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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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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.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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What it will do is (hopefully) give you a blueprint for reasoned thinking

I'd argue that school does the opposite, it doesn't teach you REASONED THINKING, it teaches you to memorize, recite, and regurgitate. That's what drones do.

Guess it depends on the school, but I'd bet that any state-run institution is NOT teaching students how to critically think. It's teaching them to think within the box of convention and normality.

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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.

That's great, hope it applies to religion as well.

A lot of parents want their children to be thinkers, except when it comes to religion.

Nothing wrong with following a particular religion, but I believe you should do so ONLY after you have thoroughly analyzed all worldly theologies and their origins (as well as science, history and pre-history) and then decide. Truth is most parents don't allow their children to do so-- it's X religion because, well, that's what I was taught and we just happen to be living in an area where it's quite common!
 

G-Man

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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.

@Roli agree with you about education, we could have an entire different argument about whether school is the place where that happens, but for the above statement, I think you're correct to be concerned, but wrong that it's a watershed moment.

Human society has never functioned on logic, reason and critical thinking, because humans don't function on those things. Even very smart humans. Stupid ideas have always had equal footing with good ones, and there's never been anything common about sense.

Also, I think large social ideas like climate change are a bad barometer, because is politics, the thing being debated is never the thing that's actually being debated. Very few people truly believe there's no harm done by putting a bunch of car exhaust in the air. Here's what's actually happening:
  • Guy suggests putting all this poisonous stuff in the air for a century is indeed bad and needs to be controlled.
  • I don't trust said guy, because I know that even without climate change he wants to use the state to control the economy and other aspects of social life. He's pretexting.
  • Now that I think about it, scientists are just people, and without an existential threat it's probably hard to get large amounts of research funding for a long period of time.
  • I'm not a scientist, I can't parse through all this, but now I don't really trust the authority figure.
  • Does it really matter? Putting a shitload of poison in the air can't be a good idea. Don't really need a dude in a lab coat to tell me that.
  • If I acknowledge the problem, but don't want to let said communist use it as a reason to control me, then I'll have to propose an alternative solution.
  • That sounds really hard.
  • Therefore, climate change is fake.

The climate change "debate" explained. Someone should make a cartoon panel.
 

lowtek

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OK, so some points - my own rant incoming.

Nobody doubts climate change. It's ironic that in a rant about a lack of critical thinking you fail to accurately characterize the perspectives of those you are demeaning. To be precise, what people doubt is a) the idea that those of us in the free world that are already leading the way in sustainable living should be forced to subsidize the pollution of the developing world and b) that government can be trusted to mitigate global warming, given their dismal track record in reducing drug use, poverty, crime, terrorism, illiteracy, etc.and c) that the proposed carbon taxes won't have an immediate negative impact on those that are least able to deal with it.

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. Even more ironic, the same lay people who cry out about denying the "settled science of global warming" are often those who deny the reality of biology, i.e. that there are only two genders or that evolution applies to humans just as much as any other animal.

All that said, I do agree with you on your fundamental premise: we do need more critical thinking. The modern university system is not the place to do that, however.

Here in the States, we have crammed more and more people into the universities (funded by the same government that wants to tax the very air we breathe)... and yet, by your own admission, critical thinking is in the toilets. While correlation may not be causation, it's a pretty big coincidence that people are dumber than ever, while record numbers of them are going to universities.

If universities were so great at instilling critical thought, I would expect the opposite trend.
 

dknise

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OP's post reached epic levels of cognitive dissonance.

There are millions of people who believe we never went to the moon.

...they do not have the intellectual wherewithal to question their own beliefs.
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.

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.
The freaking President of the United Freaking States of America questioned the status quo of climate change and relatively new, 5G.
OP does not question status quo climate change or 5G.

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.

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

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

Sure school probably won't teach you how to ... [xyz]

What it will do is (hopefully) give you a blueprint for reasoned thinking...
In my experience (anecdotal evidence, same as yours), people that come from school specifically don't know how to think. If I have a new college hire on my team and they liked their schooling, I know with certainty that I can't give them anything outside of their current knowledge domain. Otherwise, they're lost looking for a hand to hold because they'll have no idea how to acquire the information without a teacher.

