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Stay In School It's Not A Waste Of Time!

A post of a ranting nature...

Roli

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Hi, I didn't realise you knew me so intimately.


Person that doesn't believe we went to the moon questioned their belief we went to the moon...
OP believes we went to the moon. Never questioned their belief.

Yup I have questioned my belief, and by doing that I came up with overwhelming evidence that we went. From eye-witness testimony, to the fact that Russia and China and random schools around the globe were using radio equipment to track the flight.

Oh and the fact that it would have cost about 50 times the price it did to fly a craft up there, somehow hide it from all the prying radio scopes looking for the only human signals in space at the time, and then also somehow bounce signals off the moon without that being detected by a superpower hellbent on proving them liars.

But hey you obviously know me, so I must be lying right?

OP does not question status quo climate change or 5G.

Oops wrong again dude, in fact just the other day I read a short 5,000 word report on non ionising radiation, erm not that I mentioned 5G in my OP but hey, you know me so well so I must have been thinking about it right?

OP states that POTUS "believes that climate change is fake"...
OP doesn't seem to understand the complexity of climate change vs prominent man-made global warming as a sole factor, and thus can't understand other's questioning of the subject.

Again, wow, you know me so well, do you want to get married? I think we should, it's like you're looking deep into my soul and showing me how I think, cool.

*Shares political opinions*
OP: But hey, this isn't a political post (aka. don't tell me your politics, I'm the only one that can do that)

Aww, did that annoy you? Is this our first lover's tiff? :-D

*Regurgitates mainstream beliefs without question*
OP: Yeah man, people just don't question their beliefs.

Seriously, let's make up, again you demonstrate just how well you know me, by pointing out that I've never questioned those mainstream beliefs.

Or, possibly I have and found out that the reason they're mainstream, is because they're correct.

Question everything. Question school. Question the moon landing. Question vaccines. Question the president. Question climate change. Question reality. Question it all.

If the earth's obviously round, you have nothing to fear with asking the question.
If we obviously went to the moon, you have nothing to fear with asking the question.
If man-made global warming is the sole driving force of climate change, you have nothing to fear with asking the question.

Oh dear, another person reading the title and not bothering to read the content, I actually state, believe what you want, that's not the problem, it's people simply rejecting evidence based on the fact that it's part of the official narrative man

Anyway thanks for your oblique marriage proposal, but whilst I'm flattered, I'm happily 10 years together with my lovely lady.

Good luck in your search for love. X
 
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Roli

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This is a very interesting post that I've thought for some time. I'm going to tell you the truth about conspiracy people, most have college degrees (cue evil music). Sure, some toothless hick might believe in vaccines causing autism or chem trails or whatever, but a good number are college bound or college educated.

This is for a few reasons:

1) The ability to wrap your mind around a conspiracy generally takes a level of abstract thinking. That's why the toothless hick example is kind of just a bugaboo (I would argue most conspiracy theorists are in the 100-120 IQ range). The reality is many take high levels of complex thinking (doesn't mean they are right though).
.

Really good answer, and I totally agree that the standard view that a conspiracist is a bug eyed idiot is not always totally accurate.

I have quite publicly stated before, I believed in 9/11 conspiracies, I've almost been swayed by moon conspiracies, and even the antivaxx movement has had some persuasive arguments.

However my point is that we seem to be in an era whereby once people believe these things, that's it, there is nothing that can turn them from those beliefs. In that respect it's like religion, people seem to have faith in these conspiracies, rather than preparing themselves to accept new evidence, which is what I did and then realised I had been a bit silly in even contemplating some of the stuff that I wasn't sure about.

Anyway perhaps the problem isn't school, maybe it's the spreading internet, maybe it's a combination, or even maybe it's some other as-yet-unseen factor. Whatever is causing the post-truth era to accelerate, we must find it and stop it now before we eat ourselves with stupid.
 

apacini

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I still think everyone should question everything.

When I was 19, I blew out the L4-L5 disc in my back resulting in half a decade of brutal pain. I ended up getting back surgery, but I didn't choose the first surgeon I met. If I had listened to him, my physician, and physical therapist, I would have a foot long piece of metal drilled into my spine right now. Instead, I went and got three more doctors opinions until I found a neurosurgeon who gave me hope. I went with her. I'm now pain free.

