http://www.technologyreview.com/view/522111/how-to-burst-the-filter-bubble-that-protects-us-from-opposing-views/?utm_campaign=socialsync&utm_medium=social-post&utm_source=facebookI DON”T WANT THE BUBBLE BURST. THAT JUST MEANS MORE INDOCTRINATION.
Source date (UTC): 2013-12-02 04:55:00 UTC
(good)(attack on academia) (Disclaimer: I have a fine art degree: art history and theory. Aesthetic philosophy. Although I am also educated in economics, philosophy, history and computer science.) [Warning: Harsh words follow.] 1) COST. Now, if I paid 10K for this degree, or even 20K, that would be one thing. But these degrees are too expensive for the cost of the education. Humans make cost benefit analyses and the data is in: there isn’t a return on them. 2) CONTENT. Philosophy departments can alight with the humanities and religion (which is a death sentence) or align with science, economics, politics, business and law (where it is terribly useful). 3) FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHICAL PROGRAM. The academic humanities bear much of the responsibility for their plight having tried fitfully to prove via the metaphysical program on one hand (a demonstrated failure), via the logical program on the other (a demonstrated failure), by the mathematical program (a failure at least at the set level to correct mathematical platonism rather than justify it), that philosophy is a science in itself, rather than the means by which we interpret the findings of the sciences and therefore to inform and alter our perception and understanding, such that we adapt our actions to the new knowledge. Philosophy then is a moral discipline, where morality is the study of action. It is not a means of attempting find justification that philosophy is a science. It is not. It cannot be. Because science requires that we use instrumentation to confirm our senses. 4) REPLACING THE CHURCH: It is not lost on those of us who are critics (even those few of us who write philosophy nearly full time), that Academia, originating as an extension of the church, has sought to replace the church’s influence over moral and political life. It has done so. It has done so largely by a) promoting both socialism, communism, postmodernism and totalitarian humanism, social democracy, and therefore bearing the responsibility of both the decline of the west’s aristocratic mythos, and the death of nearly one hundred million people. If that is not an indictment I don’t know what is. And rather than extend rights to all, academics encouraged extraordinary rights, and in particular supported feminism as a means of increasing revenues and attracting women to previously male dominated universities. However, the feminist program has been successful in undermining the nuclear family, and are the voting force that allows socialists, democratic socialists, and totalitarian humanists produced by the university system, to obtain political power, by which to both undermine the 14th amendment, the Absolute Nuclear Family which is the necessary component of the high trust society, and to undermine the western model through forcible large scale immigration. Even now, the supreme court is populated by non-protestants. And that matters. Because protestants are the keepers of the Absolute Nuclear Family, and the High Trust, Individualist, Risk taking, Experimental society. 5) FRAUDULENT PRODUCTS: The source of much of our political trouble is the fascination in the humanities introspection and self reinforcement rather than external evidence and adaptation, combined with its fascination with totalitarian humanism, and philosophy with postmodernism and socialism. Economics departments don’t teach Marx. It’s bad economics, and really bad philosophy. Furthermore, the evidence is in, and is decidedly against democracy – we cannot seem to make all men aristocrats. So much of the philosophical tradition is not only demonstrably false. It is not only false. But it is harmful. 6) CRIMINALLY DEFECTIVE GOODS: It is not lost on us that academic wares are not warranted, any more than religious wares are warranteed. If they were I suspect academia would rapidly change. The fact that the state gives license to academics who sell faulty goods, but punishes ‘thought crimes’, is evidence enough to demonstrate that academic humanities has in fact, succeeded in replacing the mystical religion of christianity, discrediting the church, only to replace aristocratic egalitarianism and christianity, with totalitarian state humanism – effectively communism by other means. 7) INCENTIVES: It is not lost on any of us that the INCENTIVES in academia are (in economic terms ) ‘perverse’. That we have spent two generations now exchanging personal retirement accounts of parents, for overpriced education of children, most of which ends up in rapid expansion of academic administration, diversion from teaching professors to research faculty, physical capital, and endowments. That graduate students are little more than slave labor, that their work products are almost universally shoddy, that the quality of writing in the humanities is offensively bad, and that obscurant language is used consistently to mask weak, false and unsupported thought. SO BEFORE YOU JUSTIFY THE HUMANITIES PERHAPS AN *EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS** WOULD HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THE BENEFITS ARE SOLELY RESERVED FOR ACADEMICS AT TRAGIC COST TO SOCIETY. AND THAT BY AND LARGE, THE HUMANITIES HAS BEEN THE SOURCE OF MORE HUMAN SUFFERING AND CORRUPTION THAN THE CHURCH EVER MANAGED TO MUSTER. That’s what SCIENCES tell us. So choose whether you will be part of another tragic religion, or move into hard science with the rest of us. Cheers Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=7629 The Decline of Humanities blog.talkingphilosophy.com One of the current narratives is that the humanities are in danger at American universities. Some schools are cutting funding for the humanities while others are actually eliminating majors and dep..
