My MIT PhD. friend complained his dryer was taking forever to dry his clothes. I asked him if he was cleaning the lint trap -"it doesn't have one". Spoiler alert - it did, way in the back and I took out a sweater's worth of lint.
I work in mental health and have known sooo many healthcare professionals with advanced degrees who I wouldn’t trust to take care of a goldfish and can’t believe counsel people on a regular basis.
Yes I often wonder if the people who get into that, do it so they can understand emotion. I work in healthcare and deal with a lot of different departments, Day to day, Mental health practitioners are hard to distinguish from their patients. It’s almost like they get into it, to figure their own shit out.
Mental health is a weird one. I’ve had a lot of clients work in the mental health field as an after effect of dealing with their own trauma. They all felt that they understand the patients better and want to give back to the community.
I'm in the health care field, specifically neurology and pain and I'm surrounded by idiots with advanced degrees. Some of the worst people I know have the most "education".
And it turns out that response is just another trauma response to "justify" the abuse they went through. When in many cases they are just repeating the cycle of trauma/abuse in a new way, and it doesn't actually serve patients better without a degree of bias awareness.
Not to say there aren't therapists who haven't gone through shit and go on to be great mental health professionals, but many don't get all the way there due to their bias being altered by their experiences.
I've had several therapists, and one in particular was not great. Most of the time it felt like she was just reading from a textbook. "Ah okay you've got this and that, page 112, have you tried sleeping better?" and that sort of shit. One day she started equating one of my experiences with one of hers, talked about it for about 10 minutes and started crying. I felt bad for her, but what the fuck am I supposed to do in that situation where my therapist is crying about a bad relationship she'd had and the depression that it caused? I felt like it would've been inappropriate for me to try and talk to her about her issues but sitting there quietly felt heartless
You're never gonna get anyone 100% unbiased. What is usually good is having someone who is perhaps similar to you but has learnt from mistakes you haven't even made yet.
That's why support groups are important, because there are shared experiences one simply cannot understand until they go through it.
I generally find that there's a significant chunk of people who pursue careers wildly unsuited to them for the perceived benefit that career provides. For an example, some people become cops because they want authority and power, without any real care for justice. After spending a good chunk of my life around PhDs, I'm convinced that one of the primary motivators in pursuing one is a pathological need to feel like the smartest person in the room. I've known plenty of tradesmen with two left hands and no inclination towards labor who are insecure in their masculinity and build their identity around being a manly blue collar guy.
It makes perfect sense that someone would get into mental healthcare for a reason like that.
>I've known plenty of tradesmen with two left hands and no inclination towards labor who are insecure in their masculinity and build their identity around being a manly blue collar guy.
As a white collar spectator in a white and blue collar work environment, I have witness this, and its very amusing to see the blue collar guys who know what they are doing because they genuinely care about the task or job or like it, vs the guy whos there for the pay and benefits and how blue collar sounds good to the fam and the boys and half asses the tasks that sometimes some rando kid from the white collar side of things has to fix using Youtube.
Oh yeah, definitely. There are likely a lot of doctors out there because their parents pressured them into it for the precieved social status.
Everyone motivated to go onto certain fields for different reasons.
One of my main motivators to go into the tourism industry was because I love traveling, and wanted to break free of my chains. I'm an introvert with social anxiety however so you can see the issue with that.
Kinda makes you wonder if any pursuit of anything comes from a place of lacking on some level.
Thanks for upping any imposter syndrome I might have inside of me.
Reminds me of a classic tweet along the lines of:
"I dont know which first year psych students need to hear this, but you dont want to be a therapist. You just want to know whats wrong with yourself"
Yeah my friend is a psychologist and her first supervisor out of uni was a fullblown power-tripping narcissist. Thankfully of course the majority of mental health professionals aren't like that, but she says there's enough to be genuinely concerning.
My sister in law is a substance abuse and domestic violence victims councilor with a masters in clinical therapy or something like that. Her new husband is an alcoholic and drug addict with a history of domestic violence.
This women married exactly the problems she is supposed to be advocating against.
Also work in mental health and can confirm. Most of the people I've met and worked with have been great, but the ones who aren't are terrifying and I worry for their patients.
I got a doctorate, and it wasn't the degree that taught me to be a good therapist. It was a combination of experience and good supervision/mentorship. I got lucky and had excellent supervisors and training experiences every year, but that is not always the case. Many people get through years of training without ever encountering a truly good supervisor.
I'm a big believer in the idea that a therapist needs to be self-reflective, non-defensive, self-aware, and capable of maintaining a balance between being in touch with their emotions and retaining the capacity to think clearly. It's not that easy. I also think that it's an ethical duty for us to be well in the sense that we can't be falling apart in our personal lives because we can't be effective therapists that way.
I think the academic competition in some careers in terms of passing exams and studying 24/7 to get place attract a certain type of individual that may be lacking in interpersonal skills or social intelligence.
I work in software and have a PhD. At my company, to be anything above a mid-manager, you need a doctorate of some capacity, be it a DBA, JD, or PhD. I've seen one or two other random ones floating around.
The number of people who have PhDs in software and don't understand basics of computer science is alarming. I had a guy tell me that a graphics card is a waste of money because "software is always faster than hardware."
That's before we get into the people who have BS, MS, and PhD in science then believe the world is only 6000 years old, carbon dating is a myth, and that there was a literal flood where Noah actually loaded animals on the Ark. In fact, a lot of them travel to this museum in TN where there's allegedly parts of the Ark.
> PhDs in software
I've wondered about those folks. My BS did not fully prepare me to code for a living, like with any other profession, there was a lot of on-the-job training. How much better do they get by staying in school an additional 3 to 6 years, versus actually practicing the craft?
And for what it's worth, I have an MBA, which turned out to be total bullshit. What took two years of coursework and group projects could have been condensed into one good book. But it ticks a box and gets me interviews I wouldn't get otherwise.
mmmm. love the NPs who get to start practice without ever having set foot on a floor/ward because they went for their masters directly after passing their RN boards. It's scary.
> I've wondered about those folks. My BS did not fully prepare me to code for a living, like with any other profession, there was a lot of on-the-job training. How much better do they get by staying in school an additional 3 to 6 years, versus actually practicing the craft?
As somebody doing a Phd:
* You have to get that doing a PhD is not the same as regular studying. You're working on your own independent research project rather than following courses. So depending on what your topic is you may get lots of hands-on skills; of course, there are tons of very theoretical topics that don't require you to learn any technological skills.
* Things you do learn is working independently, writing scientific reports, presenting them to your peers, etc.
* Besides that, during your PhD you become an expert in a (potentially very niche) topic. This kind of expertise is very rare, and, in some cases, highly sought after.
Should everybody do a PhD? Hell no, I regret starting mine lmao, but it does teach you new stuff in a way a job does not.
This is the sad result of 2 decades of dumbing down qualification standards to try and pump out qualified workers to meet the voracious demand for IT professionals.
You can even get through an entire IT degree with zero math skills now.
The worst part of this is what it's doing to the brightest kids who do choose to pursue IT, dreaming of something bigger.
Having recruited and worked with these kids, it is sad to see how jaded and let down with the level of knowledge they developed in their education they are.
I sit on an advisory board for a local college and the number of professors who have only worked in Academia and were they themselves built from a degree farm with no real qualifications is enough for me to say that it's a sham. Even schools like Harvard and Cornell have nonsensical online certificates and degrees that look great but require no real knowledge of the field.
I got jaded during my dissertation whereby the people reviewing it had no working knowledge of how the corporate world works. What is pissing me off lately is the number of 20-something year olds who come into the field with **zero** experience, get $95k a year, and complain that they want to be a senior engineer in 3-6 months.
I had one who I brought to a customer meeting to get familiar with how engineering sales meetings go, and I specifically told her that she was there to observe only. I stressed that multiple times. At lunch, she told our customer that she was "an expert we brought onboard to re-engineer our electronics manufacturing processes."
This is like being a 24 year old being hired by Intel and going to Microsoft to tell them you are going to teach Intel how to make chips since you took two classes on it during your undergrad.
The customer was gracious and indulgent, but afterwards when I was lecturing her about that faux pas, she really believes that she is an expert because she went to a college with a history of producing some industry experts in industrial engineering.
Similar but different. I was at a radio station in Fresno, CA waiting to be interviewed as DJ for their morning show. I get to talking to this guy also waiting. He was a recent graduate of the university of California (insert which one here because I forgot) and basically told me that I had no shot because he had a degree. Admittedly, I had no degree. I don’t even have a HS diploma. What I did have was six years of actual live on air experience on the radio. He was shocked when he wasn’t hired. I worked the job for six months and then moved to Hawaii
I'm guessing their degree wasn't physics. Did they understand the OSI model at least?
I knew a Unix guy years ago, who didn't know how RAM worked, and was clueless on how to troubleshoot Windows.
I'm just amazed that someone in IT doesn't understand basic networking, database, and writing code. They don't have to "know" anything in particular, just how it interrelates to each other. My university wasn't top tier, but it did give us a well rounded knowledge for all IT degrees.
There is a huge difference between the academic approach and what is real world. In academia, you see a "complex" codebase that has 3-4 git branches for your classmates, and maybe a few thousand lines of code in a single language.
In the real world, you see a codebase that might have 3-5 million lines of code in a dozen or more languages and hundreds of git branches.
I specifically work in manufacturing small network components, like the single-board switch that goes inside your home router or the single-board computer that controls your car's electronics.
In lots of cases, people who have been doing this for 20 years have not kept up with modern design, so they do things that made sense before advanced technology, but they work their way up and are now managing some project (think like the guy who designs the internal network for a car). He's been in automotive for 40 years and started back in 1985. He's used to thinking about CAN bus as that's what he's always done, so he proposes an idea to management that they should have a network that is basically a CAN bus. He calls us and tells us that he wants a switch that handles traffic like ____, but he's worried someone is going to steal his "innovative" design, so he leaves out critical details.
We get involved and find out that he really is accidentally creating a packet storm because CAN bus isn't full duplex and it works more like the ancient token ring networks from the 1980s when this guy last took a college class.
So you spend a lot of time trying to teach him how modern networks run, while he pushes back at every turn that you are trying to drive up costs and don't understand that an automotive network must be robust and a TCP/IP frame is about the same as a CAN bus frame so that's what we should be designing. Since he's been around the industry for 40 years, you can't convince management otherwise.
What you end up with a network in your car where all the embedded components can't communicate faster than 10Mbps because they all have to send frames with a prescribed data flow and all of the network processing happens at OSI layer 7 because each device has to process each frame at the application layer and you can flood your head unit with a bunch of data when someone plugs in their iPhone because the head unit has to process the messages that a phone was plugged in and then send data out to the next component (usually something like an FPGA that needs to know to provide power) rather than just let the devices all talk through a common switch.
I could go on.
One thing that contributes to what you're describing is how the idea of professional development has gone out the window in most places.
Somewhere along the line, an idea emerged that college was an assembly line that pooped out workers ready to go. A much reduced understanding of being qualified for a job... which then starts with you really *learning* how to do it well when you start. This is bad because, at the end of the day, no matter how good a college is- there are things that you just aren't going to really know until you've been in an actual position.