Hey, do what you want, however my child is being taught the importance of education
Hey, do what you want, however as long as we're being pretentious, my child is being taught the importance of knowledge and the joy of learning. Not parroting what authority figures say.

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!
I dropped out of college after one year on a full-ride scholarship in 2009. TMF didn't come out until 2011 and during those two years, I was flying blind. At the time, believing that the quality of a college education had declined was an extremely unpopular opinion. It wasn't until several years ago that people started to notice, but I saw it all a decade ago. Besides Steve Job's Stanford commencement speech in 2007, TMF was the first book where I could look at my life arc and pinpoint on a journey where I was on it and see that I was on the right track.

I don't have a degree. I dropped out a decade ago. I've now sold a software business, sold several other software products, bought a $100k boat in cash, bought a condo, and am in the process of building a $1m new construction home, and I'm only 29. Being 29, I still have friends who went to college for their degree or masters and are still living at home with their parents. They call me lucky and I see with open eyes that they are completely ill-equipped for life.

So my final self-righteous conclusion:

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.
 
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Johnny boy

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You’re talking about people with an IQ of 80.

Walmart shoppers.

Do you have an IQ of 80? I hope not.

Don’t go back to school. It’s a step up for the Walmart shoppers. Not for us. School is a scam and a factory for indoctrination. Run away from it as fast as you can.

My local school invited me to speak and I laughed and said “of course”. I got to tell about 200 kids that school was a waste. If they want an awesome life they should not go to college and instead start a business and instead of reading fiction novels or school books they should read business books. It was the greatest thing. I’m surprised I wasn’t interrupted and told to leave.

I had asked the students what they wanted to do and someone mentioned opening a bakery and I asked them what they needed to do in order to make that happen and they said “go to school”... really? Go to school?
 

Ecom man

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IMO the problem is that school (assuming your speaking of college) is no longer about learning or even questioning beliefs. Colleges are filled with teachers who are believe and teach the same way and if someone believes or teaches different then they are called names or not allowed on campus at all.

That isn’t learning... it is just 4 years to get a piece of paper that means nothing in the current economy unless you are going for a specific reason (doctor, lawyer, etc.).

In regards to people believing conspiracy theories of course you will always have people who believe weird crap. These people who believe the earth is flat won’t stop believing it just because they partied in a college for 4 years. You can’t teach stupid out of someone.

In regards to climate change, global warming, global cooling, etc. I would say the issue is that is has been yelled that the world is ending since the 70’s. Almost 50 years later none of the predictions have been even close to accurate to why wouldn’t there be people who deny its existence?

That’s especially true when the person who has been one of the biggest mouthpieces for climate change (Al Gore) went from being worth 2 million in 2000 to being worth 200 million. It just looks like someone peddling the same thing that has been peddled since the 70s to try and increase his personal fortune.

It looks especially hypocritical when you look at the way he lives. Using 12-20x the average American household in electricity for his lavish estate doesn’t exactly help his case that he is actually concerned about climate change enough to even change the way he personally lives.

Now back to the college topic, far too often we use blanket statements in life. Everyone should do this or shouldn’t do that. Life is far more complicated than that.

I personally think that a huge chunk of the country should not go to college. All they are doing is wasting 4 years of their life on a degree that will be worthless to them in the future. Instead they should go to a technical school and learn a real trade instead of getting a worthless degree. That being said that also is a blanket statement and doesn’t apply to everyone and every situation. Saying everyone should go to college and everyone shouldn’t go to college are both patently wrong statements.
 
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G-Man

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Not speaking of religion, but not all indoctrination is bad. Without inherited knowledge, civilization wouldn’t be possible. Every generation would have to re-invent the wheel. You simply don’t have the headspace to investigate everything. Some things unfortunately have to be taken on authority.

