The MIT Paradox

[tabs]

MIT is touted as a school where the best and brightest go to be educated in the sciences...and truly many of our greatest technological advances have orginated from the place.

However the place teaches one how to be quanatative in ones approach instead of qualitative....and that puts one at disadvantage. because it limits ones perspective of the universe. One has to realize the subjective is as real as the objective., and while I havn't tested the theory maybe even more real than the objective. For it is out of the dream state of imagination that the advances in technology are derived. Much like a flash card popping up from the imagination. That spark of light that illuminates the shadow.

[oldE]

Albert Einstein did much of his work on relativity, not while he was at the university, but while he was working in the patent office. His peers rejected his theories and advised him to give it up.
When education becomes a business, the joy, or spark if you will, is lost. Successful inventors, it seems to me, are those who have had an idea come to them and have a passion for the child of their mind. I fear academia does not foster many such children.
Les

[masraum]

I was wondering if Jefe was going to chime in. Go Wayne!

[slakjaw]

Tabs,

Go play with your "new toy" (very nice BTW)

You must be really bored to think up sillyness shuch as this.

[dtw]

OK I shouldn't admit this but when I was "across the river" at Boston University I was a semi-competetive "Magic: The Gathering" player. My first tournament ever was at MIT. I ended up sweeping the tournament and taking home lots of great loot. It was a high enough honor though, just to have trounced all those poindexters.

Long live the Smoot!

[einreb]

Originally posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts
a school where they teach you not so much about the actual knowledge to be learned, but the actual act of problem solving.

Thats one of the things I really appreciate about an engineering degree... problem solving skills.

I like how tabs' posts are sometimes complete rambling crap. My inital guess is that happens when he's drunk, but I wouldnt bet against him stealing some of mothers pills.

[id10t]

Heh. I had a QuakeWorld server running at MIT for years. A buddy set it up in a closet just before he finished his PhD, gave me ssh access, and didn't bother telling anyone about it. Lasted 4 years that way.

[turbo6bar]

Originally posted by einreb
Thats one of the things I really appreciate about an engineering degree... problem solving skills.

But does a degree from a better university = better problem solving skills. Problem solving skills = ability to get things done in the real world in my book. I do not practice in engineering, so I cannot comment on the usefulness of the theory and math.

[nostatic]

I've made this argument before, because as far as I can tell....it's true. I got my ph.d. in chemistry from Caltech (and of course we all know Caltech is superior to MIT ). Anywho, I now run a new media research center, and as of the first of the year will be transitioning to a research position, probably working on a disaster preparedness simulation/game. I've consulted for the CIA on terrorist issues, been a university webmaster, and who know what my next career will be. Disney was pretty hot-to-trot for me to be an ED of technology for BuenaVista TV.

Obviously this stuff had nothing to do with my graduate education, right? I mean, how does learning chemistry teach you to do all this other stuff? Well, to me it is clear/easy. I learned how to understand data, synthesize knowledge, and solve problems. At a certain level, the vehicle you use (in my case chemistry) becomes almost irrelevant.

The great schools give you the skills to solve problems, not be a fact-spitting drone.

[tabs]

I'm going to bounce you one more time..

Once you realize the subjective is as real as the objective then you can begin to apply objective methodology to the subjective. And that is in a nutshell what I do. Once you learn your ABCs the door opens and the light begins to shine through, and so much mystery falls away.

Ohhh Mothers little pills don't do anything at all......

Most Universitys train you how to think....to fill in the forms so to speak...

Emotion is never irrational, ignorance of the who, what and why causes of the emotion is what makes for irrationality.

I understand the Engineering mentality real well....Daddy describes himself as a "Scientist" but what he really is, is a Chemical Engineer/Materials Engineer/ General Engineer....he sure does know how to make a train run on time...

[nostatic]

don't confuse a scientist with an engineer. two different beasts.

[tabs]

CAL Tech ....MIT whats the diff....both turn out pointy, little egg heads....

[tabs]

Perhaps being a "Scientist" is a state of mind...Engineering is the practical application of scientific principles....specfic quanitative knowledge...for lack of a better description.

[tabs]

It's not fair...I'm too quick for U boyz....you boys are fettered to your problem solving motif...whereas I am amorphous

[Dan Mc Intyre]

...and rude as well.

[MichiganMat]

This is a somewhat interesting discussion. I graduated from U of M (which we all know kicks the crap out of CalTech) with a Computer Engineering degree. Now, when I was in school, it seemed that a lot of what we were learning was nothing more than high-end trade school skills. Kinda like being a plumber or electrician, but with code and signals.

"But where is the creativity!!@#%!# Why can't we build cool stuff? This place is for suckas!"

Without fundamentals, your creativity is can only go so far. The same is true in music and in writing IMO. I've found that Im far more creative and much more able to execute on those ideas now that I have the foundations to back it up.

Im of the opinion that school is work, the rest is play. Thats why I formed the Student Project Lab at U of M and built a place for students to come in and build all the wacky stuff they couldn't do in their dormrooms. And even with that amazing resource we only had a handful of kids who came in and used it.

As for MIT, they have some pretty kickass competitions for their students from what I've heard, and some classes that are purely imaginative and creativity based. Very cool stuff happening over there. U of M had a video games course where students were going wild with their ideas, none of which could have happened if they hadn't spent the previous 4 years sorting data, learning algorithms, and doing matrix mathmatics.

[tabs]

Originally posted by Dan Mc Intyre
...and rude as well.

Yes Yes I've heard it all before....Mother keeps reminding me that I am rude all the time...it just seems to exasperate her to no end. I frankly don't know what to do about it, I sometimes forget that I'm dealing with the simple folk, and as such get so fustrated that I forget that I must go slower with them.

[tabs]

Hey Michigan did you know Robert Lupa when going to UM...

[MichiganMat]

Originally posted by tabs
Hey Michigan did you know Robert Lupa when going to UM...

Nope, never heard. A prof?

[tabs]

Originally posted by MichiganMat


Without fundamentals, your creativity is can only go so far. The same is true in music and in writing IMO. I've found that Im far more creative and much more able to execute on those ideas now that I have the foundations to back it up.

I think that not withstanding ones taste in Art, we can all agree that Picasso was a creative guy...yet what he strove for was the freedom of expression that a 5 year old has. Which I believe is about the age where they begin to fetter people with those "Foundations" of problem solving skills.

Time Magazine once published 2 drawings side by side one by a 5 year old and the other by Picasso...it was real tough to discern who drew what. The difference was that Picassos lines were more controled. He had to work at the freedom of expression that a 5 year old has...