Bradley, a self-employed computer technician and former Marine, attended Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest until he could no longer afford tuition, he said. While he has not taken any in-depth classes in economics, Bradley described himself as a devotee of the Austrian School, a branch of economic thought that originated in Vienna and was influential before World War I.
So, these are the people making economic policies -- wow, the educational qualifications and quality of our politicians is so staggering.
Exactly. I do not know who the hell this person interacts with, but as a consultant, I exchange business cards with people on a very regular basis.
In fact, I even have personal business cards -- as someone who believes in the value of a personal brand and who is very interested in entrepreneurship, this has come in immensely handy.
Of course, I get mine printed at Vista Print for a measly $10; but if you're interested in creating a good impression, there's always letterpress.
If you notice the thread, I made the following comment:
Anyone who has the gall to say that they've "understood" such a system, or worse yet, offer solutions in fixing the problems thereof, better have some pretty mighty empirical data to back them up. The people who caused this problem were two-penny "economists" who did not understand such systems, and Karl Denninger is no less a charlatan than any of them.
Now, I refuse to believe that some of those guys did not know what they were doing -- I am of the belief that they were well aware of what was going on, and did it anyway.
Some of them (e.g. Greenspan) were too sharp to not know what was going on, and others (e.g. Bernanke, Paulson) were either trying to make a name for themselves or cared more about short-term fixes and posterity from the public and the media. But do not mistake greed and narcissism for stupidity.
This guy knows more about the markets and the economy than you or the vast majority of respected "economists" ever will.
For one, I am not an economist, and I never claimed to be one. For another, if you are making sweeping statements like that, you'd better back them up. The man does not even have a single publication, peer reviewed or otherwise, on either RepEc or SSRN.
I'm sorry, but it would be akin to a random blogger on physics claiming to know more about "physics" without having a single peer reviewed or refereed publication on the topic.
And the big difference is that he's willing to tell the truth.
...and what truth would that be? We all know what some of the symptoms are, and we all know directionally what the solutions at addressing those symptoms might be. But that in no way makes us capable or knowledgeable in understanding -- much less fixing -- the root cause of the problem. My wife's grandmother watches House and thinks she can be a doctor, and random guys read yet another "expert" and think they know everything there is to on fixing the economy. Oh the irony.
The garbage you spew forth is typical of what the main stream media feeds the populace and you do a disservice to people as a whole by repeating it. Let me guess, you finished a couple of university courses on Keynesian economics and now you're the expert who parrots "supply & demand!" in any thread economical...
What garbage have I spewed forth? Calling forth some skepticism? But I suppose if you cannot refute the argument, why not resort to unintelligent, ad hominem attacks, right?
Denninger was a Tea Party'er before they got high-jacked by the fools that now run it in a completely different direction. He no longer has anything to do with them and frequently rails on their antics. Denninger is also NOT a "hardcore gold standard" guy, so that shows how misinformed the slurs against him are.
I could care less for his party affiliations -- I am more interested in his content and qualifications, both of which are suspect at best.
Seriously, he's one of the few beacons of light in the sea of misinformation and outright bullshit coming from the usual suspects.
How so? Please explain.
Let's face it. Markets are complex systems, not unlike the ecology of our planet. Even after lifetimes of study, we've barely grazed our understanding of the subject. Modern markets as we know are really, really young, and incredibly complex. What more, unlike nature's ecology, market dynamics include a feedback and randomness introduced by the human element.
Anyone who has the gall to say that they've "understood" such a system, or worse yet, offer solutions in fixing the problems thereof, better have some pretty mighty empirical data to back them up. The people who caused this problem were two-penny "economists" who did not understand such systems, and Karl Denninger is no less a charlatan than any of them.
I agree with you, of course. But having known traders, I can tell you that you cannot trade large sums of money on that scale without some inkling or understanding of how the market works, or at least an appreciation for its complexity.