Even with religion, you don’t have enough years in a lifetime to investigate every belief system out there, and you would end up spending your whole life pointlessly navel-gazing. Our ancestors knew this. There’s even an obscure religious text that says something to the effect of “always learning and never coming to knowledge of the truth”

EDIT: I would argue that because of this almost all people, including the super smart ones on this forum, take more of their core beliefs about the nature of reality from authority than otherwise. Even beliefs based on science are taken on the authority of the scientist unless you wanna spend your whole life trying to replicate the experiments of others. The academy is the really just the church, mosque, temple, and ashram of the modern world.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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Classic example of identifying problems (people can't think critically!) but potentially misidentifying the solution (go to school!)

Is there a widespread trend of young adults who are dropping out of high school and college? And now we have this problem? Or is "school" as popular as it ever has been?

What if school is actually the problem which you cite as the solution?

IMO, school is NOT the answer, but parenting (as you have demonstrated).
 

The-J

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The problem isn't a lack of education, the problem is the belief that fuzzy thinking and anecdotal evidence should supercede logic when logic is too complicated to follow.

It's not limited to the right. Or the left. Or the center. It's not limited to dumb people, either. Every single intelligent person I've met has at least one irrational opinion or believes in something that would be considered fringe or strange. This is regardless of political affiliation. It's a human thing, because our attention is limited and so are our cognitive faculties.

In the context of entrepreneurship, one of the key elements to getting it right is to believe something, and act on that belief, when very few others believe it... and be right about it. So, in a sense, fringe thinking, unpopular beliefs, and uncommon conclusions can lead to great success in entrepreneurship and wild innovation that changes the world.

It's actually a tough dichotomy, because fuzzy thinking and clear thinking can lead to the same conclusions, no matter whether the conclusions are right or wrong. It depends on what assumptions people start with, and how they arrive at the conclusion.
 

Sanj Modha

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School is great for everything except an education.

I can't even remember half the stuff I did and most of what I 'learnt' is useless now.

Its great for social/communications skills, dealing with difficult/SHTF situations, how to deal with dickheads effectively, how to make friends and much more.

In my opinion, school didn't teach me two of the most important skills in life:

1 - How to learn.
2 - How to deal with failure.
 
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I'm not saying that it's this way for all colleges/universities. But, I spent a year taking a general business program in college. I felt like I was surrounded by people who weren't concerned about their future, people who only wanted to party. My classes felt really outdated, especially in marketing.

I always felt like my courses geared towards us memorizing outdated facts for a test, then repeating the process. I very rarely would find valuable information that I knew was needed for my future. I do think the accounting course was the only useful course but other than that it was a bunch of bs.

I'm not saying that it's this way for all colleges/universities. But it didn't teach any real world practical stuff. Now, I've always considered myself a self-dialect, and I really believe that's the way to go for entrepreneurs.
 

Johnny boy

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How do you know what is a waste of time and not a waste of time? Do you have any results? Are you a business owner or an employee? Do you have what you want?

You are pontificating.

Unless of course, you have received some sort of amazing benefit from college. I seriously doubt it though.

I've said it before, you could put $80,000 in front of me and tell me I'd just have to go to college for one year and I would laugh in your face. Being miles away from that giant waste of time and indoctrination is seriously that valuable to me.

I know a guy that sounds just like you. He thinks college is so amazing. I saved something he said to me. It's hilarious.

"I know you are avidly against higher education, but the exposure to new thoughts, theories, philosophies, and cultures is honestly what makes it so worth it. The drive to continue learning new and interesting things, or working towards a new discovery that can benefit all of mankind is primarily accomplished through an institution of higher education.

I started as an Econ Major and it wasn't until a class on the empire of Genghis Kahn did I realize that I wanted to learn a skill that would otherwise not be attainable by someone who didn't have college-level experience or exposure. Obviously in the three years I was there I didn't even begin to scratch the surface on helping humanity, but I did work on a chemistry lab and was published in a NSF paper that is currently being used by the army to develop effective means for transporting hydrogen fuel. However, my point lies in the fact it's not just me, it's thousands of other people that I'm following and who will follow my footsteps, and all of our efforts combined are undeniably vital to humanity as a whole.

And without institutions like that, average people wouldn't have the ability to expose themselves to the incredibly beauty that makes up our world"

Can you believe this shit?

