The obvious corollary is that even if you are good at the undergrad level, you can still end up sucking when you enter the real level of work. A good friend of mine who did quite solidly in his field of study at one of the premier institutes for it still kinda sucks at his job. Unfortunately he's now years in, and will probably get a PhD and continue to hate it.
I really wish that our education system was more coherently designed to send the proper signals to those studying for various fields.
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Uglysasquatch wrote:
idiggory wrote:
What are you even trying to argue?
I'm not saying anyone can go do a Biology or Physics degree, but what I'm saying is that college itself is a joke. Someone good at Physics would possibly bomb at Business. Someone good with Stats, could bomb Geography. As long as you stick to your strengths, then college is going to be a joke. if you study in a field where you're having difficulty, odds are you're going to be mediocre at best, once you join the workforce. Using college as a sign of how smart you are when using an undergrad as the basis of your argument is retarded because there's so many that anyone could find one that fits their strengths.
Edited, Mar 11th 2011 5:28pm by Uglysasquatch
I'll just add the caveat that undergrad programs can get hard for anyone at a tough school, or in a program that a school is known for.
I went to Lehigh, and I can say for a fact that the engineering program there was taxing for all but the extremely gifted (it's the school's specialty...our team name used to be the engineers, for heaven's sake). Sometimes, especially in particular programs and schools, professors are instructed to attempt to get kids to drop the programs early, by making the material particularly tough to get through, or by making the whole experience abrasive. Trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, I guess, but things can really get skewed to the point where it's a brutal experience for even those with real aptitude.
Kachi wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Kachi's belief that attending and/or graduating from college is a determinant of intelligence disproves itself.
See, it's the incredibly poor reading comprehension that you continually exhibit that makes me doubt that you could pull it off. Intelligence is a determinant of college attendance/graduation, not the other way around.
And your inability to understand logical directionality is astounding, doubly so for someone making such claims about other's intelligence and education. Apparently in all your vast learning at college, you never learned that A->B != B->A.
What you said originally:
Kachi wrote:
Occasionally, after listening to someone speak long enough, it occurs to me that there's no way they could have, or at least should have given their powers of reason, actually graduated from a real college (haven't been wrong yet, but still working on it!).
That statement clearly claims that education is a determinant of (or at least requirement for) intelligence. Yet, when supporting that claim, you reversed the logic.
That's you failing btw. In order to defend the statement you made, you must prove that it's impossible for a person to graduate from college and still be stupid. Good luck with that.
Quote:
This is a fact by the way, so argue til you're blue in the face for all I care.
Lol... /whoosh
Edited, Mar 11th 2011 2:49pm by gbaji
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
idiggory wrote:
But all degrees aren't created equal. Going to college and graduating with an engineering degree (assuming the school isn't a joke) is certainly a sign of intelligence.
No, it isn't, and largely because school curricula are a joke. The problem is that programs can easily train students to perform without a fundamental understanding of what they are doing. A calculus student who understands series should be able to tell you if a series is divergent or convergent simply by looking at it--unless the the answer is highly obfuscated. If he/she has to perform a test to determine convergence, then they don't understand what they are doing, they have merely been trained to follow a procedure to produce the answer. They will be unable to work outside of an environment where this procedure is all that is required. Pretty much anyone can be trained.
Training, however, is sufficient to be successful at life. Stupid people go to college. Stupid people get As in college. Stupid people are successful at life. When you stop overvaluing intelligence, you can start applying it as a tool correctly.
Allegory wrote:
idiggory wrote:
But all degrees aren't created equal. Going to college and graduating with an engineering degree (assuming the school isn't a joke) is certainly a sign of intelligence.
No, it isn't, and largely because school curricula are a joke. The problem is that programs can easily train students to perform without a fundamental understanding of what they are doing. A calculus student who understands series should be able to tell you if a series is divergent or convergent simply by looking at it--unless the the answer is highly obfuscated. If he/she has to perform a test to determine convergence, then they don't understand what they are doing, they have merely been trained to follow a procedure to produce the answer. They will be unable to work outside of an environment where this procedure is all that is required. Pretty much anyone can be trained.
Training, however, is sufficient to be successful at life. Stupid people go to college. Stupid people get As in college. Stupid people are successful at life. When you stop overvaluing intelligence, you can start applying it as a tool correctly.