Two years ago I landed in the flats wakeboarding and instantly knew I had res lipped a disc but I didn't know how bad. When I went in, I pretty much told the doctor I had slipped a disc. He disagreed. I asked for an MRI but he was insistent that I didn't need one. I finally got one because I agreed that if I didn't need one, I would have to pay the full bill (like $1500). Sure enough, I had slipped 8 discs in my back. Same doctor then wanted to prescribe me a maximum dose of oxy codone. I told him to shove it, restarted my physical therapy program, and started doing float tanks. My theory was that I had had spinal decompression surgery. I likely compressed it again and at the very least, I could take the pressure off my back for 90 minutes twice a week. Well, 3 months later I was pain free. I went in for a follow up MRI and to all of our utter surprise, I was completely healed.

If I listened to "experts," I would quite literally be a doped up cyborg unable to make eye contact or walk without a cane.

Ray Dalio talks about triangulating opinions with multiple parties. He also did it with doctors who disgreed.

So I would still say, question everything!

It depends who is going to be affected by this questioning: if only yourself then it must be a personal decision, therefore I can agree. If others are affected, a minimal level of certified knowledge in the subject must be required.
 

dknise

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Hi, I didn't realise you knew me so intimately.
...
Yup I have questioned my belief...
...
But hey you obviously know me, so I must be lying right?
...
Oops wrong again dude... you know me so well so I must have been thinking about it right?
...
Again, wow, you know me so well, do you want to get married? I think we should, it's like you're looking deep into my soul and showing me how I think, cool.
...
Aww, did that annoy you? Is this our first lover's tiff? :-D
...
Seriously, let's make up, again you demonstrate just how well you know me, by pointing out that I've never questioned those mainstream beliefs.
...
Or, possibly I have and found out that the reason they're mainstream, is because they're correct.
...
Oh dear, another person reading the title and not bothering to read the content, I actually state, believe what you want, that's not the problem, it's people simply rejecting evidence based on the fact that it's part of the official narrative man
...

Anyway thanks for your oblique marriage proposal, but whilst I'm flattered, I'm happily 10 years together with my lovely lady.
...
Good luck in your search for love. X

You didn't really say much in your reply besides the sarcastic "you know me so well."

I did two things with my reply that I think got to you:
1) I tried to tone match your original post
2) I used reflection to turn your accusations back around on you

So in essence, I think your response shows you are annoyed by yourself.

it's like you're looking deep into my soul and showing me how I think, cool.
Yup.
 
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dknise

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It depends who is going to be affected by this questioning: if only yourself then it must be a personal decision, therefore I can agree. If others are affected, a minimal level of certified knowledge in the subject must be required.
The example with my back is Dalio's suggestion on triangulation. You should find multiple, believable people to get their opinion on an important matter, then decide who is right. If you give up full control of your life to the first authority, you may not get the most desirable outcomes in life.
 

rollerskates

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Even with a college degree, plenty of people are ignorant. The current value of college is greatly overestimated. I think that if you want to learn something specific--whether it be philosophy, medicine, or even art history, then go for it. Obviously some professions, like law and medicine, require specific learning, but anything else, I think should be studied out of interest, not out of a desire for a job.

Strangely, many jobs require a BA, but not in the specific field that the job is in. So any young person who likes to learn and wants to learn and they and their parents won't be financially crippled, should absolutely go study what they want. But no one should go to college thinking it will get them a job.

It used to be that people went to college to be educated, and IMO, that should be the only reason they still should. Then again, colleges are big business now, so it would probably cause an economic collapse if all the colleges created to get people jobs went out of business. :hilarious:

It's become a status symbol for those who are clearly not cut out for the academic life, like the college scandal kids.
 
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Roli

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I did two things with my reply that I think got to you:
1) I tried to tone match your original post
2) I used reflection to turn your accusations back around on you

So in essence, I think your response shows you are annoyed by yourself.

Hahaha, thanks for giving me such a laugh...

Let me see if I can get this spot on, I'd say you are ..... 23

Yeah maybe 25, it's around that age that you say silly things like that which you think are profound, and will one day cringe at.

