What is the point of Higher Education?

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Iwannaplato
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Iwannaplato »

promethean75 wrote: Tue Jun 21, 2022 4:17 pm I fervently disagree. let's take a sample group each from the millennial generation. The only moron liberals from that sample group will almost exclusively be uneducated lower class democrat black peoples, while the smartest will almost exclusively consist of Caucasian and Asian peoples with average to above intelligences.
Bullshit. I'm on the left and the amount of hysterical woke idiots who attend college and are white is incredibly high. While I agree with some of their positions, they are morons and hours and hours of them being idiots could be found demonstrating their idiocy, if your videos of dumb conservatives demonstrates anything. Eat your own idiotic anecdotal evidence approach and like it.

You say something dumb, someone points out how this can be used against your position/side, and what do you argue, assertions in the air.
promethean75
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by promethean75 »

Ah but insofar as authentic Christian belief is concerned, a murderer on death row who claims to be a born again Christian is no less credible than a pastor or saint.

There is no special kind of Christian 'way' of being Christian, and since only ambiguity, confusion and non-sense can result from literal belief in Christian doctrine in the first place, there is no 'real' way to be a Christian beyond simply calling oneself a Christian and making it up as you go.

What makes this Christian process so palpable is how human error can be accounted for, excused and justified post facto. This allows even the least commited Christians to remain Christians nonetheless; if I commit a little sin here and there, it's okay, and part of my nature.

So there's no objective standard against which to test the veracity of Christian authenticity.

If a nigga say he Christian, he no less Christian than Peter or Paul wuz.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Immanuel Can »

promethean75 wrote: Tue Jun 21, 2022 4:32 pm There is no special kind of Christian 'way' of being Christian
Yeah, there is. It's called "conformity to Christ," and it's a thing all real Christians understand.

1 Tim. 6:3-5

"If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a sick craving for controversial questions and disputes about words, from which come envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between people of depraved mind and deprived of the truth..."

But outsiders like yourself prefer to keep things in fuzzy focus, so that they don't have to realize that sort of thing, and can practice their knee-jerk cynicism instead. They want to believe there's nothing to being a Christian, so they just insist their wish is true.

But one does not achieve a standard by pretending the standard doesn't exist. And one does not become a righteous person by claiming nobody is righteous.

Likewise, one does not get rid of God by being an Atheist. All one gets rid of is ones own ability to deal with the reality of God.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Immanuel Can »

On the subject of higher ed.

I had encounters with it many years ago, when the system was still operating according to Classical Liberal beliefs, primarily, and "PoMo" stuff was brand new, and then again a dozen or so years later.

The difference? Profound. Classical university education aimed at creating the independent thinker and learner, of exposing young people to a wide range of opinions and views, and of encouraging them to figure out how to arbitrate them. Today's university, particularly in the Humanities, strives to indoctrinate and produce activists for Neo-Marxist causes.

Nothing could show this more clearly than that the major public form of the classical pattern was the open debate between extreme opponents. Today's public form, in the university, is the monologue by the ideologue, and the suppression of all controversy. Yesterday's univesity students were learning to become tough, independent thinkers; today's are trained to be fragile, obedient soldiers for ideologies the university approves.

My conclusion: yesterday's university had a great point. Today's is worse than having no point: it's actually toxic and poisoned. I wouldn't now pay to send my cat there.
promethean75
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by promethean75 »

"I'm on the left and the amount of hysterical woke idiots who attend college and are white is incredibly high."

Neurotic as they are, they still have harder intelligence than their conservative counterpart, I think. I mean look at the jeopardy game show guy/girl contestant who had the record. Forget his/her name. That dude/chick pwned everybody bruh.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Immanuel Can »

promethean75 wrote: Tue Jun 21, 2022 4:58 pm "I'm on the left and the amount of hysterical woke idiots who attend college and are white is incredibly high."

Neurotic as they are, they still have harder intelligence than their conservative counterpart, I think.
I wouldn't say so.

I have met conservatives who are in possession of great common sense and pratical cleverness, and impressive ingenuity, or with great critical faculties, who never saw the inside of a university; and I have met people with advanced degrees who couldn't think outside of the Leftist narrative into which they'd been thoroughly indoctrinated. In fact, it's fair to say that it is the people with the advanced degrees today who have achieved them by performing most elaborately the tricks of the ideology into which they have been indoctrinated...not those who think most powerfully for themselves.

Of course, there are bound to be exceptions on both sides. But I think that even as a generalization, the confidence that university education = intelligence is a false one.
Belinda
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Belinda »

promethean75 wrote: Tue Jun 21, 2022 4:17 pm I fervently disagree. let's take a sample group each from the millennial generation. The only moron liberals from that sample group will almost exclusively be uneducated lower class democrat black peoples, while the smartest will almost exclusively consist of Caucasian and Asian peoples with average to above intelligences.