Honestly, I suspect many people mistake knowledge for intelligence. That's why we run into these sorts of "education makes you smarter" type of arguments. It doesn't. It fills your head with more information, much of which is quite useful. But that doesn't make you smarter at all.
Even if we are talking about some learned tools which we associate with being intelligent (problem solving, critical thinking, language parsing, etc), I can say with first hand experience that a lot of young engineers fresh out of college are lacking in those areas. They often (almost always really) have to be taught how to solve problems when the solution isn't provided to them (which btw, is one of the defining characteristics of engineering). Education generally doesn't teach this. They teach how to do things, and sometimes why those things work. But they rarely succeed in teaching students how to derive their own solutions when the one in the book doesn't work. Or, as your example illustrates, to see the patterns around them and recognize them without having to first follow someone else's proof to get there.
A friend of mine many years ago explained the difference between a technician and an engineer. A technician, if handed a task and a set of instructions to complete that task, can consistently and even quite skillfully succeed in completing the task. However, if the technician runs into a problem for which a solution does not already exist (or is not readily available to him), he will have to stop until someone can solve the problem and provide him with a set of steps to continue. An engineer is the guy who comes up with the steps the technician follows. When he encounters a problem for which there is no defined solution, he will figure out how to solve the problem and move on.
Most people who graduate with engineering degrees are really only qualified for technician level work. It usually takes them 3-5 years in their field before they're able to do full engineering work. There's a reason why the kids out of college are called "associate engineers" (or "*** engineers" for short). They only get a full engineer title when they earn it in the work place.
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
Uglysasquatch wrote:
Quote:
If the nonsense you stated were true, everyone would have EE, bio-chemistry, Physics, etc.
How so? It appears that it's your failure on reading comprehension.
Ugly wrote:
That college is a joke. If you find your field of study to be difficult, then it's not the right field for you. Undergrads aren't difficult, so if you find your degree hard you're going to be @#%^ed when you join the workforce. Try another field of work, that's more your speed.
Completely false. If your undergrad isn't challenging you, then either your program sucks or you're gifted. The difference between undergrad and grad is superficial. Each instructor, especially at the upper division classes, determines the difficulty of their classes. I had an instructor who said that no one will get a 100% in his class, because he wanted every student to be challenged. The class was based on a curve, so people ended up with A's, but not at 100%.
So, like I said, if you're getting 100s, either the program sucks or you're a genius. Just because you're "good" at something and like it, doesn't make it ridiculously easy to the point where there aren't any challenges.
You're missing the argument here. Kachi's statement is that in order to attend college, you have to be smart. You don't need A's in order to pass college and gain an undergrad. Stop thinking about this from excelling and just getting a degree. Passing college and getting an undergrad is a joke. Excelling and getting all A's is another story.
Donate. One day it could be your family.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
Uglysasquatch wrote:
Excelling and getting all A's is another story.
Not even then. I'm not going to state that it's possible at every school and in every circumstance, but you can get a 4.0 at a decent school without being smart. Even at college level there are still teachers that give extra credit assignments, there are still teachers that give open book tests, and there are still teachers that simply run easy classes.
If you have the desire to put forth an effort, you can work your way to the top of the scoring system.
Uglysasquatch wrote:
You're missing the argument here. Kachi's statement is that in order to attend college, you have to be smart. You don't need A's in order to pass college and gain an undergrad. Stop thinking about this from excelling and just getting a degree. Passing college and getting an undergrad is a joke. Excelling and getting all A's is another story.
I understand your point of view and I agree that you don't have to be smart to attend college, but simply passing college is NOT a joke. If there exist a bell curve on grades, then that means it's challenging to some people. If your response is, "it's challenging to only dumb people", then that's no different then Kachi's argument "Only smart people go to college".
Typically, and by typically, I mean always as I've never heard of anything different, a bell curve is used in a few courses, not an entire degree.
And again, you're choosing to pick only a few specific degrees. There are a ton of degrees out there, and from excellent schools, that are easy. Just because Chemistry may be difficult, does not mean History is. A blanket statement that college is only for smart people is ridiculous. College is a joke. You want me to state that not all degrees are easy? Sure, not all degrees are easy. Does not change the fact that at any school, you can find an easy degree for your undergrad. I'll even throw you a bone, that in a select few schools, there may be an exception to that last statement. But those would be absolute top tier schools and an exception.
