Didn't you want to study poli sci?SuperJail Warden wrote:
Business school is a form of academia way more destructive than any other.
how is an MBA not academia? and yes, everyone knows he got recruited from ford or general motors or whatever.Jay wrote:
McNamara was an MBA, not an academic. He worked at Ford after WW2.
Last edited by uziq (2020-05-24 15:33:06)
My second B.A. is Poli Sci. If I was good at math, I would have majored in economics. I am glad I didn't though. Finding a job in the private sector would have been easier with an economics degree but private sector employment is a shit show. I would rather cut my own throat than have to work in the private sector again.Jay wrote:
Didn't you want to study poli sci?SuperJail Warden wrote:
Business school is a form of academia way more destructive than any other.
It was and yes that is true. The documentary covers only a small part of the extent of it, but McNamara was the driving force behind the data-based approach to war in vietnam. His generals were keen on it as well.uziq wrote:
isn't the whole point of the documentary that he expresses some contrition and regret over his numbers-based approach to the war?
weren't my lai and many other examples of military atrocity down to american GIs hunting numbers? where a dead vietcong made up the KPIs?
but never mind. i can't be bothered.
Last edited by Larssen (2020-05-24 15:34:27)
Poli Sci is the same idea as an MBA, no? Application of scientific principals to politics rather than to business? Efficiency, logic, feedback etc.SuperJail Warden wrote:
My second B.A. is Poli Sci. If I was good at math, I would have majored in economics. I am glad I didn't though. Finding a job in the private sector would have been easier with an economics degree but private sector employment is a shit show. I would rather cut my own throat than have to work in the private sector again.Jay wrote:
Didn't you want to study poli sci?SuperJail Warden wrote:
Business school is a form of academia way more destructive than any other.
it is a very good movie. much more of a success (from the director's POV) than the follow-up one he did on rumsfeld. the latter didn't give up shit. just empty platitudes (known unknowns etc).Larssen wrote:
It was and yes that is true. The documentary covers only a small part of the extent of it, but McNamara was the driving force behind the data-based approach to war in vietnam. His generals were keen on it as well.uziq wrote:
isn't the whole point of the documentary that he expresses some contrition and regret over his numbers-based approach to the war?
weren't my lai and many other examples of military atrocity down to american GIs hunting numbers? where a dead vietcong made up the KPIs?
but never mind. i can't be bothered.
All around a massive human tragedy.
definitely watch norma percy's 'the death of yugoslavia'. it's about 5-6 parts long and is the best long-form documentary i have ever seen.Larssen wrote:
The fog of war & ken burns' vietnam war together offer a remarkably detailed view into the policies in vietnam and their results. Don't think any other conflict has had such extensive 'popular media' coverage, of great quality no less.
I would say the commonly referred 'MBA mindset' was very much a product of post-WW2 rationalism and what I'll call mathematical optimism. This permeated into every field. Justifying theories through mathematical formulae and quantitative reasoning was en vogue and a good/easy way to rake in research grants.Jay wrote:
Poli Sci is the same idea as an MBA, no? Application of scientific principals to politics rather than to business? Efficiency, logic, feedback etc.
much more influential ideas than efficiencies (that's very taylorist rather than fordist) were data-related fields, computation/modelling and, later in the cold war, game theory.Jay wrote:
Poli Sci is the same idea as an MBA, no? Application of scientific principals to politics rather than to business? Efficiency, logic, feedback etc.SuperJail Warden wrote:
My second B.A. is Poli Sci. If I was good at math, I would have majored in economics. I am glad I didn't though. Finding a job in the private sector would have been easier with an economics degree but private sector employment is a shit show. I would rather cut my own throat than have to work in the private sector again.Jay wrote:
Didn't you want to study poli sci?
it is a staggering documentary. when you see all the people assembled and appearing on it. and their candour/open-ness. this was prior to half of them being dragged before the european/world courts and strung up for crimes against humanity, etc. when the history was still open and raw and yet to be settled.
That's cheap. An MBA at Columbia costs $160k. You're paying for the networking opportunity more than the actual academic portion of it.Larssen wrote:
I wouldn't say business administration is an academic discipline though. It's taught at university sure, but I find it to be rather light on theory, lackluster in content, somewhat heavy on statistics and basic arithmetic. It lacks the intellectual engagement many other fields bring and is basically a cash-cow for universities. An MBA at insead or hbs costs some 80-100k.
Last edited by Larssen (2020-05-24 15:55:50)
everybody is snobby about the business schools but they do produce research. they write theses. they borrow and implement in vogue academic ideas, from politics/economics and elsewhere (which do have full-fledged academic departments on campus). they undertake projects.Larssen wrote:
I wouldn't say business administration is an academic discipline though. It's taught at university sure, but I find it to be rather light on theory, lackluster in content, somewhat heavy on statistics and basic arithmetic. It lacks the intellectual engagement many other fields bring and is basically a cash-cow for universities. An MBA at insead or hbs costs some 80-100k.
In that case all of the social sciences and a lot of the humanities are just like MBAs. I don't think the sciences have a monopoly on logic and rationalism.Jay wrote:
Poli Sci is the same idea as an MBA, no? Application of scientific principals to politics rather than to business? Efficiency, logic, feedback etc.SuperJail Warden wrote:
My second B.A. is Poli Sci. If I was good at math, I would have majored in economics. I am glad I didn't though. Finding a job in the private sector would have been easier with an economics degree but private sector employment is a shit show. I would rather cut my own throat than have to work in the private sector again.Jay wrote:
Didn't you want to study poli sci?
They also led to Soviet-style 5 year plansSuperJail Warden wrote:
In that case all of the social sciences and a lot of the humanities are just like MBAs. I don't think the sciences have a monopoly on logic and rationalism.Jay wrote:
Poli Sci is the same idea as an MBA, no? Application of scientific principals to politics rather than to business? Efficiency, logic, feedback etc.SuperJail Warden wrote:
My second B.A. is Poli Sci. If I was good at math, I would have majored in economics. I am glad I didn't though. Finding a job in the private sector would have been easier with an economics degree but private sector employment is a shit show. I would rather cut my own throat than have to work in the private sector again.
What I meant about business school being destructive is the fact that people who were educated at America's top business schools were the ones who shaped the country's economic policy for decades and came up with great ideas like outsourcing, privatization, and supply side economics.