If you ask me, they are wildly optimistic about AI… 
Should Science End Humankind?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/11/17/364619831/should-science-end-humankind?
I know I am necroing, but this is a pretty good summary of where we are now, which your theoretical kid brother and the neighbour’s teen can understand (and perhaps consider before they go bouncing off to look for Mr Pokemon).
And there’s some cool stuff about god Elon Musk too.
Article too long to read just now so I skimmed through. I have been seeing this sort of thing for decades now: within ten or twenty years, we’ll have stuff like HAL from Space Odyssey. I don’t think we are in fact remotely close; I’ll believe it when I see it. I also suspect that the only way to get there will be to evolve such intelligence via evolutionary algorithms and when we do, we’ll understand it no better than we understand the brain (i.e. we’ll be pretty clueless as to how exactly it works).
what is your take on the viral #sciencemustfall posted by a student from UCT (who doesn’t study science)? I suspect a strong religious bias is developing in our student bodies that will and is questioning for example Homo Naledi origins of humankind, westernised thinking and teaching of science (largely from the now outdated modernist school). Thoughts?
I think they should take a page from their own book and eschew all western science and coloniasist ideas like matches, tyres, cars, brick buildings, multi-story-anything, trains, roads, cities, etc. We’d all really appreciate it.
Besides all the sci & tech, they’ll have to do without modern medicine and liberal notions such as democracy as well as a wide array of rights and freedoms. Picking and choosing what they want to accept and what to reject merely exposes these dolts’ obliviousness, ludicrousness and/or hypocrisy.
'Luthon64
From my own experience as school teacher: the belief in witchcraft is widespread and all but unshakable around here. It needn’t necessarily prevent anyone from studying science and technology, any more than Christian students are unable to study such subjects. It’s probably best not to furiously attack these beliefs either, because it will likely have the exact opposite effect from the one intended. As they become more and more westernized, such beliefs will slowly die off.
The student (or whoever) who shouted “bullshit” was passing up a golden opportunity. I would have politely asked her questions about her beliefs (it was clear she very much wanted to talk about them). Ten minutes of that on video and their whole movement would have suffered irreparable damage. Or alternatively, if he was going to go the aggressive route, he should have refused to apologize and walked out. Instead he came across as a naughty child who got caught out. Not really the image of cool, scientific objectivity we want to send out into the world.
I find it interesting to see how various people react to science. E.g. the Japanese, wholly and completely, not just passively accepted western science and technology but embraced it with almost fanatic enthusiasm. And they did this without giving up one iota of their Japanese-ness. You would never mistake the streets of Tokyo for the streets of London! This despite the fact that they were also at one point a humiliated and colonized people. One should perhaps point this out to the new generation of “science skeptics.” As BM points out, you really cannot have your anti-science cake and eat your modern technology: it’s the height of hypocrisy.
Another thing to point out: us pigmentationally challenged South Africans are not really Europeans either. My family has been living in South Africa for more than three centuries now. The Cape colony was not exactly a hotbed of modernist innovation. In other words, while Newton and his pals were making all these exciting discoveries in Europe, my own ancestors were humble, semi-literate peasants who thought the earth was flat. I.e. it is not clear to me that modern science needs to be seen as a white thing. It happened to be invented mostly by whiteys, but so what? It belongs to anyone that embraces it. Just ask the Japanese, or even some of the Afrikaners since the mid-20th century.
Last but not least, it can be pointed out that nowadays black scientists and engineers and western trained doctors are by no means quite as much of a rarity as they used to be. The notion that science isn’t for black folks is about as valid as the notion that it isn’t for women. Both of these beliefs are detrimental to our society, seeing as it effectively neutralizes a great deal of existing talent.
All of this can be pointed out, but if it is done in a preachy or arrogant sort of way, it would be better to just shut up completely and let them learn from hard experience. If these angry kids get the impression of a bunch of middle-aged, white adults preaching at them, they’ll stop listening there and then, and it would be a complete waste of time.
Incidentally, a friend of mine came up with a useful question to ask the #fees-must-fall crowd: So you want to study for free? Wonderful, but first tell me: which community upliftment projects are YOU involved in as volunteer?
I think the anti-science lady is now vying with Zuma for top position in trashing the rand. 
Having now tread the transcript of the #sciencemustfall meeting a number of issues are raised. It struck me that very few university lecturers are actually qualified to teach! They may and do have the theoretical knowledge PhD’s etc in their field of specialisation but very few have been taught/learned how to teach especially adults (andragogy) which is very different to teaching learners at school (pedagogy). A basic tenet of andragogy is to understand/appreciate the body of knowledge adults bring to the learning room (this includes values, language issues, culture etc). In the African context this seems to underlie the objections raised on the manner in which knowledge is transferred which underpin colonial mindsets,thereby creating barriers to learning by either assuming the students have the cognitive frameworks or even worse not having them and then dishing up subject content without taking into consideration what they (the students) can bring to the learning experience and how the content could be adapted to suit. Just my ha’pennies worth.