Contrary to popular beliefs, the big traders are smarter than most people would think -- it's the mid-tier ones that are mostly schmucks. So, unless he worked for someone like Ren Tech or DE Shaw, or a trading desk at the erstwhile BBBs trading big, I'd question his understanding of market dynamics. Not that those would necessarily guarantee his understanding, but it would be an improvement from the rest of the clowns who call themselves "traders".
I visited his site, and the first entry was on guns, comparing Obama to Hitler, while his site is titled, "Commentary on The Capital Markets". Very relevant and erudite, indeed. And of course, the content and quality of his site went downhill from there.
Here is the problem, and the irony, of such sites (as I see it).
Ever since the crash, you've all these "experts" who have a tenuous grasp at best of fundamental finance or economics, and yet who are perfectly comfortable spewing forth rubbish on the topic. It's no different from the dotcom boom -- everyone pretended to know a little something about technology, and was perfectly happy to spew forth rubbish, without really knowing anything substantial at all.
Just read his junk on the state of the debt, and you realize that the man only talks about the market at a broad, superficial level, peppered with hackneyed hockey-mom aphorisms, without ever touching any of the fundamental drivers. Furthermore, I really wish somebody would give this guy a crash course in fundamental statistics on cross-correlation and causation.
The problem is that armed with half-baked knowledge and strong opinions, these guys are perfectly happy telling the world what's wrong, but offering nothing more than platitudes in fixing the problems without collapsing the economic structure we've built thus far.
Heck, what are the guy's qualifications? He has a Wikipedia entry that states that he is a "stock trader" and a CEO, but how much capital did he trade in? Unless it's hundreds of millions or more, he knows nothing about "capital markets" -- he is just a small fish in the pond. And what was he the "CEO" of? What are his educational qualifications?
The irony of such guys pushing forth their opinions is pretty much the same as creationists pushing their "agenda" to stop teaching evolution.
If you must, read someone like Nassim Nicholas Taleb -- his books The Black Swan or Fooled by Randomness offer a lot more on why we fucked up, than some crazy right wing rhetoric by a chipmunk with half-a-brain (no insults to any chipmunks, of course -- they are perfectly adorable creatures).
Indeed. I'll even add that a master's in itself is becoming meaningless, and the only additional qualifications that you can have that would be useful as professional ones (e.g. JD, MD, or perhaps an MBA) or a doctorate.
As an adult math major (dual emphasis in CS and actuarial science), I suspect you wouldn't know hard core stats if it bit you on the ass. Most service courses at the graduate level (yes, I had a previous career in academia working with grad students) they teach you just enough to get your resident statistician to feel sorry for you, pat you on the head, ask for your parameters, fix your fucked up model and/or experiment, and walk away shaking their head.
I hold an undergraduate in electrical engineering and a master's in computer science -- and I do data analytics for a living.
So, I'd suspect that I probably know more about stats and their real world application across a plethora of fields (engineering, marketing, political research, economics) than you ever will.
No, he was saying that at the very least, everyone should have basic levels of education in certain things, and that these things include essentials (e.g. basic math such as calculus, core English literature such as Shakespeare etc).
I would in fact add a few more to the list -- basic chemistry, including physical, organic, and inorganic; basic physics, including mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics; engineering drawing; at least conversational skills in one non-native language; introduction to music theory; fundamentals of philosophy and the main schools of thought; introduction to social sciences, including economics, political theory, geography, history, law, sociology, and psychology; and finally, art.
I could point to someone like John Stuart Mill as the product of such an education, but I will instead leave with a Heinlein quote:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
Well, these would be polytechnics or trade schools, places where you learnt a vocation without having to understand the basics.
Back when the US did a lot more manufacturing, you had workers who just needed to operate and maintain the machinery, do basic things like soldering etc. Or learning to be a car mechanic, a plumber, or an electrician. Nothing too difficult, and certainly easily taught.
The programming that you define is very similar -- something that can be applied easily, without having to understand the basics.
And of course employers prefer skills workers in a trade. They make the perfect drones, who are perfectly content doing as they are told.
On the other hand, someone who understands the fundamentals and is good enough to get through the basic CS will come up with a startup that can optimize searches or something, and make millions.