Lolz, used reflections, hahaha, good one :-D
 

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G-Man

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What you call a dismissal of expert opinion is in fact people wising up to the fact that science isn't some noble profession. Everybody has an agenda, even scientists. In a field where you are funded by the government, those that argue for restrictions on government power are going to have a hard time being heard.
Unfortunately, suggesting that scientists are humans and that you have to view what they say through the lens of the constraints and incentives they face often gets met with the same reaction as questioning someone's religion. Hence my statement about the academy being the temple of the modern era.

Thomas Sowell has a pretty simple heuristic that I've always remembered. It goes something like "Given two competing hypotheses to explain a phenomenon, the majority of scientists will favor the hypothesis that necessitates government research funding."

EDIT: @Roli I'm guessing you're not American? Maybe that's why you've got a higher view of higher education :rofl:. Also, you have to remember that American politics relies on BS. When the President says he doesn't believe in climate change, it doesn't mean he doesn't believe it. It also doesn't mean his supporters believe he doesn't believe it. It's just BS that you spit to make a larger point. I think that underlying dynamic tends to get missed when the rest of the world watches the things our politicians say and do. It's like when the previous president said you could keep your existing health insurance. No one including his supporters actually believed that to be the case, but it was a way to BS past what supporters of nationalizing health insurance believed to be a detail that could derail the larger process they were trying to force through.

Like I said before, the thing being debated is never the thing that's actually being debated. Most of the debate on climate change has nothing to do with science and everything to do with competing visions of the country as socialist vs. not-socialist.
 
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dknise

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Hahaha, thanks for giving me such a laugh...

Let me see if I can get this spot on, I'd say you are ..... 23

Yeah maybe 25, it's around that age that you say silly things like that which you think are profound, and will one day cringe at.

Lolz, used reflections, hahaha, good one :-D
Tsk tsk... you didn't even read my reply that triggered you so bad. If you had, you would already know the answer to your guess.
 

Jack Hammer

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The sun's a ball of ice and up is down.

Oh and red is blue. There I said it.
Unlike your facetious examples, my position is the most reasonable one to take. Let me demonstrate. If climate change were not a scam, here's the sort of thing we would hear:

Mankind's carbon and methane emissions are causing the climate to warm more than it would otherwise. Here are the positive effects and here are the negative effects. We believe the negative effects will outweigh the positive effects. We should mitigate these effects in two ways: lowering emissions and bolstering infrastructure to cope with the effects. We can lower emissions by expanding nuclear power and natural gas through fracking.

If it were a scam, we would hear things like this:

Mankind's carbon and methane emissions are destroying the planet and threatening our species' very existence. The solution is to confiscate vast amounts of wealth and freedom from the citizenry and hand it over to a governing elite. We must get rid of all non-renewable energy sources like nuclear power and natural gas and subsidize solar panels and windmills. We have X number of years to act before it's too late (nevermind all the other deadlines we've set that have passed. We're really sure we got the math right on this one). The debate's over- 97% of scientists agree with us. We know because we looked at a bunch of climate science paper abstracts, took the tiny percentage that declared a position on the issue, attributed those views to the authors, and it came out to 97%. That's how real science is done. Anyway, if you disagree with any of this, you're a climate denier on par with Holocaust deniers, you hate science, and you shut be silenced and thrown into prison, planet traitor.

Which do you think we hear more of- the former or the latter? I can and do buy the former, but even that's enough to get me labeled a denier. Unfortunately, a legitimate scientific inquiry attracted power-hungry parasites who saw a great opportunity to further their agenda and proceeded to corrupt the field. They've turned it into cargo-cult science.
 

Roli

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Unlike your facetious examples, my position is the most reasonable one to take. Let me demonstrate. If climate change were not a scam, here's the sort of thing we would hear:

Mankind's carbon and methane emissions are causing the climate to warm more than it would otherwise. Here are the positive effects and here are the negative effects. We believe the negative effects will outweigh the positive effects. We should mitigate these effects in two ways: lowering emissions and bolstering infrastructure to cope with the effects. We can lower emissions by expanding nuclear power and natural gas through fracking.

If it were a scam, we would hear things like this:

Mankind's carbon and methane emissions are destroying the planet and threatening our species' very existence. The solution is to confiscate vast amounts of wealth and freedom from the citizenry and hand it over to a governing elite. We must get rid of all non-renewable energy sources like nuclear power and natural gas and subsidize solar panels and windmills. We have X number of years to act before it's too late (nevermind all the other deadlines we've set that have passed. We're really sure we got the math right on this one). The debate's over- 97% of scientists agree with us. We know because we looked at a bunch of climate science paper abstracts, took the tiny percentage that declared a position on the issue, attributed those views to the authors, and it came out to 97%. That's how real science is done. Anyway, if you disagree with any of this, you're a climate denier on par with Holocaust deniers, you hate science, and you shut be silenced and thrown into prison, planet traitor.