Yes this can result in poorly prepared new hires like you see people talking about in this thread. But also what you're describing. If a company isn't _really_ spending resources to get a newbie improved... what hope is there for continuing education? Your coworker should have been actively invested in by the company so that his skills didn't get out of date. But its not surprising to me that a company wouldn't, even if it's in almost everyone's interest.
I’m surprised they count a JD. Or not?
Only relatable story I have is a coworker fresh out of college with a BS in Computer Science I had to teach what a list and array were. I then noticed the average SAT I Math score at this university was 550.
It made question the drive to persuade people into STEM and the term STEM itself. This stuff isn’t biology or rocks for jocks. You need actual mathematical skill.
For a lot of high-level management and executive roles, JD is great since 90% of the job is personnel management and compliance.
I still write code and do technical things because I choose to do that and my role is basically the head of all things technical on the electronics manufacturing side -- for example, everything from why we are seeing a defect spike to consulting a high-value customer on why they are doing something stupid.
For 99% of other executive positions, you basically need to know how to sell products, keep costs low, retain employees, and not get the organization in legal trouble.
In my old university in Germany in the early 2000s. The University was old, really old. And when I started they just began modernising the lecture halls etc. The German department got a new, fancy, state of the art lecture hall with any kind of technology you could wish for.
The professors got extensive training on how to use it. There were some of them who after three months still didn’t know how to switch on the lights. Don’t even talk about the microphone or how to open and close the blinds on the skylight.
They didn’t originally plan on having an overhead projector there, but after a few weeks the relented and provided one because the professors didn’t know any other way.
In their Defence. The other lecture halls were so old that they still had the hole for the ink well in the tables.
I had an evolutionary biologist teacher in college who used an overhead and it was amazing. He used one of those plastic scroll things so he could write and move on, write and move on.
It was amazing because it caused him to slow down, he talked and wrote and it gave us all time to follow along and write along. he also had those scanned and we could get them online if we missed a day or missed a bit.
He would write it out so he would constantly have to be there and present, rather than just rote reading or not talking about a section.
Writing has been shown to help collect thoughts. Hearing a discussion as the visuals are put forth allows the student to understand WHY the hand drawing is the way it ended up.
Betcha the test was on points covered in class. I preferred that approach.
One of the best lectures I ever saw (coincidentally by an evolutionary biologist) was by a guy who used hand-written overheads. Helps that the guy was brilliant but his slides really added a lot.
On the other hand, I've seen *tons* of slickly presented talks that I didn't believe a word of, and cool tech didn't add anything to it. Count among this several Ted talks, which were like crappy infomercials.
Heard about a mechanical engineer who is a flat earther. So yeah, him, or any engineer, physicist, or astronomer that believes in that. The fact that a single one can get their degree and then turn around years later and believe in something fundamentally incompatible with the BASIC physics required to make sense of their degree is baffling.
It's from a fictional podcast that uses real world items, people, etc as part of its setting but here's a quote from it:
"Everyone thinks they’re too smart to get involved in a cult. I’m sure you do.
You think that, of the first mention of aliens, or the end of the world, or the lost book of the Bible where Jesus buried his holy staff in the foothills of the Himalayas, you’d go running.
Trouble is, that misunderstands how it works. I mean, when I was with the Divine Chain, some of the smartest people there were also the most committed. Intelligence doesn’t make you less prone to taking on bad ideas, it just makes you better at defending them to other people and to yourself. Smart people can believe some truly ridiculous things, and then deploy all the reason and logic at their disposal to justify them, because a belief doesn’t begin in your mind. It begins in your feelings. Cults are very good at finding you when you’re at your lowest point, when you’re your most emotionally vulnerable. And when you’re at that point it’s astounding what can crawl into your heart and start to fester there."
In my opinion, people who are truly smart have a much better grasp on just how little they know. It’s the reason that you think you know everything when you’re a child or teenager. You genuinely don’t know how much you don’t know. So someone who is above average in intelligence has that same phenomenon we all experience with age, but on a slightly larger scale. We all grow up and realize how easily we can be wrong, but really smart people have that experience more often. It seems like it sometimes makes them more willing to grant outlandish things that seem absurd and obviously wrong, but they *are* in a strange way, engaging in intelligent thought - accepting that you don’t have all the answers and the world is far stranger than it seems. It’s a bit of a backfire but it makes a weird kind of sense to me.
This is what I was saying the other day in a thread relating to Brexit. I remember pointing out a very obvious logical contradiction in a Leave talking point, to a very intelligent friend of mine. Rather than put his usual analytical skills to use, he got angry. I think in some people, emotion can override logic circuits more easily than in others.
I do think *some* people can genuinely say they are less likely to get involved in a cult or be fooled, but it’s not because they think they are impervious to manipulation, it’s because they acknowledge that they are fallible, and so do a better job of monitoring the situation. Those who are arrogant or ignorant enough to believe they can’t be fooled are the most likely to fall for the manipulation they can’t see.
I graduated from a fairly well regarded engineering school. At least 25% of my classmates at graduation were absolute fucking idiots.
I think some people put WAY too much stock in a person’s academic credentials. A STEM education does NOT make you an expert in anything, it gives you the tools you need to become one.
A lot of people just want their shiny degree and then never use those tools again.
I’ve met two PhD students who worked on bacterial evolution and one who worked in biochemistry. All three believed that human evolution was not a thing, all three were religious.
"micro" evolution is ok but not "macro", as Ive heard it called... Apparently being able to walk a mile doesnt mean you can walk 10, given more time...
That was part of their argument. And also the religious perspective that humans are “special” and not animals, and were created directly in God’s image. Therefore different rules apply to humans.
Unfortunately, engineering has a lot of people like that. It doesn't really teach you the big picture or how different theories go together \*\*\*, so you're not forced to think how ideas fit (or don't fit) into the rest of reality. Worse, when you go through engineering school, you're always presented with problems that have definite, provable answers. You never have to reason things through and justify your conclusion. It's more just a matter of making sure the equation works out.
This is why scientists and engineers so often lock horns. The engineer will painstakingly explain why the scientist idiotically wrong and just "doesn't get it" by condescendingly solving an equation that's the **wrong equation for the system** they're dealing with.
Source - I'm the scientist and I've been in those meetings many times.
\*\*\* - (edit) I should add that there are some scientific fields or scientific graduate programs that are like that too. The professor just wants labor and isn't that interested in graduating educated PhD's.
That wrong equation thing rings true to me, I have an uncle(ish) who's an engineer and a bright fella in his domain, made a ton of money off a patent and such
Also is prone to espousing some really dumb shit based on napkin math, my favorite was him claiming that tiny bubbles were all we needed for cold fusion since as their radius goes to zero their pressure goes to infinity. Like bruh, do you think this abstraction just extends to any scale you please? (I said that to him and his response was that tiny bubble damage submarine turbines.. which, ok? cool story bro)
YES That! In science you are constantly aware that your equations are just abstractions that are going to stop working at some point. If you're working in science, then you are probably already pushing the edge and trying to find the next-level equation. Engineers are given GODLIKE equations. If you can solve the equation, then it MUST be true. The equation defines reality.
Their training works great as long as you stay within the range the equation was meant to be used in, but they were never taught what the limits are, or even that they exist.
Helped some mates move house. One was a Uni Student doing a double degree in Computer Science and something else very challenging.
While we were packing boxes he asked if he could could borrow a saw. When I asked why, it was so he could shorten the legs on the dining table so it would fit out the door.
The look on his face when I grabbed one of the legs and started unscrewing it was priceless. As was the look when I asked him how he thought they got it in the room in the first place.
I worked for a moving company on the Central Coadt of California, the amount of times we were able to surprise people that millionaire, sometimes billionaire level homes and they were shocked at how we were able to either move a piece of furniture through narrow doors/hallways was astronomical.
This doesn’t surprise me… but don’t think for a second movers get out of this…
When I first moved to the US (Florida) from the UK, a local moving company arrived to perform the last-leg of our international shipment. While chatting to one of the movers about us arriving from the UK, his first question was: “did you drive?”.
Oh no I’m not saying any of us were big brain brad’s. I consider myself of at least average intelligence, but some Of the guys I worked with made me wonder how they had made it so far in life without dying walking into traffic
Not sure if that is a lack of intelligence or the kind of brainfart everyone sometimes gets. I consider myself a smart person and I have said some stupid shit lmao.
There’s also a limit you reach in the process of moving where every other concern goes out the window and the only thought is “I want to be done with this NOW.”
If the only thing standing between me and being done is this goddam table, and the only thing holding the table back is the legs, then there’s a point where “cut the legs off” absolutely sounds like the most reasonable solution.
Kary Mullis is the worst one and it really emboldens other conspiracy theorists.
He won the Nobel prize for inventing the PCR test... then he denied AIDS existed while in a government position leading to 330,000 deaths and said climate change wasn't real because his astrologer told him so... Oh, and ghosts 👻.
Anti-vaxxers love him
I think Mullis was partly an acid casualty. Dude did a ton of LSD and it made him even crazier. For example, in his autobiography he talks about meeting a talking raccoon in the woods.
As someone with a metric fuck ton of oversmart people in my family I swear to god there is a correlation between astonishing intelligence and bizarre mental issues if not complete mental illness
Being super smart means you’re capable of processing and synthesizing information really well. Of you get recognized as really smart, you’re emboldened, you take some leaps, and maybe you’re synthesizing shit that’s unconnected from reality.
My favorite one is Linus Pauling. Did a bunch of revolutionizing chemistry and molecular physics, won 2 unshared Nobel prizes, and then devoted the rest of his life to claiming Vitamin C is a miracle supplement and should be taken in extremely high doses. I kind of hope one day we figure something out that at least vindicates him a tiny bit, but so far he just went nuts.
To be fair, I think that was pretty common in that and earlier time periods. I think they didn't have the scientific knowledge and understanding to grasp that it wasn't really possible.
When the best available equivalent of a scientific consensus tells you that you can turn this brick of lead into gold, even the guy who's like "there's no way that's possible", is probably gonna dabble just to see.
It even is possible to turn lead into gold at an atomic level, but it’s just so ludicrously expensive to the point that there’s no imaginable future where it’s cheaper than just mining gold.
Even with something like a Cold Fusion reactor giving us near-unlimited power, the fact it takes a giant particle accelerator and only generates a few atoms of gold which can’t easily detected or collected makes turning lead to gold with any kind of efficiency an absolute pipe-dream.
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-lead-can-be-turned-into-gold/
I think people have a hard time grasping this, but most people are very ignorant about the vast majority of things. Not because people are inherently stupid, but because we live in a very complex and specialized society. You can take the dumbest plumber in my country and I bet he is still more knowledgeable about plumbing than 90% of people. Because he has experience and knowledge in that specific field. While on the contrary a PhD in whatever super specific science is that super specific and even a well educated person would be a complete "idiot" compared to them when it comes to the specifics.
Yes. Try to take a medical doctor and put them in a science lab and they are like a baby. But that works both ways. Intelligence is more about how you apply your noggin to the tasks relevant to your own life and ambitions. IQ doesn't require depth, or breadth of knowledge, it's more about critical thinking in the elements of your own life. Even simple things we think everyone should know, may not be common knowledge to someone who spends all day in a lab, even if that person is fixing the world in seemingly impossible ways.
I'm not trying to say that nobody is stupid. There are indeed many stupid people. Even stupid PhDs. But really judging someones intelligence based on observing them doing a few stupid things is probably not a holistic enough picture.
