Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding
I don't know about that. I seem to know more about a lot of things than most people that haven't been trying to get a BS for twenty years (well, it will be twenty in September). I definitely seem to know more general Biology than my Primary Care Physician...
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So, are you trying to argue that academic success is meaningless? or what?
All I'm saying is that, taken literally,
this is a ridiculous statement:
Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding
Academic success doesn't really measure anything other than itself.
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(My emphasis, clearly.)
Which I interpreted as something like "There is absolutely no relationship between a persons intelligence or knowledge base and the degree to which they excell academically. People who excell academically are just good at taking tests and otherwise gaming the system." Which is hogwash. So, if that's not what you meant then what did you mean?
One must have a knowledge base to succeed in academics. Yes, clearly some are for instance better test-takers than others, but you aren't going to "strategize" your way into an A if you know little or nothing about the subject, unless one is taking tests of a seriously flawed design. (I.e. Who deveolped the first safe thyroidectomy? A- Puppies, B-Existentialism, or C-Dr. Theodore Kocher?) Hmm- how would one design a test to evaluate someone's test-taking acumen that didn't involve some sort of knowledge base? Interesting thought... But the things you learn in "test-taking strategy" courses are only good for a few points here and there, IMO.
Are there tools in academia? Sure- but they're still tools who know quite a bit. And, yes, there are "nutty professors" wandering around. And intelligent and accomplished people can have some very wingnut beliefs. But academic performance is nonetheless a good metric. Not perfect, because no metric is, but good.
Also, am I saying that anyone without a master's degree is an imecile? Clearly not! Getting a degree is just a way to prove- to a certain degree of confidence- a certian degree of knowledge in a subject area. So, does having a master's degree mean that you a world expert in everything? Pfft. But you
have proven some knowledge of your field. I.e. you have been
measured, to use your phraseology. Someone with a master's in biochemistry has proven that he understands the Krebs Cycle. Whether he
retains that is another matter. Can an underachieving high-school dropout be more "intelligent" or "learned" than the guy with the master's? Yes. Especially if you're not concerned with the breadth of his knowledge and less about the depth in the other guy's master's area. But he likely hasn't
proven it. And, then there are just people who are geniuses or savants. I'm sure, for instance, that there is some hacker out there who has never taken a college course in his life but knows more about system administration than someone who just decided to get a comsci bachelors because he thought it would make for a decent career but who really doesn't have any interest in it nor talent for it.
Looked at another way- you have a group of ten people with comsci degrees and ten without.
Knowing nothing else about them, from which pool would you rather randomly pick someone to run your server? Aha, see- the academic "measuring" does mean something, doesn't it?
Anyway, even if you have been failing classes (I have no idea why it's taking you 20 years, and will not speculate) you're still making the error of normalizing yourself. You may not be normal. So, yes, I'll stand by my statement that in general those who get high scores deserve them- that grades are not distributed in a pseudorandom manner. Well, except in the humanities, of course... :P
I'd say that your claim to have better biology knowledge than your doc is also specious to the point. Clearly. First, N=1 is a bad data set. More importantly, we can't
all be experts at
everything. (Except in GURPS: Black Ops, of course.) You're always going to be able to find
something you know more about than any other random person- especially since I know you to be a typical GURPS forums trivia-sponge.
P.S- Medical school doesn't have a biology class, though most do have two semesters of biology as an admission requirement, and considering what
my freshman bio was like it isn't surprising that your doc doesn't know what a pinniped is. Freshman bio is basic stuff- cells, etc. What was his bachelors degree? I had a guy in my medical school class who was a violin major (and played professionally before deciding to go to med school). How much general biology do you suppose he knows?