I'm guessing that computer science majors can often pursue these biomedical-ish sorts of careers, but the reverse is not true (Biomedical Engineers typically don't pursue computer science-ish careers).
I am strongly interested in figuring out if this is true. Do you have any thoughts on how I would do this?
To do this your best bet is to talk to large numbers of biomedical engineering alumni. As a data point, you mentioned before that SFU has one of the most respectable biomed engineering programs. As another data point, University of Toronto doesn't allow general stream undergraduate engineers to choose certain specialties requiring that extra bit of intellectual horsepower unless you are able to enter (and survive) the more theoretical Engineering Science program. Biomed Engineering is one of the specialties that falls in this category.
I feel the reason that most biomed engineers don't pursue CS-ish careers is because many of them feel that their additional knowledge, training and suffering should be used for more "important" pursuits (grad school, designing life-saving medical devices, etc.). Combined with the general engineering school attitude that their education is more rigorous or harder than probably any other major in university (other than perhaps actuarial), and you have a situation where most engineers freshly graduated (barring Computer Engineers) would view pursuing a CS-ish career as a major step back.
However, given your stated interest in other goals (e.g. cognitive science, human cybernetics/enhancements/augmentation), this may not be a bad path to take provided you are mindful of and can navigate the immediate post-graduation job interviews.
As others suggested in this thread, it seems that you're probably much more geared towards a startup culture, in which case if you've chosen your electives correctly in 3rd and 4th year you would hopefully have had the chance to focus in on data visualization and/or bioinformatics and show an impressive body of work.
If you are motivated enough you may also try to take CS & math courses in the summer, or work on design projects to build up a body of work. Ideally summers would also be taken up with internships also, but at least the studying intensity would be somewhat reduced to allow you to get ahead on other credits/courses/knowledge/portfolio.
Perhaps in your corporate ladder discussions it may be useful to mention unions vs. managers to make the point clearer. Focusing on senior managers vs. executives is a weaker description because most people see that as one unified ladder, and not two separate ladders.
Similarly: What's a corporate executive? I understand that there is a management hierarchy, but why the arbitrary distinction between a senior manager and a junior executive? Aren't those just two rungs on the ladder? In corporate-speak, an executive is called a "decision maker." What a strange term! Isn't a manager or even a lowly "individual contributor" also a decision maker -- at the scope that their own managers allow?
Yes, they are just two rungs on the (same) ladder. In corporate-speak, an executive is usually responsible for an entire function (e.g. marketing, HR, finance, engineering, IT, sales). "Junior executive" is typically an informal title bandied about in corporations with a deep management hierarchy tree. Senior Manager is usually a formal title. The distinction is less clearcut than you believe other than the formal title vs. informal social references.
I've seen many doctors who couldn't do a nurse's work.
Sure. But the System doesn't think that way. A nurse can get in trouble with the law for doing what a doctor does. can a doctor get in trouble with the law for doing what a nurse does?
it's a historical artifact
Yes, that's it.
maybe one is the manager of the other and gets to order them around.
No, most managers are not execs.
are at least partially distinct professions
I can't see much qualitative difference between the" professions" of senior manager and executive , except for this implicit presumption of agentiness.
Agreed. There is no qualitative difference between senior manager and executive beyond the increased scope of responsibilities and scale with which your decisions affect others, both of which could be attributed to the word "agentiness."
enlisted corp exists to mold subject matter experts,
I have to disagree.
Doctors are subject matter experts, and they are all officers.
Your average doughboys/grunts and their NCOs are not subject matter experts, unless you push the definition, and they are enlisted.
I believe the main distinction was primarily historical when nobles and aristocracy commanded peasants. I had always thought that commissions (from the Queen/King or head of state) used to be put on sale by the state, similar to how France at one point used to sell public offices.
In today's more modern times, one can become an officer by dint of having a post-secondary education. At least in Canada, you are typically an officer when you enlist provided you have a bachelor degree and pass certain intelligence tests.
Everybody else (NCOs or enlisted) typically become technical SMEs due to lack of upward mobility.
Doctors are SMEs, but they also have extensive post-secondary education. Average grunts and NCOs don't start out as SMEs, but given enough time (provided they survived) become an expert would have made perfect sense.
Behavioral experiments have shown that if you reward an action consistently, every time, and then stop rewarding it, animals will learn the behavior, repeat it, and then stop shortly after the rewards do.
However, if you reward an action inconsistently, and gradually decrease the frequency of rewards, many animals will continue long after the rewards have stopped.
