Lasting novels don’t come from literature departments. Successful businesses don’t come from business schools. Scientific revolutions don’t come from research universities. Get your education, then get moving. Find the loners tinkering at the edge.
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Replying to @naval
I understand the point here, but this phenomenon varies from department to department depending on how frequently the professors of x are also the best practitioners of x.
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Departments fall on a continuum in this respect, from literature, where almost no professors are among the best practitioners, through CS where a significant number are, to math, where most are.
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So while it's true that only a microscopically small fraction of great literature is produced by literature professors, a lot of the most important new math comes from math professors.
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Incidentally, *this* is the reason you shouldn't major in English or business in college. It's not that literature and business aren't important so much as that the people teaching them in college are no good at them.
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Replying to @paulg
The better your feedback loop, the better your work. Businesses have the market. Novels have the readers. Science has experiments. It’s when the feedback loop is a small group of bosses or peers that quality falls apart.
6 replies 36 retweets 235 likes -
Replying to @naval
I think the critical difference is not the feedback loop but the kind of work you're judged on. Literature professors write papers about literature, whereas math professors write papers consisting of math.
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Replying to @paulg
Which means that the best way to learn to do something is to do it, or to apprentice under someone actually doing it (not talking about it or writing about it).
10 replies 43 retweets 257 likes
The trouble, though, is that because of the rise to dominance of mass public education, apprenticeship (which, as a cultural tradition, is susceptible to loss if abandoned for a generation or two) has declined. So fewer and fewer master practitioners are expert mentors.
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