I was hanging out with a girl today who researches cancer. I tried talking to her about Peto's Paradox...

I was hanging out with a girl today who researches cancer. I tried talking to her about Peto's Paradox, "Why don't whales get cancer?", and she didn't know what I was talking about.

I've tried asking a girl taking psychology who her favourite psychologist is, and got the answer "Freud". I once asked a girl taking linguistics if she'd heard of Steven Pinker, and she hadn't. And numerous other examples.

Why are all people such dolts? Why do we bother making people get these degrees? If people who have decided to give four years of their life to a topic are less interested in it than I am, then where do I find someone who isn't?

Other urls found in this thread:

slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/14/living-by-the-sword/
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240769/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

You came to the right place.
Just about everyone here will never progress as much as those people you mentioned, yet will be able to converse with you on a more advanced level.

>Why are all people such dolts?
You expected women to know, dolt.

I can't really say men have done better desu. I've also had a male linguistics student say "No, totally, I'll look this Pinker guy up." When I was in engineering physics and I tried to explain many-worlds theory to my classmates, I got a "Woah lol mr weird-idea guy over here." Computer engineers could give a shit about the singularity; etc.

It's just that I'm more bothered when women fail to show intellectual compatibility, since I'm a heterosexual male, and so I don't really care if some random dude isn't compatible with me.

>engineering physics
>I'm a heterosexual male
Get your story straight

woman hate thread

desu

Whales don't get cancer?

Not as much as humans, contrary what you'd expect.

slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/14/living-by-the-sword/

Don't ever make me read something that retarded again

The bar for university admission has been set too low and the demand for university education has grown too high. People are getting degrees in stuff that they only have a passing interest in and are only concerned with nailing decent grades. It's depressing how many people do not read anything beyond their assigned coursework even at a casual level and have no compunction to whatsoever. The days of somebody getting a degree in X and learning the field inside outside are long gone. People just want to get good grades, get a comfy job and be done with it.

And of course in the current economy all of the aforementioned types are enrolling in graduate programs en masse with the same mentality. Shudder.

Tbf ive asked ai/machine learning ppl on here if they know geoffrey hinton and got only 1 positive answer.

why would you ask someone who their favorite psychologist is? what kind of question is that? I think anyone trying to major in psychology would think thats a pretty stupid fucking question, you should take a class or just do some online reading before you autism in public you fucking moron

becuase people see intelligence as a social commodity.
so they want to appear smart for social gain and thats pretty much it.

which interestingly enough is what college is really about. Making connections,networking, getting together to work on projects, and finding your future wife/husband if you haven't already found them in highschool.

>When I was in engineering physics and I tried to explain many-worlds theory to my classmates, I got a "Woah lol mr weird-idea guy over here."
That's because it's not a real theory, just some popsci bullshit.

>Computer engineers could give a shit about the singularity;
That's because it's some popsci bullshit.

here i was thinking i was spending money and losing sleep to learn more about the trade i want to work in and build a career off of, and in the process earning a degree which said jobs will be able to look at and determine I have a certain amount of knowledge around the field. silly me

so let me ask you.
how much are you "ALL ABOUT YOUR TRADE"
do you just want to be succsesful
or do you actually see some merit in the field you studying other than it will make you rich?

how obsessed are you with said trade user?

STEMcuck detected, now you know why all the other majors look down on you

This, I'm getting a master's in engineering just to keep my job and hopefully get a better one. I don't have the time or energy to study beyond the basic coursework or anything not directly related to my research

What's wrong with it?

tangential to op topic. Is the idea that you get an undergrad to work in that field prevalent in America? In Canada everyone who isnt a moron realizes that because of academic inflation an undergrad is valuable as a licence to learn, in effect a proof that you are at least a somewhat capable human being.

>Why don't you know about some shit in whales
Cancer is a large field man, not everyone looks at how whales work.

They don't necessarily teach you famous/popular stuff in your degree. Like I'm in environmental science and they don't teach me anything about David Suzuki or Greenpeace or whatever, they just stick to the actual content that needs to be taught.

Perfect example; I worked with a dude who was an environmental engineering grad student from Stanford. So top notch. He definitely knew a lot of stuff, but still surprised me.

Like, he hadn't heard the anecdote about how half of the energy a car consumes in its lifetime is just in a process of making it. Would you have known that? Is that surprising?

Or a big one: I mentioned studies about the odds of global warming exceeding certain temperatures. Eg, there was one which showed a 9% chance of a 6 degree increase, but later I'd heard newer models which adjusted that down to 5% chance...

And he hadn't heard of ANY of this. He was like, "That's interesting, I'm not really sure what the odds are, I'd have to look into it..." These seem like the most important findings coming out of climate change -- what are the odds of catastrophe -- and he hadn't really thought about it. Does that surprise you?

>Why are all people such dolts?
>people


Its ok user. This is a safe space. We all know you're talking about women.

My gf's friend is a CS graduate from UCLA who works at Facebook and she doesn't know what RAM is.

Whales dont get cancer?

t. phd in biochemistry

>want to install Call of Duty on my PC
>doesn't work
>send email to CS Prof from local uni
>doesn't even know what CoD is
I feel you mate.
Academia is filled with retards.

Because society has determined that college degrees are the new high school degrees and you will be left behind without one.