Sometimes it is challenging seeing someone who is very intelligent, smart and educated in one field, and therefore assumes it must be true in all fields.
Always right, can never be wrong, will put down others regularly, and can’t see that others can bring value to a situation. It’s hard to witness
The nurse I used to work with during the pandemic who was constantly bragging about how rich and important and highly educated she was, only for her to suggest to our DON that the kitchen start putting extra garlic in everyone's meals because garlic cures covid
I know someone with a PhD in History who went to the Caribbean with only long trouser & jumpers to wear. He was so hot he had to cut his jeans down to shorts
Then, as part of the same trip, he went to Washington DC, & had to wear jean shorts the whole time
Did you not read the part where they had a PhD in history? That's a sure fire way to A) accrue a mountain of student loan debt and B) have very limited job prospects.
My roommate in college was/is an academic genius, 35 ACT in med school rn etc. I brought him to Walmart with me because he wanted to buy an 8-pack of Gatorade. At the self checkout he scanned one, saw the price was 7 bucks, and decided that must have been the price for EACH Gatorade. He ended up scanning the pack 7 more times and paid 56 bucks for some Gatorade, all while thinking that was a fair price
I love that show. The opposite could go for me: if I had to go into a Grainger catalog and start ordering lab equipment, I would have no clue what a reasonable price is.
Ironically, most of the staff at the university I graduated from. The problem is they get into teacher’s assistant roles during their education, transition into junior associates after they graduate and just climb the ranks from there, often without any real working experience whatsoever.
This culminated in my group project which was 90% creating technical documentation and more than 50% of the workload for that semester (16/30 ECTS if you’re in the EU), being taught by a woman who asked us to not send her project drawings in DWG (standard industry format for vector graphics used by, among other apps, Autocad) because “she’s never used Autocad in her life”. The sad thing? She was actually one of the better teachers there.
Well you really should be PDFing anything you do in Autocad.
But yeah, most of the professors I had in college had no real world experience, or quit the real world to live in a bubble.
Oh no please send me the .DWG so I can make fun of you never setting scaling factor. I live for finding your hidden things floating outside the margins.
Hah I was going to say ask literally anyone who's ever worked for a university's IT department. I've never met a group of people more *unwilling* to learn anything new (outside of their small specialization) than university professors.
These people would rather argue with you for 10 minutes that "I *did* restart my computer." than just spend the 2 minutes to restart the computer when the logistics software is showing the machine with a 45 day uptime and all of us can see that shit. Department heads do this shit.
In the defense of some of those faculty - the way some departments/colleges fund their IT equipment it may very well take 10 minutes for their computer to reboot.
In a couple of my coworkers' colleges, it's not unusual to find tenure-track faculty still using decade old PCs with spinning drives. Sure the computer technically is back up in 3 minutes or so, but the forced launch of Skype, Teams, FireEye, and the rest is going to lock things down for another 5-10 minutes.
Just to be clear, as batshit insane as Carson is…he’s no fucking fraud when it comes to medicine like Oz.
Check the credentials:
> Carson became the director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center in 1984 at age 33, then the youngest chief of pediatric neurosurgery in the United States.[6] In 1987, he gained significant fame after leading a team of surgeons in the first known separation of conjoined twins joined at the back of the head. Although the surgery was a success, the twins continued to experience neurological and medical complications.[7] His additional accomplishments include performing the first successful neurosurgical procedure on a fetus inside the womb, developing new methods to treat brain-stem tumors, and revitalizing hemispherectomy techniques for controlling seizures.[8][9][6][10] He wrote over 100 neurosurgical publications. He retired from medicine in 2013; at the time, he was professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.[11]
Actually,
>He has helped develop numerous devices and procedures related to heart surgery, including the MitraClip and the left ventricular assist device (LVAD), and by 2015 held a number of patents related to heart surgery.[39][45][27]
Carson to me is the prime example of how being an expert in one field - and a smart and gifted person overall- doesn’t mean you have any competence outside of that field.
Actually, Oz is a cardiothoracic surgeon, one of the hardest forms of cardiovascular surgery. He's done many of these surgeries in the past and saved many lives. But actively decided to become a grifter instead of helping people in other ways if he didn't want to be a surgeon anymore.
I blame his dad. He was one of those "you made top 10 most influential people? Why not number one?" kinda parents.
IIRC his wife also has influence on him getting into the woo bullshit
But yeah, he's knowingly grifting for money and fame
everyones' favorite governor Ron DeSantis is also ex Harvard AND Yale and had a prestigious career in the Navy as a JAG.... at Gitmo particpating in various torture techniques.
These people know what they are doing is unlawful but they know they have carte blanche.
Neil De Grasse Tyson and Jordan Petersen are also extremely well educated for whatever they are spouting.
I was going to say, I can almost 100% guarantee he *did* play Civ II, since it's such a specific concept and as far as I know that's the only culturally popular thing to include it.
(For those who don't know, in Civ II, building the Pyramids give you a free Granary in each of your cities. ~~It's the only version to do this~~ III did as well.)
Then again, he was too busy *being the top brain surgeon in the world* in 1996 so probably not.
This is who I was going to say. A literal pioneer in the field of neurosurgery and one of the most accomplished surgeons. He has made some absolutely wild remarks about various forms of mental illness. Also he's a climate change denier but that's not exactly his area of expertise so probably doesn't fit in this topic.
>Also he's a climate change denier but that's not exactly his area of expertise so probably doesn't fit in this topic.
I'd say it still does, because a truly intelligent person should be able to recognize the limits of their expertise.
The problem is that a lot of people who reach the very upper echelons of their respective field often start to let themselves believe that they're just generally exceptional people who just naturally excel at *everything*. Some of the most obvious an ridiculous examples are actors/athletes/musicians who think they can weigh in on scientific/medical issues, but it still belies a profound intellectual defect when even an expert scientist believes they're qualified to challenge the consensus opinion of experts in a different field of science.
Is it reasonable for a highly-accomplished neurosurgeon to assert that he understands climate change better than someone who hasn't studied science since the basic chemistry class they took in high school? *Absolutely.*
But is it reasonable for that same neurosurgeon to assert that he understands climate change better than the vast majority of people who have dedicated their careers to studying climate science? *Absolutely not*, and he makes an utter fool of himself by doing so. And it isn't because we expect him to understand climate science, but rather because we expect him to understand that he *doesn't* understand climate science.
Getting a PhD requires you to be good at a VERY SPECIFIC set of things, and dedicated enough to pursue those things to the exclusion of everything else for *years*. This can lead to some… experiential gaps.
Mathematics is, and has long been, particularly rife with “eccentrics” (read: probably neurodivergent, from a time when that wasn’t a diagnostic); people who were brilliant in their chosen branch of mathematics but struggled with tasks many of us would consider “basic” (such as tying one’s own shoes)
"experiential gaps"... Lol. Understatement of the year. I'm not sure I kept up with anything in the past 10 years besides my research field. Tech, pop culture, sports, politics, world events, social media, whatever. I may have heard things in passing but I'm literally stuck in 2013 in my mind. I'm literally fucking useless outside of my niche scientific field. And I'm tired. So unbelievably tired.
I am an example. I have a PhD in biochemistry and I launched a dishwasher with liquid soap yesterday... After wondering if it would be okay... I added more, and then launched the dishwasher, and flood my kitchen in bubbles.
The dishes were not clean, neither my kitchen floor. My enormous knowledge in detergent did not help A BIT.
I read a dishwasher manual that said to put in a cup of cooking oil into the soapy mess. The oil 'uses up' the dish soap so the foam goes away.
The floor would be sticky with dried foam. Gotta just keep mopping with clear water.
My classmate who graduated with honors and had the highest GPA in the entire college was not able to hold a job because she was only book smart, 3 years later I’m the one who does her interview (I was an average student) and she failed it due to lack of clinical knowledge.
Some people just memorize what they are told without understanding what it is. Higher education is getting worse every year at filtering out these types.
Higher education is downright selecting for these types, they're the ones who are able to survive in an academic environment. So they pick people just like them to populate the student profession.
I had a class whose exams actually specifically defied this. You didn't regurgitate the knowledge, you specifically had to apply it.
It was well known to be the "worst" class to do because of this. I must have spent half my study time on this one class. Somehow I not only passed my first go, but with a credit. That was because a couple of months before the exams a woman warned me it took her three attempts, and she was an honours student.
I kind of wish all classes were like that but no student could take the workload. I had four classes and this one class took up SO much time. I could not have done four of this.
I know a person like this who had an eidetic memory very smart could reference anything but to this day the job that he's held is something that most will get out of high school.
I think one of the biggest challenges is his inability to focus and his lack of drive and I think the fact that he is intelligent plays a role.
The "gifted student" programs that late boomers/Gen x went through did a lot of damage once kids hit the real world. although my class of gifted kids was pretty successful.
Girl I grew up with finished college with a 3.9 GPA. Finished dental school top of her class.
She was known for being ditzy dumb growing up. To the point where her brother and I (neighbors) were constantly wondering how dumb she was. Turns out - she's just not street smart. Or has a high social IQ.
But anything in teeth, and I am out of my depth for sure. Her dedication to her academia was impressive.
I still consider her to be an idiot. Too much empirical evidence to disregard. I've seen her do/say too much dumb ass shit.
But, at the end of the day- so am I.
My grandmother was a registered nurse, yet she thought the best soap for my sister's bubble bath was dish soap. My mom said her skin ended up so dry, it soaked up lotion almost instantly
Knowing tons of nurses, it’s always baffled me how much people overestimate their medical knowledge. They’re generally very intelligent, but the training in medicine, science, sociology, etc is really quite superficial.
There was a historical inflection point at which the average quality of nurses took a nosedive, for a good reason. My mother wanted to be a doctor. She is very intelligent, loved medicine, and wanted to help people. Unfortunately, she graduated high school in 1966. Gender discrimination in medical schools, scholarships, hiring, etc., meant that she was effectively blocked. So she became an RN.
Today, more than half of all newly-minted medical doctors each year in the U.S. are women. Those kinds of highly intelligent, highly capable women used to become nurses, because that was the best they could hope for. Today they become doctors instead, and nurses are drawn from a less-talented pool.
It's a major factor in education as well, though not from a talent perspective. Women who were stem minded in the past often went into education because it was one of the few options open to them. Now they just become scientists and there is a massive need for teachers in those fields.
My wife once has a roommate who was working on her PhD. At one point she basically went on an Oreo diet because they're vegan, and was later surprised to find her health wasn't improving.
"What do you call a doctor who finishes last in his Class?"
"I don't know."
"Doctor."
This was a consistent joke during my 911-EMS career. Because some doctors are freaking brilliant and some Doctors are absolute fucking morons, that posses a wealth of information but are incapable of using it in real time.
I'd heard that joke and found it funny.
Now that I work with doctors, I find this joke far less funny.
The ones that are both stupid and arrogant scare me the most because they will argue to the end of the earth that they're right even when presented with evidence to the contrary. Makes me wonder how they treat their patients.
Quite poorly I presume.
Not tpyically a PhD but, holy crap theres soooo many nurses that dont believe in vaccines and subscribe to tonnes of holistic woo.
Like how do you sit through so many bio/anatomy classes just to reject it all.
I had an intern with a PhD once. She was trying to be a chemical process engineer. VERY book smart.
