[ExI] mit's answer to the stanford ai class

[Mike Dougherty]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 2:41 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
> As you mention, there are in-person-for-exam-only setups in certain fields,
> such as PE licenses (or ham radio licenses).  However, there is no such
> general equivalent for BSes/MSes/PhDs.  I suspect it is primarily a
> marketing challenge: an alternative could be proposed and developed, but
> how would you get most employers to accept it as equal in weight to the
> existing degrees?

The part that I found spike's original post missing is the
coordination (database) of who is an narrow-topic expert (can't bring
myself to further overload "nano") and in what subject areas.  Having
completed some job like spike's Cavalcade whatsit, he could "profess"
to the DB so the rest of the thousand-or-so Cavalcade owner can find
him for his technical knowledge.  Perhaps the circle of trust would be
quite weak on that topic, but weak help may still be better than
figure it out all by your lonesome.

The BS/MS/PhD challenge might be solved by the trust network of
fellows with whom you've worked along the way.  If I already
(inherently) trust 3 of your colleagues and they highly vouch for your
competence in your professed field (even if their own is only
tangentially related) then I will perhaps rank your input slightly
higher in value than your competitor who I also consult in an effort
to corroborate with secondary and tertiary opinions.  This is not much
different than how such things are done "in real life" but with the
added benefit of some form of who's-who infrastructure I could consult
dozens/hundreds of "experts" in the same amount of time/effort as it
currently takes to call your 3 colleagues for a reference.