B_Frank comments on Contests vs. Real World Problems - Less Wrong

15 Post author: badger 25 March 2009 01:29AM

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Comment author: B_Frank 26 March 2009 01:05:11AM 3 points [-]

We might say there are two kinds of "responsibility." School teaches people to be responsible to authority; the other kind is being responsible for eventual outcomes (such as truthfulness) by asking questions and challenging authority.

An example would be something I read recently about the institutional mindset held by journalists at newspapers: older editors and managers are practically begging young reporters for new ideas... the problem is the type of people who go to work for a newspapers now tend to want responsibilities (and security) given to them.

Meanwhile a lot of people who never finished their homework or followed their assignment guidelines were distracted from school by new technologies -- sites like this -- and learning from the proliferating information available online.