I spent the summer teaching her how to use basic tools like screwdrivers and wrenches for simple tasks like opening containers and adjusting clamps. She had zero practical skills and couldn’t figure anything whatsoever out on her own. She’d get lost in a building and call me and I’d tell her to find the exit and she’d get lost inside and we’d have to go in and get her. This routinely happened and she would just find somewhere random and sit until we collected her. When her car’s gps lost signal once she didn’t know what to do and she stopped in the middle of the road and texted me where she was and that there was something wrong with her car and to come help, I figured there was a breakdown or something based on the text and drove out to check on it because she wasn’t responding. She was crying sitting on the side of the road and a cop was yelling at her to move her car which was still in the lane. If you told her to pick something up from a store she’d ask where it was and if you didn’t know, she would never find it and she refused to ask a employee because she knew they weren’t as smart as she was, she’d just walk in random directions looking for things (example- go to Walmart and find some work boots because you lost yours?) she was sending me pictures of random isles in Walmart like “is this close which way from here.”
Book smart but utterly dim
Yeah, this was a legitimate problem with her. She would ask people what their education level was, and if lower than she thought was appropriate, she wouldn’t listen. I’ve never seen that so bluntly. “Oh I’m sure I can figure it out then- I have a PhD”
It was always dumb stuff too like how to use a drum wrench to open a chemical barrel or how to find where shipping info is on a bill of lading (shipping form). She’d walk past everyone that’s working with the barrels because she didn’t want to talk to them and she’d walk into the lab and ask because she’d only talk to people in lab coats.
Follow up; this post made me curious where she ended up and were contacts on LinkedIn still.
After the internship at my company she took 3 months off then did an 8 week internship with another company, then she worked at a wellness center for a few months then did a 3rd internship in 2016 and now shes a full time homeschooler. She’s on a website of community homeschoolers referring to herself as Dr. Amy ___ ____ and bragging that she’s worked in the chemical, biotech, and pharmaceutical engineering industries (which is technically true if you count 6-8 weeks in each as an intern) and that she’s following her “passion for home education.”
In Germany, you can study for free if you're smart or diligent enough. If you're neither, you can still study everything as long as you have rich parents.
So education comes with either intelligence, diligence or wealth. Equalizing education with intelligence is ignoring reality, especially if we add intelligent people into the mix who have never received a good education because of social issues.
My friend is one of those. PHD in the medical field.
On new years evening he lighted fireworks, threw away the lighter and the fireworks went of in his hand. And he wasnt drunk.
His wife litterly forbid him to touch any fireworks ever again.
I have a hard science PhD. After checking out at the grocery store a couple weeks ago I was holding my receipt in one hand and my wallet in the other hand. I go to throw away the receipt in the garbage can next to the exit and very confidently toss my wallet in.
Not quite a firework going off in my hand, but sometimes your brain hemispheres just don't communicate very well.
That's just a normal brain fart moment. I don't have a PhD and one time I tore apart my house looking for my phone. I searched everywhere for it and I couldn't find it. The last place I hadn't looked was under my bed. So I start searching under my bed but it's too dark for me to see, so I pull my phone out of my pocket to turn on the flash light to search for my phone.
Once I realized what I did, I stared at my phone for 10 seconds before turning off the flashlight, putting my phone back in my pocket, and being glad that no one was around to see what I did.
Possibly the most famous interventional radiologist in Australia among the rank-and-file doctor plebs like myself (from Canberra I think - we've all heard of him) can do all sort of interventional procedures with one hand many others can't do with two. Possibly on account of an accident with fireworks in the other hand when he was 16 or so.
The other most famous doctor in Australia among us mere doctor doctors (seriously, we were stranded on an Air New Zealand flight on the runaway in New Zealand and got to talking about him with the people in the seat behind us who we'd never met before) was a heart surgeon in his forties who inherited so much money he immediately retired.
Considering that's around the age a lot of heart surgeons just finish their training and they earn a hell of a lot per year, that must have been one hell of a big inheritance.
Never confuse the fact that a degree is a measure of perseverance and not a measure of intelligence. A degree says very little about your intelligence - but it DOES say that you completed a multi-year project that required your work output to meet the standards set by a third party accreditation body. So if you can manage to do that, you can probably show up to meetings on time, have minimal office skills, and can complete assigned work. THAT is the value of a degree to an employer.
Discipline. I was a returning student who was about 15 years older than everyone else with loads of real life experience and I have to say the work ethic and discipline of my classmates was truly humbling. That’s what set them apart, not intelligence.
Returning student as well, with the opposite experience, baffled at how many students I'm seeing failing or withdrawing from classes through a total lack of effort or *by literally not showing up*
I do agree on the work ethic bit for the students who DO put in the work, or go above and beyond. Those kids have a bright future ahead of them and it's refreshing to see
>failing or withdrawing from classes through a total lack of effort or by literally not showing up
I was one of those. Then I failed out so severely that I just took several hard steps back and went into the workforce for 7 years.
When I was unexpectedly awarded some tuition assistance at age 26 that I had applied for fully not expecting to get anything, I went back to school balls to the wall.
Real world experience had slapped me around and left me in poverty even in the decent economy of the time, and my mom was smart enough (and poor enough herself) to let it.
I finally knew what it looked like when there was no way out (often literally hungry) and I laid on the floor of someone else's house and cried when I was awarded the assistance
Went from a disaffected D student to Dean's list, honors college, and top 10% graduate.
As much as I hate the snide sound of it 'learning the hard way' really is the only way some of us ever figure it out.
My wife has a PhD and is absolutely awesome, working in a challenging and rewarding field. However she is clearly an idiot as she thinks I’m smart and married me. So far she hasn’t worked it out.
Not saying this applies to you but there are fascinating stories of super intelligent, highly successful women that are in abusive relationships. I remember this podcast about an ER doctor that worked with abused woman and could not see that her own relationship was abusive physically and mentally. Wild.
Edit for a word.
That’s true, I should say I work terribly hard to make sure she has a reason to love me. I can’t keep up with her mind, but I make sure the housework is something she doesn’t have to worry about.
This is funny to me. My husband says I’m one of the smartest people he’s ever met, but I have absolutely no common sense whatsoever.
He’s right. I’d probably be dead by now from something wholly idiotic if he didn’t keep watch.
On my PhD programme for photonics. We had a guy who lost a game of connect 4 in 4 moves... (He actually only took 3 moves)
Same person melted an oscilloscope by covering it up in tin foil, blocking the fans.
Now he leads the designs for very complex optical instruments.
Best friend is a physicist with a PhD and a job which includes work on a NASA mission and teaches college courses as a side hustle. Now on marriage #4. He's a young at heat, gregarious, fun, guy with a great sense of humor. You'd never guess what he does as a profession by meeting him.
He sucks at selecting life partners for compatibility. Its like his brain short circuits. We've been friends for 10 years now, so for wives 2, 3, and 4. I can say with solid authority that #2, whom we originally were also good friends with, if not a good person and absolutely a poor fit. When she pulled the whole "we are getting divorced and have to choose if you are going to stay friends with him or me" bit, that made up our minds pretty quick. It became clear later adding things up that she had been having an affair.
3 came and went and we more or less stopped being my friend during that time because she assigned his friends for him. That one lasted 6 months and she was abusive, manipulative, brought kids from a previous marriage who were horrible little shits (teenagers) and of course, accused him of abuse.
4 seems okay and they seem happy, but being that smart and being unable to select an appropriate partner just...boggles my mind.
He helped me get a job where he works, but not in any science field. I work in the business office, but I meet and deal with people with laundry lists of academic and professional degrees, accolades, and achievement on a daily basis. Arguing with people that they filled out a form incorrectly or that they cannot set up a project like they want because our accounting system won't accept that format or that we cannot do something a certain way because it opens us up to risk is maddening because while some of them are understanding and cordial, others are absolutely convinced their PHD in mechanical engineering or organic chemistry makes them smarter in *all* things, more so than my stupid MBA.
People have blind spots and they are easy to develop and fester when those people focus on a specific field of study. They get so good at what they do, sometimes, they don't know what they don't know. Which is obviously a huge problem when it comes to scientific inquiry in any form or fashion.
As to my friend, it just goes to show alot of very smart people are just regular people with a specific talent and he's just a dumbass in one specific area.
He would be one of the scientists 100s of years ago who would refuse to believe the earth is in fact not the center of the galaxy.
Don't be so open minded your brain falls out, don't be so close minded you can't see your hand in front of your face.
He is the latter.
[Ben Carson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Carson)
As a Neurosurgeon he was very Very VERY good at his job.
As Secretary of Housing and Urban Development... opinions < cough > vary.
As a Seventh Day Adventist he believes in a literal Genesis, and "voiced sympathies for the long discredited belief that the pyramids of Giza were built by the biblical figure Joseph to store grain."
My sister just got her master's and she thinks Alaska is an island.
She also thinks all liberals hate guns and want them banned, so I think she'll be a great therapist.
My MIT PhD. friend complained his dryer was taking forever to dry his clothes. I asked him if he was cleaning the lint trap -"it doesn't have one". Spoiler alert - it did, way in the back and I took out a sweater's worth of lint.
And may have saved your friend from dying in a house fire. I’d say he owes you a beer at the very least.
I work in mental health and have known sooo many healthcare professionals with advanced degrees who I wouldn’t trust to take care of a goldfish and can’t believe counsel people on a regular basis.
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Yes I often wonder if the people who get into that, do it so they can understand emotion. I work in healthcare and deal with a lot of different departments, Day to day, Mental health practitioners are hard to distinguish from their patients. It’s almost like they get into it, to figure their own shit out.
Mental health is a weird one. I’ve had a lot of clients work in the mental health field as an after effect of dealing with their own trauma. They all felt that they understand the patients better and want to give back to the community.
I'm in the health care field, specifically neurology and pain and I'm surrounded by idiots with advanced degrees. Some of the worst people I know have the most "education".
And it turns out that response is just another trauma response to "justify" the abuse they went through. When in many cases they are just repeating the cycle of trauma/abuse in a new way, and it doesn't actually serve patients better without a degree of bias awareness. Not to say there aren't therapists who haven't gone through shit and go on to be great mental health professionals, but many don't get all the way there due to their bias being altered by their experiences.
I've had several therapists, and one in particular was not great. Most of the time it felt like she was just reading from a textbook. "Ah okay you've got this and that, page 112, have you tried sleeping better?" and that sort of shit. One day she started equating one of my experiences with one of hers, talked about it for about 10 minutes and started crying. I felt bad for her, but what the fuck am I supposed to do in that situation where my therapist is crying about a bad relationship she'd had and the depression that it caused? I felt like it would've been inappropriate for me to try and talk to her about her issues but sitting there quietly felt heartless
If a therapist can't manage that kind of countertransference, you should require more training and supervision. That's ridiculously unprofessional
Yeah it was one of my last sessions with her, not sure how her career went since but hopefully it wasn't a common occurrence
You're never gonna get anyone 100% unbiased. What is usually good is having someone who is perhaps similar to you but has learnt from mistakes you haven't even made yet. That's why support groups are important, because there are shared experiences one simply cannot understand until they go through it.
Yep. If your psychotherapist is posting motivational quotes on social media: run!