I have neither a citation nor an excellent memory of the methodology of the experiment, but IIRC it was done with apes, levers, poker chips and grapes sometime in the late 90's.
It may be that the benefit of LessWrong skews towards autodidacts -- after all, EY himself famously is self-taught. With that said, I'd say hell yeah a studious reading of LessWrong can teach you more than a "typical core college class." Sorry to say a typical core college class is far less than it should be. There are a few excellent teachers of core classes out there, but the academic system just is not set up to provide proper incentives for introductory undergraduate teaching.
I'd agree with your exception for technical classes such as general chemistry, not closely related to the core mission of LessWrong. However, if you choose to get involved in computer science related discussions on this forum, you had better punch your weight.
A second related question is whether there's a possibility of building a college course -- or college-like course, perhaps a MOOC -- specifically revolving around mastery of the content in LessWrong (perhaps starting with the Sequences).
Aha, mastery is the question, isn't it? I have no full answer for that. I hope some other LessWrongers will have.
With that said, the stupid questions forum is potentially better for specific questions than you could get from most graduate student tutors.
Aha, mastery is the question, isn't it? I have no full answer for that.
Does the OP really mean mastery or setting one on the path to mastery? Perhaps a series of MOOC-like college courses would be more appropriate to gradually introduce and incrementally advance one's demonstrated understanding of LW content over time (and multiple courses).
Perhaps a parallel for the syllabus and starting point of a MOOC style would be Coursera's Critical Thinking or How To Argue courses.
What sealed my decision to spend my last two years of high school at the state Math and Science school instead of the same public high school I'd been attending was the realization that I was learning more from the internet than I was in classes, with the exception of a few chemistry concepts that I never thought of looking up.
When I graduated, I realized that even the Math and Science school didn't catch up with what I'd learned from the internet until the final semester. I'd still say it was worth it, and I decidedly did not optimize (mostly because I was still thinking of science more as "stuff scientists discovered" than "an insanely useful method that you should pay attention to outside of science fairs"), but college? Not so much. There were benefits, sure (I think the main one Crux left out that I completely failed to even try at is networking with professionals in a broader sense than work experience), but the most important things I learned while at college were things that came entirely from the internet or experiences on holidays. There were quite a few things I stubbornly tried not to believe (mostly things about human psychology) that were thoroughly demolished by the internet (especially when I finally got to LessWrong, but by then it was a bit late and I was already in the "No, I'm not doing this anymore" phase of college.).
In spite of all of this, I'm still frustrated with my timing; college really could have been an outstanding opportunity had I, say, read the sequences a year earlier. Attending college is an incredibly easy way to access resources like labs, equipment, experts and cheap labor (especially if you can turn a project into academic credit, which I totally could have at my college; I would have gotten credit for this terrible virtual series had I just finished the blasted paperwork. (*mumbles something about a RATIONAL! rewrite*)). For example, when it manifested that Senseg might have been overly optimistic with their predictions on getting their tactile technology on shelves early in 2013, I found myself frustrated that the technology is so simple that I could toss together a simple example over an afternoon if I had any of the resources I had since my junior year of high school, but I wound up not learning about this until the cost of going back was way too large for way too small a benefit and my resources had largely dried up.
So I absolutely agree: you can get a college education by only taking courses with Dr. Google. Other professional goals, skills, or structure-based needs might be satisfied by college, but there's no point in spending thousands of dollars just for the data in the courses.
Other professional goals, skills, or structure-based needs might be satisfied by college,
As you pointed out earlier in your response, Internet learning (and LW in particular) could have been particularly useful before attending college. I would go one step further and suggest that attending college and learning from the internet should not be mutually exclusive for those who are interesting in learning and making a potential college social life trade-off.
I currently believe that most students attending college realize that the degree itself is of primary signalling importance, even if they're not able to explicitly articulate why.
Sorry this is a small nitpick. The main searchlores author is Fravia, not Favia. He was instrumental in providing a community and rallying point for various reversing groups. He was anonymous for quite some time, until he passed away in 2009.
That seems extremely sane in retrospect; thankfully I haven't done very much work on the statistics side, and sunk costs are therefore comfortably low if I were to take that path. I'm also not worried about glamour at all in that case, since I'm the one doing the work of "make it something people will actually want to use and that is useful". There are indeed many of them--do you have a specific recommendation?
There are lots of open source research programs for graphical model stuff.
@jamesf - which one of the programs will you be picking?
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Taken for the first time. 'Twas fun.