a college degree in 2025/2026/2027 ... don't

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:

Sandy Kemp wrote:If I was advising a young person today, I'd point them to work that can't be done by AI, plumbing, electrician,etc. Those jobs will last longer and the skills are useful for life.

Yes, I totally agree.
AI doesn't have hands!

paul wheaton wrote:The AI robots will have the knowledge and skill of a thousand first class plumbers.  They will probably be 20 times more trustworthy and reliable at a tenth of the price.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:BTW if you're interested in studying, in learning more on a certain subject ... and it's a subject that's taught in college/university ... you still don't have to go to college.
I found out that by 'studying' yourself, in your spare time, by reading books and articles (most of them can be found on the internet) you can learn so very much! You can go on learning about interesting subjects for all of your life, in fact even for all eternity (there will always be more to learn about!)  :-)

Dan Robinson wrote:
Here's the problem:

Achieving these AGI goals requires massive amounts of energy (electricity) to run data centers and train algorithms, not to mention an enormous supply of computer chips, such as GPUs, etc. The amount of energy needed to accomplish these nefarious goals is NOT yet available.

Then there is the side issue of cooling, where massive amounts of water are diverted to cool the data centers.

The current U.S. electrical grid cannot handle the load. Data centers are already driving up electricity costs for customers in various locations around the country. Natural gas is also being diverted to power these data centers, not to mention almost defunct coal-fired facilities being brought back online.

There is a lot of talk and research into nuclear energy and micro-nuclear reactors to supply the required energy. But it takes a lot of time and money to build this out, not to mention potential regulatory issues.

paul wheaton wrote:I had huge hopes that we would embrace the scenario I laid out, and then explore permaculture solutions.  

With a humble home and a huge garden ...

  - maybe it doesn't matter if you lose your job

  - maybe you have a MASSIVE advantage

  - maybe all this stuff becomes interesting rather than scary

  - is better than living in the city with a lot of money ...  which will drain away

  - maybe you can share your bounty with friends

paul wheaton wrote:I had huge hopes that we would embrace the scenario I laid out, and then explore permaculture solutions.

Jeremy VanGelder wrote: I wonder what projects people have been able to complete when they haven't had a workee job? I find it easier to contemplate big life changes when I can compare them to similar ones in my past...

paul wheaton wrote:I had huge hopes that we would embrace the scenario I laid out, and then explore permaculture solutions.  

With a humble home and a huge garden ...

  - maybe it doesn't matter if you lose your job

  - maybe you have a MASSIVE advantage

  - maybe all this stuff becomes interesting rather than scary

  - is better than living in the city with a lot of money ...  which will drain away

  - maybe you can share your bounty with friends

paul wheaton wrote:I had huge hopes that we would embrace the scenario I laid out, and then explore permaculture solutions.  

With a humble home and a huge garden ...

  - maybe it doesn't matter if you lose your job

  - maybe you have a MASSIVE advantage

  - maybe all this stuff becomes interesting rather than scary

  - is better than living in the city with a lot of money ...  which will drain away

  - maybe you can share your bounty with friends

paul wheaton wrote:I hear from many people (and see it all over the internet):  gotta stop AI; gotta stop the bots ...    "DEY TERK ER JERBS!"    ...   it strikes me as twisted to desire jobs so much.

I had huge hopes that we would embrace the scenario I laid out, and then explore permaculture solutions.  

With a humble home and a huge garden ...

  - maybe it doesn't matter if you lose your job

  - maybe you have a MASSIVE advantage

  - maybe all this stuff becomes interesting rather than scary

  - is better than living in the city with a lot of money ...  which will drain away

  - maybe you can share your bounty with friends

Ben Zumeta wrote:

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:BTW if you're interested in studying, in learning more on a certain subject ... and it's a subject that's taught in college/university ... you still don't have to go to college.
I found out that by 'studying' yourself, in your spare time, by reading books and articles (most of them can be found on the internet) you can learn so very much! You can go on learning about interesting subjects for all of your life, in fact even for all eternity (there will always be more to learn about!)  :-)

I think independent study is great and I continue to do so myself, but I still think the intellectual community is the most beneficial aspect of college. I remember my Taoism professor describing and then demonstrating in her great course why texts like the Tao Te Ching are not really meant to be read in solitude by a monk in a cave. Conversation and synthesis of the ideas is integral to these works’ value. This is actually a theme of The Seven Taoist Masters, and I also think is an aspect of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I think this is also a big part of the Permies’ value. Being together in person has its own value as well, and some of my greatest realizations happened in laughter filled dorm room debates and camping trips with college friends.

Les Frijo wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:I hear from many people (and see it all over the internet):  gotta stop AI; gotta stop the bots ...    "DEY TERK ER JERBS!"    ...   it strikes me as twisted to desire jobs so much.

I had huge hopes that we would embrace the scenario I laid out, and then explore permaculture solutions.  

With a humble home and a huge garden ...

  - maybe it doesn't matter if you lose your job

  - maybe you have a MASSIVE advantage

  - maybe all this stuff becomes interesting rather than scary

  - is better than living in the city with a lot of money ...  which will drain away

  - maybe you can share your bounty with friends

Community seems the hardest thing to build and grow. Maybe the best thing that could happen is for jobs to go away and peeps will have no choice and more time for building community.

That would be interesting and exciting.

Les Frijo wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:I hear from many people (and see it all over the internet):  gotta stop AI; gotta stop the bots ...    "DEY TERK ER JERBS!"    ...   it strikes me as twisted to desire jobs so much.

I had huge hopes that we would embrace the scenario I laid out, and then explore permaculture solutions.  

With a humble home and a huge garden ...