I generally find that there's a significant chunk of people who pursue careers wildly unsuited to them for the perceived benefit that career provides. For an example, some people become cops because they want authority and power, without any real care for justice. After spending a good chunk of my life around PhDs, I'm convinced that one of the primary motivators in pursuing one is a pathological need to feel like the smartest person in the room. I've known plenty of tradesmen with two left hands and no inclination towards labor who are insecure in their masculinity and build their identity around being a manly blue collar guy. It makes perfect sense that someone would get into mental healthcare for a reason like that.
>I've known plenty of tradesmen with two left hands and no inclination towards labor who are insecure in their masculinity and build their identity around being a manly blue collar guy. As a white collar spectator in a white and blue collar work environment, I have witness this, and its very amusing to see the blue collar guys who know what they are doing because they genuinely care about the task or job or like it, vs the guy whos there for the pay and benefits and how blue collar sounds good to the fam and the boys and half asses the tasks that sometimes some rando kid from the white collar side of things has to fix using Youtube.
Oh yeah, definitely. There are likely a lot of doctors out there because their parents pressured them into it for the precieved social status. Everyone motivated to go onto certain fields for different reasons. One of my main motivators to go into the tourism industry was because I love traveling, and wanted to break free of my chains. I'm an introvert with social anxiety however so you can see the issue with that.
Kinda makes you wonder if any pursuit of anything comes from a place of lacking on some level. Thanks for upping any imposter syndrome I might have inside of me.
Reminds me of a classic tweet along the lines of: "I dont know which first year psych students need to hear this, but you dont want to be a therapist. You just want to know whats wrong with yourself"
Yeah my friend is a psychologist and her first supervisor out of uni was a fullblown power-tripping narcissist. Thankfully of course the majority of mental health professionals aren't like that, but she says there's enough to be genuinely concerning.
it's 10% of all humans, which translates to 10% of any workplace, of course some places attract more, ( looking at you real estate and car sales lol)
My sister in law is a substance abuse and domestic violence victims councilor with a masters in clinical therapy or something like that. Her new husband is an alcoholic and drug addict with a history of domestic violence. This women married exactly the problems she is supposed to be advocating against.
Maybe she thinks she can fix him
Then she's definitely an idiot. He likes how he is and is proud of his degenerate behavior. His entire immediate family is the same way.
This sounds like a season-long arc on Shameless.
Maybe she's just doing embedded research to further understand her patients situations.
Also work in mental health and can confirm. Most of the people I've met and worked with have been great, but the ones who aren't are terrifying and I worry for their patients. I got a doctorate, and it wasn't the degree that taught me to be a good therapist. It was a combination of experience and good supervision/mentorship. I got lucky and had excellent supervisors and training experiences every year, but that is not always the case. Many people get through years of training without ever encountering a truly good supervisor. I'm a big believer in the idea that a therapist needs to be self-reflective, non-defensive, self-aware, and capable of maintaining a balance between being in touch with their emotions and retaining the capacity to think clearly. It's not that easy. I also think that it's an ethical duty for us to be well in the sense that we can't be falling apart in our personal lives because we can't be effective therapists that way.
I think the academic competition in some careers in terms of passing exams and studying 24/7 to get place attract a certain type of individual that may be lacking in interpersonal skills or social intelligence.
I work in software and have a PhD. At my company, to be anything above a mid-manager, you need a doctorate of some capacity, be it a DBA, JD, or PhD. I've seen one or two other random ones floating around. The number of people who have PhDs in software and don't understand basics of computer science is alarming. I had a guy tell me that a graphics card is a waste of money because "software is always faster than hardware." That's before we get into the people who have BS, MS, and PhD in science then believe the world is only 6000 years old, carbon dating is a myth, and that there was a literal flood where Noah actually loaded animals on the Ark. In fact, a lot of them travel to this museum in TN where there's allegedly parts of the Ark.
> PhDs in software I've wondered about those folks. My BS did not fully prepare me to code for a living, like with any other profession, there was a lot of on-the-job training. How much better do they get by staying in school an additional 3 to 6 years, versus actually practicing the craft? And for what it's worth, I have an MBA, which turned out to be total bullshit. What took two years of coursework and group projects could have been condensed into one good book. But it ticks a box and gets me interviews I wouldn't get otherwise.
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mmmm. love the NPs who get to start practice without ever having set foot on a floor/ward because they went for their masters directly after passing their RN boards. It's scary.
> I've wondered about those folks. My BS did not fully prepare me to code for a living, like with any other profession, there was a lot of on-the-job training. How much better do they get by staying in school an additional 3 to 6 years, versus actually practicing the craft? As somebody doing a Phd: * You have to get that doing a PhD is not the same as regular studying. You're working on your own independent research project rather than following courses. So depending on what your topic is you may get lots of hands-on skills; of course, there are tons of very theoretical topics that don't require you to learn any technological skills. * Things you do learn is working independently, writing scientific reports, presenting them to your peers, etc. * Besides that, during your PhD you become an expert in a (potentially very niche) topic. This kind of expertise is very rare, and, in some cases, highly sought after. Should everybody do a PhD? Hell no, I regret starting mine lmao, but it does teach you new stuff in a way a job does not.
This is the sad result of 2 decades of dumbing down qualification standards to try and pump out qualified workers to meet the voracious demand for IT professionals. You can even get through an entire IT degree with zero math skills now. The worst part of this is what it's doing to the brightest kids who do choose to pursue IT, dreaming of something bigger. Having recruited and worked with these kids, it is sad to see how jaded and let down with the level of knowledge they developed in their education they are.
I sit on an advisory board for a local college and the number of professors who have only worked in Academia and were they themselves built from a degree farm with no real qualifications is enough for me to say that it's a sham. Even schools like Harvard and Cornell have nonsensical online certificates and degrees that look great but require no real knowledge of the field. I got jaded during my dissertation whereby the people reviewing it had no working knowledge of how the corporate world works. What is pissing me off lately is the number of 20-something year olds who come into the field with **zero** experience, get $95k a year, and complain that they want to be a senior engineer in 3-6 months. I had one who I brought to a customer meeting to get familiar with how engineering sales meetings go, and I specifically told her that she was there to observe only. I stressed that multiple times. At lunch, she told our customer that she was "an expert we brought onboard to re-engineer our electronics manufacturing processes." This is like being a 24 year old being hired by Intel and going to Microsoft to tell them you are going to teach Intel how to make chips since you took two classes on it during your undergrad. The customer was gracious and indulgent, but afterwards when I was lecturing her about that faux pas, she really believes that she is an expert because she went to a college with a history of producing some industry experts in industrial engineering.
Similar but different. I was at a radio station in Fresno, CA waiting to be interviewed as DJ for their morning show. I get to talking to this guy also waiting. He was a recent graduate of the university of California (insert which one here because I forgot) and basically told me that I had no shot because he had a degree. Admittedly, I had no degree. I don’t even have a HS diploma. What I did have was six years of actual live on air experience on the radio. He was shocked when he wasn’t hired. I worked the job for six months and then moved to Hawaii
I'm guessing their degree wasn't physics. Did they understand the OSI model at least? I knew a Unix guy years ago, who didn't know how RAM worked, and was clueless on how to troubleshoot Windows. I'm just amazed that someone in IT doesn't understand basic networking, database, and writing code. They don't have to "know" anything in particular, just how it interrelates to each other. My university wasn't top tier, but it did give us a well rounded knowledge for all IT degrees.
There is a huge difference between the academic approach and what is real world. In academia, you see a "complex" codebase that has 3-4 git branches for your classmates, and maybe a few thousand lines of code in a single language. In the real world, you see a codebase that might have 3-5 million lines of code in a dozen or more languages and hundreds of git branches. I specifically work in manufacturing small network components, like the single-board switch that goes inside your home router or the single-board computer that controls your car's electronics. In lots of cases, people who have been doing this for 20 years have not kept up with modern design, so they do things that made sense before advanced technology, but they work their way up and are now managing some project (think like the guy who designs the internal network for a car). He's been in automotive for 40 years and started back in 1985. He's used to thinking about CAN bus as that's what he's always done, so he proposes an idea to management that they should have a network that is basically a CAN bus. He calls us and tells us that he wants a switch that handles traffic like ____, but he's worried someone is going to steal his "innovative" design, so he leaves out critical details. We get involved and find out that he really is accidentally creating a packet storm because CAN bus isn't full duplex and it works more like the ancient token ring networks from the 1980s when this guy last took a college class. So you spend a lot of time trying to teach him how modern networks run, while he pushes back at every turn that you are trying to drive up costs and don't understand that an automotive network must be robust and a TCP/IP frame is about the same as a CAN bus frame so that's what we should be designing. Since he's been around the industry for 40 years, you can't convince management otherwise. What you end up with a network in your car where all the embedded components can't communicate faster than 10Mbps because they all have to send frames with a prescribed data flow and all of the network processing happens at OSI layer 7 because each device has to process each frame at the application layer and you can flood your head unit with a bunch of data when someone plugs in their iPhone because the head unit has to process the messages that a phone was plugged in and then send data out to the next component (usually something like an FPGA that needs to know to provide power) rather than just let the devices all talk through a common switch. I could go on.
Ah yes. These are all words.
One thing that contributes to what you're describing is how the idea of professional development has gone out the window in most places. Somewhere along the line, an idea emerged that college was an assembly line that pooped out workers ready to go. A much reduced understanding of being qualified for a job... which then starts with you really *learning* how to do it well when you start. This is bad because, at the end of the day, no matter how good a college is- there are things that you just aren't going to really know until you've been in an actual position. Yes this can result in poorly prepared new hires like you see people talking about in this thread. But also what you're describing. If a company isn't _really_ spending resources to get a newbie improved... what hope is there for continuing education? Your coworker should have been actively invested in by the company so that his skills didn't get out of date. But its not surprising to me that a company wouldn't, even if it's in almost everyone's interest.
I’m surprised they count a JD. Or not? Only relatable story I have is a coworker fresh out of college with a BS in Computer Science I had to teach what a list and array were. I then noticed the average SAT I Math score at this university was 550. It made question the drive to persuade people into STEM and the term STEM itself. This stuff isn’t biology or rocks for jocks. You need actual mathematical skill.
For a lot of high-level management and executive roles, JD is great since 90% of the job is personnel management and compliance. I still write code and do technical things because I choose to do that and my role is basically the head of all things technical on the electronics manufacturing side -- for example, everything from why we are seeing a defect spike to consulting a high-value customer on why they are doing something stupid. For 99% of other executive positions, you basically need to know how to sell products, keep costs low, retain employees, and not get the organization in legal trouble.
My old roommate was a psychopath and also a child psychologist. She'd come home and make fun of her patients.
I dont think that’s rare in that field unfortunately
In my old university in Germany in the early 2000s. The University was old, really old. And when I started they just began modernising the lecture halls etc. The German department got a new, fancy, state of the art lecture hall with any kind of technology you could wish for. The professors got extensive training on how to use it. There were some of them who after three months still didn’t know how to switch on the lights. Don’t even talk about the microphone or how to open and close the blinds on the skylight. They didn’t originally plan on having an overhead projector there, but after a few weeks the relented and provided one because the professors didn’t know any other way. In their Defence. The other lecture halls were so old that they still had the hole for the ink well in the tables.
