The University

Around August I returned to university after about a year of being a semi-dropout. Here are some thoughts I’ve had since being back.

Incentives

Whenever people asked me what I was doing during my dropout period and whether I intended to go back, my answer would usually prompt them to try and convince me that I’ll “meet like minded people and make friends” and that I’d be doing something I really enjoyed. For the most part the latter has been true (digression: is it just me or does everyone forget which is latter and which is former?)—The amount of BS work I’ve had to put up with in my course is only about 0.1% of my total hours, everything else (most of which is math) has been quite entertaining, so I can safely say that it’s much more fun than high-school. The former statement, however, has been mostly false.

From the very beginning of my semester, I noticed that though a small minority of my classmates were somewhat interested in what we were doing, even this minority treated everything as they would school work, reacting to difficulty as something frightening, always asking “Is this gonna be on the exam?”, and generally behaving as though the course is a chore. This schoolboy attitude is indicative of the fact that these people aren’t actually there because they want to be, but instead are there due to some external factor. I haven’t straight up asked anyone yet, but I have a hunch that, when questioned about it, no one really knows why they’re at university.

The cause of this ignorance is manifold: first of all, going to university or some kind of higher/special education is just what you’re “supposed to do” after finishing school. This makes the university funnel already quite large, and quite bad at selecting for people who are interested in what they’re applying for. Secondly, most are too lazy or have too high a time preference to invest some time into actually exploring the gamut of possibilities laid before them, before pulling the trigger on any one path (I used to be in this category). Unfortunately, this is rewarded by the schooling environment (and the society at large), making it far more common than it otherwise would be.

Let’s prove that last statement:

Suppose Alice is a student finishing high-school. She has already done her final exams and is in the process of applying to a university (how this application takes place is irrelevant). However, because most of Alice’s time has been spent in a high-school centered microcosm of reality, she has very little experience of anything beyond that. As a result she is unsure, at this “pivotal” moment in her life, as to what she should do. Should she continue on the path that every adult she encounters has told her is the right one and enroll in some prestigious degree at a prestigious university? Or should she take time to wait and explore her options on her own?

Alice, being a rational individual, clearly sees that proceeding on the path given to her is a sure bet, the outcome is certain, as she has been given extensive information about this path by teachers, family, friends, etc. which as far as she is concerned is true.

On the other hand, exploring on her own is not something she has been exposed to. It is not necessary for school and as a result occurs only through personal initiative, that Alice happens not to have. Therefor, having never done or otherwise heard anything about it, the outcome of this choice is uncertain. Additionally, since most if not all of her endeavours have involved adult guidance, directly through a teacher or indirectly through knowledge in textbooks, she has never had to independently decide on uncertain things, so by Lemma4 and Lemma3, she is incapable of making such decisions.

Thus, by Lemma1, she will prefer the choice of going to university now.
Qed.

This somewhat contrived proof helps to at least build a decent framework for understanding why the behaviour I’ve described is so prevalent, but it is by no means comprehensive.

Attitude

I did a very small poll where I asked a handful of my friends the following question: how many people do you know that are truly invested in what they’re doing at university? The highest answer I got was 3 (which included me and the answerer), and the others were all 0. Why is everyone comfortable with being aimless? With doing things they dislike? Prior to enrolling in Computer Science I personally fell for the uni scam and enrolled in another degree straight out of high-school. But while I was there and wasn’t sure what I actually wanted to do I still tried to get into it. I explored the field on my own time and made an effort to become interested. When I realized it wasn’t for me, I dropped out.

If no one really cares for the path they’re on, nobody works on stuff beyond what they’ve been told to (or on their own time), and everybody complains about the work, why do they think university is so important? It’s a strange form of puritanical self-flagellation. Almost as if the whole point of going is to participate in a huge circle jerk about how fierce you are for putting up with it. As James Taggart says in Atlas Shrugged.

If she enjoys it, what is there to admire about her doing it?

School has definitely succeeded in numbing people to pointless stress, and tricking them into thinking that’s a sign of virtue.

Will they ever realize this is a dead end? Oh well, Who is John Galt?

