Are degrees in French literature still a thing?

Yes, and people who study this stuff are important for society if you want to avoid things like genocide.

Literary theory, which is essentially where continental philosophy went when academic philosophy in the US became exclusively analytic, is some of the most difficult stuff I've ever read. People argue that it's because it's poorly written or obscure, but you could just as easily say that about difficult economics text. The reality is that the stuff they are discussing is incomprehensible for most people but that doesn't mean it can't be comprehended.

I was studying comparative literature before I dropped out as I realized there would be no job in the future for me (praisworthy, right, since we should only study things that are pragmatic, and then grow up to be rent seekers who because we haven't read much are able to meet the requisite lack of empathy that allows us to maximally exploit others?). Almost everyone I met in graduate school was a beautiful person in a way that almost no businessperson could be.

I actually find this to be great and wished that it continued. Really, the only reasons to attend college are:

1) the facilities and environment would prove beneficial to your studies (you aren't learning chemical engineering, petroleum engineering, physics, etc, properly from your desk at home)

2) you truly want a liberal arts education

3) your name is Thaddeus James Watson IV and it doesn't matter how much time you waste because dad will hand you the hedge fund when you're 35 anyway.

There's a lot of unfortunate statistics the defenders of college don't like to talk about. For one, a BLS study from 2013 stated that just 23% of jobs require a bachelors degree. Well, according to Pew research in 2016, 40% of the 25-29 year old work force has a bachelors degree or higher. So by that metric, a bachelors degree is already a very expensive job hunting license.

Also, say what you want about IQ and cognitive ability, but it is, according to Jordan Peterson, the best measure for intelligence based performance. You take a kid with an IQ of 100 and stuff him through a college program, and maybe he finished. But since he's only intellectually average, he didn't study STEM, or Accounting, or Nursing, or the fields that lead to steady employment and good wages. He probably majored in something lower level, where pay is worse and jobs are tough to come by. How is that more advantageous than pointing him to a welding program at age 16 and having him fill one of the many positions that companies are desperate to hire for, but can't?

You mention opportunities and how these days, not having a degree shuts doors more than having one opens them. I fully, 100% agree with that; as I mentioned before, there's a funnel where your studies don't guarantee you a career, but you better believe your lack of studies will guarantee that some careers are off limits. However, that's just pure economics; these jobs won't go away just because the proportion of people with a certain arbitrary educational checkmark declines. Marty Nemko once made the A+ point on 20/20 where he mentioned that you could take the pool of college bound kids and lock them in a room for 4 years, and they'll come out and make more money. While some fields do rely on crystallized intelligence (medical fields, for example), most top modern jobs rely on fluid intelligence. You could probably take a class of 4th Grader standardized tests and predict who will be most likely to succeed at those jobs in 20 years, and you'll probably be shockingly accurate.

And you also mention the automated economy, self driving cars and the like. Once again, as a guy who is currently working in software, I see this every day. But frankly, software is hard. If you take a generic person and stuff them in a college computer science program, they will probably fail. Not to mention I have worked with many college dropouts, who have all been highly skilled software engineers. This alludes to things I said before, where fluid intelligence, work ethic and interests are a way better predictor of success in a field like software engineering than a degree.

W/R/T income disparity, well, that's growing, and given my best guess via workforce knowledge and labor Econ research, it's going to keep growing. Notice I'm not saying underclass, though. This is because in the age of technology, we see an absurdly small amount of people create an absurdly high amount of value. WhatsApp, for example, is a 50 man shop per Wikipedia and sold a few years back for $19.3 billion. That's like 60% more per head than James Harden's contract. So why is that? Well, the big reason is efficiency; with this technology, companies are able to push product to hundreds of millions of people with a very small workforce. And labor is expensive, so when you can produce a ton with not a lot of human labor, you have a recipe for huge value. So as companies move further to robots, they'll see cost reductions that can be passed down to consumers in order to gain a competitive advantage over their less modern rivals.

So what does that all potentially mean? Means things will begin to get dirt cheap. Which means that you won't need as much income to cut it. Now, we've seen repetitive jobs and low level white collar jobs disappear due to the robots, but there's plenty of industries out there whose performance is reliant on strong economies. What this means is that while the low level law job is now gone, what exists is the snowboard instructor job in Lake Tahoe that pays the bills. We've already experienced this trend, as the amount of effort required to survive has continued to progressively go down, and it's possible that people could one day make a living attempting to not laugh at the rich, fat engineers who are trying to learn how to surf.

But for less pie in the sky type optimistic theorizing about the future of the global economy, it is undoubtably not a good idea for all kids who go to college now to do so. One area I will agree with you is that it would be a terrible trend for families to keep their 4.0 GPA, 1500 SAT type kid from college due to a values misalignment, especially since the current hyper-leftist climate on many college campuses is unsustainable (as Mizzou is showing us). But America, and the world, has gone so far into the tank for college over the last 50 years, that we have long been due for a correction in that. So I think you have to mind the people whose first generation college grad kids are still living at home at 30 with student debt greater than their mortgage balance questioning whether or not college is all that great.