  - maybe it doesn't matter if you lose your job

  - maybe you have a MASSIVE advantage

  - maybe all this stuff becomes interesting rather than scary

  - is better than living in the city with a lot of money ...  which will drain away

  - maybe you can share your bounty with friends

Community seems the hardest thing to build and grow. Maybe the best thing that could happen is for jobs to go away and peeps will have no choice and more time for building community.

That would be interesting and exciting.

Craig Weiser wrote:Even if AI/robots didn’t exist, the current standard of going to college for a wage so you remain in debt for the rest of your life makes no sense.  Perhaps still viable for those who have a natural talent better than most.  But for the rest of us, the very concept of giving up our time for money to service a lifelong debt in the suburbs must be reevaluated.  So young people logically seek other options: can you live in poverty skillfully?  Can you have sufficient shelter and community with minimal dependency on the currency?  Has the definition of “work” always been sacrificing your time for money?  Now here comes AI and fine labor robotics to exasperate the whole thing!  

I believe my comment about "thinking" being the new in-demand workie job holds - there's a big push within the so-called "alternative" community toward healthy food and real, tactile experience of the world, and only thinking people will be able to produce this. From Montessori style schooling to "paleo" style diets, there's a definitive theme out there, and it's one that's driving an increasing demand for production of real food with real hands in a really contaminated world. Permaculture is the answer to this. The number of "social media influencer" and "podcaster" people that source most of their foodstuffs from the Amish community is a great example of the market demand, and that trend is only growing. Fake food is out and permie apples, land race sweet corn and free-range hams are in.

College degrees themselves are not skills, even when you're talking STEM related studies.  

Les Frijo wrote:The thing I always thought about college or even trade school is why would I want to go learn how to do things like we have done in the past that got us here. I don't. There are better ways. Look where we are, The results speak for themselves. College serves our masters not us.

The title of this thread is pretty specific. The only reason I come here is because most of the answers that I haven't come up with on my own are already here. Thanks to Paul. Wheaton Labs is a great idea manifesting as we speak. But we need millions of them at this rate.

The last thing I ever want is another "job". It would be nice to be able to make a living though. Like before "jobs" were invented. That's what jobs and whatever masters we serve have taken away from all of us.

M Ljin wrote:
That we choose who and what shape our minds, and this is a serious decision.

If I were to choose who my foremost teacher is, the one I listen to above all others, I would call it “mystery”. Or myself. Or both. Trusting yourself leads to creativity, to wisdom, to perception. Whenever I gave my mind to others, I would find that the language-mediated reality they offered was only partial. When I gave my mind to mystery, finally I would learn. Not knowing is knowing truly.

I am not trying to imitate sustainable people, or anyone, just follow what I know in my heart to be true. That has always lead me well, even if it has taken me to places that seem like madness or irrationality.

I flipped open a book yesterday: “This is your mind on plants” by Michael Pollen, the chapter on caffeine. It was just the right section—it was describing how caffeine, in effect, shaped the patterns of thought and perception in society and ushered in the age of rationalism. (I don’t use caffeine and it makes a difference!) If we took that one substance away, would the whole paradigm crumble, would our perception of reality change entirely? And culture works the same way. If you only work within one cultural context there is no room for contradicting it. If you free yourself from cultural context, it opens up into the vastness of the world. And that is where we find what we need to create real change.

Not saying people in college don’t think (not at all!) but that working alone, self in concert with mystery, is a very different and very valid approach, and allows for a lot more creativity and novelty than working within an existing cultural paradigm. (It might be said that that is the work of the shaman, even…)

Dan Robinson wrote:

...Generally speaking, it takes about two years of industrial experience before an engineer proves their worth to the company...

This is also true in nursing. 2 years to be a competent, safe nurse.  5 years for true competence. I know some exceptions, excellent young nurses who are safe sooner than that. The scary ones are the RNs who come out of school thinking they know something.

Tereza Okava wrote:

tel jetson wrote:
I do want to briefly mention that there are still a number of places in the world where a college degree is either free or nearly so. ... if one of those places appeals, immigration might be an option.

Funny enough, that is exactly what we did! moved to a place that has free federal universities with top-flight science and engineering, if you can pass the entry exam.

I liked my college experience in the US, but I can't imagine having paid full price for it (luckily I received many scholarships and fellowships, along with work study and jobs on the side-- and back then it was relatively cheap!! I shudder to think about what it costs today).
Even with an almost-free ride, I graduated with 20K USD in debt (gotta eat something and sleep somewhere even if school is free...). Thankfully I was able to pay it off with my first job, but I know talking to my peers that I was very, very lucky to owe "only" that.
I really didn't want that for my daughter. It was a big gamble, since it's hard to tell what a kid will want to study, but it was a big factor when we decided where we wanted to live long-term. Not a choice for everyone, but something I've never regretted.

paul wheaton wrote:the setupMy guess is that there are a lot of other solutions.  I would love to add some more permaculture solutions to my list.  Anybody have some more solutions?

Jeremy VanGelder wrote:After all, the students are the customers.

John F Dean wrote:While the computers did do a great deal more work, they also created more work. In the end, there were no savings.

tel jetson wrote:learn and share skills. don’t need to reinvent the wheel here: if there are community centers, art centers, clubs, religious groups, granges close by, you may as well make good use of them.

Susan Mené wrote:      We all wandered down the wrong path, I guess.  Just to clarify, What solutions were were you looking for? Solutions to get more people into permaculture, or skip, or ERE. or FIRE?  Or was it more personal to your situation, like getting people into bootcamp?  Or raising awareness of what is to come and the need for society to rapidly shift the definition of success? Or expanding permaculture communities?
     My original response was suggesting that aside from working the land, both hands-on and compassion type life callings are largely robot proof.  And will be needed/beneficial in all communities.