Which do you think we hear more of- the former or the latter? I can and do buy the former, but even that's enough to get me labeled a denier. Unfortunately, a legitimate scientific inquiry attracted power-hungry parasites who saw a great opportunity to further their agenda and proceeded to corrupt the field. They've turned it into cargo-cult science.

As you read this, imagine me slow clapping you...

The point of my facetious reply was that you just came out and said something which 100% proved my point about people just saying shit and then calling it a theory. At least you have applied some thinking to your statement so thank you for demonstrating that.

I think your thinking is skewed, simply because you're looking at this purely from an economical point of view and when you do that you have to factor in self-interest, profit, corruption, general socioeconomics, etc. So I'm not trying to claim that some people don't try and make a buck from climate change, we are on a business forum and we are all trying to make a buck from something right?

I'm not going to get into a climate debate, as that is not what this thread is all about, all I will say is what I said to a friend with the same views as yourself.

There are over 7 billion of us on this planet, that is a huge number and anything we do causes a huge impact on the earth, for instance if we all decided to go vegan that would trigger an environmental response. Or if we all decided to go to San Francisco and jump at the same time, we could reset the tilt of the earth by a tenth of a degree and cause a tsunami or two.

Case in point, there is now at least one piece of plastic for every fish in the ocean, think about that, billions of fish over hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean all have plastic in them. Those fish and their antecedents have been there for billions of years, we invented plastic less than a century ago.

On top of that there is now a floating island of plastic in the Pacific ocean the size of New Zealand so in other words we have created another continent, the earth took hundreds of millions of years to create continents, we've done it in less than a century.

So considering the very visible and very provable changes we have already wrought on the ecosystem, is it really that much of a logical jump for you to make that we might also have had an invisible impact on the atmosphere?

Climate change is real and happening, my family are from Nigeria, and in the last 20 years an extra season has happened, I have quite literally witnessed the climate changing.

Fun fact: A couple of years ago it snowed in Zambia for the first time in human history.
 
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Roli

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Tsk tsk... you didn't even read my reply that triggered you so bad. If you had, you would already know the answer to your guess.

Lolz, you're mistaking amusement for being triggered, take that mirror down from in front of your face and you'll see :)

Anyways, good luck in all of your ventures mate.

Toodle pip.
 

Roli

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EDIT: @Roli I'm guessing you're not American? Maybe that's why you've got a higher view of higher education :rofl:. Also, you have to remember that American politics relies on BS. When the President says he doesn't believe in climate change, it doesn't mean he doesn't believe it. It also doesn't mean his supporters believe he doesn't believe it. It's just BS that you spit to make a larger point. I think that underlying dynamic tends to get missed when the rest of the world watches the things our politicians say and do. It's like when the previous president said you could keep your existing health insurance. No one including his supporters actually believed that to be the case, but it was a way to BS past what supporters of nationalizing health insurance believed to be a detail that could derail the larger process they were trying to force through.

Like I said before, the thing being debated is never the thing that's actually being debated. Most of the debate on climate change has nothing to do with science and everything to do with competing visions of the country as socialist vs. not-socialist.

You're right I am from the UK, and thank you for that insight into the dynamics of American politics, very interesting indeed...
 

Jack Hammer

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As you read this, imagine me slow clapping you...

The point of my facetious reply was that you just came out and said something which 100% proved my point about people just saying shit and then calling it a theory. At least you have applied some thinking to your statement so thank you for demonstrating that.

I think your thinking is skewed, simply because you're looking at this purely from an economical point of view and when you do that you have to factor in self-interest, profit, corruption, general socioeconomics, etc. So I'm not trying to claim that some people don't try and make a buck from climate change, we are on a business forum and we are all trying to make a buck from something right?

I'm not going to get into a climate debate, as that is not what this thread is all about, all I will say is what I said to a friend with the same views as yourself.

