Being Credentialed

[Hygro]

In my experience as someone whose path by great luck led me to understand fiscal economics at a high and comprehensive level, I have noticed some things about the quality of takes about my field.

While learning it, even before I got good, I discovered that the news is wrong. It got hard to read media takes, even in prestigious newspapers with economics credentialed writers, because they were wrong. Fake news. News in service of bought interests etc.

But ... the news was way more right than the un-credentialed skeptical masses who were already saying the news is wrong and not to trust it.

Think about that a second. A dumbass who doesn't know anything and then follows the first authoritative but wrong source was more right than the correctly skeptical but still dumbass.'

The good news is, while the economic takes in the news are more less incorrect, they kind of sum out to good enough. Better than our politics to begin with.


And it was turtles everywhere. The higher level, economics within universities, overall good enough, better than the news, but a lot of fake/bought/bad takes/uncritical thinking. So you keep going and you level up.

It's wrong takes all the way down. But if you're at the bottom, your wrong take is probably, very probably a much wronger take than the credentialed person who you know is wrong, one step above you in the pursuit of a topic.

And that's just once slice. FIGHT!

 

[Birdjaguar]

Getting credentials usually takes work, effort, thought and money. And even before that, a motivation to learn the subject at hand. Credentials often come through an institution or agency and therefore are "official". Some folks are smart enough and motivated enough to earn credentials through hard work and success. Credentials tend to make one appear to be an expert at something. Wow! I have an MBA I must be so smart and good at business! Well maybe. I have had certified dentists who were not very good at what they did. Trump has an MBA from Wharton and still bankrupted 3 casinos. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and founded Microsoft (in Albuquerque btw).

 

[soundjata]

I don't believe in credentials.

I believe most of us spend most of our existence craving for tokens of various forms someone else would give us.

Every human is a corporation after all

 

[Oruc]

I don't support credentialism those who cling to it must be opposed and figuratively torn down

 

[Birdjaguar]

I certainly hope my various doctors have been to medical school. I also hope the electricians I have used to fix things in my house are trained and certified. I also think it is a good thing to require police to pass training and get certified.

 

[Oruc]

Please it's just a way to ring fence jobs for the middle classes so the working class gets nothing. Look at your example police you never used to need a degree for that in this country or another nurse which also needs a degree now. It's just middle classes ring fencing jobs for their kids and that's all it's ever been

 

[Hygro]

I am legitimately open Oruc's free for all version of freedom, if it weren't for the loss of shareable efficiencies and that anti-credentials team is on the whole more wrong on every subject than the credentialed side they fight.

What's the alternative, Oruc? We tear it down, there is no more lies through titles. How do you go from there to something better than here, when there is worse than here? What is that process?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Please it's just a way to ring fence jobs for the middle classes so the working class gets nothing. Look at your example police you never used to need a degree for that in this country or another nurse which also needs a degree now. It's just middle classes ring fencing jobs for their kids and that's all it's ever been

Should doctors and plumbers be licensed?

 

[EnglishEdward]

In my opinion, medical doctors ought to be licensed.

As for plumbers, to claim to be a professional plumber,
one ought to have a licence.

But plumbing ought not to be limited to licensed plumbers.

There are plenty of general builders that can
install simple piping and change your tap.

However certification is required in the UK for gas
central heating which involves electricity, gas and water.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

I think there's an unspoken agreement that some licenses aren't any real signifier* of expertise, but rather as a government lobbying gimmick designed to reduce competition within certain industries. Like barbers? C'mon...And I'd say even restaurants needing it is really pushing it...

*really? That's marked as misspelled, CFC?

 

[Voidwalkin]

I am legitimately open Oruc's free for all version of freedom, if it weren't for the loss of shareable efficiencies and that anti-credentials team is on the whole more wrong on every subject than the credentialed side they fight.

What's the alternative, Oruc? We tear it down, there is no more lies through titles. How do you go from there to something better than here, when there is worse than here? What is that process?

I'm skeptical of credentials too.

Interestingly, where I work, they've recently restructured their maintenance department. By which, I mean the guys who maintain machinery, not janitors.

