[tensor]

Number two is flat out wrong. The majority of knowledge that you need to know is not bleeding edge and does not become outdated by the time a curriculum is formed. In fact, you can't even understand the bleeding edge research without first understanding what came before it.

If by institutions, we are talking about universities, then they are one of the best places to access vast amounts of information and experts on different domains that you'll ever find. Most of us are just too young to realize it and don't care enough about learning to make use of those resources.

Hell, we see article after article here on hacker news about how horrible it is that science papers are so often paywalled. Yet nearly everyone went through university during which time they probably had free access to nearly every single relevant english science article on earth.

Perhaps if people bothered to learn a fraction of what is available in just the computer science or engineering departments of their university we wouldn't see the same old 50 year old technologies being reinvented again and again. Hey look! It's event driven frameworks again! The next greatest thing that's 50 years old!

The only part of point two I like is to not have faith. Never have faith in anything. Always observe, reason, and experiment.

[charlieflowers]

See, I read it differently. I think his point there is about being passive, as in, "I don't have to go out and get knowledge, because it is my school's job to install knowledge into me." He didn't explicitly use the word "passive", but he mentions "faith", and relying on the institution "to educate you."

Right on the money -- even if you're in forced schooling, you need to go out and get knowledge.

Plus, think about all the programming curricula out there. How many are just mediocre Java certification programs? If you want really outstanding programming skills, you're going to have to go get them ... possibly using a university along the way (possibly not).

So his point # 2 resonated strongly with me.

[nadam]

"Perhaps if people bothered to learn a fraction of what is available in just the computer science or engineering departments of their university we wouldn't see the same old 50 year old technologies being reinvented again and again."

The problem is that for most people (be it salaryman or enterpreneur) knowing a lot of computer science (and other academic stuff) is irrelevant. I mean knowing the basics is good, but learning a lot of it is irrelevant compared to other things (connections, social skills, dealing with pressure, dealing with boredom, capacity to see through complex systems, luck, experience, talent (in fact different kinds of talents)). Even the companies which seem to prefer academic kind of knowledge in fact prefer (and test for) raw talent of some kind.

Of course if your goal is to do research, academy is extremely important. Otherwise (for example if your goal is financial independence) not that much (beyond the basics, but talented people learn the basics pretty quickly).

[eli_gottlieb]

The only part of point two I like is to not have faith. Never have faith in anything. Always observe, reason, and experiment.

That seems wrong. Without believing in both yourself and in something beyond yourself (it doesn't necessarily have to be physically real), there's little point in observing, reasoning, or experimenting.

Expertise in epistemology doesn't help much if you've got no normative philosophies for applying it.

[sjwright]

What do you mean by "believing in yourself"? I'm pretty sure I exist, indeed it would be a logical conundrum to think otherwise. Belief doesn't figure here.

What else should I believe in?

I don't believe that gravity is real, I just operate my life on the assumption that it exists and is predictable. It's working great so far.

I don't believe climate change is real, but I accept the evidence provided, and will continue to do so until such time as I'm provided with further evidence to consider.

I don't believe my mother loves me, I'm quite satisfied that she does. I have enough evidence.

[eli_gottlieb]

Ah, so you define the word "to believe" as "to have blind faith in", rather than "to estimate a very large probability with high confidence that a proposition is true."