Boring Calculus lecture? Were the University merely serving up boring lectures in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Microbiology, would we be so worried about what the University is doing to our young people?

[…] Why do people go to class […]

Since everyone is now on the internet, even extremely poor third worlders, our entire education system is obsolete. We need to school kids to reading, writing, and rithmetic, but everything after that should be replaced by exams and apprenticeships. Just test all kids at the start of puberty, give them a grade, and then formal schooling just ends. Problem is that priesthood gets an extended education, largely for reasons of indoctrination rather than anything very useful, so if priests are high status, everyone gets an extended education.

I can think of two reasons to have professional instruction: (a) because when something doesn't work, you can just *ask* instead of spending hours trying to figure it out yourself, and (b) a teacher checking your work might notice gaps in your knowledge that you were completely unaware of. Really smart people can learn a lot on their own, but they learn even more when they work in close physical proximity to other really smart people. This "law of increasing returns" is why colleges were established in the first place. This breaks down if you try to impose a particular racial or sexual balance on the student body -- then the dumbest white or Asian male is vastly smarter than everyone who is not a white or Asian male. Do keep a pool of high-IQ white and Asian women nearby for breeding purposes, however, because single guys get tired of every social event being a sausage-fest!

Regarding human nature, Friedman's head is so far in the clouds it's a private space program. He likes it there. Don't ruin it for him.

[…] Source: Bloody Shovel […]

"People don’t go to college to learn. They go because it’s the official way of attaining high status." Again, this seems to be an upper-class perspective. For most people these days, getting a degree is about getting a decent job.

Lectures in the university remain because they are flexible and cheap means of delivering course content. I think lectures do have their place for those who want to learn, particularly in more theoretical subjects. I think they work best as supplements to reading materials and (if it applies to the subject) practical exercises, as starting points for further learning. Lectures, while having much lower information density than written materials, can be more engaging when done correctly, and I say this as an avowed bibliophile. Having said that, I agree with the main thrust of your argument, although I say it more broadly: people go to university for mostly economic and social reasons, not intellectual; finding their social betters to suck up to is just one reason out of many. This probably accounts for the high female:male ratios seen on modern Western campuses (hell, even in Iran that's true). I doubt the young 18 year old Psychology major is there because of a love of psychology or learning in general. She is there because (a) that's what society says you should do, (b) all her friends are doing it, so why shouldn't she? and (c) try and find some alphas to mate with, until she can find the one to permanently provide for her. I distinctly remember one girl, upon seeing this thick book that I was reading, admit that she didn't like to read. Another, complaining about her economics and sociology classes, wondered why shouldn't just find a rich guy to marry. I think guys of the same intelligence of those girls are more willing to not give a fuck about what society wants from them (although they care about what their bros think and are especially concerned with mating). Is this a good or bad thing? Well, the media will fret from time to time about this trend as a part of the "End of men" and whatnot. Economically, it may all come out a wash. True, many of old blue collar jobs are being abandoned or automated, but then we're coming to a point where so will many white collar jobs ... and at least those plebs didn't wasted their twenties pretending to care about gestalt theory, utility functions or Performance Studies (look at the Humanities PhD part - I don't think I've ever seen a more useless class).

In the Medieval period, no one had books. Everything was gotten by lecture and writing your own commonplace book. Later, when everyone had access to books, the lecture was supposed to be an example of a coherent piece of scholarship on the material in the readings. The lecture was designed for imitation, an intellectual model. The lecture was analogous to the the clinical part of a doctors education rather than the academic part. Then students stopped reading. No, really. Students don't read the material. Part of the reason is that the materials are so very bad. For example, college books for algebra and calculus are dreadful. Another part of the reason is the the intellectual level of students is much lower, and they have no interest in reading the material. If a rigorous geometry course (one that's all proofs) was required, how many students at a typical university could pass it? Very few. It's true that students don't go to university to learn. That's a good insight. They don't want to learn the material because well, they really can't. That's a more disturbing insight.

Most people aren't sociopathic status maximizers, but status lemmings. Why do people attend boring lectures? Because sociopathic status maximizers saw high status people getting a boost from college, and wanted to signal just how committed they were, and now everyone else gets to suffer instead of being able to call it a horse. India's caste system looks better and better by the day... (sorry if this double posts; I consider being able to use a smart phone proficiently to be extremely low status)

OT: Spandrell, any thoughts on this from Sailer? http://www.unz.com/isteve/diversity-means-beijing-must-rule-all-under-heaven/

Why people go to class is the same reason why people drive cars, even though automobiles are actually slower than walking. "Extremes of privilege are created at the cost of universal enslavement." -Ivan Illich THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF TRAFFIC http://ranprieur.com/readings/illichcars.html

