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Academia vs Joe Sixpack

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  • Total voters
    51
Fiddytree said:
More simplistic populist, mass democratic nonsense meant to stroke your egos.

Joe Sixpack doesn't live in the consequential real-world of complex financial institutions, international diplomacy, and so forth. They are stuck to their localities, if that. How much more fantasy-land can you get than that? Is it any wonder why we had bred people like Henry Stimson?



Wilson is practically the Godfather for modern bureaucratic structure and civil service. He wasn't just some idealistic schmuck that screwed over the Fourteen Points and made the hopelessly naive sentiments about the last Great war among men.
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And yet many tenured academics get their position by politics, who they know, or merely by keeping their head down low and supporting the right political department head. My wife is an English professor. I have the pleasure of meeting with their happy cohort on occasion. Most of them...I wouldnt trust with deciding anything more important than sock color.

We cant merely assume that the professor in a typical Ivy league setting is any more or less 'intelligent' than Joe Six Pack. At best, we can assume they have been presented academic opportunities in a very specific field of study and capitalized on it in a purely academic setting. Whether that knowledge and experience translates to practical use or the ability to govern...thats a helluva stretch.

Its not a knock on academics. I have an uncle who is an engineer. Dood cant carry on a conversation with common folk...thinks on a different plane...think a less geeky version of the Sheldon character from The Big Bang Theory. A close in-law was a literal rocket scientist. Couldnt fix a car, change oil, repair anything around the house and frankly wasnt blessed with 'common sense'. At the same time...one of the smartest men I know is a blue collar machinist.

Picking one or the other is rather silly IMO. I'd bet we could find 535 intelligent and qualified academics. I'm also certain we could find 535 average Joes.
 
longview said:
I think the average Joe deserves more credit. and could learn how to govern effectively.
The University Professors might tend to be more ideologues.
It has been my experience that most PhDs make poor managers.
They can be very good in their own area of expertise, but hubris leads them to
believe that makes them good in all areas of Human knowledge.
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My experience has been that many business types who are successful - as in making s***loads of money - have exactly the problem mentioned. Never understood how someone who made his fortune in manufacturing one rather specific item thought that his experience made him someone to listen to in a totally unrelated field. Simply because you have been successful in managing an urban area property company does not mean you have some innate ability to fly small planes or skipper a yacht but I run into such idiots on a weekly basis.

Naturally, the same criteria should be applied to those professorial types who can waffle on and on about string theory or the geology of the Alberta tar sands while holding zero concept of the difficulties involved in political manoeuvring with opponents in some legislative body.
 
RadicalModerate said:
This thread makes me lol. Joe Spaghetti-Stain is the same doofus who every four or eight years switches from defense of the status quo to opposition to it when nothing really ever changes. He's the brain-dead moron who gets a hard on from Romney or Obama's empty platitudes and glittering generalities.

I understand the point that the intellectual elite aren't equipped to run the country solo, but the main point should be those who can collect, organize and analyze the data should be the ones providing the data to the average cheeze-whiz drinkin' Joe to make a (hopefully) somewhat informed decision.
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Leadership is just another word for management. We have intellectuals, soldiers, workers, number crunchers, strategists, programmers, industrialists, salesmen, and all kinds of useful people, and they all have their place. The leader we need is the one who can bring all of those people together for the benefit of the nation. It doesn't take an intellectual to do this, and it's a requirement that's above the ability of the average person. Management of people is a skill not many have. We like to think we all have it, but we don't. Not on that scale. We need a higher level logistics manager, or a Sergeant Major, someone who knows people, and knows how to put them to the best use on a very large scale.
 
Your Star said:
Smart people, obviously. We didn't get to where we are now by having idiots in positions of power.
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We're in the middle of a global economic crisis. I beg to differ with your evaluation.
 
Academentia is not the intelligentsia. Its inmates are more like the corrupt and totalitarian cardinals of the Middle Ages and Spanish Inquisition, as opposed to saints such as Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi and Joan of Arc. They spend their formative years in unnatural living conditions, always isolated from reality. The resulting pathetic and passive personalities lead them to conform to seductive but simplistic fads. After years of this mental rape room, the academented wind up narrow-minded, intolerant, and stubbornly resistant to changing when results don't come out the way their theories tell them they should.
 