They hired graduates with masters degrees in engineering and threw them at every problem, dismissing older, much less credentialed employees who were specialized by experience to tend to our specific machines. The result has not been pretty. They take longer, more often fail, and the pslower rate of solutions means even getting their attention if a machine is performing suboptimally is impossible; they are too busy struggling to solve critical failures.

I don't see any real sign that their supposed expertise has better prepared them to fix these machines than any reasonably intelligent new guy off the street, honestly. Only experience seems to really determine who will make the effective professional.

 

[Angst]

from a lot less serious perspective on this, i share the pain. having studied music theory, most popular music takes are cringe. academically valuable because the method is about understanding the subjective response - but cringe. i have ranted before, but i won't bore this thread with examples in particular. what i will say is that most people are confidently wrong about the material conditions that make up the music they listen to, and are confidently wrong about the actual consumer segment they're part of. like, measurable things with sales numbers that takes five seconds to google. who made stuff, and how. you know. pure material, and coin. and people's personal understanding of music is usually tied to identity, so it's pulling teeth coddling people if you want to explain things they have no idea about while fully entrenched in it. you're polite and calm and a lot of people quickly get very upset.

Please it's just a way to ring fence jobs for the middle classes so the working class gets nothing. Look at your example police you never used to need a degree for that in this country or another nurse which also needs a degree now. It's just middle classes ring fencing jobs for their kids and that's all it's ever been

police education in the us is basically learning how to use a firearm accurately and lethally. half a year of combat drills, not even tantamount to a military standard of deescalation (whose purpose it is to actually kill). that's it. it's why they shoot so often and are dangerous to people they don't understand. now you want them to shoot past their targets and hit all the grandmas why exactly?

 

[Kaushad]

Distrust in credentials is making the pursuit of any formal technical training a massive gamble. What's the point if you also need to competitively sweet talk yourself up? Conman's economy.

 

[Shirotora Kenshin]

But ... the news was way more right than the un-credentialed skeptical masses who were already saying the news is wrong and not to trust it.

I‘m not sure if this is true all the time. You‘re not really ahead of someone, even if you‘re far ahead, if you were running into the wrong direction.

Also, i read in Civ6 a nice quote, it appears when you research a certain tech.

„If you don‘t read the newspaper, you‘re not informed.
If you read the newspaper, you‘re false informed.“ - I don‘t remember who it was

Other than that, i think the OP have discovered some interesting stuff, things i agree with.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I don't always understand English 100%, but from what I understand, the OP basically says:

Tin-foil hat freaks < news-informed < college graduates < fully educated professionals

Well, I would have guessed it myself.

 

[Shirotora Kenshin]

I don't always understand English 100%, but from what I understand, the OP basically says:

Tin-foil hat freaks < news-informed < college graduates < fully educated professionals

Well, I would have guessed it myself.

But i think there is a lot more in this, between the lines. Either that, or i read my own thoughts into his text.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

Credentials make sense when you're fresh out of school. After a few years you should be evaluated by your results.

Larry Summers is supposed to be a genius. Yet he's the one who convinced Clinton it was a good idea to repeal Glass-Steagall. He was also one of the main architects of the bailout, which resulted in running the deficit sky high, double digit unemployment, and a massive shift of wealth to the top 0.1%. (Although in fairness that might have been his intention all along and he isn't dumb.)

George W. Bush has two Ivy League degrees and he's a dullard.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Who are the people claiming that the credentialed should not be trusted?

 

[Angst]

Who are the people claiming that the credentialed should not be trusted?

there's an elephant in the room

 

[Voidwalkin]

Who are the people claiming that the credentialed should not be trusted?

I often do. There are legions of jobs in which the credential is essentially the company offloading the cost of training to the individual rather than bear it themselves.

That in and of itself is kinda shady...and the result is often that the credentialed individual's general knowledge lacks application to more specific tasks that require intricate knowledge.

Would I trust somebody with a degree to fix my machine over one without, that has specific training lasting three months in duration? Absolutely not. In manufacturing, at least, there is no substitute for direct training and experience.