The one that you chose is perfect for a job, without any creativity or basic understanding. Nothing more. Once you get into other areas, it would prove to be woefully inadequate.
The irony of this is that I'm doing a master's in government and international relations, and I've had to take some pretty hardcore stats classes, for quantitative research in poli sci and econ.
It's amusing to see when people in a technical area complain of having to take math classes when people in social sciences have to, as well.
In fact, I would say that there are three separate (but related) categories in computing --
1. Computer Engineering -- this would be akin to any other field of engineering. You learn about microprocessors, VLSI, DSP, and other elements, not dissimilar from EE or ECE. Lots of practical, engineering considerations should be involved.
2a. Theoretical Computer Science -- this, to your point, should be about theoretical computer science, complexity, discrete math, topology, graph theory, and other aspects of "real" computer science.
2b. Applied Computer Science -- one learns to apply the topics of above to specific real-world problems (e.g. how can you use physics and vectors in building a raytracer or graph theory in network topology or how semantics encoding can ensure soundness and completeness in parsers etc).
You can have something along the lines of Computer Science & Engineering where both are taught, for those areas which overlap (e.g. OS design, device drivers etc).
3. Programming/Development -- this is the least glamorous and the most pedestrian application, so much so that I question if this should be taught at all. If one were to understand the fundamentals, they should be able to pick up the intricacies of applying them in any language or API. Ditto with system administration. In my mind, I bucket this with all the IT/IS/MIS load of crap.
The reason this last area is popular at all is because there are no polytechnics these days -- back in the day, this would have been an easy skill that would have been taught in polytechnics for people to quickly learn and apply.
In the hierarchy of things --
pure math >> applied math >> theoretical physics >> applied physics >> engineering physics >> engineering >> programming
You are being absurd and populist in your opinions -- sour grapes, perhaps?
Harvard is a good school with great people, and like any other institution, there are people of all natures and predispositions. Generalizing your ridiculous notions to the entire institution is not only crazy, but also reeks of unbridled and irrational hatred tinged with jealousy.
But that is the point -- Harvard's goal is not *only* furthering science. If Harvard accepted only the uber smart students, then it would turn into the University of Chicago (shudder). The idea is that Harvard looks for leaders in its students, people who can make a difference in the world. That is not always translated into academic scores.
Chicago looks for smart people, Harvard looks for smart and *interesting* people who have the ability to break the mold -- and kick ass.
My wife goes to school there, and so do/did several of our friends. And not one of them is particularly wealthy -- a few well-off kids, and a few upper middle class. But the vast majority? Middle class.
You should consider it because not all schools are made alike. I'm in my late 20s, and after an undergraduate in engineering and a master's, I decided to go to school to study something completely unrelated -- social sciences.
So far, I've been amazed at how much there is to learn. Even a subject such as applying stats to political science is interesting in ways I'd never considered. If anything, with a full-time management consulting job with lots of travel, I am finding it extremely difficult to even handle two classes on the weekends.
And with every class, I meet new and interesting people, I read books that I would have otherwise never read, and I come away learning something new every day. In fact, while most of my classmates are young, there are also a few that are older and are in the same boat as me. Some are even considering doing a PhD, after having "retired" at the age of 40 (and having made millions). Not a single one of my classmates comes across as under-motivated, or has demonstrated a need for hand-holding.
So, I would say this -- pick your school. It makes a difference, trust me.
If you think that very little furthering of science happens at Harvard, I can only pity you. Look up the number of Nobel laureates from Harvard and compare that against the number from ITT Tech. Harvard is one of the best schools for a variety of reasons, not the least because it is picky about its students, but also because it provides its students with a world-class environment, both in the form of the educators and in the form of resources.
How about looking up the average SAT and GRE/GMAT scores of Harvard and ITT grads? I can bet you dollars to donuts that the average SAT score of the Harvard freshman will beat the knockers out of the average SAT score of the ITT Tech freshman. Oh wait, does ITT even require taking the SAT?