Our school teachers are formally qualified to teach, but most of them have no clue how to do it either. I don’t know what one can do about that.
In the meantime, university lecturers have never really been qualified to teach. It has always been assumed that if you go to university, you are mature enough and interested enough in the subject matter that you are mostly going to teach yourself. In the past, this has never prevented students from making it. First year acted as a sieve to remove those not sufficiently talented or interested or disciplined or whatever.
But I have seen it argued that actually universities should do two things: research, done by people not burdened by students, and teaching, done by professors who specialize in teaching and don’t do much research (so they can focus on the students and not be burdened by the publish-or-perish thing.)
I don’t know whether such a thing will work. The problem is that it seems to me no one actually knows how to teach in the first place. As I reported on this board before, I once attempted to do the post-grad teaching certificate, and abandoned it after a few months because I couldn’t make head or tails of what was expected. What really got to me was that one would expect a university’s department of education, supposedly experts in how to present material, to be great at presentation. It’s among the nerds in the science department where you would expect the bad teachers.
My experience was the exact opposite: the very best presentation I got from my science lecturers, the very worst from the supposed experts in how to teach. This left me extremely skeptical of education as a field of even human science.
In the meantime my own experience as school teacher was that the biggest problem was that the kids lacked all manner of intangible kinds of things that simply cannot be taught at school: discipline, manners, ambition, a sense of personal pride, work ethic, a basic interest in the world around them, etc. etc. Much of South Africa’s educational woes go back to parenting rather than lack of good schools. Take, say, a Jewish kid from a house in Houghton and put him in a township school, and I can guarantee you he’s still going to get seven distinctions for matric.
On the positive side, these students burning down the universities illustrate yet again what an anarchic society South Africa is, and on a continent known for dictatorships, that is not necessarily a bad thing…
Yes and no. You did a little bit contradict yourself in this paragraph: “it has never prevented students from making it”, but, you also said most of those who couldn’t deal with the teaching style were lost in the 1st year. So it did prevent them from making it.
My experiences at varsity pan out all that you say. Yes a lot of people lost the plot 1st year. For a variety of reasons. Simply not being prepared enough, not being mature enough, partying > education, promiscuity > education, etc. Moreover I did make it but not always due to the skills of the lecturers. The presentation skills varied wildly, even within departments. Yes, some math and science lecturers have it down: Engaging the class, getting into debates and conversations, prompting for input… Others stand in front of a class and read, then leave. Literally. There was one particular lecturer I don’t think ever spoke directly to a single person in class, nor really looked at us as if we were anything but robots there to absorb a stream of facts.
Yes, the smart ones would engage in self-study at that point… But a 80% drop-out rate is not something higher education should be striving for. SOME see it as part of the point, I would personally say we should strive to lower it.
I have, later in life, gone back to some of the stuff I’m fuzzy on and downloaded online lectures from the likes of MIT. It would seem that the of quality their lectures is VASTLY superior to what I experienced. In some instances I only totally grasped something from varsity upon re-visiting it with a virtual MIT lecturer.
… This may be why they have the reputation they have. Not so much for the course material, but that they’ve gone into the “science” of making it more easily accessible and digestible to the students.
I predict we will hear the term “decolonised learning/ education” a lot during the next few months. As if it has any meaning at all. It will become to South African higher learning same as what “energy” is to the chackra tuners.
Rigil
Yeah, I didn’t put that very clearly; I simply meant that it didn’t prevent universities from turning out graduates. It’s of course a good question whether the people who eventually make it are necessarily the best ones; perhaps a great deal of talent is lost among students who are hugely intelligent and fail because of other factors.
As far as I can gather, the single most important factor contributing to success in university studies is work ethic rather than intelligence or insight or rational thinking. So we need to go work out whether this is what we want or not.
Yes, the smart ones would engage in self-study at that point... But a 80% drop-out rate is not something higher education should be striving for. SOME see it as part of the point, I would personally say we should strive to lower it.
Well, one reason to want to lower the failure rate is that it costs the country a great deal of money. As I noted on this board before, one thing that might help is to award a qualification for every year passed. It might persuade many students to hang in there for just a month or two longer in order to get the first-year (or whatever) certificate.
Another thing that I think is becoming absolutely essential in South Africa is to have all prospective students write an entrance exam, perhaps irrespective of whether they have matric or not. That might give one at least some sort of indication of whether they have the basic literacy, numeracy, critical thinking and general knowledge skills needed to cope. It would also create opportunities for autodidacts who, through no fault of their own, did not have an opportunity to pass matric.
