Rubik's Cube and the Problem of Credentialism

It's enlightening how the smallest of unfolding systems reflect underlying issues and/or emergent problems within society. This article is a look at the serious issue of Credentialism. That being a reliance on formal qualifications or certification to determine the productive character of an individual.

To be clear. I have no formal qualifications, nor any certificate that would grant me any authority to speak on the matter at hand. I am neither an expert in the field of human status seeking behaviour nor am I recognized as an authority in the areas of sociology or mass psychology.

Rubik's Cube is a device. A structure. A machine. It's a very unique and frankly ingenuous invention. It was never intended to be a puzzle toy. Although it was meant to puzzle and intrigue people. Specifically Professor Rubik's students of Architecture. The device was meant to be analyzed by those students with the goal of gaining an understanding of the actual mechanism that was used to construct the device. It is an extremely clever device, and I am of the opinion that Prof. Rubik is somewhat of a mechanical genius.

In order to help his students more easily visualize the way in which the planar surfaces of the cube are constrained each face of the cube was differently colored. As the cube is rotated through the various states of planar folding, the colored faces become seemingly randomized.

Yada, yada, yada. You all know what a fucking Rubik's cube is.

So now a little bit of anecdotal recollection. I was first exposed to Rubik's Cube sometime in the mid 1970's when it was first released as a puzzle toy. Of course I immediately stole one.

I played with it for a little bit, but not being something that exploded, produced toxic fumes or calculated Pi to the millionth decimal; I soon lost interest. Later I picked it up, and as I was playing with it I began to notice a certain calculus of topology. Not that I thought of it in those terms at the time. I had a different vocabulary for such things at that age.

I spent some hours, perhaps days exploring this space. The concepts of volumetric folding, spatial transforms and topological calculus all began to gel in my mind. After many, many hours I finally figured out how to solve this puzzle. Played with it for a little while thereafter but eventually took it apart. Thus discovering the true genius of this little device. The way in which Rubik had used captured sliding elements to constrain and contain the planar surfaces. Brilliant.

I extracted what was available from this toy and to this day have never picked one up again. Yet, I have no credential. No certificate. I don't compete in timed trials.

Now, let us turn to modernity: half a century later.

One of my ex-girlfriend's nieces is a brilliant little girl. Her parents enrolled her in one of the many, many classes offered that teach children how to solve this puzzle. Why is this a problem? The wee girl in question blazes through her solves, far faster than I could ever hope to accomplish. [possibly because the algorithm I assembled is total crap].

So, again. Why is this a problem? The answer lies in hidden facets of the puzzle itself. The true value in the puzzle lies not in solving the puzzle. Rather, I contend, it lies in using the problem space of the puzzle to learn generic methods of solving other, less obvious, topological quandaries.

Hidden value.

Here is what is being taught to these children.

Amazing results, yes? Phenomenal rote recall and execution of a prepackaged set of algorithmic actions. Yes, there is an element of state analysis involved here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not discounting the actual accomplishments here.

Having said that. None of these students actually learned how to solve this puzzle. They memorized how someone else solved it. The small boy in the video above now has a credential saying he knows how to solve this puzzle. Yet he didn't learn HOW the puzzle is solved. He learned WHAT someone else derived as a solution. Rote memorization of prepackaged "knowledge".

That is fundamentally what Credentialism is about. Rote recall.

I once worked with a developer with dozens of certifications. A moderately skilled developer, yet he didn't have extraordinary skills nor a flair for problem solving. I would see him, day after day, working through huge lists of certification questions and their answers on his breaks . Memorizing. Working his linguistic recall.

He knew the right answers, but not the underlying skills or capabilities that would generate those answers a priori. Even having those answers memorized he showed a distinct inability to apply that knowledge to related problems. He was mid.

Credentialism is a problem primarily because credentials as currently structured do not provide insight into whether the person holding said credential actually has the capabilities supposedly tested for. A credential therefore only provides a certification that the person holding said piece of paper is capable of rote memorization. Credentials are therefore a flawed instrument and should be discarded.

