From: Asgaard <asgaard@Cor.sos.sll.se>
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 04:07:41 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Decline of Science ?? (Was: Stinger Specs)
In-Reply-To: <199612060757.AAA23206@infowest.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.HPP.3.91.961206114031.14965A-100000@cor.sos.sll.se>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Attila wrote:

> to participate. junior colleges are graduating students who
> would not have passed out of tenth grade 20-30 years ago.

<etc. about Gen 3 (-5) as in Tim's example>

Isn't this merely an effect of mass education instead of
elite_only education? And the peak performers will do as
well as they ever did? Doesn't every generation claim that
the younger people get defective education in some sense?
The Latin speakers of Gen 1 were horrified that Gen 2 didn't
get a thorough understanding of classic Greek culture and
geometry (but started with 'sets' and 'subsets' instead). 

Science is still exploding in electro-physics, digital
programming, molecular biology and several other fields.
(I wonder what is happening in Pure Math with No Applications
- not even for Cryptography :) - these days?) And formal
education is gradually loosing to actual competence.

A real difference, though, is the relative lack of multidisciplinary
theorists nowadays, I mean with a deep understanding of several
'unrelated' fields of knowledge. Most of us with actual competence
in a certain area are SUBspecialists. This is natural since the
knowledge bases have exploded to become impossible for any one man
or woman to comprehend. An industrial cobol programmer probably
doesn't know shit about Java (perhaps a bad example; I'm not
a programmer, but I know a guy who makes a good living off cobol!)
and a PCR biochemist hacking DNA doesn't know shit about immunology
or molecular neurology. In bio-science there is a discipline
which tries to put all such kinds of specialties into a broader
understanding of the human/animal body and soul - it's called
physiology, and is a declining field with chronic lack of funds;
not much money in it. I'm sure there is a comparable discipline
of computer science that I'm not able to name (information theory??),
with similar economic problems. But there is still hope for the GMAU
(Grand Meta-Analysis of the Universe); AltaVista is a new, good start
for collecting ingredients :-)


So, I'm not worried. When I indulge in the inevitable bashing of
younger generations I stick to their bade taste of music, like rap
and hip-hop (but some acid house/techno is ok), and appearance, like
tatoos and piercing, and life-style, like working-out, cliff-climbing
and resorting to vitamins, herbal medicine and other useless stuff.
(But even so, psychodelic drugs are making a come-back which I think
is a Good Thing.)


Asgaard (Gen 2)