On the other side, the smallest minority of intelligent conservatives would be folks from the boomer generation who could hold a legitimate conversation about the principles of free market for longer than sixty seconds. The rest of the conservative population of the voting millennial generation are usually either affluent white bourgeoisie or backwood protestant redneck racists who are too stupid to not only not recognize they're being underpaid at their job driving a forklift all day, but are also proud of having the opportunity to drive a forklift at all. I mean it's the quintessential plebian ethos par excellence. You can't find a dummy dummer than a conservative dummy. Granted, each side produces dummies, as I've conceded, but a conservative dummy is a special breed of dummy.
Let's add that it's for historical/political reasons, not racist reasons, that black peoples include moron liberals. Lack of intelligence has been researched by psychologists . While intelligence is to a high degree inherited , the inheritance of intelligence is linked , not to 'race', but to genetic forebears. These latter are not the same ; all peoples number more and less intelligent individuals and families.
Iwannaplato
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Iwannaplato »

promethean75 wrote: Tue Jun 21, 2022 4:58 pm "I'm on the left and the amount of hysterical woke idiots who attend college and are white is incredibly high."

Neurotic as they are, they still have harder intelligence than their conservative counterpart, I think. I mean look at the jeopardy game show guy/girl contestant who had the record. Forget his/her name. That dude/chick pwned everybody bruh.
Ah, ok. You sense of intelligence and mine are quite different. Jeopardy winnings may very well measure some slice of some type of intelligence, but record holding winner - much better than her peers on both sides of the political divide - could easily be many kinds of moron in a range of categories of stupid.

But sure, maybe the Left would also be better at Trivial Pursuit.
promethean75
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by promethean75 »

Lol google the search terms 'liberals smarter than conservatives' and then 'conservatives smarter than liberals' and you'll get the same results: countless articles about why and how atheists and liberals are smarter than conservatives. That's so rude of google.
Iwannaplato
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Iwannaplato »

promethean75 wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 1:55 am Lol google the search terms 'liberals smarter than conservatives' and then 'conservatives smarter than liberals' and you'll get the same results: countless articles about why and how atheists and liberals are smarter than conservatives. That's so rude of google.
OK, one...I came in where you were asserting that you could demonstrate the stupidity of conservatives by showing youtube videos. The person you were exchaning with correctly pointed out that he could do the same with liberals. Score one for the conservative. Your not very good argument/threat was shown to be what it was: empty. Maybe you're not one of the smart liberal/lefties....., since you can't seem to manage to acknowledge this. Or perhaps, in conservative terms you lack the kind of good character to do this. That's where I came in, pointing out he was correct.
Two, conservatives and liberals view intelligence in different ways. Conservatives value common sense over the ability to win jeopardy, I mean over having a lot of book knowledge, now speaking in very broad terms. Liberals tend to view book knowledge and complicated language skills higher. Each of these foci produce, when in excess, different kinds of idiocy and skills. I don't feel aligned with the mass of either group and the truth is I see them both as filled with people who are easily fooled, but in different ways. If you can get the liberals to think it is being nice to someone they feel guilty about or convince them that SCIENCE is behind it (even if it is actually corporations) they will go along with idiocy (at least, also). If you can convince righties that it goes against the family or is a threat to the nation, they will go along with idiocy. Hence things like trans rights are central to the news, with idiocy on both sides.

Right now I see two groups who have these idiocy buttons on their foreheads and the only thing people in power have to do is push those buttons and the right and left will fight each other. while those with power shift more and more money and power and surveillance and control into their hands.

Great, you, like your rightie counterparts will spiral down the drain screaming about how stupid the other side is when you both look very stupid to me. It's unbelievable how intelligently those in power have played the left into supporting corporate interests and federal power as one example amongst many. The older left used to understand that neither the government nor corporations were anyone's friends. They might see an opening in using federal power to reduce racist policies in southern states, but now the left have become these weird nationalists. And all they have to do is convince the left that X is a right wing viewpoint, and so they all oppose it, with as much analytical thinking as a truck tire.

Dumb vs. dumb. How utterly convenient, but for neither of you.

But you keep on googling the good fight.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

promethean75 wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 1:55 am Lol google the search terms 'liberals smarter than conservatives' and then 'conservatives smarter than liberals' and you'll get the same results: countless articles about why and how atheists and liberals are smarter than conservatives. That's so rude of google.
I don't believe 'smart' nor 'intelligence' is a critical criteria to assess the progress of humans or the trends within humanity.

Rather we should focus on 'wisdom' the fundamental essence of 'philosophy-proper' as that which will optimize the well being of the individual[s] and humanity.