A larger problem is that much of education from primary school to graduate school has embraced credentialism as a basic tenet. There are now entire fields of study in which the synthesis and generation of knowledge has become absent. These fields can best be thought of as "book report" fields. Ones in which no basic techniques of knowledge generation are taught or exercised. Ones where the entire field is self-referential and is comprised almost solely on remixes or restatements of previous works. Which themselves are just similar derivatives of other papers. Many of these fields are underpinned by only a handful of original works.

Society is now accepting the inflated costs of "professionals" who quite bluntly, do not hold the skills that their credentials would indicate. Project managers who have no idea how to manage a project. Yet they have a certificate saying they do hold that skillset.

Credentials have become big business. A way for people of limited skill to enter into lucrative, often semi-technical fields, without a true understanding of the field itself. It is reminiscent of the old Guild structures of the Middle Ages. Wherein one would buy their child a position within a guild. Securing for them a financially rewarding career. Similarly, in later years, military officer's commissions were also sold in such a fashion.

The shift backwards to this older model of economic mobility has serious consequences in a society that increasingly depends on extreme levels of technological proficiency. Increasingly even highly technical fields are succumbing to a similar fate. Leaving a competency deficit that has effectively stalled any real progress for the last 30 years.

We are faced with some serious challenges as the population of the world approaches 10 billion within the next 25 years. Those challenges are not only technical in nature. How to feed, house and keep healthy that many human souls. How to entertain them, how to provide them with meaningful lives. All these are challenges we as a species are facing. One of the largest of these is how do we employ these people. How do we offer them a way to generate value that will provide them a livelihood?

With the shift to credentialism and the effective sale of upwards mobility we sentence the poorest to economic stagnation. Even the most skilled of the underclasses will be unable to bootstrap their way into payment for a "Credential". How much talent is already wasted as potential positions they may have filled are instead filled with someone holding a "Google Certificate"?

Now I've outlined a serious issue that is emerging in modern society. It's not enough that I should simply stop at that. As a very clever man once said to me. "Never bring me a problem unless you have a solution". Truly I learned much from this man. He rarely accepted my solutions as presented. What did happen was that we were able to use my suggested solution as a springboard towards finding one that we both were confident was workable.

Fortunately we do have an exemplar for a solution. One that has worked for thousands of years. A system that has produced some of the most technically wonderous systems and structures on the planet.

These are the trades. The ancient Student/Apprentice/Journeyman/Master layout of the physical trades. A student sits in the classroom. Learning the basic knowledge and cognitive skills needed for the trade in question. Often including mathematics, geometry and the comprehension of highly technical illustrative and textual specifications.

The student is then taken in hand by a Journeyman. Who slowly and incrementally introduces the neophyte to the specific application of the knowledge learned in the classroom to the vagaries of the real world. It's a long process, as each apprentice must master certain skills before proceeding to the next. After many years, usually four to six, an apprentice will be declared a journeyman. This is an evaluation and judgement made by someone who actually works with the knowledge being assessed.

Note. This is not a Credential! It is a title of competency and somewhat of respect. An apprentice works for their title of Journeyman. They have progressed through a set of daily examinations of increasing difficulty. Their work product forms the basis of their examination. They produce value during this phase of their career, for which they are paid accordingly. 1200 hundred days, each day comprised of multiple problems that the apprentice is expected to solve. Thousands of examinations, each not only an instrument into the apprentice's knowledge but also a method of teaching the application of that knowledge.

A Master of a trade is one who has sufficient experience, often spanning decades. It is these rare individuals who set policy and procedures for the training and advancement of members of the trade. This ensures that the training of the incoming tradesmen keeps pace with changing technologies, that criteria are stringent, that the trade remains performant in a changing environment.

This system works. It continues to work. Our entire infrastructure is built upon the work of people who have come up within such a system. What it doesn't do is allow for fraud, deceit or undue rapidity of advancement. It's a measured system, a slow and careful development of highly technical creators.

We have a separation of the "Trades" from the "Professionals". Yet it is clear to me that the training and qualifications of the "Professional" may in many instances be sorely lacking. Perhaps the world would be better served if the "Professions" were organized more along the lines of the "Trades"?

I think it would serve us much better than the credential system as it currently stands. Especially given the ways in which it is lacking as well as the ways in which credentialism can be exploited by the unscrupulous.

Yes, all this from thinking about Rubik's Cube