Your Star said:
Smart people, obviously. We didn't get to where we are now by having idiots in positions of power.
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Academics are not nessecarrily smart. I have found them to be as narrow minded and inflexable as anyone.
 
RadicalModerate said:
This thread makes me lol. Joe Spaghetti-Stain is the same doofus who every four or eight years switches from defense of the status quo to opposition to it when nothing really ever changes. He's the brain-dead moron who gets a hard on from Romney or Obama's empty platitudes and glittering generalities.

I understand the point that the intellectual elite aren't equipped to run the country solo, but the main point should be those who can collect, organize and analyze the data should be the ones providing the data to the average cheeze-whiz drinkin' Joe to make a (hopefully) somewhat informed decision.
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With the academons in charge, we'd all wind up getting data raped.
 
ecofarm said:
One semester I took 18, grad (including a med lab, gm for crops), UF, and left 2-3 weeks early to speak in Europe.
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You went to "jorts U" *highfive*
gator-jorts5.jpg
 
VanceMack said:
And yet many tenured academics get their position by politics, who they know, or merely by keeping their head down low and supporting the right political department head. My wife is an English professor. I have the pleasure of meeting with their happy cohort on occasion. Most of them...I wouldnt trust with deciding anything more important than sock color.

We cant merely assume that the professor in a typical Ivy league setting is any more or less 'intelligent' than Joe Six Pack. At best, we can assume they have been presented academic opportunities in a very specific field of study and capitalized on it in a purely academic setting. Whether that knowledge and experience translates to practical use or the ability to govern...thats a helluva stretch.

Its not a knock on academics. I have an uncle who is an engineer. Dood cant carry on a conversation with common folk...thinks on a different plane...think a less geeky version of the Sheldon character from The Big Bang Theory. A close in-law was a literal rocket scientist. Couldnt fix a car, change oil, repair anything around the house and frankly wasnt blessed with 'common sense'. At the same time...one of the smartest men I know is a blue collar machinist.

Picking one or the other is rather silly IMO. I'd bet we could find 535 intelligent and qualified academics. I'm also certain we could find 535 average Joes.
Click to expand...

I know more than a few scientists who cant fix their own stuff yet help design cutting edge equipment and come with inovative concepts, thats why they got me those like me, engineers. Their the scientists, I am the surgeon. You could look in a directory and I think you could find some fairly qualified people very easily, who could step up and perform reasonably well regardless whether or not they academics.
 
Fiddytree said:
Civil service does governance, and it does it generally very well.



I do disagree. The common man may be more wise about himself, but he is not wise about his collective.
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I disagree veheminately as I am subject to that governace and would love to hang every damn near every cival servant I have ever come accross, literally. Some of what I've been subjected and being subjected to, is bat**** insane. Hate is not near a strong enough word to describe my feelings about the bueracracy that I am subject to. Cival servants for the most part suck, big time, and in my mind have earned themselves a rope around their necks. If I was king for a day I would fire EVERY SINGLE ONE, and then run em out the country. If only I was king for a day.
 
Paschendale said:
So I will cease to be a member of academia when I graduate and start practicing law? And then perhaps my "book learning" will no longer be demonized? I don't think most of this discussion shares your notion that only people who still study or work at a school comprise academia.

But if that is so, then why would you want either academics or sixpacks in government? Why not draw from the well educated and practically experienced group that came out of academia and apply their skills?
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If these over-respected phonies were of any use, they would teach the public, or at least the dumbed-down graduates they set up for influential positions in the media, the correct use of the word comprise (also oxymoron and many other words misused by those who pretend to be educated). Unlike the way you and others in this thread use it, the subject of comprise is the unity, while the object is its parts. It is used like includes, except that it takes in all the parts comprehensively, which is a related word. So if these anti-social educators had been fulfilling their function in society, you and others would have written "your notion that academia comprises only people who still study or work at school"
 
PrometheusBound said:
Academentia is not the intelligentsia. Its inmates are more like the corrupt and totalitarian cardinals of the Middle Ages and Spanish Inquisition, as opposed to saints such as Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi and Joan of Arc. They spend their formative years in unnatural living conditions, always isolated from reality. The resulting pathetic and passive personalities lead them to conform to seductive but simplistic fads. After years of this mental rape room, the academented wind up narrow-minded, intolerant, and stubbornly resistant to changing when results don't come out the way their theories tell them they should.
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This is often times what stupid people say to feel better about themselves.
 
