[bpatel576]

I'd rather see Google make donations to the education system. We've seen that there are limits to money in politics. Once you get past a certain point, what we really need is a strong educational system so people can make rational decisions.

[dimitrios1]

I see plenty of people that graduate from ivy league schools that continue to make irrational decisions, publish irrational research, and work on irrational things.

Being offered an education doesn't guarantee you get educated.

[the_local_host]

Moreover making a rational decision isn't necessarily the same thing as making a moral decision.

[spacemark]

Many schools of philosophy would disagree... those that western civilizations are built on, for example.

[CydeWeys]

It's not black and white, it's shades of gray.

[protonfish]

I went to school and they didn't teach me anything about critical thinking. Our grades mainly reflected how well we followed orders.

So maybe we should make everyone take a course on critical thinking. OK, what course is that? Everyone I've ever seen is garbage. Which shouldn't be surprising coming from a population that discourages critical thinking.

[leesalminen]

Check out Methods of Inquiry [0]. I took it my freshman year of college and it’s proved to be one of the most useful classes ever. I still keep the book and reference it from time to time.

0 - Methods of Inquiry: Applied Critical Thinking https://www.amazon.com/dp/0757530443

[markstos]

It doesn't have to be either/or. Google has funded "Summer of Code" and other education-related initiatives.

[newsclues]

I rather see large companies like Google donate money to education or other social services, rather than use their money to influence politics.

[LegitShady]

>Google donate money to education or other social services, rather than use their money to influence politics.

they will use those donations to influence politics differently, is all. We will get a spinoff company whose job is education or social services, and that company will try to capture regulators and pay off the low end administrators they find in the education system.

[snarf21]

I understand your hope but people don't have time/desire to want to be educated on a subject. Even those of us on HN, how many subjects are we really well informed on? or do we just believe the headlines from our favorite site? The spending bill that was recently presented to Congress was 800 pages and our representatives had four hours to read it before the vote. The world is too complicated and moving too fast.

[paulie_a]

Skillshare, coursea, mit online courses, brilliant, TTC, and a hundred others disagree with you

[snarf21]

I'm not sure what you are saying. Ted Cruz has a Harvard law degree but thinks, well who really knows. Being educated didn't stop millions of college graduates from believing that Dominion voting machines "flipped" votes to Biden or that tractor trailers full of "Biden" votes were dropped off but only in the states that Trump had more in person votes initially because the US Mail bad or fraud. I saw people reposting stuff on FB that X state had more votes than registered voters or even citizens but if you did a single Google, you would see that it was for the population of state X in 1980 or some shit. How does this happen in a world with Coursea?

[LegitShady]

You would think so, but I fear that google is a corruptive influence wherever it goes. What changes would google require education made to get its donations? How much vendor lock in will their 'donations' get them?

A strong education system is important, an education system bought and paid for by corporate interests directly is another step towards giving google power it will wield to everyone else's detriment.

[NikolaeVarius]

They run Grow With Google.

[sandworm101]

There are lots of well-educated people siding against the election. Those elected representatives are not uneducated. We can believe they only pander, that they do not actually believe this stuff, but then we are the ones being naïve. Many educated people really do have faith in this issue. That faith is shaken but is far from gone.