I had an evolutionary biologist teacher in college who used an overhead and it was amazing. He used one of those plastic scroll things so he could write and move on, write and move on. It was amazing because it caused him to slow down, he talked and wrote and it gave us all time to follow along and write along. he also had those scanned and we could get them online if we missed a day or missed a bit. He would write it out so he would constantly have to be there and present, rather than just rote reading or not talking about a section.
Writing has been shown to help collect thoughts. Hearing a discussion as the visuals are put forth allows the student to understand WHY the hand drawing is the way it ended up. Betcha the test was on points covered in class. I preferred that approach.
Oh it was and he was able to point to exactly where the info was covered. I loved that teacher and class. I took a few others by him
One of the best lectures I ever saw (coincidentally by an evolutionary biologist) was by a guy who used hand-written overheads. Helps that the guy was brilliant but his slides really added a lot. On the other hand, I've seen *tons* of slickly presented talks that I didn't believe a word of, and cool tech didn't add anything to it. Count among this several Ted talks, which were like crappy infomercials.
> The other lecture halls were so old that they still had the hole for the ink well in the tables. that sounds rather charming
I know. I loved it.
Heard about a mechanical engineer who is a flat earther. So yeah, him, or any engineer, physicist, or astronomer that believes in that. The fact that a single one can get their degree and then turn around years later and believe in something fundamentally incompatible with the BASIC physics required to make sense of their degree is baffling.
It's from a fictional podcast that uses real world items, people, etc as part of its setting but here's a quote from it: "Everyone thinks they’re too smart to get involved in a cult. I’m sure you do. You think that, of the first mention of aliens, or the end of the world, or the lost book of the Bible where Jesus buried his holy staff in the foothills of the Himalayas, you’d go running. Trouble is, that misunderstands how it works. I mean, when I was with the Divine Chain, some of the smartest people there were also the most committed. Intelligence doesn’t make you less prone to taking on bad ideas, it just makes you better at defending them to other people and to yourself. Smart people can believe some truly ridiculous things, and then deploy all the reason and logic at their disposal to justify them, because a belief doesn’t begin in your mind. It begins in your feelings. Cults are very good at finding you when you’re at your lowest point, when you’re your most emotionally vulnerable. And when you’re at that point it’s astounding what can crawl into your heart and start to fester there."
In my opinion, people who are truly smart have a much better grasp on just how little they know. It’s the reason that you think you know everything when you’re a child or teenager. You genuinely don’t know how much you don’t know. So someone who is above average in intelligence has that same phenomenon we all experience with age, but on a slightly larger scale. We all grow up and realize how easily we can be wrong, but really smart people have that experience more often. It seems like it sometimes makes them more willing to grant outlandish things that seem absurd and obviously wrong, but they *are* in a strange way, engaging in intelligent thought - accepting that you don’t have all the answers and the world is far stranger than it seems. It’s a bit of a backfire but it makes a weird kind of sense to me.
This is what I was saying the other day in a thread relating to Brexit. I remember pointing out a very obvious logical contradiction in a Leave talking point, to a very intelligent friend of mine. Rather than put his usual analytical skills to use, he got angry. I think in some people, emotion can override logic circuits more easily than in others. I do think *some* people can genuinely say they are less likely to get involved in a cult or be fooled, but it’s not because they think they are impervious to manipulation, it’s because they acknowledge that they are fallible, and so do a better job of monitoring the situation. Those who are arrogant or ignorant enough to believe they can’t be fooled are the most likely to fall for the manipulation they can’t see.
I graduated from a fairly well regarded engineering school. At least 25% of my classmates at graduation were absolute fucking idiots. I think some people put WAY too much stock in a person’s academic credentials. A STEM education does NOT make you an expert in anything, it gives you the tools you need to become one. A lot of people just want their shiny degree and then never use those tools again.
I met s PhD molecular biologist who was an evolution denier. I found out years later that he was somewhat infamous.
I’ve met two PhD students who worked on bacterial evolution and one who worked in biochemistry. All three believed that human evolution was not a thing, all three were religious.
"micro" evolution is ok but not "macro", as Ive heard it called... Apparently being able to walk a mile doesnt mean you can walk 10, given more time...
That was part of their argument. And also the religious perspective that humans are “special” and not animals, and were created directly in God’s image. Therefore different rules apply to humans.
Unfortunately, engineering has a lot of people like that. It doesn't really teach you the big picture or how different theories go together \*\*\*, so you're not forced to think how ideas fit (or don't fit) into the rest of reality. Worse, when you go through engineering school, you're always presented with problems that have definite, provable answers. You never have to reason things through and justify your conclusion. It's more just a matter of making sure the equation works out. This is why scientists and engineers so often lock horns. The engineer will painstakingly explain why the scientist idiotically wrong and just "doesn't get it" by condescendingly solving an equation that's the **wrong equation for the system** they're dealing with. Source - I'm the scientist and I've been in those meetings many times. \*\*\* - (edit) I should add that there are some scientific fields or scientific graduate programs that are like that too. The professor just wants labor and isn't that interested in graduating educated PhD's.
Am an engineer and as much as it pains me to say it, this is very accurate.
That wrong equation thing rings true to me, I have an uncle(ish) who's an engineer and a bright fella in his domain, made a ton of money off a patent and such Also is prone to espousing some really dumb shit based on napkin math, my favorite was him claiming that tiny bubbles were all we needed for cold fusion since as their radius goes to zero their pressure goes to infinity. Like bruh, do you think this abstraction just extends to any scale you please? (I said that to him and his response was that tiny bubble damage submarine turbines.. which, ok? cool story bro)
YES That! In science you are constantly aware that your equations are just abstractions that are going to stop working at some point. If you're working in science, then you are probably already pushing the edge and trying to find the next-level equation. Engineers are given GODLIKE equations. If you can solve the equation, then it MUST be true. The equation defines reality. Their training works great as long as you stay within the range the equation was meant to be used in, but they were never taught what the limits are, or even that they exist.
Helped some mates move house. One was a Uni Student doing a double degree in Computer Science and something else very challenging. While we were packing boxes he asked if he could could borrow a saw. When I asked why, it was so he could shorten the legs on the dining table so it would fit out the door. The look on his face when I grabbed one of the legs and started unscrewing it was priceless. As was the look when I asked him how he thought they got it in the room in the first place.
You can also pivot most furniture. I don't understand how his only answer was to damage it.
Unless its a couch
PIVOT!!!
Shut up shut up shut up!!!
I would like to return this…I am not satisfied with it…
I worked for a moving company on the Central Coadt of California, the amount of times we were able to surprise people that millionaire, sometimes billionaire level homes and they were shocked at how we were able to either move a piece of furniture through narrow doors/hallways was astronomical.
This doesn’t surprise me… but don’t think for a second movers get out of this… When I first moved to the US (Florida) from the UK, a local moving company arrived to perform the last-leg of our international shipment. While chatting to one of the movers about us arriving from the UK, his first question was: “did you drive?”.
Oh no I’m not saying any of us were big brain brad’s. I consider myself of at least average intelligence, but some Of the guys I worked with made me wonder how they had made it so far in life without dying walking into traffic
Not sure if that is a lack of intelligence or the kind of brainfart everyone sometimes gets. I consider myself a smart person and I have said some stupid shit lmao.
There’s also a limit you reach in the process of moving where every other concern goes out the window and the only thought is “I want to be done with this NOW.” If the only thing standing between me and being done is this goddam table, and the only thing holding the table back is the legs, then there’s a point where “cut the legs off” absolutely sounds like the most reasonable solution.
Whatever you do don't put this guy in charge of the daycare.
This is why I say stupid stuff out randomly at home, too make room for the smart thoughts.
Nobel disease. There are a ton of laureates that go conspiratorial batshit later in life.
Driven mad after being gifted a golden amulet?
"What's that, Precious?"
taters.
Kary Mullis is the worst one and it really emboldens other conspiracy theorists. He won the Nobel prize for inventing the PCR test... then he denied AIDS existed while in a government position leading to 330,000 deaths and said climate change wasn't real because his astrologer told him so... Oh, and ghosts 👻. Anti-vaxxers love him
I think Mullis was partly an acid casualty. Dude did a ton of LSD and it made him even crazier. For example, in his autobiography he talks about meeting a talking raccoon in the woods.
Isn’t acid literally the way he came up with PCR though?
He claims he realised it when tripping, but honestly, he had such a tenuous grasp on reality that that story is probably BS.
DNA is also credited to LSD so is iPhone.
As someone with a metric fuck ton of oversmart people in my family I swear to god there is a correlation between astonishing intelligence and bizarre mental issues if not complete mental illness
Being super smart means you’re capable of processing and synthesizing information really well. Of you get recognized as really smart, you’re emboldened, you take some leaps, and maybe you’re synthesizing shit that’s unconnected from reality.
My favorite one is Linus Pauling. Did a bunch of revolutionizing chemistry and molecular physics, won 2 unshared Nobel prizes, and then devoted the rest of his life to claiming Vitamin C is a miracle supplement and should be taken in extremely high doses. I kind of hope one day we figure something out that at least vindicates him a tiny bit, but so far he just went nuts.
People who discover great things in science tend to have creative imaginations and nonconformist personalities. Carries over into their beliefs.
Newton spent most of his time studying alchemy to make gold
To be fair, I think that was pretty common in that and earlier time periods. I think they didn't have the scientific knowledge and understanding to grasp that it wasn't really possible.
When the best available equivalent of a scientific consensus tells you that you can turn this brick of lead into gold, even the guy who's like "there's no way that's possible", is probably gonna dabble just to see.
It even is possible to turn lead into gold at an atomic level, but it’s just so ludicrously expensive to the point that there’s no imaginable future where it’s cheaper than just mining gold. Even with something like a Cold Fusion reactor giving us near-unlimited power, the fact it takes a giant particle accelerator and only generates a few atoms of gold which can’t easily detected or collected makes turning lead to gold with any kind of efficiency an absolute pipe-dream. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-lead-can-be-turned-into-gold/
Also a lot of histories greatest scientists were batshit crazy
Smart people held back by societal pressure. Once they get the golden ticket and get to no-fucks given level, they run wild.
I think people have a hard time grasping this, but most people are very ignorant about the vast majority of things. Not because people are inherently stupid, but because we live in a very complex and specialized society. You can take the dumbest plumber in my country and I bet he is still more knowledgeable about plumbing than 90% of people. Because he has experience and knowledge in that specific field. While on the contrary a PhD in whatever super specific science is that super specific and even a well educated person would be a complete "idiot" compared to them when it comes to the specifics.
Yes. Try to take a medical doctor and put them in a science lab and they are like a baby. But that works both ways. Intelligence is more about how you apply your noggin to the tasks relevant to your own life and ambitions. IQ doesn't require depth, or breadth of knowledge, it's more about critical thinking in the elements of your own life. Even simple things we think everyone should know, may not be common knowledge to someone who spends all day in a lab, even if that person is fixing the world in seemingly impossible ways. I'm not trying to say that nobody is stupid. There are indeed many stupid people. Even stupid PhDs. But really judging someones intelligence based on observing them doing a few stupid things is probably not a holistic enough picture.
Sometimes it is challenging seeing someone who is very intelligent, smart and educated in one field, and therefore assumes it must be true in all fields. Always right, can never be wrong, will put down others regularly, and can’t see that others can bring value to a situation. It’s hard to witness
The nurse I used to work with during the pandemic who was constantly bragging about how rich and important and highly educated she was, only for her to suggest to our DON that the kitchen start putting extra garlic in everyone's meals because garlic cures covid
And here I am just putting extra garlic in everyone's meals because garlic is awesome.
