We use college for too many purposes

In my view, our focus on college stems from our habit of using college for three related but different purposes:
– general intellectual training
– elite selection and preparation
– job-specific training

If we were to separate these functions, we would probably be better off.

To begin with, I doubt there would be much of a demand for post-secondary schools focused on the first function (general intellectual training,) but perhaps some of the hardest-core intellectuals would be into it. Becoming smarter and more knowledgeable in general is a worthy thing, but it should be possible to do it on the cheap. I doubt we’d subsidize it much, if at all.

The second function (elite selection and training) is why I think we focus so intently on colleges as they are now. We use them as gatekeepers to high position, the big jobs with high status and usually high pay. But does it really have to take four years, or even more, to sort out the capable from the nearly capable? The military doesn’t run Officer Candidate School for four years; it’s more like half a year. I can accept that selecting the people who are going to (or are likely to) run the show is worth doing carefully, and that there are some things worth teaching them. And of course since people are status-hungry, competition for position at whatever Social OCSes we run is going to be keen. But whatever else these institutions are, they are going to be small, because the elite pretty much by definition has to be small. Separated out, I would expect this function could be served in a year or so, and might enroll 10% of each cohort. Maybe 20% if we’re feeling exceptionally egalitarian and want to cast the net wide.

And finally we arrive at the job-specific training. This is what most people actually need, but it’s also what we’re not doing a particularly good job of delivering. To begin with, there is no particular reason this function has to be combined with the other two. We don’t need to educate the folks who want to be writers and editors together with the folks who want to be data scientists and engineers. Their job functions have very little overlap, meaning their curricula should have very little overlap, so their education could easily be done in separate institutions. And job training programs can be diverse. Some jobs are simple and require no training at all. Others are very complicated, and can easily take close to a decade of training to master. And if we were to separate the three functions, only a few of the job training institutes would look and operate much like traditional colleges.

But ultimately, we are so focused on college, and so willing to spend money on them, because we are confounding three quite different purposes that current colleges serve: general intellectual training, elite selection and preparation, and job-specific training. If we are to separate the functions, the first one would probably mostly wither, the second would be short and specific (and hence not too expensive), and the third would have its proper place as the destination for nearly everybody.

What Star Wars VII should have been

I thought The Force Awakens had some strong parts, like the attack on Death Star III and the engaging trio Rey/Poe/Finn. But it wasn’t the story I wanted to be told. I didn’t need to see A New Hope again. I would much rather have seen the original characters age and grow, and face new challenges.

Don’t show me Leia leading a rag-tag rebellion. Show me an ageing professional politician wrestling with the impossible demands of a thousand worlds.

Don’t show me Han working as a smuggler. Show me an old warrior bored out of his skull serving as Minister of Whatever, yearning for something else, anything else.

And throw in a Luke who after decades of devotion to the Force sees everything from every perspective all the time, to the point that he is barely even human any more.

Then have the New Republic face some hammer-blow of a challenge, where things go so badly wrong that these senior figures are inadvertently on the front lines, letting them have one last big adventure before the fight is taken up by younger hands.

That would have been a film worth watching.

The Secret

The girl was on time for her appointment. She walked into my office and sat down in my guest chair.  Girl? Woman? She was younger than my daughters, anyway.

"Thanks you for agreeing to see me."

"We don't hear from your organization often. Your request was, shall we say, intriguing."

The slightest of smiles. "We have a problem for you."

"We specialize in solving them. How can we be of assistance?"

"We have a secret that must be kept for a long time, and then revealed to everyone."

"What sort of secret?"

"I am not allowed to disclose that. Not to you. Even I know only a portion of it."

"I'm going to need at least a hint or two."

"Very well. To speak very metaphorically, we have struck a spark. The spark will grow into a fire. The fire will burn a land bare. And in the bare land, a precious thing will grow."

"And of these the secret is ... ?"

