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parrhesia  1yr ago (sotonye.substack.com)   2654 thread views

Most Education is Wasteful and Immoral

sotonye.substack.com

SS: I make a case for drastically cutting back on education. I argue that education doesn’t achieve its desired goals. The material is irrelevant and students forget much of the material. Most information taught in schools is quickly accessible with a smartphone. Education might be warranted if it boosted cognitive ability but it appears to be increasing IQ scores rather than actual ability to think.

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Then Alexander the Great gets tutored by Aristotle and conquers a huge fraction of the known world.

n=1, totally rational. Genghis Khan was tutored by no philosopher, lost father early in life, had to kill with a bow to survive, and conquered greater fraction of world than Alexander, and his empire still kept expanding for decades after his death.

Genghis Khan was also known for his focus on recruiting experts from every region that he conquered. He might not have been a scholar himself, but he valued scholarship.

In any case, you are correct that small-n tells us little. I mention these examples as intuition pumps.

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