There's no way this garbage comes from his own mind. It's just pumped in there. Feels like I'm talking to someone doing Amway.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufN8MxyMlEQ

"All the regular homeless people have newspaper, and look what I have!"
 

MJ DeMarco

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This happen with my Nurse Aide Certificate. I believe otherwise if there isn't something in it for both sides, there's not point in getting yourself into large debt for the sake of impressing people.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMk7CKwJ8OM


This is the kind of stuff people are getting into. I thought I had debt, and I have nothing compared to some people. You're basically becoming a slave to debt these days with Student Loans.

OMG, that video puts my mouth on the ground. Apparently 2 advanced degrees didn't give them any common financial sense. 300K in student loans, 200k credit cards, nearly a $1M in debts and not even 30 yet.

So you spent a half million dollars on an "education" and clearly NO PART of that education taught you how to manage money. Is school the answer here? Apparently not.

But gawd damn, I bet they have an awesome set of new BMWs and a nicely furnished home, compliments of Restoration Hardware...
 

MJ DeMarco

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OK, so some points - my own rant incoming.

Nobody doubts climate change. It's ironic that in a rant about a lack of critical thinking you fail to accurately characterize the perspectives of those you are demeaning. To be precise, what people doubt is a) the idea that those of us in the free world that are already leading the way in sustainable living should be forced to subsidize the pollution of the developing world and b) that government can be trusted to mitigate global warming, given their dismal track record in reducing drug use, poverty, crime, terrorism, illiteracy, etc.and c) that the proposed carbon taxes won't have an immediate negative impact on those that are least able to deal with it.

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. Even more ironic, the same lay people who cry out about denying the "settled science of global warming" are often those who deny the reality of biology, i.e. that there are only two genders or that evolution applies to humans just as much as any other animal.

All that said, I do agree with you on your fundamental premise: we do need more critical thinking. The modern university system is not the place to do that, however.

Here in the States, we have crammed more and more people into the universities (funded by the same government that wants to tax the very air we breathe)... and yet, by your own admission, critical thinking is in the toilets. While correlation may not be causation, it's a pretty big coincidence that people are dumber than ever, while record numbers of them are going to universities.

If universities were so great at instilling critical thought, I would expect the opposite trend.

What he said.

I don't have a degree. I dropped out a decade ago. I've now sold a software business, sold several other software products, bought a $100k boat in cash, bought a condo, and am in the process of building a $1m new construction home, and I'm only 29. Being 29, I still have friends who went to college for their degree or masters and are still living at home with their parents. They call me lucky and I see with open eyes that they are completely ill-equipped for life.

So my final self-righteous conclusion:

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.

Great ending to a great post. Rep+
 
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dknise

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If you understand the topic it is always advisable to question and this is how science goes forward.
Questioning vaccines without a sound knowledge in biology is like building a car without a knowledge of mechanics, maybe you forget to fit the brakes. It could be a Darwin award, or it could be an homicide.
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!
 
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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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Mattie

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OMG, that video puts my mouth on the ground. Apparently 2 advanced degrees didn't give them any common financial sense. 300K in student loans, 200k credit cards, nearly a $1M in debts and not even 30 yet.

So you spent a half million dollars on an "education" and clearly NO PART of that education taught you how to manage money. Is school the answer here? Apparently not.

But gawd damn, I bet they have an awesome set of new BMWs and a nicely furnished home, compliments of Restoration Hardware...
Oh...I love listening to that show about how stupid people are and how much debt they have. I am on the feed in Facebook as well. I do laugh though, because they're even stupid about how to budget their money, what should they sacrifice, and how to sacrifice.

For example: My coffee pot broke. Should I take it out of my emergency fund? I rolled my eyes. My response to them myself. "There's these places called second hand shops, yard sales, garage sales, and even if you can find Millennial's recycling stuff on face book in your local community.

Now first of all, a coffee pot doesn't cost that much at the regular store, and you should just be able to afford that out of your own grocery budget. Not a huge expense, but if you're where you need problem shoot there are alternatives.

