Hmmm, if your guess is true, then I’ll say it here first – Anne Mulcahy

the opposite is true…

no one wants to realize that they are losing because they fail to meet some aesthetic for the future mandated by a few who self proclaim their superiority.

Without merit us Autodidactic Rennaisance people cant move things, and so we then become social cranks to people.

meanwhile, libraries, airline industry, automotive industry, desk top computers, telephone, light bulb, virtual reality, moving pictures, television, harvesters, great literature, and more all came from autodidactics….

Even Einstein technically was an autodidact, in that he really didn’t educate from the academy. he was a patent clerk when such would have been going after a degree…

I am beating my head against the wall with some really cool incredible stuff. the professors agree, and have even sent back articles to show how i was right.

but, just as they are overwhelmingly giving lots of money in record amounts in midterm elections for obama and liberal democrats.. they too, have internalized the rules as to who can or cant participate.

so the problem is kind of what happens when you INVERT a section. the smartest, dont become dumb, but are forced to live that kind of life with that kind of end, and the not so smart, dont become smart, but they are placed in a position which the other would be in, but then cant function (because the idea we are all Procrustean equal is a farce meant to destroy all of societies comparative advantage from merit as the arbiter).

Credentialism has existed for centuries in one form or another as groups with an information or knowledge advantage have tried to maintain their position of superiority with everything from guilds and associations to secret societies and esoteric languages.

And even though teachers and educators have noble intentions, their position in our economy, by design is dependent upon a psychology of the scarcity of knowledge.

Whole categories of attributes from self-help to self-directed inquiry have been coined to disguise and set apart individual learning as an aberration so as not to displace the hierarchical power of educators.

And yet, throughout history self-educated men and women from all walks of life and social stations have risen to the occasion of the challenges facing them.

In so doing, they have set new standards for learning, which without question have raised the bar of achievement for their respective societies.

But only in the latter half of the twentieth-century has the insidious notion that one must have the blessing of an institution to function in society been generally accepted without protest.

This same thing blocks the advancement of women and people of color as well as blocks whites and chinese and jews.

Ramanujan, discovered by Hoyle, would never make it today, despite being of color. he is self educated, and would not have given a hat tip to the socialist organizations who would pretend to have facilitated him.

[which is why they dont celebrate Emmy Noether, Catherine Elizabeth Hughes, Clare Luce, Muriel Siebert, Dawn Steel, Benjamin Banneker, John Henrik Clarke, and many more]

So now we have people in the labs who can barely do the incremental work, make only paper, and are way way way too scared to take a risk and bring their idea to completion as IP in a market.

and outside that, we have people like me clamoring for just one chance, one time to shine without some wet towel and confounding being thrown on their heads, with platitudes about not competing, being greedy, and much more…

The more I try, the more outsiders like here think i sound nuts, the more isolated i am made, and the less chance i have to accomplish any of the technological ideas i have (and not have them stolen as has happened several times).

You walk into one of these academics offices, and you ahve some interesting things in computational biology and digital evolution, and what you have is not comprehensible to them easy, and so they dawdle, and diddle… that is till someone else does the same or similar thing, then they send you an email saying wow, you were right again… you must have a lot of first premises to work from.

they incorporate your ideas into their grant writign, but they dont help you write one, as your not part of the system. you volunteer to do work for them, to move their work out of the way, to buy time. and they inform you that if you save them time, they will use it on their own things.

so what does one do?

well, one can HOPE for CHANGE and perhaps someone like occam or an out of work EE might help a bit…

but the truth is that this game puts you in the pile of crank and crazy masses who have ideas they think is inventing and no engineering, electronics, physics, material science, manufacturing skills etc.

without the academy stamping you approved each step, your in the pile of freaks!!!!!!!!!!

I go upstairs and its 60% women, the rest are minorities and foreigners, and you realize that if it wasnt for the same policy your discussing here from the other end, i would be in the labs or of my own company, rather than moribund writing simple software with a stagnated salary, and no hope (given attempts make me out to be a freak)

you know what?
i would rather be the stupid person working hard to do something in that higher place, as there i have a chance to change and actually do it if i worked really hard.

than to be the smart person assumed to be dumb, nutty, con artist, wrong aesthetic, greedy, narcissistic, scheming, and everything and anything OTHER.