Skill

Reading this you may wonder why I am at university. I have a very clear mission: to acquire skill. Not to engage in university life or student politics, and certainly not to start an academic career. Simply to become exceptional at difficult things I enjoy doing. This has been my explicit goal since around when I started this blog. I am only at university in so far as I think it serves this goal. As soon as that changes, I’m out.

As far as I’ve seen, math education isn’t in such a bad state. But my brush with the course’s introduction to programming makes me skeptical of the other CS focused classes. The drop out rate is among the highest, up there with physics, which makes me think either it gets better and more challenging but the university is bad at selecting candidates, or it gets worse and the more talented students decide it’s a waste of time. I’d be interested to see the scores of the dropouts.

With regards to the introductory part, most of the first and second semester could be scrapped and replaced with something between nand2tetris and fromthetransistor. Subsequent semesters could focus on studying various branches of CS more deeply, in a similar first-principles style. I’m thinking From Matmul to MNIST or From the Pixel to Quake. Devise a simple version of each branch’s stack, and build the whole thing from scratch. But I doubt that an approach like this could be done when you’re busy teaching your freshmen to program in python, with 3 months dedicated to explaining basic control flow.

Overall it seems that the diagnosis I’ve heard others give is correct. The university is dead, for Computer Science anyway, It just doesn’t know it yet. By learning programming on my own I’ve already outpaced the non-math part of the curriculum. As soon as I get better at languages like coq and metamath I’ll likely be able to outpace that part too. If these languages had more online material and a greater overall web presence, formal math education would become just like learning to code. A similar approach could be taken with biology, physics, chemistry, architecture, history, mechanical and electrical engineering, linguistics—any field worth its salt. With the right tools, the means necessary for intellectual training start to look like “compiler” + “editor” + “stackoverflow”. The only barriers to entry are interest and discipline.

Universities as they exist are architecturally constrained. They can only take so many people before they become overrun by mediocrity, and have no choice but to be inclusive given the ideology of the faculty members and of those who fund them. The suckless guys get it. Catering to the mainstream is a waste of resources and results in poor quality. Set the bar high, and only take on those who are serious about learning.

This is the only way for higher education to approach the meritocratic rigor of the martial arts. The criterion has to be skill, raw skill. I don’t trust the judgement of alt-universities, and imagine you’d eventually see most of the same behaviour crop up in them also. To quote geohot

you don’t do it by defining yourself in opposition to the existing, you just build something 10x better.

Friends

I’ve had trouble sleeping. Busy mind, lots of unexpressed thoughts. The other night I went out with a good friend who I hadn’t seen in a while, and managed to free some of the ideas from my own head. I long for this kind of connection with a classmate.

Whatever aims to replace university has to foster these kinds of relationships, and create an environment where people see the mutually masturbatory whining that goes on now for what it is. Once again, martial arts set a good example. Challenging, upward-bound goals toward which students can be guided by their teachers. Competition for the approval of the mentor. Experiences around which real camaraderie and brotherhood can flourish.

From Bronze Age Mindset.

Among your instincts you will find the longing for strong friendships, that the modern evil tries to snuff out. And they have good reason to try this, because every great thing in the past was done through strong friendships between two men, or brotherhoods of men, and this includes all great political things, all acts of political freedom and power. The modern zoo wants you instead to be a weak and isolated “individual.” In most Greek cities there were the aristocratic clubs or fraternities, which were always places of great plans, great ideas and spiritual ferment. Here were made great political plans, plans of colonization and exploration of new lands and new cities, plans of conquest, actions against the designs of tyrants and plebs. Where is your bulwark today against Babylon, when all this has been made illegal for you?

[. . .]

A brotherhood of men in this form is the foundation of all higher life in general: there is a certain madness, an enthusiasm that exists also in a community of true scientists or artists, that follows this same pattern. It is totally forbidden in our time: it’s totally absent in universities, which is where science has been sequestered.

[. . .]

Where to recover true friendship then? [. . .] All you need to do is give in to desire for great things. The true foundation of the Bronze Age, of the age of great adventures [. . .] You must only embrace your own instincts with abandon and understand that in common dedication to a higher cause, a great friend is invaluable because you spur each other on and keep guard on each other in the mission.

I wish to you all great friendships.