And what about the number of ITT Tech grads that won the Nobel prize? Pulitzer prize? Fields medal? Turing award?
I think you are confusing the ability of an educational institution to teach and incidentally make money with an educational institution whose sole existence is to make money.
The mission statement of Harvard does not involve money -- money merely enables it to succeed at being one of the very best schools on this planet, to educate the best and the brightest, and do kickass research in the arts and the science. In contrast, a place like DeVry or ITT Tech are concerned primarily with making money, and education merely enables them to succeed at making more money.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you heard of Confirmation Bias?
Jesus H! From the article:
So, these are the people making economic policies -- wow, the educational qualifications and quality of our politicians is so staggering.
Exactly. I do not know who the hell this person interacts with, but as a consultant, I exchange business cards with people on a very regular basis.
In fact, I even have personal business cards -- as someone who believes in the value of a personal brand and who is very interested in entrepreneurship, this has come in immensely handy.
Of course, I get mine printed at Vista Print for a measly $10; but if you're interested in creating a good impression, there's always letterpress.
So did Yasser Arafat.
And what lie would that be?
If you notice the thread, I made the following comment:
Now, I refuse to believe that some of those guys did not know what they were doing -- I am of the belief that they were well aware of what was going on, and did it anyway.
Some of them (e.g. Greenspan) were too sharp to not know what was going on, and others (e.g. Bernanke, Paulson) were either trying to make a name for themselves or cared more about short-term fixes and posterity from the public and the media. But do not mistake greed and narcissism for stupidity.
For one, I am not an economist, and I never claimed to be one. For another, if you are making sweeping statements like that, you'd better back them up. The man does not even have a single publication, peer reviewed or otherwise, on either RepEc or SSRN.
I'm sorry, but it would be akin to a random blogger on physics claiming to know more about "physics" without having a single peer reviewed or refereed publication on the topic.
What garbage have I spewed forth? Calling forth some skepticism? But I suppose if you cannot refute the argument, why not resort to unintelligent, ad hominem attacks, right?
I could care less for his party affiliations -- I am more interested in his content and qualifications, both of which are suspect at best.
How so? Please explain.
Let's face it. Markets are complex systems, not unlike the ecology of our planet. Even after lifetimes of study, we've barely grazed our understanding of the subject. Modern markets as we know are really, really young, and incredibly complex. What more, unlike nature's ecology, market dynamics include a feedback and randomness introduced by the human element.
Anyone who has the gall to say that they've "understood" such a system, or worse yet, offer solutions in fixing the problems thereof, better have some pretty mighty empirical data to back them up. The people who caused this problem were two-penny "economists" who did not understand such systems, and Karl Denninger is no less a charlatan than any of them.
I agree with you, of course. But having known traders, I can tell you that you cannot trade large sums of money on that scale without some inkling or understanding of how the market works, or at least an appreciation for its complexity.
Contrary to popular beliefs, the big traders are smarter than most people would think -- it's the mid-tier ones that are mostly schmucks. So, unless he worked for someone like Ren Tech or DE Shaw, or a trading desk at the erstwhile BBBs trading big, I'd question his understanding of market dynamics. Not that those would necessarily guarantee his understanding, but it would be an improvement from the rest of the clowns who call themselves "traders".
I visited his site, and the first entry was on guns, comparing Obama to Hitler, while his site is titled, "Commentary on The Capital Markets". Very relevant and erudite, indeed. And of course, the content and quality of his site went downhill from there.
Here is the problem, and the irony, of such sites (as I see it).
Ever since the crash, you've all these "experts" who have a tenuous grasp at best of fundamental finance or economics, and yet who are perfectly comfortable spewing forth rubbish on the topic. It's no different from the dotcom boom -- everyone pretended to know a little something about technology, and was perfectly happy to spew forth rubbish, without really knowing anything substantial at all.
Just read his junk on the state of the debt, and you realize that the man only talks about the market at a broad, superficial level, peppered with hackneyed hockey-mom aphorisms, without ever touching any of the fundamental drivers. Furthermore, I really wish somebody would give this guy a crash course in fundamental statistics on cross-correlation and causation.