There are over 7 billion of us on this planet, that is a huge number and anything we do causes a huge impact on the earth, for instance if we all decided to go vegan that would trigger an environmental response. Or if we all decided to go to San Francisco and jump at the same time, we could reset the tilt of the earth by a tenth of a degree and cause a tsunami or two.

Case in point, there is now at least one piece of plastic for every fish in the ocean, think about that, billions of fish over hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean all have plastic in them. Those fish and their antecedents have been there for billions of years, we invented plastic less than a century ago.

On top of that there is now a floating island of plastic in the Pacific ocean the size of New Zealand so in other words we have created another continent, the earth took hundreds of millions of years to create continents, we've done it in less than a century.

So considering the very visible and very provable changes we have already wrought on the ecosystem, is it really that much of a logical jump for you to make that we might also have had an invisible impact on the atmosphere?

Climate change is real and happening, my family are from Nigeria, and in the last 20 years an extra season has happened, I have quite literally witnessed the climate changing.

Fun fact: A couple of years ago it snowed in Zambia for the first time in human history.
The issue is the difficulty in establishing a causal link. When it comes to an island of man-made plastic trash in the ocean, it's easy to implicate mankind without any doubt. When it comes to determining the effects of mankind's contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, that is a much more difficult problem. The reason is the earth is an extraordinarily complex system, there's only one Earth, and you can't fit it inside a lab. It's quite a leap to go from "There are unusual weather events in Nigeria" to "It's caused by man's CO2 emissions". Did unusual weather events never happen before the industrial revolution?

An argument I often hear is that the tobacco industry tried to deny the link between smoking and cancer and now, skeptics of climate change are playing the same role. Ultimately, the science demonstrating the link between smoking and cancer prevailed, but those were not N=1 experiments. They looked at thousands of people, both smokers and non-smokers. Furthermore, cancer is a binary thing- you either have it or you don't. Even with those advantages, researchers still had to be rigorous and disciplined to remove the effect of bias and make a compelling case.

I recommend reading Richard Feynman's speech about cargo cult science (link). Pay attention to the examples he provides of science going astray. Are any of the systems being studied in those examples especially complex? Is there any political or financial pressure for the answers to turn out one way or the other? After reading that, can you honestly say climate science has demonstrated the extraordinary level of rigor needed to make such confident assertions of causality?
 
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Roli

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The issue is the difficulty in establishing a causal link. When it comes to an island of man-made plastic trash in the ocean, it's easy to implicate mankind without any doubt. When it comes to determining the effects of mankind's contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, that is a much more difficult problem. The reason is the earth is an extraordinarily complex system, there's only one Earth, and you can't fit it inside a lab. It's quite a leap to go from "There are unusual weather events in Nigeria" to "It's caused by man's CO2 emissions". Did unusual weather events never happen before the industrial revolution?

An argument I often hear is that the tobacco industry tried to deny the link between smoking and cancer and now, skeptics of climate change are playing the same role. Ultimately, the science demonstrating the link between smoking and cancer prevailed, but those were not N=1 experiments. They looked at thousands of people, both smokers and non-smokers. Furthermore, cancer is a binary thing- you either have it or you don't. Even with those advantages, researchers still had to be rigorous and disciplined to remove the effect of bias and make a compelling case.

I recommend reading Richard Feynman's speech about cargo cult science (link). Pay attention to the examples he provides of science going astray. Are any of the systems being studied in those examples especially complex? Is there any political or financial pressure for the answers to turn out one way or the other? After reading that, can you honestly say climate science has demonstrated the extraordinary level of rigor needed to make such confident assertions of causality?

I hear what you're saying, and I apologise for my earlier glib responses to your post, you clearly have put some thought into this...

It's just that I can't get away from the fact that if we all decide to do something, or not even all of us, just a lot, then we tend to have a massive environmental impact.

If we all switched to eating tuna tomorrow, tuna would be extinct by next month. In fact the Japanese have done a fairly good job at eating all the bluefin tuna in the world (or is it yellowfin? I have never bothered to remember).

I get what you're saying about complex systems, a case in point is the disappearance of bees. We have no idea why they disappearing, and sure we can say that it's just a correlating coincidence that they happen to be going now when we're around, or we can assume that it is something we're doing and try to work out why, seeing as they pollinate most of the food in the world.

Also have you seen that meme about windshields in the 1970s and ones now? It shows how in the 70s when you went out for a drive in the country, your windshield ended up covered in insects, now not so much.