Another example: Should we spend some of our wedding budget to pay for a lawyer for my fiances child, because it takes all our wedding money, and I won't have a nice wedding if we have to do go through with this custody battle.
I rolled my eyes, I'm like you can have a wedding ceremony any year of your life. The child obviously needs her father to do what's right, and family lasts long-term versus a wedding ceremony for a day. And explained you can use your $10,000 dollars for your wedding ceremony, and also spend another $10,000 dollars on a divorce lawyer a year from now if your relationship doesn't work out, because nothing is written in stone. Which is the better investment your fiances daughter that lasts a lifetime or your wedding ceremony?
 
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raden1

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I worked for a plumber who was in woes about how illogical people were.

Yet he complained about being broke, while he drank and smoke. And he complained that big businesses were polluting the Earth while he threw cigarette butts out the window. He is also the angriest person I've ever met.

Of course, he is very logical in his mind.

Additionally, many solutions to personal problems tend to be simple. They don't require Einstein levels of logic.

It's just people are so emotionally F*cked it's hard for them to carry stuff out. That's why this forum is constantly pushing the cliched phrase of "take action." I don't see how an additional 4 years of schooling is going to help.

Logic is a very small part of life that's blown way out of proportion. It's almost like a fetish for some people to just think all day. When you get down to it, there's nothing logical about consciousness, existence or death. We're floating on a rock in space that came from nothing and that's weird.

And, I have an Associates of Science. It hasn't done anything for me. And I mean nothing.

I have made a tiny amount of money doing a shit job at copywriting and freelancing.

I've made $0 from my degree.

And the problem with conspiracy theories is if one turns out to be true, then that opens the floodgates and every conspiracy theory could be true.

IMO, teaching people to have self-respect and how to take care of themselves physically and emotionally are infinitely more important than teaching them how to "critically think." Because it's almost impossible to act logically or learn anything if your emotions are a mess.
 

MJ DeMarco

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When you get down to it, there's nothing logical about consciousness, existence or death. We're floating on a rock in space that came from nothing and that's weird.

Very true, reminds me of Carl's epic take...


Maybe school isn't the problem/solution?

Solid parenting so the child can recognize agenda over fact, education over indoctrination.

It's hard to politicize or agendacize a skill like computer science, engineering or mathematics.
 

Silverfox148

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Interesting topic, it's good it's being discussed here.

It's ironic but as MJ stated , school itself may be the problem. If you stop and take some time to observe and think critically about what really goes in the school system past 5th grade you might not like what you see, and it may be too painful for you to accept, so you shut yourself down to the idea.

My son goes to one the "best" school systems in the state and while yes they are up there on the standardized scores. Education is the last thing being taught in those schools, there is so much dogma and bullshit and very very little room for true thinking and questioning, it's become no different than religion. School is actually hurting these kids more than it is helping them past the 5th grade. Most will think this is crazy but that's the dogma kicking in, no different than religion, it's just the religion of school.

Couple of Points:
- Education is great, but there is no reason why education needs to happen inside of a school, education can and should happen anywhere, the best education is hands on education.

-The idea of school graduation is itself a problem, because you never truly graduate from anything, you have keep learning and educating yourself your entire life yet school graduation gives the impression you are done. I laugh when people who already are employed with a bachelors degree go for their "masters" , it's just the programming kicking in, they associate learning/education with a school and must therefore go back. Crazy good programming.

-The idea/impression that a majority of teachers even truly care enough about their students to actually educate somebody.This one is one most do not think about, but it is vitally important. To actually educate a child much less one that can critically think is incredibly hard and requires a ton of effort/hours, it is simply impossible for any teacher to truly educate more than 1 or 2 students deeply out of a class of 20. I don't blame them for this at all because most don't even expend this effort for their own kids much less that of others. My son is 7 years old and I have spent hundreds of hours on his physical/emotional/educational/spiritual development to date, over and over and over. He has weekly goals that roll up into quarterly goals that roll up into yearly goals, every week he holds himself accountable at our weekly meetings on Sundays. Do you have any idea of the dedication required to accomplish this at such a young age, no teacher should/can/will provide this for a child?

Y'all gotta wake up with regards to schooling and the results they are giving, it's not about getting a job, it's about fulfilling your potential as an individual, that's the last thing schools are teaching.
 