Note this take by Jonathan Haidt, a liberal, centrist and non-theist;
All of a sudden, a whole new world opened up. Haidt discovered that conservatives had some important insights to offer on human nature, the value of institutions, and the importance of moral capital. He felt conservatism offered an important counterbalance to the excesses of progressivism.
He also came to appreciate the pedigree of conservatism, from the writings of people like Edmund Burke in the 18th century to Thomas Sowell in the 20th.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/612025/
Haidt laments the state of contemporary American politics, believing that on both the right and the left we’re seeing populism that responds to real problems but in illiberal ways. “On the right,” he said, “the populism there is really explicitly xenophobic and often explicitly racist … I think we see strands of populism on the right that are authoritarian, that I would say are incompatible with a tolerant, pluralistic, open democracy.”

Looking in the other direction, Haidt says, “we’ve messed up the word liberal and we’ve used it to just mean ‘left.’ I’ve always thought of myself as a liberal, in the John Stuart Mill sense. I believe in a society that is structured to give individuals the maximum freedom to construct lives that they want to live. We use a minimum of constraint, we value openness, creativity, individual rights. We try hard to maximize religious liberty, economic liberty, liberty of conscience, freedom of speech. That’s my ideal of a society, and that’s why I call myself a liberal.”

But on the left, Haidt said, “there’s been a movement that has made something else sacred, that has not focused on liberty, but that is focused instead on oppression and victimhood and victimization. And once you get into a framework of seeing your fellow citizens as good versus evil based on their group, it’s kind of a mirror image of the authoritarian populism on the right. Any movement that is assigning moral value to people just by looking at them is a movement I want no part of.”

Haidt went on: “I think this is a very important point for us to all keep in mind, that left and right in this country are not necessarily liberal and conservative anymore. On the left, it’s really clear that there are elements that many of us consider to be very illiberal; and on the right, it’s hard to see how Trump and many of his supporters are conservatives who have any link whatsoever to Edmund Burke. It’s very hard for me to see that. You know, I would love to live in a country with true liberals and true conservatives that engage with each other. That, I think, is a very productive disagreement. But it’s the illiberalism on each side that is making our politics so ugly, I believe.”

ibid
Haidt justified his points in detail in his book,
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Given the best and the worst of the current 'right' and 'left' at present I believe the so-called right are more net-effective [governance and morally] than the so-called left.
Whilst Trump was narcistic and boorish on a personal basis, overall on a professional basis he did a reasonable good job in compliance with his Terms of Employment as President of the USA.

The current left is so truth-averse [irrational] and is so hypocritical with their blind acceptance of the inherent evil Islam.

Note how true Muslims condemned Ilhan Omar when she lend support to the LBGTQ community;

ILHAN OMAR HAS CROSSED ALL LINES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehKy2pUw1yg

Ilhan Omar Targeted By Islamists | LGBTQ Support Termed UnIslamic |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9Erui-PYdE

For those who are on the left or right ideology, they should take into account the inherent primal impulses of tribalism in their own brain and mind before jumping to any conclusions without sufficient rational justifications.
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Dontaskme
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Dontaskme »

My personal experience of higher education was to unlearn everything I'd ever learnt.

My graduation was celebrated by a swift return to good old terra firma. :D

The point being, it's was all pointless.
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Sculptor
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Sculptor »

I am told that 30% of Americans think that the Democrats stole the election, and that the percentage of Republicans is as high as 60%.

The entire world knows that this is Trump's Big Lie. To keep it simple for the Republicans "the big steal is a big lie".
Biden as dreadful a candidate as he was got 6million more votes than Trump.

Do the maths; there is something significantly wrong with the thinking of the Republicans. Republicans are twice as likely to be duped by a cheap lie than the general population. Essentially that 30% is the same people.

I think the best way to understand this is the tendency, especially amongst religious people to think that belief justifies truth; what they chose to believe is the truth. If you do not see the horror of this statement then you are already lost. But I do think this is part of the culture. A culture which says I have the right the believe in whatever I want. Having right to your own beliefs does not give the right to your own facts.

Low education; a religious education; religious tendencies; and right wing views tend to go together.

If you really think that the Democrats really stole the election then what do you think is going on in this conversation??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbFc9T7KXA0
Skepdick
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Skepdick »

Sculptor wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 11:13 am Having right to your own beliefs does not give the right to your own facts.
But it does give the right to ignore facts and deem them irrelevant to the pursuit of political goals.

It doesn't matter whether they think the Democrats stole the election. It's politically useful to hold and propagate that belief.

Immoral, but politically useful.
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Sculptor
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Re: What is the point of Higher Education?

Post by Sculptor »

Skepdick wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 11:46 am
Sculptor wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 11:13 am Having right to your own beliefs does not give the right to your own facts.
But it does give the right to ignore facts and deem them irrelevant to the pursuit of political goals.

It doesn't matter whether they think the Democrats stole the election. It's politically useful to hold and propagate that belief.

Immoral, but politically useful.
Well duh
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