Sure, that could be because of different of glass, but maybe not.

Lastly I would say that in the 1980s I was saying almost exactly what you're saying now about political agendas and so on, however I soon realised that the other people saying these things were the oil companies, the very people who stand to lose if we all decide to focus on renewable energy sources.

History has proven that the powerful and nefarious are extremely adept at making their argument our argument.

I just listen to people like David Attenborough, the most respected naturalist on earth, whom has been plying his trade for about half a century and is surely not doing that for overt profit and gain, rather for the love of it.

He is worried, very, very worried and I'm more likely to listen to him than business people who are worried that we are saving the planet at the expense of their balance sheets.
 

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The problem with such blanket topics as "School is a waste of time", "Climate change is fake" etc etc is that everyone on every side generalises what he / she thinks the other person is saying. The OP surely had some valid points when he started but the valid points get lost in what the other side's "general" view of the topic are.

This is a serious problem in debate. Second is emotions, people get emotionally attached to what they think their beliefs are and are almost never willing to change their belief systems. Again, true for all sides. Rare is a person who can first of all, listen attentively and objectively to a very contrarian viewpoint, evaluate them based on reason and be willing to acknowledge that perhaps there is an argument there which could be correct.

I have thought deeply about the question of education. To try to understand why things are the way they are, one has to look at history to understand how things came to be. The modern system of schools / education essentially stems from post industrial revolution era where having a large pool of people who can do particular jobs in particular way was the need of the hour. Hence our schools indoctrinated things.

But this isn't how education always was. If you go back a few centuries, the liberal arts and essentially the Trivium (Grammer, Logic and Rhetoric) was the standard of education and it taught those who chose to pursue education, critical thinking. Europe during renaissance, the Arabs during the middle ages, the Greeks before that all focused on education as a method of teaching reason and critical thinking. But global wars, mass industrialisation and modern banking / fiat currency essentially replaced logic / critical thinking with "packaged education". This of course doesn't mean it's all bad. Generalisations are never good. For people who are at the very bottom of Maslow's triangle, modern industrial education can provide a path to rising higher.

So it depends on the individual situation. Who you are, where you are, what kind of schools are available to you, what your state of awareness about the world is.
 

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Unpopular opinion coming in 3...2...

So the zeitgeist at the moment is that school is a waste of time, at least three times a week we see young people coming on here and they're all excited after reading Unscripted or The Millionaire Fastlane and they're like that's it, F*ck it, I quit! Then they come on here looking for support for their decision, well here's why they very rarely, if ever, get that support from me.

School IS important.

Why?

Because the amount of people who do not have the ability to engage in reasoned thinking is growing at an exponential rate, we are living in a post truth era whereby the official narrative and experts are dismissed not because of what they are saying, but because of who they are.

Don't get me wrong, officials lie, experts are wrong, but THAT'S NOT THE POINT!

The point is quite simply this; today on planet earth, in our glorious system of Sol, there are millions, yes freaking millions! of people who believe that the earth is flat. There are millions of people that believe that vaccines are a government plot to give you autism. There are millions of people who believe we never went to the moon.

Pause. Breathe.

The point is not that these people believe these things, it is that they do not have the intellectual wherewithal to question their own beliefs.

So why is this a problem?

Well now we have got to a head where the freaking President of the United Freaking States of America believes that climate change is fake science and that noise causes cancer. He backs these statements up with the reassuring words, I know science.

AND PEOPLE BELIEVE HIM!!!!!!!

*Facepalm*

Another pause.

This is not a political post, I don't care what you think about Trump or any of the issues mentioned thus far.

What I do care about, is the general inability of the mass populace to come to their own informed decisions via an Occam's inspired route paved with reason, logic and critical thinking... Because I'm telling you man, we are reaching a watershed moment whereby every opinion no matter how stupid is given equal footing with sensible ideas.

If I say the earth is an orange, or the sun is a ball of ice, I don't need evidence, I just need a Youtube channel and a large moronic following who say shit like; "oh yeah, we are being lied to, you're so right dude, I see it now, the sun's a freaking ball of ice. F*cking NASA."

I'm serious, the idiots are taking over the asylum. T. S. Elliot tried to warn us;

this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
not with a bang, with a whimper.