The problem is that armed with half-baked knowledge and strong opinions, these guys are perfectly happy telling the world what's wrong, but offering nothing more than platitudes in fixing the problems without collapsing the economic structure we've built thus far.
Heck, what are the guy's qualifications? He has a Wikipedia entry that states that he is a "stock trader" and a CEO, but how much capital did he trade in? Unless it's hundreds of millions or more, he knows nothing about "capital markets" -- he is just a small fish in the pond. And what was he the "CEO" of? What are his educational qualifications?
The irony of such guys pushing forth their opinions is pretty much the same as creationists pushing their "agenda" to stop teaching evolution.
If you must, read someone like Nassim Nicholas Taleb -- his books The Black Swan or Fooled by Randomness offer a lot more on why we fucked up, than some crazy right wing rhetoric by a chipmunk with half-a-brain (no insults to any chipmunks, of course -- they are perfectly adorable creatures).
Indeed. I'll even add that a master's in itself is becoming meaningless, and the only additional qualifications that you can have that would be useful as professional ones (e.g. JD, MD, or perhaps an MBA) or a doctorate.
I hold an undergraduate in electrical engineering and a master's in computer science -- and I do data analytics for a living.
So, I'd suspect that I probably know more about stats and their real world application across a plethora of fields (engineering, marketing, political research, economics) than you ever will.
No, he was saying that at the very least, everyone should have basic levels of education in certain things, and that these things include essentials (e.g. basic math such as calculus, core English literature such as Shakespeare etc).
I would in fact add a few more to the list -- basic chemistry, including physical, organic, and inorganic; basic physics, including mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics; engineering drawing; at least conversational skills in one non-native language; introduction to music theory; fundamentals of philosophy and the main schools of thought; introduction to social sciences, including economics, political theory, geography, history, law, sociology, and psychology; and finally, art.
I could point to someone like John Stuart Mill as the product of such an education, but I will instead leave with a Heinlein quote:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
Well, these would be polytechnics or trade schools, places where you learnt a vocation without having to understand the basics.
Back when the US did a lot more manufacturing, you had workers who just needed to operate and maintain the machinery, do basic things like soldering etc. Or learning to be a car mechanic, a plumber, or an electrician. Nothing too difficult, and certainly easily taught.
The programming that you define is very similar -- something that can be applied easily, without having to understand the basics.
And of course employers prefer skills workers in a trade. They make the perfect drones, who are perfectly content doing as they are told.
On the other hand, someone who understands the fundamentals and is good enough to get through the basic CS will come up with a startup that can optimize searches or something, and make millions.
The one that you chose is perfect for a job, without any creativity or basic understanding. Nothing more. Once you get into other areas, it would prove to be woefully inadequate.
Hahaha! Too bad I posted in this thread, else I'd have modded you up. :-)
The irony of this is that I'm doing a master's in government and international relations, and I've had to take some pretty hardcore stats classes, for quantitative research in poli sci and econ.
It's amusing to see when people in a technical area complain of having to take math classes when people in social sciences have to, as well.
In fact, I would say that there are three separate (but related) categories in computing --
1. Computer Engineering -- this would be akin to any other field of engineering. You learn about microprocessors, VLSI, DSP, and other elements, not dissimilar from EE or ECE. Lots of practical, engineering considerations should be involved.
2a. Theoretical Computer Science -- this, to your point, should be about theoretical computer science, complexity, discrete math, topology, graph theory, and other aspects of "real" computer science.
2b. Applied Computer Science -- one learns to apply the topics of above to specific real-world problems (e.g. how can you use physics and vectors in building a raytracer or graph theory in network topology or how semantics encoding can ensure soundness and completeness in parsers etc).
You can have something along the lines of Computer Science & Engineering where both are taught, for those areas which overlap (e.g. OS design, device drivers etc).
