all.

College should be for becoming educated. Not for getting a job.

If paying huge amounts of money isn’t worth it to you to be educated, fine. But that doesn’t mean the education is bad, just that it’s not worth it from a financial perspective.

I studied philosophy and art, even though I could have studied something more “practical” (a dubious distinction that I think is less and less accurate in the dynamic modern economy, but that’s a separate discussion.) I don’t regret it for a second, and if my future kids want to study art and philosophy I’ll encourage them to and pay for it the best I can by then.

I find the hype exhausting. Especially the pseudo intellectual essays that pop up in my Twitter feed every time I accidentally open the app.

The actual using of AI, though, doesn’t tire me much. But I mostly use it for answering specific types of questions that I’d otherwise need to spend a lot of time researching.

A lot of those acts were definitely in response to criticism, but I think in general the billionaires of the time cared more about their public image and in contributing to society. The whole idea of Silicon Valley rebels didn’t really exist.

Go get a job at a cafe, 30-40 hours a week. Early morning shifts.

You’ll fix your schedule and be motivated to actually apply for better tech jobs.