(good)(attack on academia) (Disclaimer: I have a fine art degree: art history and theory. Aesthetic philosophy. Although I am also educated in economics, philosophy, history and computer science.) [Warning: Harsh words follow.] 1) COST. Now, if I paid 10K for this degree, or even 20K, that would be one thing. But these degrees are too expensive for the cost of the education. Humans make cost benefit analyses and the data is in: there isn’t a return on them. 2) CONTENT. Philosophy departments can alight with the humanities and religion (which is a death sentence) or align with science, economics, politics, business and law (where it is terribly useful). 3) FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHICAL PROGRAM. The academic humanities bear much of the responsibility for their plight having tried fitfully to prove via the metaphysical program on one hand (a demonstrated failure), via the logical program on the other (a demonstrated failure), by the mathematical program (a failure at least at the set level to correct mathematical platonism rather than justify it), that philosophy is a science in itself, rather than the means by which we interpret the findings of the sciences and therefore to inform and alter our perception and understanding, such that we adapt our actions to the new knowledge. Philosophy then is a moral discipline, where morality is the study of action. It is not a means of attempting find justification that philosophy is a science. It is not. It cannot be. Because science requires that we use instrumentation to confirm our senses. 4) REPLACING THE CHURCH: It is not lost on those of us who are critics (even those few of us who write philosophy nearly full time), that Academia, originating as an extension of the church, has sought to replace the church’s influence over moral and political life. It has done so. It has done so largely by a) promoting both socialism, communism, postmodernism and totalitarian humanism, social democracy, and therefore bearing the responsibility of both the decline of the west’s aristocratic mythos, and the death of nearly one hundred million people. If that is not an indictment I don’t know what is. And rather than extend rights to all, academics encouraged extraordinary rights, and in particular supported feminism as a means of increasing revenues and attracting women to previously male dominated universities. However, the feminist program has been successful in undermining the nuclear family, and are the voting force that allows socialists, democratic socialists, and totalitarian humanists produced by the university system, to obtain political power, by which to both undermine the 14th amendment, the Absolute Nuclear Family which is the necessary component of the high trust society, and to undermine the western model through forcible large scale immigration. Even now, the supreme court is populated by non-protestants. And that matters. Because protestants are the keepers of the Absolute Nuclear Family, and the High Trust, Individualist, Risk taking, Experimental society. 5) FRAUDULENT PRODUCTS: The source of much of our political trouble is the fascination in the humanities introspection and self reinforcement rather than external evidence and adaptation, combined with its fascination with totalitarian humanism, and philosophy with postmodernism and socialism. Economics departments don’t teach Marx. It’s bad economics, and really bad philosophy. Furthermore, the evidence is in, and is decidedly against democracy – we cannot seem to make all men aristocrats. So much of the philosophical tradition is not only demonstrably false. It is not only false. But it is harmful. 6) CRIMINALLY DEFECTIVE GOODS: It is not lost on us that academic wares are not warranted, any more than religious wares are warranteed. If they were I suspect academia would rapidly change. The fact that the state gives license to academics who sell faulty goods, but punishes ‘thought crimes’, is evidence enough to demonstrate that academic humanities has in fact, succeeded in replacing the mystical religion of christianity, discrediting the church, only to replace aristocratic egalitarianism and christianity, with totalitarian state humanism – effectively communism by other means. 7) INCENTIVES: It is not lost on any of us that the INCENTIVES in academia are (in economic terms ) ‘perverse’. That we have spent two generations now exchanging personal retirement accounts of parents, for overpriced education of children, most of which ends up in rapid expansion of academic administration, diversion from teaching professors to research faculty, physical capital, and endowments. That graduate students are little more than slave labor, that their work products are almost universally shoddy, that the quality of writing in the humanities is offensively bad, and that obscurant language is used consistently to mask weak, false and unsupported thought. SO BEFORE YOU JUSTIFY THE HUMANITIES PERHAPS AN *EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS** WOULD HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THE BENEFITS ARE SOLELY RESERVED FOR ACADEMICS AT TRAGIC COST TO SOCIETY. AND THAT BY AND LARGE, THE HUMANITIES HAS BEEN THE SOURCE OF MORE HUMAN SUFFERING AND CORRUPTION THAN THE CHURCH EVER MANAGED TO MUSTER. That’s what SCIENCES tell us. So choose whether you will be part of another tragic religion, or move into hard science with the rest of us. Cheers Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=7629 The Decline of Humanities blog.talkingphilosophy.com One of the current narratives is that the humanities are in danger at American universities. Some schools are cutting funding for the humanities while others are actually eliminating majors and dep..
