I have a theory about how well educated the mass of humans are, could be and should be.
Bear with me.
Roughly 2000 years ago, the number of people who could do arithmetic and writing was < 1% of the population. By 200 years ago it was maybe what 10%?
Now it is 95% of the world population, and 99.9% of 'Western' world.
Lets say that Alexey Petrov is about as highly educated and trained as any human so far. (A Physics PhD represents pretty much 25 years of full-time full-on education). But most of us stop earlier, say 20 years, and many have less full-on education, perhaps not doing an hour a day of revision or whatever.
But imagine we could build the computing resources, the smaller class sizes, the gamification, whatever, that meant that each child was pushed as far as they could get (maybe some kind of Mastery learning approach ) - not as far as they can get if the teacher is dealing with 30 other unruly kids, but actually as far as their brain will take them.
Will Alexey be that much far ahead when we do this?
Is Alexey as far ahead as any human can be? Or can we go further - how much further? And if every kid leaving university is as well trained as an Astronaut, is capable of calculus and vector multiplication, will that make a difference in the world today?
I'm "smart" relative to the general population, but you could have thrown all the education in the world at me and I'd never have become Alexey Petrov.
I have a hunch that the Alexey Petrovs -- the upper 0.001% or whatever -- of the world do tend to get recognized and/or carve out their own space.
I think the ones who'd benefit from your plan would be... well, folks like me. I mean, I did fine I guess, but surely there are millions as smart as me and smarter than me who fell through the cracks in one way or another.
I suspect fairly quickly we'd run into some interesting limits.
For example, how many particle physicists can the world actually support? There are already more aspiring particle physicists than jobs or academic positions. Throwing more candidates at these positions would raise the bar for acceptance, but it's not like we'd actually get... hordes of additional practicing particle physicists than we have now. We'd also have to invest in more LHC-style experimental opportunities, more doctorate programs, and so on.
Obviously, you can replace "particle physicist" with other cutting-edge big-brain vocation. How many top-tier semiconductor engineers can the world support? I mean, there are only so many cutting-edge semiconductor fabs, and the availability of top-tier semiconductor engineers is not the limiting factor preventing us from making more.
There are also cultural issues. A lot of people just don't trust the whole "establishment" for science and learning these days. Anti-intellectualism is a thing. You can't throw education at that problem when education itself is seen as the problem.
> ...will that make a difference in the world today?
It will make a huge difference, and no difference at all. It will probably help us solve all of our current problems. And then it will also introduce a whole new brand of problems which will be sources of crises that generation will deal with. What you read on news will change, but the human emotional response to those news will be very similar to today's.
Most people demonstrate pretty clearly that they don’t have the aptitude for serious physics. A substantial number of people can’t get passed freshman classes and that’s true even for the top few% of high school students.
That doesn't necessarily mean that the content is the problem. 200 years ago you could probably say the same thing about "basic algebra" instead of "serious physics".
I agree wholeheartedly. We would live in an exceptional world. The obstacle preventing this is greed and exploitation of people who are born into low income situations. Rising out is the exception, not the rule. Affording many years of education is simply not an option for some. I wish it were, but this is another issue.
The evidence is quite clear that going to college doesn’t actually improve life outcomes very much at all. We mistakenly thought it did for a while, but what was actually happening is the people who were going to college were smart and very likely to succeed anyway.
Everyone being as trained as an astronaut would definitely make a difference, if only because they would appreciate the importance of science, technology, innovation... And not believe stupid conspiracy theories about vaccines.
Bear with me.
Roughly 2000 years ago, the number of people who could do arithmetic and writing was < 1% of the population. By 200 years ago it was maybe what 10%?
Now it is 95% of the world population, and 99.9% of 'Western' world.
Lets say that Alexey Petrov is about as highly educated and trained as any human so far. (A Physics PhD represents pretty much 25 years of full-time full-on education). But most of us stop earlier, say 20 years, and many have less full-on education, perhaps not doing an hour a day of revision or whatever.
But imagine we could build the computing resources, the smaller class sizes, the gamification, whatever, that meant that each child was pushed as far as they could get (maybe some kind of Mastery learning approach ) - not as far as they can get if the teacher is dealing with 30 other unruly kids, but actually as far as their brain will take them.
Will Alexey be that much far ahead when we do this? Is Alexey as far ahead as any human can be? Or can we go further - how much further? And if every kid leaving university is as well trained as an Astronaut, is capable of calculus and vector multiplication, will that make a difference in the world today?