there's a dangerous moment of moral hazard in learning about a topic where you know enough to phone it in and fool 90% of even informed people, but not enough to add any value... a lot of people settle into that zone. It's like the grifter side of imposter syndrome
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Imposter syndrome: Oh shit, I don't know enough to add value, what if someone finds out?
Grifter syndrome: Oh shit, I don't know enough to add value, but looks like I can get them to pay anyway!
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It's related to, but not the same thing as, Dunning-Kruger effect. Happens at the same stage of the learning curve, but the D-K clueless typically don't realize there's more to know/learn and stall out due to lack of aptitude
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There's also one where you're "just good enough in physics" to *barely make it* through a phd program (Or, say, Caltech), but where it takes so much out of you that you've become basically destroyed afterwards
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I'm a generalist; I specialize in this. I try to be careful not to fool people, though, and promote actual experts rather than pretend to be one.
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Lotta people just need to stop spending money on shit that doesn't add value. It's hard to blame people for grifting when big corporations and governments are willing to pay for it. Perverse incentives all around.
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But look at it this way. The existence of sufficient grifters show that if even a small % who graduate that, the scene would do very well for itself. They're the canary in the goldmine.
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Can I add value? seems like an excellent litmus test. In engineering the answer is pretty clear cut wonder what a general version of this would be
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