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/the-changing-income-distribution-for-lawyers-average-is-over.htmlTHE END OF LAW AS A PREDICTOR OF GOOD INCOME
Lower standards
Too many lawyers
The expansion of the law into niche and nuance
The reordering of society to revolve around government where people are powerless, rather than courts where they are not.
Source date (UTC): 2013-11-25 03:11:00 UTC
http://www.medicaldaily.com/psychologists-discover-how-people-subconsciously-become-their-favorite-fictional-characters-240435INCEPTION VIA LITERATURE
INCEPTION AND TRAINING BY OBSCURANT LANGUAGE.
(This is what I’m talking about Troy Camplin. )
Source date (UTC): 2013-11-22 09:56:00 UTC
“The current generation of Americans are ahistorical. They have no understanding of history” – James Flynn
This is the nicest possible way to tell a generation that they are ignorant.
Source date (UTC): 2013-11-16 12:29:00 UTC
GOVERNMENT IDIOCY
What is, scientifically, the health problem in america? We get our sweet from sugar instead of fat. We don’t exercise. We force children to sit rather than exercise.
Why do we want sugar? Because we are not getting oxygen from exercise (walking and running)
Why is it such a problem? Because MSG makes you ravenous and eat voraciously, more than you normally would.
Are trans-fats bad? Oh. Sure. Will the government stop subsidizing corn syrup? Um No. Will the government stop subsidizing sugar? Um. No. Will the government ban MSG as a toxin and a drug? Um, no. Will the government return our children to having (intense) ‘recess’ every couple of hours? Um no.
Nothing rational at all. Nothing smart out of that city ever.
Source date (UTC): 2013-11-15 07:52:00 UTC
(personal) (sentiment)
I loved my university experience. All six years of it. 🙂 Mostly what I loved was being with the people. Although very few of the professors were all that interesting. It was a lot less anxious environment for me than ‘real life’ which seemed largely populated by zombies.
But as much as I loved the university, I learned almost everything of value reading on my own. And I think picking up debate as a hobby turned out to be almost as educational. Because it forces you to question your own ideas. As long as you learn from your failures.
Source date (UTC): 2013-11-05 07:52:00 UTC
http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=7629REASONS FOR THE DECLINE OF THE HUMANITIES
(good)(attack on academia)
(Disclaimer: I have a fine art degree: art history and theory. Aesthetic philosophy. Although I am also educated in economics, philosophy, history and computer science.)
[Warning: Harsh words follow.]
1) COST. Now, if I paid 10K for this degree, or even 20K, that would be one thing. But these degrees are too expensive for the cost of the education. Humans make cost benefit analyses and the data is in: there isn’t a return on them.
2) CONTENT. Philosophy departments can alight with the humanities and religion (which is a death sentence) or align with science, economics, politics, business and law (where it is terribly useful).
3) FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHICAL PROGRAM. The academic humanities bear much of the responsibility for their plight having tried fitfully to prove via the metaphysical program on one hand (a demonstrated failure), via the logical program on the other (a demonstrated failure), by the mathematical program (a failure at least at the set level to correct mathematical platonism rather than justify it), that philosophy is a science in itself, rather than the means by which we interpret the findings of the sciences and therefore to inform and alter our perception and understanding, such that we adapt our actions to the new knowledge. Philosophy then is a moral discipline, where morality is the study of action. It is not a means of attempting find justification that philosophy is a science. It is not. It cannot be. Because science requires that we use instrumentation to confirm our senses.
4) REPLACING THE CHURCH: It is not lost on those of us who are critics (even those few of us who write philosophy nearly full time), that Academia, originating as an extension of the church, has sought to replace the church’s influence over moral and political life. It has done so. It has done so largely by a) promoting both socialism, communism, postmodernism and totalitarian humanism, social democracy, and therefore bearing the responsibility of both the decline of the west’s aristocratic mythos, and the death of nearly one hundred million people. If that is not an indictment I don’t know what is. And rather than extend rights to all, academics encouraged extraordinary rights, and in particular supported feminism as a means of increasing revenues and attracting women to previously male dominated universities.
However, the feminist program has been successful in undermining the nuclear family, and are the voting force that allows socialists, democratic socialists, and totalitarian humanists produced by the university system, to obtain political power, by which to both undermine the 14th amendment, the Absolute Nuclear Family which is the necessary component of the high trust society, and to undermine the western model through forcible large scale immigration. Even now, the supreme court is populated by non-protestants. And that matters. Because protestants are the keepers of the Absolute Nuclear Family, and the High Trust, Individualist, Risk taking, Experimental society.