I didn't mean to imply that the degree is stupid, just that it seems tough to make a career that pays the bills out of it. I'm 3/4 through this book:



It's tech, tech, and more tech. He says that, if a young person inquired, he'd recommend cybersecurity as the job that will last 50 years and I wouldn't be surprised if a two year community college degree would suffice.

6-12 LHE

AdAs UTG+1, UTG raises, we go three bets, five ways.

Ac2c6c, UTG bets, all call

Js, UTG bets, three call

2s, UTG bets, hero raises, utg groans, calls, shows Jc8c

Did I maximize value by not raising the turn? I would like to say I gained a bet by doing so.

All I learned in college was that I would be favor of many forms of genocide

I'd have put more action in at some point unless this guy's donk range is just absurdly flush heavy. Probably with a flop raise since the Kc and Qc is going to be calling all the bets we throw at it.

You give us no reason to say anything but "yuck". Raise the flop.

Raise flop, force out chasers even though we're relatively certain we're already beat? AKA need to catchup so outside action is inconsequential? That was my line.

Not raising flop due to assuming we're behind seems awfully pessimistic given the guy raised UTG and the Ac is on board. I'd expect to see AxKc/AxQc/66 way more often from these player types than J8cc. Plus, even when behind, we have a whole metric boatload of equity. And people aren't cold calling Tc9s preflop so that they can fold to 2 cold on A62ccc

Even at that, there are probably only 5 or 6 classes that are relevant. The rest is just filler liberal studies crapola.

You had to go to college to learn that?

So we lose no value raising the flop?

I like a flop raise here for a couple of reasons:
- we have the best hand here a lot of the time
- people call all kinds of garbage for two bets on the flop
- if somehow UTG (or anyone else) has a flopped flush, I would like to find out now

No disagreement from me, just that I'm pretty sure thay this reason grows in importance over time.

Two numbers don't tell the whole story. A Georgetown study from 2014 argues BLS is systematically undercounting based on labor surveys showing that while the absolute minimum requirement is lower than Bachelor's, the number of people actually holding Bachelor's degrees in those job is higher - 30.8% in 2008, compared to the BLS number of 20.8% in the same year. Both numbers have gone up, the BLS counted 23% in 2013 and the Georgetown study projected 35% by 2020. That's still short of the actual number - we do have more college graduates than we need right now, but only slightly - but by 2030 when these graduates hit their most productive years it will ve just about right.

I an extremely skeptical of anything that links IQ with anything. So few people take proper IQ tests that you don't get a population-wide distribution.

But I'm willing to entertain the basic premise:

If he would be more successful at welding than math, I agree with you. But welding is in demand specifically because not everyone can do it well.

And aside from welding and I believe driving tractor trailers, any other top 10 of 2030-2050 list is filled with college degree-requiring skills: nursing, geriatric care, computer analysts, etc. I agree not every person can do these well, but given the demand everyone who can do it well should do it.

We agree on this, but with the caveat that there are a growing number of people who both have fancy degrees and all the soft skills like work ethic.

When I applied to college, top universities like Harvard had acceptance rates in the high teens, now they take less than half. A 4.0 GPA no longer guarantees acceptance, now they want 4.0 GPA and captain of the basketball team. Because they can.

And that means on the back end, we get the luxury of picking people who are excellently skilled AND work hard AND are cultural fits, instead of having to settle for 2/3 or 1/3 as we did 20 years ago (I get the feeling you're not as old as I am so maybe some of this isn't landing).

I think the proof will be in the pudding.

If you're right and basically we're entering a deflationary period, I agree it's true we can just let a small handful of people take care of needs. But I don't think that will be the case.

The other option is the corporations drive down costs but keep prices high, and pocket the difference.

These two are kind of linked. At every university I've interacted with, technical departments tend to be way less political and only moderately liberal. And it's not surprising, because the people who go to college thinking that the label itself matters tend to be the hyper-leftists. As colleges admit fewer people who think "learning how to learn" is learning, you'll probably see a regression to the political mean - which will still be liberal.

Paying for college is a different story. I agree that people who graduated from college who can't find jobs have had something go wrong. I'm unwilling to blame it on college.

People who go to college and major in Binge Drinking with a minor in Learning How To Learn aren't going to do any better if they don't go to college. It's not like you're going to stick them in a welding program and all of a sudden they work hard.

Hopefully you teach your kids to just not be those people, whether they go to college or trade school or whatever. But concurrently, you've got to plan to keep as many options for them as they grow up, and that means having a reasonably optimistic view of the institutions that give them the chance at the best jobs.

