Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
- Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.
I don't think I need to do that at all. Demonstrating equivalence seems entirely sufficient.
EDIT: Wait, I totally misread your comment the first time round, and yes, from the position you're approaching it, the argument isn't complete. In the context of the original spoon/spade argument, I think I'd need to demonstrate that the person with the pre-2002 photography degree can't accomplish equivalent feats to a person with a contemporary photography degree, adjusting for experience.
In this case, it seems that the contemporary photography graduate has the advantage of not having to learn a large quantity of material that is no longer necessary with the advent of better tools. This points to a possible difference between badass spoon-diggers and obsolete spoon-diggers: the badass spoon-digger develops general skills, whereas the obsolete spoon-digger develops obsolescent skills.
EDIT EDIT: Some explanation on this particular example -- this is a complaint I've heard a couple of times from people with such degrees, that they spent a lot of time learning how to achieve effects which are trivial under contemporary methods. From their perspective, this was time wasted.