"That the spark has been struck, and the fire is coming."

"And why does that need to be a secret?"

She looked away. "Because striking the spark was nearly unconscionable, and if people know the fire is coming they will try to fight it and might conceivably succeed. Then the precious thing would be lost."

"How long must the secret be kept?"

"Until the precious thing appears."

"How long?"

"Three hundred to five hundred years. The interval is uncertain. But there will be clear signs."

"And once the precious thing appears, the secret should be revealed?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because people may misunderstand the significance of the precious thing. They will need to know why it appeared in order to know what to do with it."

I shifted in my seat. "How big is the secret?"

"Excuse me?"

"Is the secret the size of a deck of cards or the size of a super-tanker?"

"The secret is an explanation. Typed, it would fit on three or four pages."

"Who knows the secret now?"

"A dozen or so people in my organization. No one outside it."

"Can they be trusted?"

"Yes. We are confident they will not reveal it."
She seemed very certain. "That's not what we need help with."

"Can anyone in my organization learn the secret if we help you?"

"No. I suppose we can't conceal that there is a secret, but even you must not learn the details."

"So, to summarize, you need help keeping a modest bit of information secret for perhaps five hundred years and then revealing it to everyone. Is that a fair summary?"

"Fair enough."

I sat back and steepled my fingers. "We should be able to help you. It will take some time. You know our prices?"

She stood up. "Yes. As you know our resources. Thank you for this meeting." And with that, she walked out.

Higher education industry headed for trouble

A college education costs more than ever.

But the actual work of instruction is increasingly being done not by actual scholars but by adjunct instructors who are paid by the class at starvation rates.

And the student body at third-tier schools is often just plain not ready for traditional college classes.

So, colleges are charging ever more, and offering an increasingly debased product, to people who aren't actually able to receive it. Lovely industry, really.

I think the questions worth asking at this point are:
a) How long can this go on?
b) When it can't, what will happen?

Interestingly, some top companies have dropped their requirements for a college degree.

Squeezing Dune

Dune, the 1965 SF novel by Frank Herbert, has been adapted for the screen twice: first as a feature film by David Lynch in 1984 and later as a miniseries by John Harrison in 2000. A third effort is currently underway.

It's hard to squeeze Dune into a single movie. The book is a good 500 pages long, which fits better into three movies than into one. But if you are determined to fit it into a single movie, it should be possible. Here's one way:

ACT 1 (30 min) Start in Arrakeen, with the Atreides already in charge. Leto is the kind master, Paul his formidable young son. Their rivals are the Harkonnen, a nasty bunch (they abuse servants). Introduce Arrakis as the source of the Spice, possibly as part of Jessica's training of Paul in esoteric disciplines. The Fremen are mentioned, but as a minor impoverished rabble. Meanwhile, the Emperor, the Space Guild, and the Harkonnen meet and agree to replace the Atreides in order to maintain control of the Spice. The Harkonnen attack, Leto dies, and Paul and his mother flee to the desert. End with Paul looking back and vowing revenge.

ACT 2 (30 min) Paul and Jessica encounter the Fremen, and are taken in by them. Paul tests himself against young Fremen fighters and is impressed; they are very good, but he is better. He accompanies them on a raid against the Harkonnen, and is again impressed. He joins the Fremen, and becomes a worm-rider. He learns the true size of the Fremen from seeing one of their secret meetings. Jessica speaks of the Voice from the Outer World prophesy. Following Jessica's advice, Paul decides to lead the Fremen against the Harkonnen. Meanwhile, the Harkonnen are making a cruel mess of Arrakis.

ACT 3 (30 min) Paul campaigns to become the Fremen war-leader. This effort is shown as a montage of knife fighting and speeches before increasingly large gatherings. Harkonnen cruelties continue. The Emperor announces plans for a visit. Paul, Jessica and Stilgar begin training the troops, incorporating her and Paul's esoteric training. They wait for a sandstorm and attack in force with wormriders. Fight scenes between Fremen and Hakonnen. The fight goes to the Fremen. The Emperor flees in a ship. Paul addresses the crowds of Arrakeen from a balcony proclaiming a new day on Arrakis, with the natives in charge.

