Go read this Gary Jones piece on the future evo­lu­tion of smart nonexperts.

My Lords, I have sub­mit­ted to you, with the free­dom and truth which I think my duty, my sen­ti­ments on your present awful sit­u­a­tion. I have laid before you the ruin of your power, the dis­grace of your rep­u­ta­tion, the pol­lu­tion of your dis­ci­pline, the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of your morals, the com­pli­ca­tion of calami­ties, for­eign and domes­tic, that over­whelm your sink­ing coun­try. Your dear­est inter­ests, your own lib­er­ties, the Con­sti­tu­tion itself tot­ters to the foun­da­tion. All this dis­grace­ful dan­ger, this mul­ti­tude of mis­ery, is the mon­strous off­spring of this unnat­ural war. We have been deceived and deluded too long. Let us now stop short. This is the crisis—the only cri­sis of time and sit­u­a­tion, to give us a pos­si­bil­ity of escape from the fatal effects of our delu­sions. But if, in an obsti­nate and infat­u­ated per­se­ver­ance in folly, we slav­ishly echo the peremp­tory words this day pre­sented to us, noth­ing can save this devoted coun­try from com­plete and final ruin. We madly rush into mul­ti­plied mis­eries, and “con­fu­sion worse confounded.”

Lord Chatham, 1777

One semes­ter of grad­u­ate school is over. I am I sup­pose about 10% an engi­neer. A lower-​​case “p” of the Ph.D., perhaps.

The theme that has tied this first semes­ter together, its golden thread, is expe­ri­ence hurts.

Not the gain­ing of experience—that is in fact the fun, the deep­est plea­sure to be gained from an edu­ca­tion re-​​begun. But rather: hav­ing expe­ri­ence out­side the track expected by one’s instruc­tors is worse than hav­ing no expe­ri­ence at all.

The young green stu­dent is not expected to ask but why would any­body think to do it that way at all? for she has learned the tacit assump­tions of her field in her under­grad­u­ate classes [of which I have none]. The real inno­cent does not rail at the sys­tem­atic con­ceal­ment of mod­ern tech­niques for the sake of tried-​​and-​​true prim­i­tive ones, or the inten­tional mask­ing of dif­fi­cult prob­lems and cru­cially pre­car­i­ous assump­tions [noise? ran­dom­ness? uncer­tainty? for­get them now; they will only con­fuse the issue]. Nor at the paucity of cru­cial (even help­ful) insights from other dis­ci­plines, from other silos, from far-​​off weirdos work­ing in other build­ings [We do not learn from data. We do not know here the rev­o­lu­tion that has come upon sta­tis­tics in the last 20 years.]. “You will all remem­ber from your 373 classes that…” or “Cre­ate an AMPL model (you all know how to run AMPL, right?) that…” are state­ments of pre­sump­tive track­ing [Such a shock to an instruc­tor, to know the cul­ture is so very local].

This is the way we do it here can­not be met suc­cess­fully with This is the way we did it else­where. There is no facil­ity for such a thing in higher education.

And: that is a good thing. For what bet­ter role is there for a grad­u­ate degree, than to make you want to push the System’s but­tons right back? How else can it grow, than by instill­ing rage rather than com­pla­cency in its own con­stituents? Who will come to its aid, if not those who are made most inti­mately aware of its self-​​destructive shortcomings?

A pro­fes­sor whose class I did not take said to me the other day, “There are only two ways to learn a sub­ject well: Take a good class in it, or teach a good class in it.”

There are at least two oth­ers he missed. One is: build a machine that does it. But that is beyond most of my peers, still, though I think I will be chang­ing that quickly enough.

The other one he missed, well… it’s bet­ter demon­strated, I think.

Con­fes­sions of a Com­mu­nity Col­lege Dean: Uh-​​Oh:

Banks used to run on ‘bankers’ hours’; now they’re ²⁴⁄₇ oper­a­tions. Doc­tors used to golf on Wen­des­days; now man­aged care has ‘ratio­nal­ized’ the pro­fes­sion, arro­gat­ing the resul­tant prof­its to itself. What’s so sacred about higher ed? If doc­tors and bankers couldn’t defend their ways of life, what makes us think pro­fes­sors can?

Go thou aca­d­e­mic and read it. And think. And act.

One way or the other.

Watch now an excel­lent and infor­ma­tive video­play yet, from What Tian Has Learned.