Re: [Gnu-arch-users] OT: trained dependency

[Thomas Lord]

    > From: Andrew Suffield <address@hidden>

    > > They're not underprepared; they're overprepared.  In fact, they're
    > > cooked to the point where all the juice has evaporated.  Japanese
    > > students know how to sit at desks, look at books, and memorize huge
    > > amounts of material.  They have huge amounts of information stored,
    > > but no concept of how to wrap that expressive material around original
    > > thoughts.

    > This is the normal perception of graduate students by industries
    > everywhere. Probably deservedly; most people have no more than a
    > handful of original thoughts in their entire lives.

    > I have never seen any education system which performed appreciably
    > better at this. As best I can tell, it's normally left to natural
    > aptitude. I've never seen any evidence that there is a practical way
    > to teach this sort of thing.


Where did /you/ come from?  Are your gifts and advantages purely
genetic?  Or did you luck into a circumstance wich might have some
more "commodifiable" properties?

Your fetishsizing of "original thoughts" is also problematic.   We've
known that interesting original thoughts can be systematically and
reliably cranked out, nearly assembly-line fashion, since Fluxus and
Eno, at least.   They are hardly a scarce resource.  The problems of
innovation are not a scarcity of original thoughts.

"hopefully the most obscure reply I'll make all week",
-t