Comment by nicoburns

Comment by nicoburns 3 days ago

> I think it misses what incredible alchemy comes from making people who come in for “job training” (like I did) spend 4 years in close proximity with research, academic freedom, liberal arts, and at least an attempt at some kind of intellectual idealism separate from economic incentive.

For me it was the opposite. I came into college full of academic curiosity, and left completely burnt out by a system that cares about grades and proving knowledge much more than the pursuit of knowledge.

CharlieDigital 3 days ago

If you can't prove knowledge gained, would that not indicate that the pursuit was fruitless?

Regardless of your endpoint in that pursuit, you should have gained intermediate foundational knowledge along the way, even if you haven't arrived at your endpoint.

If you cannot show mastery of that intermediate knowledge, then any kind of journey for knowledge would have failed.

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nicoburns 3 days ago

"if you can't prove something, then it isn't true" is an obvious logical fallacy.

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- redwall_hp 3 days ago
  
  Extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, however, is not. It's the foundation of the scientific method.
  There's an obvious lack of logical rigor to jump from someone pointing that out to framing it as proving an untruth.
  A is true if evidence B supports it ≠ A is only true if evidence B supports it.
  But you can only claim A is true if B. Otherwise you're just blowing smoke around an unknown.
  
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