You completely missed his point. Solving a problem is not good enough to be good at something, you need to understand the entire system to make something be good.

Here's another analogy of what he was going after. You may not need to be a physicist to be an efficient driver, but you best know some physics if you want to not be the idiot who put a wind-turbine on their car to get "free energy".

Anyone who only understands their own set of problems cannot properly solve anything, except by blind luck. You must also understand other people's problems. No one system is entirely isolated from all others. The more understanding of other systems, the better your understanding of your own system.

Or cost of living is crazy low, like around here. When the cost of living is low, the pay is also low, but that's Ok, because money has relative value. $600/month will get you a nice house around here, and you can get anywhere in town in under 10 minutes.

Ahh yes, but that's because it's a perception issue. Most people do not realize when they do this, that's the issue. I can assume I don't do this often, but even then, I'm probably wrong. At least I am aware of the issue and don't write it off as "I never have this issue". People who think they are immune are the ones most likely to be affected.

There are other ways. I find /. and other sites great, but they're still not as good as the experience I had in school.

As well as it may have worked for you, for most, it won't end as well. I also agree that even college is slow paced for learning, but not everyone can learn really fast in all subjects. My upper level classes had quite a quicker pace than the lower level, but most of the "baddies" were weeded out by Jr year.

I would argue that I learned more in my Generals than my Major. They strengthened my critical thinking quite a bit. I'm used to doing critical thinking and research on computers, but I'm good at computers and have a lot of knowledge. Doing critical thinking and research on subjects that I have less knowledge and experience is COMPLETELY different. The most important thing you'll learn is "what you don't know".

When someone doesn't know that they don't know something, it's like a "null" value. Their brain doesn't know how to handle it and assumes they do know it by thinking it's something they already know. False positives.

Couple that with having whole-class discussions about different points of view, pros and cons of those views, and the reasoning being those views. You learn a lot about learning.

4 year Uni greatly increased my critical thinking to the point that the knowledge acquired was almost worthless. But if you talk to any of my teachers, that's what their goal is. So many after-class chit-chats with a wide range of teachers. All very nice people.

Anyone can acquire knowledge, anyone can acquire experience, but the most important thing you get some a good University is neither of those and is more important.

Only if you have some really crappy schools. The primary thing taught in college for me was critical thinking. Nearly half of every class on every topic was a discussion about how, why, and implications. Most classes, including GDRs were tested for understanding and reasoning. Most tests were setup in a way that the written portion was weighted heavily. If you had a good grasp of knowledge or understanding, but not both, the best you're going to get is a "B", to get an "A", you really need both.

Every GDR that I took had a lot of written portions to test and project work, except Wellness class. That was a cross between "class" and phy-ed.

When I think of a "tech job", I don't typically imagine a first line tech support that reads from a script or someone that installs network lines after having in-house training and just doing repeated step-by-step instructions.

Of course you don't need a bachelors for a job that has little critical thinking requirements. If you want a secure job that pays well, is salary, and has good benefits, you may want a bachelors degree.

We're also forcing you to purchase police and a military, but I don't see you complaining about having a justice system.

You can choose to not drive, which means you can forgo car insurance. Same thing with health insurance. You can choose to not be alive, which means you can forgo health insurance. But like driving, a person being alive means that on average, they will go to the doctors and cost society money. We're just asking that they pay their fair share before they drink it away at the bar.

I had a situation like this once. Then I talked to someone in my HR at work and they called the hospital and got my insurance on the phone and found out the price for me. The HR lady told me if I get a bill that is more expensive than that, she'll get it straitened out. I love the HR at my work.

They can't discharge you until you are stable and capable of taking care of yourself. Both of which, they must prove.

Some people go in to the ER for their yearly checkup. Can't afford the $200 doctor's visit, so they hit up the $2,000 emergency service and get the whole work-over. Then the hospital says, "you're good", and sends them home with a bill that gets forgotten about. It's cheaper to have them go into the $200 doctor's visit than to pony up for the ER.

How? Where I work, you get auto-enrolled. Every year, you must explicitly decline to get insurance and sign a waiver. Dental and Vision are not this way, the health insurance is.

Even if they pass a law stating it, no major medical educational center will support it. There are a lot of ethics involved with being a doctor and abandoning those ethics, even if support by law, will land you with no license to practice.

$60 for a doctor's visit?! Don't make me laugh. More like $200 for the visit and another $500 for all the tests like blood work. My wife recently went to the ER because she had a sharp burning pain in her pelvis and it was in the middle of the night when it started, so no other offices are open. All she did was sit in a room for 2 hours, a doctor stopped in, talked to her for 5 minutes, and told her it's a pinched nerve, sent us home with a $900 bill.

Don't tell people to pay for their own healthcare until we've made healthcare affordable.

You preach about managing your own money for healthcare, but most of the cost of healthcare has nothing to do with you. The largest cost to healthcare is the hospital taking losses on people who can't or won't pay, so the hospital charges everyone else exorbitant prices to cover their other losses. Around here, hospitals are not allow to turn away anyone that comes to the ER for any reason other than capacity. Even if they know the personal cannot or will not pay their bill or they fake issues, the hospital is required by law to see the person and only release the person once the hospital as proven that they are safe to send home.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but I remember going to my University, the poli-sci went over the numbers and the amount of money we spent on the "war" over 3 years was enough to cover all hospital costs for all of the USA and send everyone to college, assuming the average cost, for 10 years. I would personally rather have a highly educated healthy society than running about the planet killing other people who pose less threat than pollution or drunk drivers.