What's the point of a PhD?

Reading an old Slate article about why MOOCs (online classes) devalue the importance of a one-on-one relationship between professors and students, I have a few thoughts:

Sure, in the ideal case there is this fantasy that undergraduate classes are tight seminars, one-on-one with a professor who pushes you to learn more, who customizes everything to your needs. In reality, the vast majority of undergraduate education is more like the broadcast of a MOOC, a professor and his staff piping information out to students, who take it all in and produce homework assignments.  The TA (or, sure, in smaller classes, the professor) grades the assignments, and in the best classes the professor himself looks carefully at the student's output and critically evaluates it.

But Is society really better off with a group of "insiders", who learn from each other, and then produce theses and papers that nobody will ever, ever read. What percentage of PhD theses are ever read again, after the degree is granted? I bet the overwhelming majority are are never, ever checked out of the library, completely irrelevant to everyone for all time in the future. At what point is an academic PhD just a glorified blogger?  While it may be useful for them and their tight circle of colleagues, is what they're doing the most efficient way to expand knowledge?  

Compare a traditional academic experience with something like http://www.fsmitha.com/, a blog written by a “amateur” who wrote more than 1M words of history.  I can imagine a future where everything is a seminar.  You read  information jointly with a whole bunch of others who are exploring the same idea, and you need to produce new information, interacting with others who pursue the same goal. That’s what I’d like to see.

 

Hold the ice

 
Food vendors in the US seem to put ice into every drink, whether you want it or not — a habit that has long annoyed me. Don’t people realize that melted ice = water? We say “watered down” to describe something that is less than pure, and that’s exactly what you do when you dump ice into something. So why do food vendors routinely stuff extra ice (water) into our drinks?

Note that this is a uniquely American ritual. In other countries, you have to ask for ice — and in many cases they’ll look at you strangely when you do. When a US flight attendant asks me what I’d like to drink, I always say “X with no ice”. On non-US airlines, it’s the opposite: if you want your drink extra-chilled, you’ll need to request it.

I think this habit of dumping ice into everything started with the invention of low-cost artificial refrigeration in the early 1900s. Before that, ice in the summer was a big deal: somebody needed to carefully preserve ice, usually underground, from the winter, an expensive luxury item that literally melted away over time. Ice was a status symbol, and somehow it remains that way.

So, thanks for offering, but no thanks.

(Photo: Pierre Rennes)

[book] War! What Is It Good For? by Ian Morris

As with his seminal “Why the West Rules”, Stanford Professor Ian Morris’ new book makes you repeat “Aha!” as he explains the big picture of history with remarkable ease. Instead of simply telling a story, he gives the rules behind the story: how societies naturally evolve, almost inevitably, in fixed directions.  “Maps, not chaps”, as he summarizes it: geography matters more than great people in how history unfolds.

This time Morris presents the history of warfare, and how — bad as it is for the people involved at the time — normal people are better off when larger “Leviathan” states incorporate smaller, weaker political units. The Roman Empire, cruel as it was much of the time, provided law and order, secure trade routes, and long-term stability that ultimately brought more good than bad. The same goes, with rare exceptions, for all great empires, including the modern world’s Pax Americana.  The ironic paradox of history is how, the more swords you have, the more plowshares you get. When you’re strong enough that nobody can challenge you, generally nobody does, and the overall result is peace.

It leads to a cycle that, in Morris' telling, ultimately seems so predictable: for example, Britain’s role as globocop in the late 1800s slowly ended due to its own success in creating vigorous new markets, which later became rivals, especially Germany. Similarly, China’s rise — tied as it is with the US economy — can only weaken America’s undisputed globocop role, especially in strategic southeast Asia. How will it end?

One hint comes from the tectonic shifts identified in the National Intelligence Council Global Trends 2030:

• growth of the global middle class
• wider access to lethal and disruptive technologies
• shift of economic power toward the East and South
• unprecedented and widespread aging
• urbanization
• food and water pressures
• return of American energy independence

Combining these trends, he references Ramez Naam’s books, Nexus and Crux  as examples of how the merging of computers and people may have an affect on the future. We’ll be fine if the US maintains its globocop role till then; not so much otherwise.

Let's hope.

[book] Last Days of the Inca

Having just attended the excellent Peru exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, I was inspired to finally read this highly-recommended book detailing the Spanish conquest. If you've read the opening chapter of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, you already know the story: How on earth did an invading army of only 168 Spaniards defeat an army of 80,000 warriors who were defending on their home turf an empire of ten million people? The invaders had no knowledge of local geography or food supplies and no backup force. How did they do it?

Francisco Pizarro was a poor, rural Spaniard who arrived in the New World only a few years after Columbus’ initial landing, but by 1513 was together with Balboa at the first European sighting of the Pacific Ocean. After hearing of Cortez’ conquest of Mexico in the 1520’s, Pizarro teamed up with Diego de Amalgro to form a company intent on finding another empire. After one failed trip south, they made a more successful visit to the village of Tumbez, where they found natives who seemed to have access to lots of gold and silver trinkets – an incentive for the Spaniards to keep trying. Pizarro traded with these natives for two young boys, who he sent to Spain to learn Spanish and become interpreters for his next voyage.

The big expedition happened in 1531, with168 Spanish recruits (most of whom had never been soldiers before), 100 horses, and an assembly of others including African slaves, "merchants" (?), and women servants. Almagro stayed behind to raise more money and troops while Pizarro took the force into the heart of the Inca empire.

To make a long story short, Pizarro and his men overcame the odds through repeated use of trickery (to kidnap and kill the reigning emperor), and careful “divide-and-conquer” techniques (appointing a puppet emperor). But the Spaniards got carried away, and soon the “puppet”, Manco Inca, led a full-scale backlash that almost restored the Inca empire.

But the Inca suffered from two fatal errors in their counter-attacks: the first was, in their illiteracy, to miscalculate the importance of writing, thinking that captured, valuable documents would “send a message” if handed over, covered in blood, to besieged Spaniards, when in fact they carried valuable intelligence that saved the day. The second mistake was their habit, in battles, of sending the most important, most seasoned general to lead the charge, thinking that would be a symbol of bravery to the hesitant troops following him when in fact it merely demonstrated his irreplaceability when he inevitably was killed.

Reading this with modern eyes, I can’t help think how awful were these European invaders, who committed so many atrocities, against the natives and against themselves. Ultimately nearly all the key Spanish leaders were killed in various civil wars amongst themselves; Francisco Pizarro himself was assassinated by disillusioned supporters of his former business partner.

Still, the defending Incas were no saints either, themselves guilty of unspeakable cruelties against those who resisted their own conquests, just ninety years before the Europeans arrived. Ultimately, history proceeds in many, sometimes ugly directions and it’s pointless to guess what might have happened. But maybe there is a lesson in here about the value of bravery, of hutzpah, in the face of seemingly ridiculous odds and how that can make all the difference between being a conqueror and the conquered.

Great Spragues in history

Too bad that, as far as I know, I am no relation to Frank J. Sprague (1857-1934), an assistant to Thomas Edison. According to the Edison Tech Center: 

Edison's primary interest was in light, while Sprague was interested in power. He resigned his position after about a year and started the Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Company in 1884. During the next two years, Sprague produced a number of inventions of major significance.

Eventually Edison Electric ended up using so many of Sprague's inventions that they decided to merge the two companies into one: General Electric.

How's that for imagination at work?