[irishcoffee]

The meat of the below quote: you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.

Quoting the whole thing:

""" CLARK: There's no problem. I was just hoping you could give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities—especially in the southern colonies—could most aptly be characterized as agrarian pre-capital—

WILL: [interrupting] Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably, you’re gonna be convinced of that until next month when you get to James Lemon, then you’re gonna be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year, you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin’ about, you know, the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.

CLARK: [taken aback] Well as a matter of fact I won't, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of —

WILL: "Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth..." You got that from Vickers, Work in Essex County, Page 98, right? Yeah I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us—you have any thoughts of—of your own on this matter? Or do—is that your thing, you come into a bar, you read some obscure passage and then you pretend, you pawn it off as your own—your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?

[Clark is stunned]

WILL: See the sad thing about a guy like you is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library. """

https://genius.com/Good-will-hunting-good-will-hunting-bar-s...

[SketchySeaBeast]

And in another movie Tony Stark built an arc reactor in a cave with a box of scraps.

[irishcoffee]

Yes, a comic book hero did comic book hero things in a comic book hero movie. Not sure what point you think you're making.

[btilly]

The point is to demonstrate that if a fictional character in a work of fiction does X and it works out, that does not serve as evidence that a real person doing X will work out in reality.

[irishcoffee]

You can't read a book and understand it unless you pay someone to sit in a class and tell you how to think about what you read?

[btilly]

Do you understand the distinction between "does not serve as evidence" and "serves as evidence against"?

Now in fact it is possible to learn from self-directed study. But your odds of learning are massively better when you get to ask questions, test your understanding by talking with others, and have your ability to explain your understanding graded.

Which means that, on average, people get more value out of going through a book in a classroom setting than they get by reading it on their own.

Whether that is enough value to justify tuition is another story entirely...

[SketchySeaBeast]

Well, that just because it's in a movie doesn't mean it's true.

Few people would get to any sort of level of understanding of that sort of material just by reading it, and just because a movie genius can do it doesn't mean it's easy.

If we replaced all those examples with engineering textbooks, wouldn't it be the exact same, if it not, why? We learn he's an untrained math prodigy later on in the movie, so he doesn't need any education. It would appear a STEM education is a waste as well.

[irishcoffee]

So in order to understand something, you need to a.) and then b.) have someone tell you how to think about what you read? While paying them? You can't wrestle with deep and complex topics unless someone tells you how to think?

[SketchySeaBeast]

Not at all, but having someone who can provide context sure helps with a lot of works - often these works are building on centuries or millennia of thought that they may assume you're aware of and that help place the arguments.

Again I ask, given that textbooks exist, can you make the argument that STEM is any different?

[irishcoffee]

As a STEM major at a large public university, my classmates and I decided that at a meta-level, STEM majors learned how to learn new and complicated things quickly in order to get good grades in classes. Also, as a STEM major, I found attending class less than helpful most of the time. I do remember spending quite a lot of time in either a computer lab or in the library fighting my way through problems. Math, physics, chem, programming. Attending lectures was largely someone regurgitating either slides or a textbook.

I assumed this was true for most people in STEM majors in college, no?