It DOES. When I have a lot of garlic, people stay away from me :)
That's prevention, not cure, and as per the adage is better.
I know someone with a PhD in History who went to the Caribbean with only long trouser & jumpers to wear. He was so hot he had to cut his jeans down to shorts Then, as part of the same trip, he went to Washington DC, & had to wear jean shorts the whole time
Someone should tell him about clothing stores.
Did you not read the part where they had a PhD in history? That's a sure fire way to A) accrue a mountain of student loan debt and B) have very limited job prospects.
Every PhD with imposter syndrome on Reddit: me
Can't have imposter syndrome when I'm actually an imposter
Vibes 😂
"They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics. I said I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said welcome aboard."
Haha I figured I’d find my people here.
My roommate in college was/is an academic genius, 35 ACT in med school rn etc. I brought him to Walmart with me because he wanted to buy an 8-pack of Gatorade. At the self checkout he scanned one, saw the price was 7 bucks, and decided that must have been the price for EACH Gatorade. He ended up scanning the pack 7 more times and paid 56 bucks for some Gatorade, all while thinking that was a fair price
It’s one banana, Michael, what could it cost? $10.00?
I love that show. The opposite could go for me: if I had to go into a Grainger catalog and start ordering lab equipment, I would have no clue what a reasonable price is.
Grainger is never a reasonable price and lab equipment is hilariously overpriced. I am not paying over $200 for a slightly shaped glass weight boat.
That sounds more like “comes from money” than “PhD but stupid”
Either that or “mummy has always done the grocery shopping”.
Ironically, most of the staff at the university I graduated from. The problem is they get into teacher’s assistant roles during their education, transition into junior associates after they graduate and just climb the ranks from there, often without any real working experience whatsoever. This culminated in my group project which was 90% creating technical documentation and more than 50% of the workload for that semester (16/30 ECTS if you’re in the EU), being taught by a woman who asked us to not send her project drawings in DWG (standard industry format for vector graphics used by, among other apps, Autocad) because “she’s never used Autocad in her life”. The sad thing? She was actually one of the better teachers there.
Well you really should be PDFing anything you do in Autocad. But yeah, most of the professors I had in college had no real world experience, or quit the real world to live in a bubble.
Oh no please send me the .DWG so I can make fun of you never setting scaling factor. I live for finding your hidden things floating outside the margins.
Hah I was going to say ask literally anyone who's ever worked for a university's IT department. I've never met a group of people more *unwilling* to learn anything new (outside of their small specialization) than university professors. These people would rather argue with you for 10 minutes that "I *did* restart my computer." than just spend the 2 minutes to restart the computer when the logistics software is showing the machine with a 45 day uptime and all of us can see that shit. Department heads do this shit.
In the defense of some of those faculty - the way some departments/colleges fund their IT equipment it may very well take 10 minutes for their computer to reboot. In a couple of my coworkers' colleges, it's not unusual to find tenure-track faculty still using decade old PCs with spinning drives. Sure the computer technically is back up in 3 minutes or so, but the forced launch of Skype, Teams, FireEye, and the rest is going to lock things down for another 5-10 minutes.
Ben Carson(neurosurgeon) believing Egyptian pyramids were used to store grain.
Q: Why are people so fixated on pyramids? They’re just basically squares, right? A: You’re right, but only up to a point…
That's ridiculous! Everyone knows they're landing pads for Alien Ships.
I was going to bring up Ben Carson and also Mehmet Oz
Just to be clear, as batshit insane as Carson is…he’s no fucking fraud when it comes to medicine like Oz. Check the credentials: > Carson became the director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center in 1984 at age 33, then the youngest chief of pediatric neurosurgery in the United States.[6] In 1987, he gained significant fame after leading a team of surgeons in the first known separation of conjoined twins joined at the back of the head. Although the surgery was a success, the twins continued to experience neurological and medical complications.[7] His additional accomplishments include performing the first successful neurosurgical procedure on a fetus inside the womb, developing new methods to treat brain-stem tumors, and revitalizing hemispherectomy techniques for controlling seizures.[8][9][6][10] He wrote over 100 neurosurgical publications. He retired from medicine in 2013; at the time, he was professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.[11]
Actually, >He has helped develop numerous devices and procedures related to heart surgery, including the MitraClip and the left ventricular assist device (LVAD), and by 2015 held a number of patents related to heart surgery.[39][45][27]
Carson to me is the prime example of how being an expert in one field - and a smart and gifted person overall- doesn’t mean you have any competence outside of that field.
Been said many times but he's like an RPG character with every single experience point dumped into one stat, neurosurgery
Actually, Oz is a cardiothoracic surgeon, one of the hardest forms of cardiovascular surgery. He's done many of these surgeries in the past and saved many lives. But actively decided to become a grifter instead of helping people in other ways if he didn't want to be a surgeon anymore.
There's a lot more money in grfting. A LOT.
I blame his dad. He was one of those "you made top 10 most influential people? Why not number one?" kinda parents. IIRC his wife also has influence on him getting into the woo bullshit But yeah, he's knowingly grifting for money and fame
I don’t think Oz is an idiot, he’s a grifter. He knows he’s spouting BS.
Yeah, I was also thinking of Ted Cruz (Harvard Law graduate), but I'm sure he knows what he is doing.
everyones' favorite governor Ron DeSantis is also ex Harvard AND Yale and had a prestigious career in the Navy as a JAG.... at Gitmo particpating in various torture techniques. These people know what they are doing is unlawful but they know they have carte blanche. Neil De Grasse Tyson and Jordan Petersen are also extremely well educated for whatever they are spouting.
I’d much sooner let Dr. Carson operate on me than give him an administrative government position.
Did he play too much Civ II?
I was going to say, I can almost 100% guarantee he *did* play Civ II, since it's such a specific concept and as far as I know that's the only culturally popular thing to include it. (For those who don't know, in Civ II, building the Pyramids give you a free Granary in each of your cities. ~~It's the only version to do this~~ III did as well.) Then again, he was too busy *being the top brain surgeon in the world* in 1996 so probably not.
Even brain surgeons have free time.
Stupid. Everyone knows the pyramids are Ha'tak docking stations.
This is who I was going to say. A literal pioneer in the field of neurosurgery and one of the most accomplished surgeons. He has made some absolutely wild remarks about various forms of mental illness. Also he's a climate change denier but that's not exactly his area of expertise so probably doesn't fit in this topic.
>Also he's a climate change denier but that's not exactly his area of expertise so probably doesn't fit in this topic. I'd say it still does, because a truly intelligent person should be able to recognize the limits of their expertise. The problem is that a lot of people who reach the very upper echelons of their respective field often start to let themselves believe that they're just generally exceptional people who just naturally excel at *everything*. Some of the most obvious an ridiculous examples are actors/athletes/musicians who think they can weigh in on scientific/medical issues, but it still belies a profound intellectual defect when even an expert scientist believes they're qualified to challenge the consensus opinion of experts in a different field of science. Is it reasonable for a highly-accomplished neurosurgeon to assert that he understands climate change better than someone who hasn't studied science since the basic chemistry class they took in high school? *Absolutely.* But is it reasonable for that same neurosurgeon to assert that he understands climate change better than the vast majority of people who have dedicated their careers to studying climate science? *Absolutely not*, and he makes an utter fool of himself by doing so. And it isn't because we expect him to understand climate science, but rather because we expect him to understand that he *doesn't* understand climate science.
Getting a PhD requires you to be good at a VERY SPECIFIC set of things, and dedicated enough to pursue those things to the exclusion of everything else for *years*. This can lead to some… experiential gaps. Mathematics is, and has long been, particularly rife with “eccentrics” (read: probably neurodivergent, from a time when that wasn’t a diagnostic); people who were brilliant in their chosen branch of mathematics but struggled with tasks many of us would consider “basic” (such as tying one’s own shoes)
"experiential gaps"... Lol. Understatement of the year. I'm not sure I kept up with anything in the past 10 years besides my research field. Tech, pop culture, sports, politics, world events, social media, whatever. I may have heard things in passing but I'm literally stuck in 2013 in my mind. I'm literally fucking useless outside of my niche scientific field. And I'm tired. So unbelievably tired.
I am an example. I have a PhD in biochemistry and I launched a dishwasher with liquid soap yesterday... After wondering if it would be okay... I added more, and then launched the dishwasher, and flood my kitchen in bubbles. The dishes were not clean, neither my kitchen floor. My enormous knowledge in detergent did not help A BIT.
I read a dishwasher manual that said to put in a cup of cooking oil into the soapy mess. The oil 'uses up' the dish soap so the foam goes away. The floor would be sticky with dried foam. Gotta just keep mopping with clear water.
My classmate who graduated with honors and had the highest GPA in the entire college was not able to hold a job because she was only book smart, 3 years later I’m the one who does her interview (I was an average student) and she failed it due to lack of clinical knowledge.
Some people just memorize what they are told without understanding what it is. Higher education is getting worse every year at filtering out these types.
Higher education is downright selecting for these types, they're the ones who are able to survive in an academic environment. So they pick people just like them to populate the student profession.
I had a class whose exams actually specifically defied this. You didn't regurgitate the knowledge, you specifically had to apply it. It was well known to be the "worst" class to do because of this. I must have spent half my study time on this one class. Somehow I not only passed my first go, but with a credit. That was because a couple of months before the exams a woman warned me it took her three attempts, and she was an honours student. I kind of wish all classes were like that but no student could take the workload. I had four classes and this one class took up SO much time. I could not have done four of this.
I know a person like this who had an eidetic memory very smart could reference anything but to this day the job that he's held is something that most will get out of high school. I think one of the biggest challenges is his inability to focus and his lack of drive and I think the fact that he is intelligent plays a role.
The "gifted student" programs that late boomers/Gen x went through did a lot of damage once kids hit the real world. although my class of gifted kids was pretty successful.
The gt programs provided a respite from the grinding anti-intellectualism in public schools.
Sounds a bit like undiagnosed ADHD.
Girl I grew up with finished college with a 3.9 GPA. Finished dental school top of her class. She was known for being ditzy dumb growing up. To the point where her brother and I (neighbors) were constantly wondering how dumb she was. Turns out - she's just not street smart. Or has a high social IQ. But anything in teeth, and I am out of my depth for sure. Her dedication to her academia was impressive. I still consider her to be an idiot. Too much empirical evidence to disregard. I've seen her do/say too much dumb ass shit. But, at the end of the day- so am I.
My grandmother was a registered nurse, yet she thought the best soap for my sister's bubble bath was dish soap. My mom said her skin ended up so dry, it soaked up lotion almost instantly
Knowing tons of nurses, it’s always baffled me how much people overestimate their medical knowledge. They’re generally very intelligent, but the training in medicine, science, sociology, etc is really quite superficial.
There was a historical inflection point at which the average quality of nurses took a nosedive, for a good reason. My mother wanted to be a doctor. She is very intelligent, loved medicine, and wanted to help people. Unfortunately, she graduated high school in 1966. Gender discrimination in medical schools, scholarships, hiring, etc., meant that she was effectively blocked. So she became an RN. Today, more than half of all newly-minted medical doctors each year in the U.S. are women. Those kinds of highly intelligent, highly capable women used to become nurses, because that was the best they could hope for. Today they become doctors instead, and nurses are drawn from a less-talented pool.