Also, you're a tool for failing to see anything in any way other than absolutes.
Edited, Mar 12th 2011 8:24pm by Uglysasquatch
And again, you're choosing to pick only a few specific degrees. There are a ton of degrees out there, and from excellent schools, that are easy. Just because Chemistry may be difficult, does not mean History is. A blanket statement that college is only for smart people is ridiculous. College is a joke. You want me to state that not all degrees are easy? Sure, not all degrees are easy. Does not change the fact that at any school, you can find an easy degree for your undergrad. I'll even throw you a bone, that in a select few schools, there may be an exception to that last statement. But those would be absolute top tier schools and an exception.
Also, you're a tool for failing to see anything in any way other than absolutes.
Edited, Mar 12th 2011 8:24pm by Uglysasquatch
Donate. One day it could be your family.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
Ugly wrote:
Typically, and by typically, I mean always as I've never heard of anything different, a bell curve is used in a few courses, not an entire degree.
I apologize, I meant a natural bell curve. Meaning, classes wont be all A's or all F's, etc. The class will naturally be evened out in grades. That has been my experience in most of my classes. Most students fall in the B/C category, there are a few A's, less D's and fewer F's. That isn't true overall as I've seen classes with a high number of A's or a high number of F's.
Ugly wrote:
And again, you're choosing to pick only a few specific degrees. There are a ton of degrees out there, and from excellent schools, that are easy.
That was part of my point, some degrees are easier than others. So, if you're not being challenged, chances are high that either you're a genius or the program is easy. You can have an excellent school with sub-par or average programs. A university typically wont excel in every department.
Ugly wrote:
Just because Chemistry may be difficult, does not mean History is.
History CAN be just as difficult or more difficult than a Chemistry class depending on how it is taught.
Ugly wrote:
A blanket statement that college is only for smart people is ridiculous.
I agree.
Ugly wrote:
You want me to state that not all degrees are easy?
No, I want you to realize that "easy" degrees are easy because they are poorly implemented, not because they are "easy" subjects.
Ugly wrote:
Sure, not all degrees are easy. Does not change the fact that at any school, you can find an easy degree for your undergrad. I'll even throw you a bone, that in a select few schools, there may be an exception to that last statement. But those would be absolute top tier schools and an exception.
Also, you're a tool for failing to see anything in any way other than absolutes.
Also, you're a tool for failing to see anything in any way other than absolutes.
Read above.
Almalieque wrote:
No, I want you to realize that "easy" degrees are easy because they are poorly implemented, not because they are "easy" subjects.
He never stated anything contrary to this, so I'm not sure why you're trying to get him to admit it.
#139Almalieque,
Posted: Mar 13 2011 at 6:29 AM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) He did indeed do so. He stated that he saw some stupid people graduate from some of the top schools in Canada and stated "take that for what you will". Furthermore stating that I was specifically choosing subjects and just because Chemistry might be difficult, that doesn't mean History is.
You just can't seem to understand what this argument is about. Great schools offer easy degrees. Being smart is not a prerequisite of graduating and obtaining an undergrad. Every statement I've made has been based around that. Because you're too fucking stupid to understand that, I'm not discussing this with you any further. Your lolonlineschool is showing.
Donate. One day it could be your family.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
Ugly wrote:
You just can't seem to understand what this argument is about. Great schools offer easy degrees.
Not only did I not argue against that, I agreed to that. I understand your argument quite well.
I'm arguing against this:
That college is a joke. If you find your field of study to be difficult, then it's not the right field for you. Undergrads aren't difficult, so if you find your degree hard you're going to be @#%^ed when you join the workforce. Try another field of work, that's more your speed.
I disagree with your general statement that college is a joke and if you find your field of study to be difficult, then it's not "right for you". My consistent counter is that college in general is NOT a joke and if you don't find your field some what challenging, then it's because your department is a joke, not because "college is a joke".
Ugly wrote:
Being smart is not a prerequisite of graduating and obtaining an undergrad.
I've agreed to this 3 times already.
Ugly wrote:
Every statement I've made has been based around that. Because you're too ******* stupid to understand that, I'm not discussing this with you any further. Your lolonlineschool is showing
Uh, no. You made a statement that college in general is a joke and if you're being challenged then you're in the wrong field.. I questioned and challenged your statements. Now you're focusing on the statements that I've agreed to as opposed to the statements that I disagreed with.
