"The problem is that learning "useless things," which is rooted in a form play, turns into something more--that is a self-centered approach of securing yourself in a social hierarchy."
Social signaling and play aren't the only thing that learning useless skills can turn into.
When I started learning to program, it was useless because all I knew how to write were toy programs. But at some point I got good enough at writing toy programs that people could actually use my useful work.
Right now, the fact that I've spent the last couple of months re-learning calculus is totally useless to my careers as a CRUD programmer, IT admin dude, or musician. But I started the MITx 6.002 class on electrical engineering, and that math learning has helped immensely with the first part of that course...
In itself me knowing how to design electronics is useless. And I am profoundly grateful to be , as you correctly phrase it "wealthy in time, energy and cognitive power". I can learn just because I find it playful.
But eventually I have some product ideas that I'd like to build (just for my own fun and enjoyment). And that doesn't sound useless at all. It sounds fun and interesting (which have some utility in themselves) and it could be monetarily profitable given the depth of my domain knowledge.
Similarly, when I started learning to play upright bass, it was just useless play... I didn't play well enough to do anything with it. At this point, I've done it enough that it's useful to the musicians I gigged and recorded with in the last week.
Similarly, I have a pretty good domain knowledge with IT skills, and at some point I want to turn my attention to the various methods of working with machine learning / statistics / AI / whatever. When I start to do that, it will be useless because I won't know enough to do anything other than play with it. But maybe eventually I will have enough facility to do some useful things with it... I am assuming that when I'm in my late 60s and 70s that will be a very useful skill to have for helping with political activism.
So I somewhat agree with you. Without actually doing anything, all knowledge acquisition is useless. I have most of a PhD in English and I totally agree that there is a lot of social signaling that goes on in education.
But the possibility of that use for education doesn't imply that social climbing and play are the only uses for "useless" knowledge.
Social signaling and play aren't the only thing that learning useless skills can turn into.
When I started learning to program, it was useless because all I knew how to write were toy programs. But at some point I got good enough at writing toy programs that people could actually use my useful work.
Right now, the fact that I've spent the last couple of months re-learning calculus is totally useless to my careers as a CRUD programmer, IT admin dude, or musician. But I started the MITx 6.002 class on electrical engineering, and that math learning has helped immensely with the first part of that course...
In itself me knowing how to design electronics is useless. And I am profoundly grateful to be , as you correctly phrase it "wealthy in time, energy and cognitive power". I can learn just because I find it playful.
But eventually I have some product ideas that I'd like to build (just for my own fun and enjoyment). And that doesn't sound useless at all. It sounds fun and interesting (which have some utility in themselves) and it could be monetarily profitable given the depth of my domain knowledge.
Similarly, when I started learning to play upright bass, it was just useless play... I didn't play well enough to do anything with it. At this point, I've done it enough that it's useful to the musicians I gigged and recorded with in the last week.
Similarly, I have a pretty good domain knowledge with IT skills, and at some point I want to turn my attention to the various methods of working with machine learning / statistics / AI / whatever. When I start to do that, it will be useless because I won't know enough to do anything other than play with it. But maybe eventually I will have enough facility to do some useful things with it... I am assuming that when I'm in my late 60s and 70s that will be a very useful skill to have for helping with political activism.
So I somewhat agree with you. Without actually doing anything, all knowledge acquisition is useless. I have most of a PhD in English and I totally agree that there is a lot of social signaling that goes on in education.
But the possibility of that use for education doesn't imply that social climbing and play are the only uses for "useless" knowledge.