Not the bang of thermonuclear warheads, with the whimper of stupidity . . .

How long before these idiots halt and eventually reverse scientific progress?

We are already seeing diseases that we were on the verge of eradicating, returning with a vengeance because of stupidity and superstition, what next; how long till we uninvent the wheel?

So back to school.

Literally.

Sure school probably won't teach you how to be a whizz hot business person, it won't make you rich by going to school. Hell that marketing degree probably won't even get you a half decent marketing job, let alone set you up to run your own company.

What it will do is (hopefully) give you a blueprint for reasoned thinking, which in turn will help you come to your own conclusions as to whether the earth is round, climate change exists, or chemtrails are real.

Maybe school isn't enough, although they are all different and are located all over the globe, so using the word school is probably woefully inadequate when trying to cover the varying spectrum of institutions that carry that particular moniker. However it's all we've got...

Hey, do what you want, however my child is being taught the importance of education, because quite frankly I don't want her to grow up a simpering idiot who believes any old pseudo science bs being spouted by some dreadlock-wearing-skunk-smoking waster who believes they have uncovered an intricate chemtrail-flouride-Rothchilds inspired conspiracy on Google.

My child will be armed with the basic cognitive abilities that will allow her to question her own beliefs in such a way that will enable her to come up with the right answers and also, crucially, the right questions.

She will understand what evidence is and how to view and analyse it. She may not turn out to do a STEM subject in University, she may not even go, however she will be somebody who understands that reason and logic can create informed thinking.

...and that dear friends, is what I wish for the world.

So yeah, don't be an idiot, stay in school kids.

Rant over.

Self education is the only thing that will save you.

Pause. Breathe.
 

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The problem isn't that school is a waste. It's that there are ways that are literally a 10 to sometimes a 100 times more efficient and cheaper than school in any form of education.
 

Tossek

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I liked going to university. Grammar school was not so my thing but ok. I am a very technical guy in the end and could live up my "dream" to be a researcher while doing my PhD ... find something that noone found before. Then, I had enough and went to industry and learned soooo much there as well. I mean my time is not scalable and this is maybe .

But not everybody likes to be SEO (and wants to be). Not everybody wants to be a service man or a business man. Some people have to manufacture parts, others want to develop high technology. How about all the internet businesses here without having a developed network system called "internet"? And the people that invented this have all studied because for them it was the fastlane to knowledge and not to money.

Some just want to do their 9 to 5 and done. And still in this time you learn many lessons that can prepare you for your fastlane adventure. E. g. my aim is to stick 5 years with my current company and see different positions and read and learn stuff next to this work and try some side hustles ... again just to learn. And then I plan my next step. And probably then it is time for fastlane to money. :)
 
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Jack Hammer

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I hear what you're saying, and I apologise for my earlier glib responses to your post, you clearly have put some thought into this...

It's just that I can't get away from the fact that if we all decide to do something, or not even all of us, just a lot, then we tend to have a massive environmental impact.

If we all switched to eating tuna tomorrow, tuna would be extinct by next month. In fact the Japanese have done a fairly good job at eating all the bluefin tuna in the world (or is it yellowfin? I have never bothered to remember).

I get what you're saying about complex systems, a case in point is the disappearance of bees. We have no idea why they disappearing, and sure we can say that it's just a correlating coincidence that they happen to be going now when we're around, or we can assume that it is something we're doing and try to work out why, seeing as they pollinate most of the food in the world.

Also have you seen that meme about windshields in the 1970s and ones now? It shows how in the 70s when you went out for a drive in the country, your windshield ended up covered in insects, now not so much.

Sure, that could be because of different of glass, but maybe not.

Lastly I would say that in the 1980s I was saying almost exactly what you're saying now about political agendas and so on, however I soon realised that the other people saying these things were the oil companies, the very people who stand to lose if we all decide to focus on renewable energy sources.

History has proven that the powerful and nefarious are extremely adept at making their argument our argument.

I just listen to people like David Attenborough, the most respected naturalist on earth, whom has been plying his trade for about half a century and is surely not doing that for overt profit and gain, rather for the love of it.

He is worried, very, very worried and I'm more likely to listen to him than business people who are worried that we are saving the planet at the expense of their balance sheets.
I haven't watched any of David Attenborough's documentaries, so I honestly don't know- what does he propose we do about it? Does it involve expanding nuclear power and natural gas? If so, he might be worth taking seriously. If not or if he actively opposes them like most of the environmental movement, he isn't.

