Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Mandatory Secret Identities - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 April 2009 06:10PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (177)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Nominull 08 April 2009 09:03:40PM 23 points [-]

Personally I suspect that the bathwater only really gets dirty when you are teaching something that is essentially useless in modern society, like martial arts or literary criticism. Most people who study, say, engineering don't do so in the hopes of becoming teachers of engineering.

Now you might say that this is because teachers of engineering are expected to also do research, but firstly that doesn't explain the disparity between fields, and secondly, I don't think that the example of tertiary education is one to aspire to in this way. I seem to recall you are an autodidact, so you may not have the same trained gut reaction I do, but I have seen too many people who did not have the skill of teaching but were good researchers teaching horribly, and I remember one heartbreaking example of an excellent teacher denied tenure because the administrators felt his research was not up to snuff too well, to want to optimize rationality teachers on any basis other than their ability to teach rationality.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 April 2009 09:10:04PM 2 points [-]

Personally I suspect that the bathwater only really gets dirty when you are teaching something that is essentially useless in modern society, like martial arts or literary criticism. Most people who study, say, engineering don't do so in the hopes of becoming teachers of engineering.

Fair point. But this depends on things starting out healthy so that they stay healthy.