[HN Gopher] The PhD Octopus (1903)
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The PhD Octopus (1903)
Author : mutant_glofish
Score : 55 points
Date : 2023-08-08 22:16 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (la.utexas.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (la.utexas.edu)
| bcjordan wrote:
| > With many men the passing of these extraneous tests is a very
| grievous interference indeed
|
| I feel seen 120 years ago
|
| I am hopeful massive LLMs/other models will be an enabler in
| recognizing and fostering everyone's talents, capabilities and
| interests in learning with detailed nuance. We'll soon no longer
| need to whittle down the education experience to fit through the
| eye of 20-40 needles[0] which all need to be snapshotted
| synchronized across a classroom like when TV episodes were only
| available at their exact weekly time slot. We've got like, I
| don't know, a trillion 32-bit resolution needles to work with
| now, I imagine we'll find significantly more nuanced and
| effective ways of learning[1] and organizing hiring/work
| collaboration with each other.
|
| [0]: Or as the 1890 Scantron predecessor Hollerith Electric
| Tabulating System called the needle eyeholes, "keypunches"
|
| [1]: Having worked over the years often on school/learning-
| supporting tech, and using GPT-4 to learn new things, it feels
| like, FINALLY! One-on-one instruction with direct attention has
| always been the most OP way of teaching/learning, but extremely
| cost-prohibitive. This could easily enable widespread hard-to-
| fathom outcome changes for students otherwise falling through the
| cracks of the one size fits all education model.
| omgJustTest wrote:
| As a person with such a degree, I can tell you that getting a PhD
| to teach is basically like getting a Lamborghini as a daily
| driver. Wildly impractical, a PhD is for teaching is primarily a
| gate-keeping methodology which finds it's true power in the,
| sometimes literal, indoctrination of the future generations.
|
| For this purpose I feel as though it is justified, however there
| is also a ponzification of bestowed PhDs, where novelty and
| published research may become so tangential or new that the field
| literally doesn't exist and might never be useful. For this
| purpose, a PhD feels like the "other" bin, the world doesn't have
| a name for it or the PhD holder claims that no other label fits.
| hbbio wrote:
| TLDR:
|
| "The Ph.D. Octopus" is an essay by William James that delves into
| the increasing importance and sometimes detrimental effects of
| the Ph.D. degree in American academic life.
|
| James recounts an incident where a brilliant student was offered
| a teaching position but was later informed that he must either
| have his appointment revoked or obtain a Ph.D. degree from
| Harvard. This event highlights the growing emphasis on titles and
| degrees over genuine talent and knowledge.
|
| (@gpt)
| turtleyacht wrote:
| [pdf]
| mutant_glofish wrote:
| HTML version: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Ph.D._Octopus
| ke88y wrote:
| _> Graduate schools still are something of a novelty, and higher
| diplomas something of a rarity. The latter, therefore, carry a
| vague sense of preciousness and honor, and have a particularly
| "up-to-date" appearance, and it is no wonder if smaller
| institutions, unable to attract professors already eminent, and
| forced usually to recruit their faculties from the relatively
| young, should hope to compensate for the obscurity of the names
| of their officers of instruction by the abundance of decorative
| titles by which those names are followed on the pages of the
| catalogues where they appear. The dazzled reader of the list, the
| parent or student, says to himself, "This must be a terribly
| distinguished crowd, - their titles shine like the stars in the
| firmament; Ph.D.'s, S.D.'s, and Litt.D.'s bespangle the page as
| if they were sprinkled over it from a pepper caster."_
|
| Interestingly, this remains true. If you want to be a CS
| professor at a small college, your industry experience is
| probably more desirable than a PhD.
|
| Just don't expect to be paid more than a 10th of what you make
| now, and certainly don't expect the respect of your bespangled
| peers ;-)
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Beautifully written. 120 years later and people can't write
| formally and poetically without either mocking something or
| willing to be mocked. We've lost something.
| atorodius wrote:
| While I would question this statement in general (people
| definitely can still write formal and poetical content without
| mocking, eg recently eulogy here on HN even), but on the other
| hand it also seems this piece itself is mocking to some extend?
|
| > America is thus a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of
| things in which no man of science or letters will be accounted
| respectable unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped
| upon him, and in which bare personality will be a mark of
| outcast estate.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I thought this had shown up more often, but only one past
| submission with discussion (1 or 3 comments in the other two
| submissions):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13944474 - March 24, 2017
| (46 comments)
| jhbadger wrote:
| As alluded to in the concluding paragraph, this was a time in
| America where the PhD degree was just beginning to be popular in
| America and was seen by many as an unwelcome German import (as
| the PhD degree as we know it originated there).
| gumby wrote:
| Stil pretty ubiquitous, though there are lovely exceptions like
| tenured MIT professor Ed Fredkin (passed away last month) with no
| college education at all!
|
| Ed passed away in June month, but he's been mentioned frequently
| on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fredkin
| nextos wrote:
| Less extreme, but Simon Peyton Jones never did a PhD.
|
| Yet he eventually became a Lecturer and a Professor at UCL and
| Glasgow, respectively:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Peyton_Jones#Education
| 13of40 wrote:
| Consider the old joke...
|
| Q: What do you call a person with 18 years of education and a
| freshly minted certificate declaring them a distinguished
| Master in their field?
|
| A: That new guy.
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