A recent IPCC report estimates that if we do nothing, the world economy will be 8% smaller than it would be otherwise in the year 2100. An economy that would probably be 3+ times larger than it is now might only be 2.7+ times larger- hardly the doomsday scenario we're told to expect.

For a more sober analysis of the problem, it might be worth checking out Bjorn Lomborg. Here's his TED talk from 2005: Global priorities bigger than climate change
 

Roli

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I haven't watched any of David Attenborough's documentaries, so I honestly don't know- what does he propose we do about it? Does it involve expanding nuclear power and natural gas? If so, he might be worth taking seriously. If not or if he actively opposes them like most of the environmental movement, he isn't.

A recent IPCC report estimates that if we do nothing, the world economy will be 8% smaller than it would be otherwise in the year 2100. An economy that would probably be 3+ times larger than it is now might only be 2.7+ times larger- hardly the doomsday scenario we're told to expect.

For a more sober analysis of the problem, it might be worth checking out Bjorn Lomborg. Here's his TED talk from 2005: Global priorities bigger than climate change


It is not about having a smaller or larger economy, it is about being able to breathe clean air and live on a planet that isn't poisoned.

As for Mr Lomborg, you might want to read this before quoting him again.

Spoiler alert: He has changed his mind.


Bjørn Lomborg: the dissenting climate change voice who changed his tune

Natural gas and nuclear power are not the only alternatives by the way, and fracking throws up a whole host of problems that we don't even want to go into.

England now has earthquakes you can feel, which originate (you guessed it) at fracking sites.
 

Jack Hammer

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It is not about having a smaller or larger economy, it is about being able to breathe clean air and live on a planet that isn't poisoned.

As for Mr Lomborg, you might want to read this before quoting him again.

Spoiler alert: He has changed his mind.


Bjørn Lomborg: the dissenting climate change voice who changed his tune

Natural gas and nuclear power are not the only alternatives by the way, and fracking throws up a whole host of problems that we don't even want to go into.

England now has earthquakes you can feel, which originate (you guessed it) at fracking sites.
No, he really hasn't changed his mind. He might change the number of dollars he thinks we should spend mitigating climate change, but his message is still the same- the alarmist line is wrong, climate change is not catastrophic but just one of many problems humanity faces, and we should prioritize spending accordingly to achieve the greatest good. Even the article you link to points this out:

"The point I've always been making," he explains now, "is, it's not the end of the world. That is why we should be measuring up to what everybody else says, which is we should be spending our money well."​

Here's the sort of thing he's been posting on Twitter recently: Bjorn Lomborg on Twitter

I bring up the economic effects because if the alarmists are right, it won't result in a slightly smaller economy than we'd otherwise have. It will result in having no economy at all. Or at best, an economy a fraction of the size of today's economy.

Natural gas and nuclear aren't the only solutions, but they are obvious low-hanging fruit. They're clean, have low emissions (nuclear especially), are economical, reliable, not intermittent, and even climate skeptics can get behind them. They would go a long way in fulfilling your goal of having cleaner air to breathe. And of course they have problems. Everything has problems. No industrial activity is perfect and risk-free. Natural gas makes a great replacement for coal. Does coal not present huge problems? Do the much-touted solar panels and windmills not have problems? Environmentalists keep telling us that climate change threatens our species' existence and we must make great sacrifices to avoid it, but then they get fussy about occasional mild earthquakes? What solution are they proposing that would be effective and doesn't have any negative effects?
 
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DavidTT

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IMHO I do feel that I have benefitted from school and going to university but mostly in an indirect way. For example, I entered in English Literature which might seem like the most useless program to most and also has very little to do with making money. However, because I studied that matter, it really opened the doors to reading for me. I used to NEVER read books before but now I read books on a regular basis. Another thing to mention is that because I read books, I eventually stumbled on TMFL which really blew my mind (I think for all of us lol). I also noticed that most friends/family who read books tend to have attended some sort of post-secondary education.

The real problem that I see with higher education is the cost of it. However, thank God my father is a professor at my university so I do get a discount. That being said, since I do get it at a much cheaper rate, is it still worth it?
 

Roli

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Just met a flat earther on this forum.

Bump.
 
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