I like the post but I’m not entirely convinced. Even if these are optional classes to pad your degree out, you’d have to think taking history classes adds more value than all other potential options. I don’t entirely believe that’s the case even if I agree with many of your points in the post.
I appreciate this point a lot! I think the counterfactual value of taking history classes is pretty hard to generalize across university students because everyone has different tradeoffs. Some students might have more value from taking other kinds of classes, even other kinds of “padding” classes. Good candidates might be CS, economics, philosophy, math, and maybe a writing class. My general sense is that the value of those classes are more well known in EA (e.g. I see many people majoring in the first four) and probably don’t need an explanation. I think history might need more of an explanation, which is why I offered one here. In general, I do agree that people should be thinking about this counterfactually, but I think the outcome would be very dependent on the individual student.
I like the post but I’m not entirely convinced. Even if these are optional classes to pad your degree out, you’d have to think taking history classes adds more value than all other potential options. I don’t entirely believe that’s the case even if I agree with many of your points in the post.
I appreciate this point a lot! I think the counterfactual value of taking history classes is pretty hard to generalize across university students because everyone has different tradeoffs. Some students might have more value from taking other kinds of classes, even other kinds of “padding” classes. Good candidates might be CS, economics, philosophy, math, and maybe a writing class. My general sense is that the value of those classes are more well known in EA (e.g. I see many people majoring in the first four) and probably don’t need an explanation. I think history might need more of an explanation, which is why I offered one here. In general, I do agree that people should be thinking about this counterfactually, but I think the outcome would be very dependent on the individual student.