Sometimes, rarely, yes. Not nearly enough to make calling best. It could be that this UTG *never* bets without a flush but you didn't tell us anything like that in your post. And given that he raised J8cc, I would doubt that it's an accurate read.

My next question then is, if we get three-bet on the flop, do we continue and call the river unimproved if another club doesn't come?

Yes, don't be looking for spots to fold top set.

But don't make it four bets?

I actually speak from the POV of someone who doesn't have children (I'd like to have kids, but currently single ATM).

I think the area where we disagree actually is purely cosmetic: you take credential inflation as a current state and I do not. A great example would be an "experience" type job like account management. You learn and get better at customer service mostly by dealing with customers, so it's questionable whether a bachelor's degree would help. But while maybe it's not required to have a bachelor's degree, it sure helps put your resume at the top of the pile for the role. But if less people in a cohort have a certain characteristic, employers can't seek out that characteristic as liberally as they do now (and we both agree that changes to college financing are needed, but one thing that would inevitably happen if we restrict loan access to "safe" investment students is a sharp drop in lower end students enrolling).

One study that I recall, that I do not have offhand, stated that a full 24% of first year enrollees at 4 year university did not have any educational credential, nor were they enrolled in school, 6 years later. That's a pretty large amount of students who flame out in their freshman year.

No disagreement here. My contention is that just because we need those jobs, doesn't mean there isn't a severe labor disconnect between college and the workforce. The top current groups of majors is, per NCES data:

Business: 19.2%
Health: 11.4%
Social Science/History: 8.8%
Psych: 6.2%
Bio: 5.8%
Engineering: 5.2%
Visual & Performing Arts: 5.1%

I will concede the point that health professions is the major field that's growing the fastest (from just 6.1% at the start of the millennium to 11.4% now). But when there's still more communications and journalism majors than computer science majors, you have to wonder where the former group ends up in 15-20 years.

Game theory suggests this won't happen, as the company that deviates from the fixed price stands to benefit at the expense of everyone else (and historically, this has played out for the most part).

Agreed. Education itself will always appeal more to those less motivated by bottom line (which in turn will attract more liberals), and I think most people are fine with that, as long as it doesn't adversely affect the educational experience. However, some of the worst nonsense we've seen in recent times have tangibly affected the education, and as I mentioned, the schools associated with these incidents have been punished. And it's not like you have to send your kid to Berkeley; you could send them to an engineering focused school, where the political environment is subdued.

Agreed that it's not wise to just take whatever number someone shouts at face value, but it is subjectively easy to determine if someone is operating at a high, medium, or low cognitive ability. Plus, we do have things that kind of, sort of, resemble IQ exams in the form of the SAT and ACT. The College Board did a study of college readiness (Probability of a 2.7 GPA or higher in the first year of school) as a function of SAT component scores and saw an 1180 total score on the post-1995 SAT was the inflection point (where P(GPA > 2.7) >= 0.65). There's obviously a whole host of variables that affect first year GPA beyond cognitive ability (like, how much does a newly semi-liberated 18 year old pass on studying in favor of fun and parties?), but given that a 2.7 really isn't even that hard, there has to be some weight in the study.

You can make it 4 bets even if you're sure the other guy has a flush, if you will get 2-3 additional customers to come along for the ride. Gambool Gambool

Everyone folded to two/three bets post-flop in this game save for one fishy fish so that was generally the less profitable play...I'm in Minnesota where the fishiest fish aren't as plentiful as your Californias and Arizonas and such

I don't 4! in this situation and do pay off. In the games in which I play, UTG could typically take an aggressive line with AKc (tho obv unlikely to have this hand given our holding) or in some cases the naked Kc. I would weight heavily toward a flopped flush once he 3! but I would never be certain enough to fold.

Well, it depends. In a live 6/12 game in MN, I probably wouldn't make it 4 bets unless I had a specific reason to believe that the raiser was getting out of line. In a live 20/40 or 40/80 game in CA, I would go infinity bets on the flop because a lot of players will only bet/3bet this texture with an ace and/or a single club.

In any event, you have to raise the flop. Not just for value (which you have lots of), and not just because it is far too early to conclude that you are beat (it is), but because it's a big pot and you don't want some shmuck with the 5c to out-draw you for one small bet. Letting people chase singleton clubs in a 15 SB pot when you don't have one is a colossal mistake. Your play only looks good because the guy who 3bet pre flop miraculously showed up with J8cc, which is not a hand you should have when you voluntarily enter the pot in early position.

Right, it definitely was miraculous. I'm not against a flop-raise here, I just don't like the second flop-action to be a raise and forcing out all the (basically) dead money.

Thanks for the insight guys.

You know, education helped in life beside getting a job ...
I mean just reducing college education to a salary is pretty laughable.