G-Man

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I'm old enough to remember life before the internet-inspired post-truth era we live in today, and I can quite categorically say that stupid ideas before the internet were just laughed at and killed at birth.

However you're right, there's nothing common about sense :)
Man the struggle is real. You may be right, but I really think it just seems like there's more stupidity out there because all of a sudden a lot of these folks have a platform. And @lowtek is right, it can happen to anyone. You also have to remember that these things play on our most basic human weaknesses.

Example: I used to be really into conspiracy theories. That's not to say I trust the government now, but I mean, I was straight up watching Alex Jones all the time in the years right after 9-11. I was that guy that people avoided certain topics with. Anyway, what made me finally snap out of it was someone said something like: "For a lot of people, the idea that a malevolent cabal is pulling the strings and running everything is a lot less scary than facing the chaos of reality. Having a bad person in charge somehow more comforting than trying to cope with the reality that no one is."

I paraphrase, but you get the gist.
 
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The-J

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Anyway, what made me finally snap out of it was someone said something like: "For a lot of people, the idea that a malevolent cabal is pulling the strings and running everything is a lot less scary than facing the chaos of reality. Having a bad person in charge somehow more comforting than trying to cope with the reality that no one is."

Perfect example of fuzzy thinking leading to crazy conclusions. I don't fault you, because you snapped out of it.

I had a conversation the other day with a rather intelligent friend who said some of the dumbest shit I've ever heard. I explained to him exactly this, and it made me aware of my own bias due to my agnostic beliefs. I, personally, have a bias toward randomness. I'm more likely to believe that the unlikely or negative is due to chance and that it could have happened another way. Others have a bias toward determinism, in which they believe that something unlikely or negative must have been bound to happen because someone willed it so. Others believe in destiny.

It's easy to take all these biases toward their logical extremes, and despite being 'logical' the thinking behind it is fuzzy because (1) it doesn't stand up to real scrutiny, and (2) the assumptions are based on feelings or beliefs.

On the other hand, convictions and beliefs form the basis for actions that result in wanted (or unwanted) outcomes, and many of these convictions and beliefs cannot be falsified. Despite my randomness bias, I personally do believe that there are 'right' convictions and 'wrong' convictions, and people with 'wrong' convictions are likely to have poorer outcomes and cause harm to others, either through their actions or through spreading their beliefs.

That dichotomy raises its head yet again.

Granted, I believe I'm correct in saying there's no shadowy cabal, only individual incentives, and those incentives can (but didn't have to!) lead to every single outcome we see today.

I hope members of this forum can be as self aware as you were when you listed to that person.
 

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It depends on what you mean my school. If by school, you mean High School. I agree. If by school you mean college. I disagree.

You state that flat-earthers and anti-vax individuals are dumb because they don't go to college. This may be true. It may be false.

I do present to you... the average college student. Who believes that men/women can magically change their sex/gender just by their mere thought... or from some surgery. It take a college degree to not understand how biology works.

College is a major waste of time. I'd be hard pressed to find a college that actually teaches critical thinking. I am graduating with my Doctorates degree in 1 week. I can tell you that my critical thinking was never challenged in any of my undergraduate classes.

Learning is important, I just think it is naive to think you can only continue to learn by going to college. People are capable of reading any book. Scour the internet. Want to learn to critically reason? There are Youtube channels, books, and even college professors on Youtube that will teach you without the extraordinary cost and all at the comfort of your home.
 

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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).

2) The feeling of general intelligence and moral righteousness people receiving from knowing the "truth" vs. all those "idiotic masses"

3) Non-Stop Internet addiction and scrolling and obsession leading to boredom and eventually delving into these conspiracies

4) The general feeling that life sucks and it's someone else's fault (because why take responsibility when that's hard)

5) Isolation and alienation

Let me state that I don't believe in virtually any conspiracies. Mostly due to the fact I think through it carefully, Occam's razor as stated earlier in the thread. The problem is conspiracy thinking is that it is also a black hole, you believe in one and it sucks you in. If you believe 9/11 was a conspiracy, you're far more likely to believe the CIA shot JFK and then vaccines cause autism and so on and so on. I've seen so many people, mostly likable internet personalities fall face first into this trap. They become the most insufferable assholes imaginable and don't realize how stupid they sound. I can hardly listen to anyone anymore. It's like every thunderstorm starts with a rain drop.