"The answer to the question is obvious. I mean, come on. People don’t go to college to learn. They go because it’s the official way of attaining high status. That’s what education is for. The guy who just wants to learn already reads the book and doesn’t bother with the lecture. The fact that we still have lectures and pay lecturers, as some guy said over there, “pay thousands of professors to give exactly the same Calculus lecture”, is not to satisfy the market of kids who want to learn. That’s not the market that high education caters for." Maybe as a person of comparatively low IQ I can provide some insight you are still missing. It's essential to consider the IQ of the learner, the IQ of the lecturer (specially if being in class you can actually interact with them) and the IQ the book content and the course are intended for. If you can interact, during the class or when it's over, with the lecturer, and IQ (lecturer) - IQ (learner) is >10, then that's a huge help. Conversely, if IQ (learner) - IQ (course and book) is >10 then you have little, if any, reason to attend classes. We know Plato stated the superiority of direct teaching vis-a-vis teaching by book: he even refused to write down his exoteric doctrines. Listening to a voice and having a human tell you what you can read in a book helps. If you don't appreciate this, it's probably because you needed no heat at all. YouTube class vs "real" class: only difference is in the interaction, with the lecturer and fellow students. Even the companionship of a few friendly guys who shared the same burden with me helped me study. Being able to ask a question to a lecturer can make you entangle an issue in 10 minutes, when doing it alone would have taken 2 days. Every discussion about school issues should take IQ into account, because things change completely for people in different IQ ranges.

Uh....duh? Of course I'm not in a PhD program just because I want to learn the material. Just learning the material is something I could do on my own. Sure, a rigorous program is helpful because it keeps me from being lazy, but I could just hire a tutor. I'm in a PhD program because a) it gives me that piece of paper by which to convince gateholders to money (viz. employers, granters, etc.) that I learned the material (and put up with the shit test), and because being in the PhD program allows me to make potential professional connections with the professors and other students. Is this somehow not obvious to people who don't go to grad school? Because, let me tell you, it's dead obvious to people who do. It's why they do it, and they know it's why they do it, and lack of that awareness is treated as a social and professional malfunction. Or are you talking about lower-level (e.g. undergrad) courses of study? But undergrads are children, and therefore not expected to understand the professional world. This is why their parents involve themselves in helping said undergrads choose a school.

You're right. The main reason people attend universities and go to classes is to attain higher status. But one advantage of a lecturer over books & videos is the possibility of asking him a question.

In this day and age there is no excuse for NOT being educated. The internet has put everything you need at your disposal. Every other method of acquiring information is a waste of time and money. If you want prestige, that is another thing entirely from information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnZ0Y4rvz6E Starts at 3 min.

I think that there are large numbers of people (neurotypical?) who are not self-driven to learn the material that they need to learn (for, say, an engineering degree), and not "rational" enough to be able to force themselves to read the book unless there is some sort of social pressure. Peer influence is important. These people have to be in a room with other people in order to make learning feel like a social activity. That's how I feel about exercise. I know on an intellectual level that I should exercise, but I find it godawful boring to just exercise. Basically, I have only found two ways to force myself to exercise: there either has to be a black belt yelling at me, or there has to be a puck on the ice. The instructors at the dojang I go to go to enormous lengths to make exercise interesting. Bryan Caplan said something similar in _The Myth of the Rational Voter_ about the art of teaching economics. Teaching is less about transmitting information than about giving students emotional gratification for learning it. For normal people, that gratification involves other people. Part of the problem is the need for structure, as was mentioned earlier. Without a lot more structure than simply being given a library card, a lot of people will procrastinate endlessly. Part of the motivation people get by attending classes is fear of public embarrassment. Robert Bly talks about this in his "The Power of Shame" lecture. A failure that can be concealed doesn't sting nearly as much as one that other people watch. It isn't the same watching other people on a video. It's important that they can see me.

For a supposed master of hiring firing, Trump has been bad doing so in government: – Fires Flynn on a bad pretext, tries hiring Robert Harward who is GC deep state, then hires McMaster who is also GC deep state pro-Islam – Doesn’t fire Comey who’s a known piece of shit when he becomes president – Hires Kelly at DHS who is GC deep state pro-economic immigration instead of Kobach – Hires Tillerson who is GC believes in global warming not pulling out of climate accords – Doesn’t fire most of the top level Obama appointees that are doing lots of the leaks. See : http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/18/top-ten-holdover-obama-bureaucrats-president-trump-can-fire-today/ – Doesn’t fire the Obama acting head AG until she publicly refuses to defend Trump’s immigration ban – Doesn’t control Sessions lets Sessions recuse himself without Trump’s permission – Doesn’t get rid of GC Paul Ryan when he could have, now we’ll be getting Obamacare lite List can continue…