furrowsofar

furrowsofar , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to U.S. News in Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That?

Not about faith. It is a price/value question. Majority of people never historically went to college anyway.

furrowsofar , 9 months ago to U.S. News in Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That?

Yes, I think role depends. I did a lot more real writing in graduate school. Papers, thesis, etc. As far as writing … this relates a lot to critical thinking. If you cannot write a good technical paper or article it may be a critical thinking problem. There is also a difference between being given the answer solution method from books or papers and working it out youself.

My wife taught science at the community college level. Thing she said was a lot of students did not understand critical thinking and how to think through things. She felt real accomplishment when half way through the semester she could start to see some students understanding. Same thing with a lot of the general public. Lot of people think science is an opinion not a fact. For that matter Mandy think that there is no difference in objective fact and opinion.

furrowsofar , 9 months ago to U.S. News in Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That?

Frankly the amount of writing encouraged where I worked for over 20 years was minimal. It was mostly PowerPoints and emails that you had to get all the substance into the first paragraph. The major writing I ever did was for stuff the was going into patents and that is a very different kind of writing. Not sure liberal arts or college writing would help with either if those.

I do admit though some people’s writing is terrible. I remember reading nominations for an employee reward. People’s writing skills varied widely. Some were really terrible.

As for me, we had a writing requirement in college that was integrated with lab reports. The English prof too one look at my reports and said taking their class was a waste of time. So basically I tested out.

furrowsofar , 9 months ago to U.S. News in Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That?

These are all things people should have done in high school. A far as critical thinking, STEM requires much more precise thinking then most other fields.

furrowsofar , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to U.S. News in Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That?

The answer to that is specific specialty training. Something actually useful. I rather doubt that there is much you can do to teach people to be good. Lot of people argue religion is for that but I see no evidence that helps either.

The only humanities class I took in college that had value was economics and that I would have taken any way. This does not mean that I have not taken tons broadening stuff that would not do the same thing but would also not satisfy the crazy humanities requirements.

The one area where you may have a point is my experience is that specialists have to meet people where they are, not the other way around. I have seen some specialists not seem to do that very well on one hand and on the other hand lack skills they should have learned in high school like good writing. Not that I think that humanities requirements helps that much, but maybe. These people took those and it did not solve the problem.

furrowsofar , 9 months ago to U.S. News in Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That?

It is the age old argument. The question is why are you going. Unless your wealthy, it is nuts to spend money and take debt without a plan of how you will pay for it. Too many people do not consider the price value side of things.

As far as the the tech versus liberal education. It makes no sense for someone like me to pay for or waste time on useless crap. What is useless crap is very person dependent. The other interesting thing is one never hears about the liberal education folks pushing that they need more science and tech skills. How many liberal arts people actually understand science and tech?

furrowsofar , 10 months ago to U.S. News in Sanders suggests course on Black history spreads ‘hate’ against U.S.

Why is belief in freedom, fairness, honesty, truth, knowledge, and acceptance of diversity considered hating the US. At the same time some how is authoritarianism, exploitation, lying, manipulation, ignorance, and tribalism loving the US. That is like saying left is right, up is down, dumb is smart, totally bizzare.

furrowsofar , 10 months ago to U.S. News in Shop owner shot, killed over rainbow flag outside clothing store near Lake Arrowhead

I think we all know that more guns mean more gun deaths. The stats are pretty clear as a whole.

It is a pretty small group of people that actually own guns to make them safer. Majority it is to feel safer while making them and everyone around them less safe. That is my big issue with guns. Not gun ownership itself… just nutty ownership.

furrowsofar , 10 months ago to U.S. News in Shop owner shot, killed over rainbow flag outside clothing store near Lake Arrowhead

Great example why guns are just bad. To many impulsive and abusive people with them. More guns, more death.

furrowsofar , 11 months ago to Fediverse in Time to ditch Twitter/X, what are you guys switching to?

The interesting thing about Twitter is how it shows how a significant part of our society works. It is kind of about amplifying fame and suggesting that we should all cares about meaningless 240 character posts or what these guys think.

That news media types love Twitter is kind of an indictment of how news works.

furrowsofar , 11 months ago to Fediverse in Should we post on our local instances' communities to avoid making the Fediverse centralized?

Actually in terms of the threadiverse it makes more sense to join medium to large instances that align with your interests and values. That way most of your posts and subscriptions are local. Then it makes sense to subscribe to the best other communities that are missing from your instance. This reduces fragmentation which is good.

Keep in mind your suggesting promoting fragmentation which is just nuts. Building community scale is the biggest issue at the moment. Keep in mind too that as long as there are 7 or so major instances, the threadiverse is not centralized. It is just more cost and manpower effective to join and donate to larger instances rather then everyone run their own. Presumably there is an optimal instance size. I have no idea what that is.

Long run it would be good to have some tech that fights community fragmentation like the ability to aggregate communities. The other approach is just to let the dynamics choose these and let minor communities just get starved which seems to be the current approach. Maybe that is better, I have no idea.

furrowsofar , 11 months ago to Fediverse in The Fediverse needs a popular agent

Depends on what people want. For threadiverse who cares, this is topic based not people based.

For a lot of micro blogging this is for people that either want to be the one people follow or for people that want to follow those people. I am not one of those people. You do have a point though about those people. That is not the the threadiverse though… not related to lemmy or kbin.

Drivers vary though. For tube sites it is more about monetization. So that it yet another driver.

furrowsofar , 11 months ago to Do It Yourself in New to DIY. Are multi tools recommended?

I just plan every project and only buy tools when I need to. Then use general tools that I have before buying something new. So mostly I am opposed to the buy ahead approach.