3. Programming/Development -- this is the least glamorous and the most pedestrian application, so much so that I question if this should be taught at all. If one were to understand the fundamentals, they should be able to pick up the intricacies of applying them in any language or API. Ditto with system administration. In my mind, I bucket this with all the IT/IS/MIS load of crap.
The reason this last area is popular at all is because there are no polytechnics these days -- back in the day, this would have been an easy skill that would have been taught in polytechnics for people to quickly learn and apply.
In the hierarchy of things --
pure math >> applied math >> theoretical physics >> applied physics >> engineering physics >> engineering >> programming
Yes, that's why Leslie Valiant from Harvard won the latest ACM Turing Award.
For one, I'm studying something I truly enjoy, benefits notwithstanding. For another, I'm getting reimbursed for my studies, so it's not my money.
But at the end of the day, I am having a blast studying at one of the best schools in the world -- what's not to like?
You are being absurd and populist in your opinions -- sour grapes, perhaps?
Harvard is a good school with great people, and like any other institution, there are people of all natures and predispositions. Generalizing your ridiculous notions to the entire institution is not only crazy, but also reeks of unbridled and irrational hatred tinged with jealousy.
But that is the point -- Harvard's goal is not *only* furthering science. If Harvard accepted only the uber smart students, then it would turn into the University of Chicago (shudder). The idea is that Harvard looks for leaders in its students, people who can make a difference in the world. That is not always translated into academic scores.
Chicago looks for smart people, Harvard looks for smart and *interesting* people who have the ability to break the mold -- and kick ass.
My wife goes to school there, and so do/did several of our friends. And not one of them is particularly wealthy -- a few well-off kids, and a few upper middle class. But the vast majority? Middle class.
I'm still waiting to hear how you think that Harvard's mission does not include education or furthering science.
You should consider it because not all schools are made alike. I'm in my late 20s, and after an undergraduate in engineering and a master's, I decided to go to school to study something completely unrelated -- social sciences.
So far, I've been amazed at how much there is to learn. Even a subject such as applying stats to political science is interesting in ways I'd never considered. If anything, with a full-time management consulting job with lots of travel, I am finding it extremely difficult to even handle two classes on the weekends.
And with every class, I meet new and interesting people, I read books that I would have otherwise never read, and I come away learning something new every day. In fact, while most of my classmates are young, there are also a few that are older and are in the same boat as me. Some are even considering doing a PhD, after having "retired" at the age of 40 (and having made millions). Not a single one of my classmates comes across as under-motivated, or has demonstrated a need for hand-holding.
So, I would say this -- pick your school. It makes a difference, trust me.
A company's mission statement has everything to do with its business practices, and also what those practices mean to investors. The sole purpose of the company then is -- to use a clichéd expression -- to enhance shareholder value. The sole purpose of a non-profit, in comparison, is not to enhance shareholder value, but rather to use the funds to further its mission and charter. That is a significant difference.
If you think that very little furthering of science happens at Harvard, I can only pity you. Look up the number of Nobel laureates from Harvard and compare that against the number from ITT Tech. Harvard is one of the best schools for a variety of reasons, not the least because it is picky about its students, but also because it provides its students with a world-class environment, both in the form of the educators and in the form of resources.
How about looking up the average SAT and GRE/GMAT scores of Harvard and ITT grads? I can bet you dollars to donuts that the average SAT score of the Harvard freshman will beat the knockers out of the average SAT score of the ITT Tech freshman. Oh wait, does ITT even require taking the SAT?
And what about the number of ITT Tech grads that won the Nobel prize? Pulitzer prize? Fields medal? Turing award?
Maybe you'll learn to spell cappuccino right the next time?
I think you are confusing the ability of an educational institution to teach and incidentally make money with an educational institution whose sole existence is to make money.
The mission statement of Harvard does not involve money -- money merely enables it to succeed at being one of the very best schools on this planet, to educate the best and the brightest, and do kickass research in the arts and the science. In contrast, a place like DeVry or ITT Tech are concerned primarily with making money, and education merely enables them to succeed at making more money.
*That* is the difference.