[spoiler]Soon, we'll even be left behind with one

yeah but the point is people have degrees they're not interested in, of course they are able to learn the material

Everything can get cancer if it lives long enough, what are you even on about

Not at all because I haven't heard of either of those things either. I think that first thing is just a way of saying that it take a lot of energy to make a car and those odds studies are are really highly debatable so they don't teach it specifically. That's what I think.

>Angry that your peers don't give a fuck about popsci, and instead focus on actual science.

>Why don't whales get cancer?
They do, you goddamn idiot.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240769/

They do, OP is just stupid.

>Because society has determined that college degrees are the new high school degrees and you will be left behind without one.
Fucking THIS.
I'm pretty worried about the free CC movement here in CA, if it happens then there will be a huge fucking influx on CC students and most classes will be full, higher taxes, etc.

New York went full retard and so did San Francisco.
IIRC another state joined the movement too.

Okay, that is a nice opinion and certainly some nice feels there but you have to remember that the "huge fucking influx on CC students" are human beings too. Simply people, trying to compete. Trying to rise up like you are doing. If you are afraid that more people will be joining the battleground then I must assume that is because you are shit at whatever you are doing and you are banking on just not having competition at all. Well, welcome to the real world. Go cry somewhere else.

the point is that cancer is not related to # of cells, if it was then all whales would have cancer.

google Peto's Paradox

Yeah I get it.
But it gets really shitty when one of your major's classes like ODE get full as fuck and you have to wait another semester for the next class to open because there's a huge waitlist, last day to add passes and you never got in the class anyway.
And you'll need a miracle if you want to get in again because since CC is free, you can just take it again if you failed anyway and then waiting almost a whole year to get that class to achieve your Associate's a fuckton of time later than the expected year.

And you cannot get professors just like that either, there is no solution to those problems; not everyone with a Master's will teach, or ever think about it.
As well the PhDs will do their best to not teach at a CC for obvious reasons, and I know there are exceptions here and there but there won't be enough.

ask me how i know you are petit bourgeois?

less than 38% of the people in the US have a degree of ANY kind. this includes fly-by-night degree mills and trade school associates degrees. having a degree from a legit 4 year institution, let alone one from a top 100 school, is actually still uncommon. you guys are probably just living in a place where a lot of your neighbors, friends, etc. are all college educated.

Veeky Forums is a bunch of morose memesters.

>where do I find someone who isn't?
In the graduate (not undergrad) programs at elite schools such as Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Oxford, etc.

In other words, you're around stupid people because you're mediocre yourself.

That's fucking jokes, in Canada it's about 50%.

>petit bourgeois

What a retarded fucking phrase. Wouldn't petit bourgeoisie just also be petit proletariat?

>wants a "smart girlfriend"
>Heterosexual
Literally pick one. The single most emasculated trait

This.

Nigga I'm the 2nd user.
The point of higher education is to go beyond than the normal and climb the latter to the higher class, not every fucking body should get to higher education, this could fuck up a lot of salaries and jobs in the US and make everyone poor either way.

Have you ever questioned why many businesses want more STEM degrees? So these degrees become as worthless as a humanities major.
If you have more people with degrees, then everyone becomes worthless.

And the best things to do to stop this is to not encourage people to be in your major, do the same "just b urself and major on what you like" and shill for liberal arts/general education.

If you want to have a 30k salary as an engineer because you wanted to give everyone the "opportunity", then that's your fucking problem senpai.

not at all. higher education is a mark of the upper class. its why even ludicrously rich people send their children to school. there are tons of ways to just make money, a lot of them more lucrative than spending 4 years getting a degree. but its not about the money. its about not being a fuckin' pleb.

>More lucrative
But are they better?

But there are millions of people with college degrees that are poor. I don't think that having a higher education makes you upper class or even "petit bourgeoisie".

>But there are millions of people with college degrees that are poor.

there are billions of people in the world. the unemployment rates and median salaries for a degree holder are well above the poverty line and into middle class. degree holders are objectively better off.

This, you expressed what I was thinking perfectly. Seriously, random/interesting trivia != Intelligence or your competence in a field.

>emasculated
What do you mean? Do you understand how shitty it is having a retarded girlfriend? Do you thinkits

>TEE HEE FUCK ME SILLY!

No man. It's "Oh hey I'm 10k in credit card debt" and other retarded shit like that.

>implying just because most people don't have degrees means degree inflation isn't a thing are that a college degree is increasingly depreciating in value

I mean, it's not popsci, but it's not a fact either

>Why don't whales get cancer

That's because they have a shit ton of tp53 genes right?

It's because you seem like a curious level headed dude that's interested in the ideas no matter how out-dated or applicable they are, however most people are not like that. People just want to get degrees for a job or prestige, academia is no longer about truth seeking. Real life is all about utility and practicality :)

See

Wow sexist much?

Do I smell... selection bias?

OP, the truth is most undergrads from non top unis are retarded. They usually enter uni with just a passing idea of what their degree is (specially stem) and very little experience with any of its methods.

For instance, why the fuck do we still have calculus and algebra 1 classes for pure math majors? If you can't handle basic analysis/set theory you shouldn't be doing math at all.

yeah but those poor people with degrees feel superior to those without degrees even if they make less than them. Met tons of people like this

>petit bourgeois
Jesus fucking christ why can't the english language get it's own damn words for stuff that exist instead of stealing everything

you came here expecting different, however I am here to inform you that 60-80% of this board are mindlessly incompetent, it's just the way the interest lottery works

english has always been a mutt language