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sremani | 7 months ago

Birds did not read Ornithology to fly. Accumulation of knowledge is useful but real world experience and hard earned wisdom is more important.

That is what you test-taking, credential hustlers do not understand.

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fragmede|7 months ago

Birds didn't read Ornithology in order to fly, sure. But you can be damn sure the engineers at Boeing cracked a textbook on the way to making the 747.

Real-world experience teaches you how you survived. Education teaches you how others failed. You need both to avoid old mistakes and make new ones.

It’s not about credential hustling, it’s about having more tools in the toolbox.

nobody9999|7 months ago

>It’s not about credential hustling, it’s about having more tools in the toolbox.

Yes. However, there's a strain of anti-intellectualism in the US that denigrates knowledge and learning, as Isaac Asimov observed:

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'"[0]

This is discussed in greater detail in Tom Nichols 2017 book The Death of Expertise[1].

This is exacerbated of course, by the Dunning-Kruger effect[2]. I mean, heck, why should I go to a cardiologist for my heart condition? I'm a plumber and watched youtube videos about the cardiovascular system. Which is exactly the same as indoor plumbing, so I'm doing my triple bypass surgery myself. Fuck you, medical establishment. With your "school" and "residency" and other gatekeeping. It's all a scam! Anyone (and especially me!) can do all of this stuff without some "doctor"![3]

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/84250-anti-intellectualism-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

[3] Yes, that's hyperbole. But as we've seen in this discussion, similar ideas abound in other areas. And more's the pity.