5) FRAUDULENT PRODUCTS: The source of much of our political trouble is the fascination in the humanities introspection and self reinforcement rather than external evidence and adaptation, combined with its fascination with totalitarian humanism, and philosophy with postmodernism and socialism. Economics departments don’t teach Marx. It’s bad economics, and really bad philosophy. Furthermore, the evidence is in, and is decidedly against democracy – we cannot seem to make all men aristocrats. So much of the philosophical tradition is not only demonstrably false. It is not only false. But it is harmful.
6) CRIMINALLY DEFECTIVE GOODS: It is not lost on us that academic wares are not warranted, any more than religious wares are warranteed. If they were I suspect academia would rapidly change. The fact that the state gives license to academics who sell faulty goods, but punishes ‘thought crimes’, is evidence enough to demonstrate that academic humanities has in fact, succeeded in replacing the mystical religion of christianity, discrediting the church, only to replace aristocratic egalitarianism and christianity, with totalitarian state humanism – effectively communism by other means.
7) INCENTIVES: It is not lost on any of us that the INCENTIVES in academia are (in economic terms ) ‘perverse’. That we have spent two generations now exchanging personal retirement accounts of parents, for overpriced education of children, most of which ends up in rapid expansion of academic administration, diversion from teaching professors to research faculty, physical capital, and endowments. That graduate students are little more than slave labor, that their work products are almost universally shoddy, that the quality of writing in the humanities is offensively bad, and that obscurant language is used consistently to mask weak, false and unsupported thought.
SO BEFORE YOU JUSTIFY THE HUMANITIES PERHAPS AN *EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS** WOULD HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THE BENEFITS ARE SOLELY RESERVED FOR ACADEMICS AT TRAGIC COST TO SOCIETY. AND THAT BY AND LARGE, THE HUMANITIES HAS BEEN THE SOURCE OF MORE HUMAN SUFFERING AND CORRUPTION THAN THE CHURCH EVER MANAGED TO MUSTER.
That’s what SCIENCES tell us. So choose whether you will be part of another tragic religion, or move into hard science with the rest of us. 🙂
Cheers
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev
Source date (UTC): 2013-11-05 05:52:00 UTC
YOUR INTELLECTUAL JOURNEY
You know, you start out on any subject and it just seems like there is this vast literature, an infinite amount to learn, and that you’ll forever be ignorant. You struggle to gain each new concept, and master its application. You find some niche and sort of master that, then expand out from there to learn more.
At some point you grasp, that in any field there are a very small number of basic principles. And that you must simply master the permutations of those principles. And that, really, most writing is other people trying to LEARN themselves, by applying those basic ideas or trying to refute them. And so there is an awful lot of ‘chaff’ and very little intellectual ‘wheat’. The problem is learning how to separate wheat from chaff. Other than that, each field isn’t very hard.
(Math is interestingly like this. I mean, you can understand all that there is to know about math from the very basics to the most complex. The problem though, is like chess. The basic rules are really simple actually. But the sequence of moves is pretty enormous, and the consequences of those moves more so. And the art is in actually PRACTICING all those various transformations until you gain an insight from the practice of transforming. Myself, I find it boring as hell. But some people love puzzles and I love problems and that’s what a division of labor is for.)
At some point you begin to grasp the intellectual struggle of each person back into ancient history as trying to wrestle with and within his or her limited knowledge paradigm, and doing the best he or she can. (And that’s when you realize that Aristotle was godlike.) But you can empathize with each of them and their circumstance.
(Philosophy is like this. You see that basically everyone has a bit of fragmentary knowledge and is trying to apply it before they have sufficient empirical means to do so. Worse, that most philosophers are trying somehow to get power, justify power, or undermine power. And in that way, philosophy is a sort of middle ground between religion (norms) and science (laws). But it becomes quite clear that most of the time, they just don’t have good scientific tools to work with, and they ‘re stuck with religion’s model of thought.)
At some other point you begin to see yourself in some paradigm of limited knowledge and and begin to think about what assumptions that you make might be wrong given the most recent increases in knowledge. And at that point you’re usually crushed and humbled.
(The internet has done more for knowledge accumulation than I had ever dreamed of before. I almost can’t reconstruct life before it. Its so horribly SLOW by comparison. So TEDIOUS. I mean, ordering BOOKS from LIBRARIES? Ungh…. It’s hard to be an info-vore in the age of paper, without patience. For those of us with ADD like symptoms, it’s awesome that you can drink from the fire hose CONSTANTLY. )
And then you realize that all of us, even the best, really are fighting against the dark forces of time and ignorance, each of us but a bit of kindling upon the pyre of those who came before us. Some work with diligence their entire lives and serve to maintain by not extend our understanding. Others manage a single marginally useful idea. And others shovel them out by the wagon load as fuel for a coal fire.
And it seems a random game at times. But you can’t win if you don’t play. And it matters more that you play hard, than that you desire to win.
Source date (UTC): 2013-11-04 15:52:00 UTC