I suppose we’ll have to collectively go do some soul searching anyway about what exactly university is for. Why do we want such things? What kind of qualifications should they let you study for? I have no data on this, but I wonder whether we are not turning out way too many B.A. graduates compared to the harder stuff like science and engineering. How many graduates in political science or sociology eventually get any kind of related job, that pays them the kind of salary a guy with a degree in chemistry can hope for?
As I said, I have no data on this. Perhaps having armies of university graduates is not a bad thing at all. Or perhaps we urgently need some of these people to go study plumbing instead and need to encourage them to do so?
My concern here is actually not even so much for the country (we can always import Zimbabwean or Chinese plumbers if we need to) as for the students themselves. They go register for their degree in biblical studies with stars in their eyes, thinking it will be the key to an easy middle class life, and I don’t know how often it actually is. It certainly helps to get a job, but most of the jobs out there for B.A. graduates actually pay from a bare fraction to rather less than what a plumber can hope to make, and they leave you with almost no skills or opportunity to start your own business.
I don’t know whether anyone is still looking at the issue rationally; it has all become hopelessly entangled with politics (though I saw a clip of Comrade Nzimande testifying in front of some or other committee the other day and found myself in agreement with him to a surprising extent).
Thunderf00t has a go as well. I think he’s wasting his intellect on these guys though. (even though that’s not the point)
“This is the product of Cape Town University” - Thunderf00t.
Fuck.
I think both play a role.
Another thing that I think is becoming absolutely essential in South Africa is to have all prospective students write an entrance exam, perhaps irrespective of whether they have matric or not.
I don’t know how many universities or departments around the country are run today, but I definitely did have to write entrance exams a long time ago despite having a full matric exception and good marks in all relevant subjects. This was even before basic literacy started becoming a problem, or varsities started introducing extra “bridge” years. This was in the “good old days”.
What kind of qualifications should they let you study for? I have no data on this, but I wonder whether we are not turning out way too many B.A. graduates compared to the harder stuff like science and engineering.
Maybe the question is: Is it possible to steer people into hard science? The nature of reality may just be that only a small subsection have the aptitude to even attempt it, and those gravitate towards it anyway.
How many graduates in political science or sociology eventually get any kind of related job, that pays them the kind of salary a guy with a degree in chemistry can hope for?
Supply and demand. These degrees may have intrinsic value, but are devalued because, IMHO, many see them as an easy shot to having a qualification. Any qualification. I think it begs more the question: Are these degrees too easy to obtain? Presenting themselves as targets for exploitation?
They go register for their degree in biblical studies with stars in their eyes, thinking it will be the key to an easy middle class life, and I don't know how often it actually is.
Indeed, I know some unemployed and struggling with laundry lists of high biblical studies qualifications. But this is not isolated to those fields: I’ve spoken to starry-eyed youths who have no idea about science, computers and engineering but “heard that it pays well” and so blunder into the fray anyway with no idea of what lies ahead for them. It doesn’t go so well. Some have a way to blunder their way through a qualification, but melt during an interview.
The excerpt below is from my latest scifi book (unpublished as yet) and reflects a futuristic educational system:
Universities were split up into training- and professional development centres of excellence that were linked to and under the control of, the various professional bodies, such as astrophysics, medicine, engineering, architecture, education, law, robotics, economics and accounting. The selection of students was done on the basis of entry examinations conducted by the controlling bodies. Failure was not tolerated and should this happen, the student was given one more attempt in a different discipline of his or her choice, failing which they would be relegated to more mundane pursuits such as clerks, cleaners and factory or farm labourers.
All relevant education was free and funded by city taxes. Due to the efficacy of delivery, the overhead cost of education was low. Subjects such as the humanities, social studies, performing- and fine arts and culture, however were generally unsubsidised and could only be studied if the student was prepared to carry the full cost thereof. Other fields of study such as archaeology, history and palaeontology were partially subsidised. The study of religions was only permitted as a subset of the history of the planet.
I’ll go out on a limb, and say somehow I don’t think the #FeesMustFall crowd would really agree with that.
In other words, young Beethoven and Michelangelo, being poor, would not have access to higher education in their field. Seems to me like a society that does not value the arts too highly.
I don’t think we actually need such extreme measures. In western Europe, all higher education is funded by the government, on (as far as I know) a rather small fraction of their total budget. Presumably, a future society will be prosperous enough to allow a large fraction of its members to freely pursue their hobbies. Of course, this particular fictional society might be a post-apocalypse one where they simply cannot afford to paint soft porn on chapel ceilings…