I think that could work. But some elements does get left out, given the compressed time-line: the spice as a mutagen, the nature of the Bene Gesserit and their goals, the Kwisatz Haderach, Paul's Harkonnen heritage, Paul's duel with Feyd-Rautha, and everything about Liet-Kynes.

Why might an atheist be trustworthy?

One of the charges that's sometimes leveled at atheists and agnostics is that they cannot be trusted to do the right thing because ultimately they don't have any reason to fear consequences when they do wrong. If no one's watching, the thinking goes, people steal. For believers there is always Someone watching but for unbelievers, there isn't. Therefore unbelievers cannot be trusted to do the right thing. This is a serious claim, and deserves a serious answer.

To begin with, is religious belief sufficient for moral behavior? Are all believers virtuous? No. Visit any of our prisons, or watch any program about them, and you'll see plenty of religion there. There's no shortage of God-talk and God-work in prison. If Jesus is everywhere, he seems to make a special point of visiting every jail-house in the land. So belief is not sufficient for moral behavior.

But if it isn't sufficient, might it be necessary? Does only belief motivate people to do the right thing? A believer who does something because he believes God will punish or reward him is motivated by feelings of fear (of consequences) or greed (for reward.) Greed and fear are certainly feelings that drive behavior. But they are not the only ones. Think of a mother comforting a crying child when she could just as well have let him cry himself out. She's doing it out of love. Or think of a soldier staying up through the night on guard when he knows damn well sarge is fast asleep in his bunk. He's doing it out of feelings of duty. Love and duty are feelings that can drive people to do the right thing, quite apart from fear and greed.

The feelings of duty can be specific or general. They can motivate the soldier to do his duty to his unit or corps, but they can also apply to larger duties, including the duty to do what is right in a broader sense. And it is these feeling of duty that an atheist can feel just as keenly as any believer, and which may lead him to do what is right.

Will they necessarily do so? No. Some real scoundrels don't have these feelings of duty. And even for people who do have them, they sometimes aren't sufficient to overcome temptation. But then the fear and greed that are supposed to motivate a believer aren't always sufficient either. Both believers and unbelievers may do wrong. My point is simply this: fear and greed are not the only feelings that may motivate people to do what is right. A feeling of duty may do so also. An atheist may feel a duty to do what he believes is right just as keenly as the most pious believer. And that's why an atheist may be trustworthy.

Why blunt criticism is often a bad idea

Sometimes it is tempting to just speak your mind . That's the honest thing to do, right? No reason to dissemble like a courtier; just say what you mean.

Unfortunately speaking plainly and directly in all cases runs into some pretty hard cultural boundaries. What you say and what people will interpret you as saying can be quite different. This will seem patently obvious to some people. I will explain it from first principles because it is not obvious to everyone.

The way the social protocol works around here (US/Canada) is that it is just fine to be directly critical of others if you are talking downward socially. Boss to subordinate, parent to child, teacher to student, it's just fine. But it's not really OK peer-to-peer or upward. And if you insist on being bluntly critical peer-to-peer or upward, what you are saying carries the additional meaning that the person is a real bozo or messed up really badly, so you are justified in talking down to them, as a sensible knowledgeable person dealing with a fuck-up.

That said, it is possible to convey criticism sideways or up, but it requires some social tap-dancing to emphasize that you are only telling the person they are mistaken, not that they are laughably hilariously wrong. The simplest of them is understatement. Compare "That doesn't look right to me. Could you check that it's doing what you expect?" to "No. That's wrong."

Next time you are tempted to be bluntly critical, keep this in mind. Your message may be taken as much more severe criticism than you intend.