If it keeps going they start to doubt the fabric of being and reality itself. This is when they start talking about aliens, magic, the occult, and other fanciful bs. And like a depressed person pushing good people out of their life, the conspiracy theorists will eventually accomplish the same. Until their lives are a nightmare of their own creation. A conspiracy against themselves.

Read number #4 again carefully. See even if you knew it was 100% true, you can't do anything. You're powerless to effect meaningful change socially or politically on it. Therefore it makes you weak and helpless.

As for the college thing, look guy, everyone goes to college now. I've met dumb people with no college who worked hard and became successful. But virtually every dumb and lazy person I've ever met has a college degree and will never go anywhere. If college was so great, do you think we would have lawyers, congressmen, judges, and government officials of such shockingly low character and integrity? With no sense of honor or even a good grip on their jobs' requirements? By your deeds you shall know them, look what American universities have produced.

From what I've seen with my college experience, for 95% of people, college isn't the start of critical thinking, it's the end of it.
 
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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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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.
This is a great rant. It brings up a lot of cool points that I hadn't considered.

In terms of college, jt seems that if you're smart about your education and don't get into massive debt for it (ie go to community college for prerecs and try to get scholarships) than the process of sticking with college gives you a good foundation for sticking with difficult tasks. Not to say college is the only method, but it's percieved importence is a good motivator to stick with it.
 

Roli

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IMO the problem is that school (assuming your speaking of college) is no longer about learning or even questioning beliefs. Colleges are filled with teachers who are believe and teach the same way and if someone believes or teaches different then they are called names or not allowed on campus at all.

That may be true, as I was ranting I was thinking about education standards. However I was thinking about basic schooling, it seems even that is being denigrated at the moment.

In regards to climate change, global warming, global cooling, etc. I would say the issue is that is has been yelled that the world is ending since the 70’s. Almost 50 years later none of the predictions have been even close to accurate

Science evolves, computers get more powerful, and nobody ever said the world would end. The mantra has always been rising sea levels, extreme weather, and a runaway greenhouse effect. Which is happening.

That’s especially true when the person who has been one of the biggest mouthpieces for climate change (Al Gore) went from being worth 2 million in 2000 to being worth 200 million.

I can see how that could effect people's thinking. However it shouldn't, what one individual does or how much they make is of zero consequence to the environment. Also how do we know that's how he made his money? More likely, like every ex-president or high-up politician, he used a mixture of privilege, inside information, contacts and good old fashioned work to make that money.

It looks especially hypocritical when you look at the way he lives. Using 12-20x the average American household in electricity for his lavish estate doesn’t exactly help his case that he is actually concerned about climate change enough to even change the way he personally lives.

Again, being a hypocrite doesn't make him wrong.

The problem isn't a lack of education, the problem is the belief that fuzzy thinking and anecdotal evidence should supercede logic when logic is too complicated to follow.

So true, however I feel if education was better, and people understood that they can use it to create a strong thinking mind, this problem would pall into insignificance.

It's actually a tough dichotomy, because fuzzy thinking and clear thinking can lead to the same conclusions, no matter whether the conclusions are right or wrong. It depends on what assumptions people start with, and how they arrive at the conclusion.

They can lead to the same conclusions, however it is more about being prepared to revisit your beliefs in the face of insurmountable evidence, which too few people are prepared to do.
 
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Roli

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I'd argue that school does the opposite, it doesn't teach you REASONED THINKING, it teaches you to memorize, recite, and regurgitate. That's what drones do.

I guess it depends on the school, whilst I learned to memorise, I also learned to reason, which of course is an ongoing process.

That's great, hope it applies to religion as well.

A lot of parents want their children to be thinkers, except when it comes to religion.

Absolutely! Religion is the main way that the human race is manipulated and I constantly speak to her about this. I tell her not to believe in outrageous claims without extraordinary evidence, and I am schooling her in how to discern evidence from BS.
 

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