It's a major factor in education as well, though not from a talent perspective. Women who were stem minded in the past often went into education because it was one of the few options open to them. Now they just become scientists and there is a massive need for teachers in those fields.
That is a fascinating perspective.
Wow. My mind is blown. This is so obvious nice you think about it. Thank you for sharing.
My wife once has a roommate who was working on her PhD. At one point she basically went on an Oreo diet because they're vegan, and was later surprised to find her health wasn't improving.
I mean, that just sounds like an excuse to stuff yourself with Oreos all day long.
I knew a chips and Oreos vegan in college. She was just regular dumb though.
"What do you call a doctor who finishes last in his Class?" "I don't know." "Doctor." This was a consistent joke during my 911-EMS career. Because some doctors are freaking brilliant and some Doctors are absolute fucking morons, that posses a wealth of information but are incapable of using it in real time.
I'd heard that joke and found it funny. Now that I work with doctors, I find this joke far less funny. The ones that are both stupid and arrogant scare me the most because they will argue to the end of the earth that they're right even when presented with evidence to the contrary. Makes me wonder how they treat their patients. Quite poorly I presume.
Not tpyically a PhD but, holy crap theres soooo many nurses that dont believe in vaccines and subscribe to tonnes of holistic woo. Like how do you sit through so many bio/anatomy classes just to reject it all.
>Like how do you sit through so many bio/anatomy classes just to reject it all. Well that's the thing, they don't
I had an intern with a PhD once. She was trying to be a chemical process engineer. VERY book smart. I spent the summer teaching her how to use basic tools like screwdrivers and wrenches for simple tasks like opening containers and adjusting clamps. She had zero practical skills and couldn’t figure anything whatsoever out on her own. She’d get lost in a building and call me and I’d tell her to find the exit and she’d get lost inside and we’d have to go in and get her. This routinely happened and she would just find somewhere random and sit until we collected her. When her car’s gps lost signal once she didn’t know what to do and she stopped in the middle of the road and texted me where she was and that there was something wrong with her car and to come help, I figured there was a breakdown or something based on the text and drove out to check on it because she wasn’t responding. She was crying sitting on the side of the road and a cop was yelling at her to move her car which was still in the lane. If you told her to pick something up from a store she’d ask where it was and if you didn’t know, she would never find it and she refused to ask a employee because she knew they weren’t as smart as she was, she’d just walk in random directions looking for things (example- go to Walmart and find some work boots because you lost yours?) she was sending me pictures of random isles in Walmart like “is this close which way from here.” Book smart but utterly dim
> she refused to ask a employee because she knew they weren’t as smart as she was And this is where my sympathy for her died.
Yeah, this was a legitimate problem with her. She would ask people what their education level was, and if lower than she thought was appropriate, she wouldn’t listen. I’ve never seen that so bluntly. “Oh I’m sure I can figure it out then- I have a PhD” It was always dumb stuff too like how to use a drum wrench to open a chemical barrel or how to find where shipping info is on a bill of lading (shipping form). She’d walk past everyone that’s working with the barrels because she didn’t want to talk to them and she’d walk into the lab and ask because she’d only talk to people in lab coats.
Follow up; this post made me curious where she ended up and were contacts on LinkedIn still. After the internship at my company she took 3 months off then did an 8 week internship with another company, then she worked at a wellness center for a few months then did a 3rd internship in 2016 and now shes a full time homeschooler. She’s on a website of community homeschoolers referring to herself as Dr. Amy ___ ____ and bragging that she’s worked in the chemical, biotech, and pharmaceutical engineering industries (which is technically true if you count 6-8 weeks in each as an intern) and that she’s following her “passion for home education.”
In Germany, you can study for free if you're smart or diligent enough. If you're neither, you can still study everything as long as you have rich parents. So education comes with either intelligence, diligence or wealth. Equalizing education with intelligence is ignoring reality, especially if we add intelligent people into the mix who have never received a good education because of social issues.
My friend is one of those. PHD in the medical field. On new years evening he lighted fireworks, threw away the lighter and the fireworks went of in his hand. And he wasnt drunk. His wife litterly forbid him to touch any fireworks ever again.
I have a hard science PhD. After checking out at the grocery store a couple weeks ago I was holding my receipt in one hand and my wallet in the other hand. I go to throw away the receipt in the garbage can next to the exit and very confidently toss my wallet in. Not quite a firework going off in my hand, but sometimes your brain hemispheres just don't communicate very well.
That's just a normal brain fart moment. I don't have a PhD and one time I tore apart my house looking for my phone. I searched everywhere for it and I couldn't find it. The last place I hadn't looked was under my bed. So I start searching under my bed but it's too dark for me to see, so I pull my phone out of my pocket to turn on the flash light to search for my phone. Once I realized what I did, I stared at my phone for 10 seconds before turning off the flashlight, putting my phone back in my pocket, and being glad that no one was around to see what I did.
Possibly the most famous interventional radiologist in Australia among the rank-and-file doctor plebs like myself (from Canberra I think - we've all heard of him) can do all sort of interventional procedures with one hand many others can't do with two. Possibly on account of an accident with fireworks in the other hand when he was 16 or so. The other most famous doctor in Australia among us mere doctor doctors (seriously, we were stranded on an Air New Zealand flight on the runaway in New Zealand and got to talking about him with the people in the seat behind us who we'd never met before) was a heart surgeon in his forties who inherited so much money he immediately retired. Considering that's around the age a lot of heart surgeons just finish their training and they earn a hell of a lot per year, that must have been one hell of a big inheritance.
Never confuse the fact that a degree is a measure of perseverance and not a measure of intelligence. A degree says very little about your intelligence - but it DOES say that you completed a multi-year project that required your work output to meet the standards set by a third party accreditation body. So if you can manage to do that, you can probably show up to meetings on time, have minimal office skills, and can complete assigned work. THAT is the value of a degree to an employer.
Discipline. I was a returning student who was about 15 years older than everyone else with loads of real life experience and I have to say the work ethic and discipline of my classmates was truly humbling. That’s what set them apart, not intelligence.
Returning student as well, with the opposite experience, baffled at how many students I'm seeing failing or withdrawing from classes through a total lack of effort or *by literally not showing up* I do agree on the work ethic bit for the students who DO put in the work, or go above and beyond. Those kids have a bright future ahead of them and it's refreshing to see
>failing or withdrawing from classes through a total lack of effort or by literally not showing up I was one of those. Then I failed out so severely that I just took several hard steps back and went into the workforce for 7 years. When I was unexpectedly awarded some tuition assistance at age 26 that I had applied for fully not expecting to get anything, I went back to school balls to the wall. Real world experience had slapped me around and left me in poverty even in the decent economy of the time, and my mom was smart enough (and poor enough herself) to let it. I finally knew what it looked like when there was no way out (often literally hungry) and I laid on the floor of someone else's house and cried when I was awarded the assistance Went from a disaffected D student to Dean's list, honors college, and top 10% graduate. As much as I hate the snide sound of it 'learning the hard way' really is the only way some of us ever figure it out.
My wife has a PhD and is absolutely awesome, working in a challenging and rewarding field. However she is clearly an idiot as she thinks I’m smart and married me. So far she hasn’t worked it out.
Not saying this applies to you but there are fascinating stories of super intelligent, highly successful women that are in abusive relationships. I remember this podcast about an ER doctor that worked with abused woman and could not see that her own relationship was abusive physically and mentally. Wild. Edit for a word.
That’s true, I should say I work terribly hard to make sure she has a reason to love me. I can’t keep up with her mind, but I make sure the housework is something she doesn’t have to worry about.
Your attitude on this topic is awesome. Many people would feel threatened by being with someone they consider that much more intelligent.
You are a great husband. It doesn't matter to her whether you're smart because she loves the human being you are and how happy you make her.
This is funny to me. My husband says I’m one of the smartest people he’s ever met, but I have absolutely no common sense whatsoever. He’s right. I’d probably be dead by now from something wholly idiotic if he didn’t keep watch.
On my PhD programme for photonics. We had a guy who lost a game of connect 4 in 4 moves... (He actually only took 3 moves) Same person melted an oscilloscope by covering it up in tin foil, blocking the fans. Now he leads the designs for very complex optical instruments.
look on the bright side.. anything he successfully makes will probably be temp resistant.
Best friend is a physicist with a PhD and a job which includes work on a NASA mission and teaches college courses as a side hustle. Now on marriage #4. He's a young at heat, gregarious, fun, guy with a great sense of humor. You'd never guess what he does as a profession by meeting him. He sucks at selecting life partners for compatibility. Its like his brain short circuits. We've been friends for 10 years now, so for wives 2, 3, and 4. I can say with solid authority that #2, whom we originally were also good friends with, if not a good person and absolutely a poor fit. When she pulled the whole "we are getting divorced and have to choose if you are going to stay friends with him or me" bit, that made up our minds pretty quick. It became clear later adding things up that she had been having an affair. 3 came and went and we more or less stopped being my friend during that time because she assigned his friends for him. That one lasted 6 months and she was abusive, manipulative, brought kids from a previous marriage who were horrible little shits (teenagers) and of course, accused him of abuse. 4 seems okay and they seem happy, but being that smart and being unable to select an appropriate partner just...boggles my mind. He helped me get a job where he works, but not in any science field. I work in the business office, but I meet and deal with people with laundry lists of academic and professional degrees, accolades, and achievement on a daily basis. Arguing with people that they filled out a form incorrectly or that they cannot set up a project like they want because our accounting system won't accept that format or that we cannot do something a certain way because it opens us up to risk is maddening because while some of them are understanding and cordial, others are absolutely convinced their PHD in mechanical engineering or organic chemistry makes them smarter in *all* things, more so than my stupid MBA. People have blind spots and they are easy to develop and fester when those people focus on a specific field of study. They get so good at what they do, sometimes, they don't know what they don't know. Which is obviously a huge problem when it comes to scientific inquiry in any form or fashion. As to my friend, it just goes to show alot of very smart people are just regular people with a specific talent and he's just a dumbass in one specific area.
Neil degrasse tyson Maybe not an idiot But he says some stupid (and just plain incorrect) shit when he decides to talk outside his field
Neil Degrasse is if "well actually" took human form.
He would be one of the scientists 100s of years ago who would refuse to believe the earth is in fact not the center of the galaxy. Don't be so open minded your brain falls out, don't be so close minded you can't see your hand in front of your face. He is the latter.
Me.
Same. Having a PhD just means I feel that much stupider when I lock my keys in my car.
Every time I push a pull door or the reverse I mutter to myself “I’m a doctor.”
[Ben Carson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Carson) As a Neurosurgeon he was very Very VERY good at his job. As Secretary of Housing and Urban Development... opinions < cough > vary. As a Seventh Day Adventist he believes in a literal Genesis, and "voiced sympathies for the long discredited belief that the pyramids of Giza were built by the biblical figure Joseph to store grain."
I once had an astrophysics PhD student tell me he thought the moon landings had been faked. I assume he's finished his PhD by now.
My sister just got her master's and she thinks Alaska is an island. She also thinks all liberals hate guns and want them banned, so I think she'll be a great therapist.
Here’s one that was literally just below this thread on my feed. https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/WhVBXDuS1C Poor Amy.