PrometheusBound said:
Academentia is not the intelligentsia. Its inmates are more like the corrupt and totalitarian cardinals of the Middle Ages and Spanish Inquisition, as opposed to saints such as Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi and Joan of Arc. They spend their formative years in unnatural living conditions, always isolated from reality. The resulting pathetic and passive personalities lead them to conform to seductive but simplistic fads. After years of this mental rape room, the academented wind up narrow-minded, intolerant, and stubbornly resistant to changing when results don't come out the way their theories tell them they should.
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Simply absurd.
 
I'm not voting because I wouldn't want either. Obviously a random sample of the American public could be a disaster because there are some very uninformed people, on the other hand college professors can be some of the most radical people in this country.

I want our leaders to be intelligent and educated but I also think it takes more than that to be a good leader. I want them to be wise, ethical, and be in touch with the people.
 
PirateMk1 said:
I know more than a few scientists who cant fix their own stuff yet help design cutting edge equipment and come with inovative concepts, thats why they got me those like me, engineers. Their the scientists, I am the surgeon. You could look in a directory and I think you could find some fairly qualified people very easily, who could step up and perform reasonably well regardless whether or not they academics.
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Kinda what I said, right? Academia is not a magic cloak of competency, nor incompetence. Same w/ Joe Six Pack.
 
Ideally, I would want a mixture of both.

However, if I can't have that then I would pick the academics.
 
PirateMk1 said:
I disagree veheminately as I am subject to that governace and would love to hang every damn near every cival servant I have ever come accross, literally. Some of what I've been subjected and being subjected to, is bat**** insane. Hate is not near a strong enough word to describe my feelings about the bueracracy that I am subject to. Cival servants for the most part suck, big time, and in my mind have earned themselves a rope around their necks. If I was king for a day I would fire EVERY SINGLE ONE, and then run em out the country. If only I was king for a day.
Click to expand...
Like everybody else, you've been taken in by the political poses of the phony ideologues. Liberals who run these agencies are unconscious agents of the Right Wing. Their class instinct drives them to purposely make government inefficient. There is nothing wrong with the way our services are organized; the people in charge of them want us to be alienated from the government and make sure things go wrong.

This ilk of spoiled, sheltered, suburban-born snobs first gave us the hippies. Then they became yuppies. Then, openly admitting the class all these ppies come from, they were called "preppies." But all along, in a united Liberal-Conservative axis, they been taking over the government ("gummint") in order to use it against the majority. So they should be called "guppies."
 
Credentialism is less important than wisdom. Not for me an arrogant elite who assumes they can run my life better than I can.
 
PirateMk1 said:
I know more than a few scientists who cant fix their own stuff yet help design cutting edge equipment and come with inovative concepts, thats why they got me those like me, engineers. Their the scientists, I am the surgeon. You could look in a directory and I think you could find some fairly qualified people very easily, who could step up and perform reasonably well regardless whether or not they academics.
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I know more than a few scientists who design cutting edge equipment, probe the very fundamental mysteries of the universe, push science and knowledge forward AND can fix all their stuff.
 
I would like to see a combination of those two groups mentioned in the OP. I have always felt that in our congress and state legislatures we need a whole lot more waitresses, truck drivers, salespeople, and just plain average people to go along with the highly educated attorneys, professors, and the highly degreed. I certainly would NOT want the first 535 people off the street. Nor would I want 535 Ivy League attorneys or polisci profs.
 
PrometheusBound said:
Like everybody else, you've been taken in by the political poses of the phony ideologues. Liberals who run these agencies are unconscious agents of the Right Wing. Their class instinct drives them to purposely make government inefficient. There is nothing wrong with the way our services are organized; the people in charge of them want us to be alienated from the government and make sure things go wrong.

This ilk of spoiled, sheltered, suburban-born snobs first gave us the hippies. Then they became yuppies. Then, openly admitting the class all these ppies come from, they were called "preppies." But all along, in a united Liberal-Conservative axis, they been taking over the government ("gummint") in order to use it against the majority. So they should be called "guppies."
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I wanna hang the bastards, how that being taken in? I vote libertarian or its equivalent.
 
Ikari said:
I know more than a few scientists who design cutting edge equipment, probe the very fundamental mysteries of the universe, push science and knowledge forward AND can fix all their stuff.
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I know a couple, they are much rarer bird though, I've found.
 
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