If I meant what you thought I meant, then yes, I'd be wrong.
Donate. One day it could be your family.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
I apologize if I misinterpreted your statement.
Look at that, we almost made it through a discussion without me calling you names.
Donate. One day it could be your family.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
More importantly, I reached the nice round number of 4200, which is now +1.
gbaji wrote:
Kachi wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Kachi's belief that attending and/or graduating from college is a determinant of intelligence disproves itself.
See, it's the incredibly poor reading comprehension that you continually exhibit that makes me doubt that you could pull it off. Intelligence is a determinant of college attendance/graduation, not the other way around.
And your inability to understand logical directionality is astounding, doubly so for someone making such claims about other's intelligence and education. Apparently in all your vast learning at college, you never learned that A->B != B->A.
What you said originally:
Kachi wrote:
Occasionally, after listening to someone speak long enough, it occurs to me that there's no way they could have, or at least should have given their powers of reason, actually graduated from a real college (haven't been wrong yet, but still working on it!).
That statement clearly claims that education is a determinant of (or at least requirement for) intelligence. Yet, when supporting that claim, you reversed the logic.
That's you failing btw. In order to defend the statement you made, you must prove that it's impossible for a person to graduate from college and still be stupid. Good luck with that.
Quote:
This is a fact by the way, so argue til you're blue in the face for all I care.
Lol... /whoosh
Edited, Mar 11th 2011 2:49pm by gbaji
Incredible. Does everyone see this? Please take notes. I claim that A->B. gbaji claims that I say, B->A. I correct gbaji. He mocks that I never learned that A->B =! B->A
This is EXACTLY the kind of thing that makes me doubt your reading comprehension, or even your ability to reason. The statement, which you say, "clearly claims that education is a determinant of intelligence," says no such thing. What is says is that there is a determination, both a causative and correlative element-- that you need a certain amount of A to get B. It does not say that nobody with low A doesn't get B. It does not say that only people with B have A, or even a great deal of A. It doesn't say that you can't have tons of A and no B. It says that some people have too little A to get B.
And it's things like this that make me suspect that you might not have enough A to get B.
Allegory wrote:
idiggory wrote:
But all degrees aren't created equal. Going to college and graduating with an engineering degree (assuming the school isn't a joke) is certainly a sign of intelligence.
No, it isn't, and largely because school curricula are a joke. The problem is that programs can easily train students to perform without a fundamental understanding of what they are doing. A calculus student who understands series should be able to tell you if a series is divergent or convergent simply by looking at it--unless the the answer is highly obfuscated. If he/she has to perform a test to determine convergence, then they don't understand what they are doing, they have merely been trained to follow a procedure to produce the answer. They will be unable to work outside of an environment where this procedure is all that is required. Pretty much anyone can be trained.
Training, however, is sufficient to be successful at life. Stupid people go to college. Stupid people get As in college. Stupid people are successful at life. When you stop overvaluing intelligence, you can start applying it as a tool correctly.
If you think that all undergrad curricula are a joke, then you're either a genius, or more likely, are speaking from limited experience with school curricula, underestimating challenges that you've never endured. While it's in vogue, I'll throw out the words Dunning-Kruger (which I'm pretty sure you're intimately familiar with).
Also, I think I was unintentionally rude to you earlier, so I apologize. I generally agree with you and like what you have to say; I just happen to disagree with your perceptions here.
Uglysasquatch wrote:
You're missing the argument here. Kachi's statement is that in order to attend college, you have to be smart. You don't need A's in order to pass college and gain an undergrad. Stop thinking about this from excelling and just getting a degree. Passing college and getting an undergrad is a joke. Excelling and getting all A's is another story.
That is not my argument or statement. My statement is simply that intelligence is a determinant of college attendance and graduation. The less intelligent you are, the less likely you will be successful in college, at some point (and not the point of mental retardation, either) leaving a very low probability of success. This still leaves plenty of room for success for people of average and even below average intelligence (particularly as undergraduate, but not post-grad, admission and graduation requirements lax). This is a statistically proven fact, not really up for debate.
Kachi, I suspect you're getting caught up on semantics (again). Specifically, your use of the word "determinant" isn't clear in terms of causation versus correlation. I'd explain the linguistic aspects of this, but we'd just spiral into a silly argument.