Engineers have to get things right. They design things which have to work in the real world. When bridges fall down, there are consequences. If your computer doesn’t work, there are consequences. If a rocket crashes, there are consequences.

By contrast, many scientists have the luxury of living in the world of thought. They can toy around with ideas and models and concepts, normally without consequence for being wrong. You would not want a scientist designing a bridge, or performing surgery. They generally don’t have the necessary skills.

i will write a program in a day that blows the docs away… i will over the weekend construct some basic electrical stuff and enable their research for under 50 dollars when they cant get the 6000 for some expensive catalogue item that does the same.

i volunteer this outside my job. do i get raises? awards? how about paid for the materials i use up?

Personally, the more this goes on, the more futile it is, the more you realize that you wasted a life that you cant get back. the more your skills are failing, your eyes are failing, you cant do the work, you have fewer resources, and everyone thinks and treats you like a pariah, for thats what failures get.

The more it goes on, the more you understand, and and the more one thinks that maybe Edwin Armstrong, Phil Katz, James B. Lansing, Rudolf Diesel, among many others known and unknown had the right idea after merit failed them and vultures came, and they had little chances.

Each of them had their technology stolen, were prevented from succeeding, or lost control of their dreams… by the design and games of others.

They were never in the leveraged position of Galt…

there is only one thing worse than being a has been and thats being a never been (and wasting your life and resources to get there!).

So what DOES one do?

It was hard enough when merit was the measure, but now?

As our society becomes more and more complex the urge is to put more and more of it under top-down government control which is less and less of a good answer.

And maybe it’s time to give the Dr.’s a little rest. I am enamored of Dr.’s Sowell, Hansen, and Williams, but not one of them would suggest that their wisdom came from their ph or their d but from their watching the current scene, which any of us can do.

When it comes to the federal government imposing a top down wisdom upon us all I am reminded of what happened to the water temples in Thailand.

For centuries the Thai had been going to the priests at the water temples to get water rights handed out.

Then the UN showed up with experts and computers to fix the situation to make it more fair and efficient.

And you know what happened: they had a drought.

That’s almost guaranteed. Hubris always is rewarded. When allowed to flower on a national scale the results are staggering.

I would personally be very embarrassed to work as a Affirmative Action quota employee. I’m surprised that more women and blacks haven’t spoken out against it. Aren’t they embarrassed?

I had read that Clarence Thomas had graduated 8th in his class at Holy Cross, which is impressive. He greatly resented allegations that he needed AA to get into Yale Law School, given those grades.

An engineering classmate got hired at a good lab position at a major corporation. “They hired me just because I am a woman.” No, they hired you because you graduated with a 3.8 GPA and got things done and done very well.

I would personally be very embarrassed to work as a Affirmative Action quota employee. I’m surprised that more women and blacks haven’t spoken out against it. Aren’t they embarrassed?

In my limited experience, no, because they don’t consider themselves affirmative action hires.

For example, I once had an overseas grad student for whom I’d talked a company from his home (Third World) country into sponsoring through grad school. One time he made clear before the rest of my research group that he thought his good fortune had arisen through his own efforts and achievements.

Although I hadn’t breathed a word about it to anyone, the rest of my group had divined what had happened, and there was much coughing and shuffling of feet. They knew. He didn’t.

I suspect that that is not a lone incident. No one wants to believe he achieved his present position through juice, rather than through merit.

But poor old Larry really cannot tolerate life outside Haavaad. Anyone with true self-respect would have hustled out of the institution that canned him for wholly unjustified reasons, instead of staying on and then returning, after a stay with BHO, back to Mama H.

The current crowd believes the pathway to recovery is thru keeping prices up (e.g. housing), when it is more likely that we should let the market reset prices. Interfering with prices causes / prevents a real recovery taking hold and keeps employment down.

Exactamundo. The Japanese government wasted a decade in trying to keep housing prices up when the housing bubble burst. Let them fall.

Doesn’t the Administration want affordable housing for the poor? Falling prices will help that out, not setting the poor up with a $500,000 mortgage with nothing down.

He’s the financial world’s answer to Jamie Gorelick, the Mistress of Distress, who also went from disaster to disaster. Strictly coincidence, I’m sure.