Then I may have misunderstood the discussion functionality of HN. I've never submitted a story so excuse my ignorance for asking: when you submit an article, is there an option to disable all followup comments so that the post is "read-only"? (Which means the OP forgot to check that option.) If that functionality doesn't exist, I don't understand how anyone would post to HN but not want commentary.
>Consequently, all of your "education-based" examples are bad, as somebody might claim Cisco certification, school and/or college are pointless and even be completely right.
I agree with that but that's not my point at all. You're talking about a case-by-case situation of delivering education (some of it good, some of it bad) and the subsequent extraction of economic value from time invested (repay school loans, opportunity cost, money wasted.) Maybe someone should drop out of school because he has great card playing skills and wants to bet his income potential on winning World Series Poker championship. Or maybe he's an autodidact and can learn iOS and Android on his own to a $100k salary. Scenarios like that are not relevant to my point.
What I was talking about was something else. It was the idea and concept of education. My point is that just because teachers, politicians, and parents disagree on what "education" is does not mean the idea of education is pointless.
>Now, it's true that there isn't one good definition on what proof actually is.
Right. And yet, we as a civilization can still benefit from "math proofs" in spite of the fact that there are some philosophical differences on what "proof" is.
>arguable "best practices" aren't pointless, because they do work, not because "disagreement doesn't matter".
I wasn't stating this. I said something different: that "best practices" are not disqualified because of disagreements. I did not say "best practices" are good because of disagreements. Those are 2 very different sentences and I did not write what you think I wrote.