Let's throw out the words and look at the meaning. You said that you could tell by talking to someone (presumably by them showing a lack of intelligence) that they could not have graduated from college. Whether we decide from that statement that intelligence is a determinant of a college graduation, or the other way around is utterly irrelevant. Your statement directly claims that it is impossible for a stupid person to graduate college. Whether that's because a stupid person isn't capable of graduating, or whether the process of attending school and learning will make you not stupid anymore just plain doesn't matter.
For your statement to be true, it must be impossible for a stupid person to graduate college. That is clearly not true. Ergo, your statement is false.
Let's throw out the words and look at the meaning. You said that you could tell by talking to someone (presumably by them showing a lack of intelligence) that they could not have graduated from college. Whether we decide from that statement that intelligence is a determinant of a college graduation, or the other way around is utterly irrelevant. Your statement directly claims that it is impossible for a stupid person to graduate college. Whether that's because a stupid person isn't capable of graduating, or whether the process of attending school and learning will make you not stupid anymore just plain doesn't matter.
For your statement to be true, it must be impossible for a stupid person to graduate college. That is clearly not true. Ergo, your statement is false.
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
What I said was that a sufficiently stupid person "could, or at least should" not graduate from college. I indicated that intelligence has a gradient which does not have a clear cutoff as a graduation determinant and that a person could graduate that shouldn't have graduated (some of this in the very selection you cherry-picked). I really shouldn't have to say explicitly that occasionally stupid people manage to find their way through college.
I'm not going to ask you to admit you're wrong, because everybody else should already be able to see that plainly. Just stop posting. If you had any shame, you would just be embarrassing yourself.
I'm not going to ask you to admit you're wrong, because everybody else should already be able to see that plainly. Just stop posting. If you had any shame, you would just be embarrassing yourself.
Kachi wrote:
What I said was that a sufficiently stupid person "could, or at least should" not graduate from college.
Yes. Which means that barring a horrible mistake being made every person who graduates from college should be "intelligent" (however you define that). At the very least, this should indicate that unintelligent people with college degrees should be extremely rare (I'll grant that you did add "or should not" in your original statement).
Several posters responded with disagreement to that statement Kachi. Heck. Almost every single poster in this thread has disagreed with that statement. There are just far far too many really dumb people walking around with college degrees for that statement to be true.
Quote:
I really shouldn't have to say explicitly that occasionally stupid people manage to find their way through college.
You're not getting the disagreement. It's not that occasionally stupid people get through, but that it's quite common. Hence, the idea of yours that you can talk to someone, decide he's stupid, and then conclude with reasonable certainty that he didn't graduate from college is just plain wrong. Maybe you think you can do this, but I don't think there's anyone here who agrees that the statement is true in any kind of broad sense.
Quote:
If you had any shame, you would just be embarrassing yourself.
That's ironic. I'm not the one who made a broad statement to which everyone on the board disagreed, and then has spent a dozen posts attempting to backpedal this statement instead of just saying "Yeah. I may have exaggerated that a bit" and moving on.
What an incredibly stupid thing to get hung up on!
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
Quote:
Which means that barring a horrible mistake being made every person who graduates from college should be "intelligent" (however you define that)
Again, you completely miss the point. The point is not that every person who graduates from college is intelligent, but that some people are so transparently unintelligent and uneducated that it is unlikely that they went to college or could even be successful if they did.
But it doesn't surprise me that you don't understand the difference. You weren't the only one, to be fair, but you can't really blame that on me.
Btw, I want to point out that people are using a broad classification of "stupid" and it isn't really lending you the support you think it does. A lot of people (e.g., people in this thread), would consider many people with average intelligence or slightly below average intelligence "stupid." By my own assessments, average people are pretty fucking stupid. Not too stupid to graduate college, or to fail at life, or whatever crude remark you want to infer from that. Again, there's a whole spectrum of stupid, including the "too stupid to college" stupid.
It's pretty simple. There are kids that are too stupid to graduate from high school, and there are even more people too stupid to graduate from college.
Kachi wrote:
Again, you completely miss the point. The point is not that every person who graduates from college is intelligent, but that some people are so transparently unintelligent and uneducated that it is unlikely that they went to college or could even be successful if they did.
Which is pretty much a tautology not worth being said.
If your argument is that there exists at least 1 person on the planet who is too stupid to get a college education, then I guess it's convenient for you to feud through writing because it must be hard speaking your mind while breathing through your mouth.
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