I know nuffin' I'm just sitting here looking at... - Page 2

Reading from the slides is the absolute worst.

http://www.heterodoxnews.com/hed/study-programs.html

This is a list of all the study programs in the world that teach heterodox economics. In my view, the elite universities often have the worst economists, because that's where you find power and privilege, so naturally, their bias is stronger. That's when you start getting economists like James Buchanan, research grants paid by the Koch brothers. But I think Cambridge has a lot of heterodox economists in their 'development' program or w/e it's called. Ha Joon Chang, Yash Tandon, and others are there last I checked.

Also yes, in NZ a university course is around $700 US.

The two-tiered system that America is pretty messed up, underprivileged kids stand almost no chance there. That and the fact that you have high interest rates on student debt.

On December 28 2021 17:42 RiKD wrote: I don't even like Plato that much but I think that assessment is correct.

Also it really isn't haha, i was mentioning it as a joke really. I think France is probably the only country where the public would vote in an academic anyway (cedric villani, perhaps could be the future mayor of paris and he seems like a weirdo). There are quite a few examples of mathematicians with absolutely barbaric political views (john von neumann, teichmuller).

LOL

It was Heidegger that said one should take 10 years to study Aristotle and he was a literal Nazi. He literally wanted to be the philosopher king of the Nazis. Haha.

But, I was basing that on something I read a long time ago that people are typically most prolific in math in their teens and early 20s while people are more prolific in say history in their 40s. Which is why I said study math from 2 to 20 and study Aristotle in 40s. I can't remember the source besides I saw it on 2p2. It's funny how certain things stick in my mind where the veracity is suspect.

I think one rule maybe to be suspect of people obsessed with being a philosopher king. I just want the good life.

I feel like Plato had better justifications for his technocratic totalitarian society than people do now, since there was no public education system back then. He also had an obvious and understandable bias from his life experience, i.e watching his friend socrates get killed by mob rule. That said I remember one chinese philosopher around the same time arguing for mass education of the peasants.

it's actually not at all obvious to me that the masses have a better understanding of geopolitics now than they did 2500 years ago. Herodotus's Histories has a detailed description of how the Persian empire collected tribute, I doubt many people learn't from him since 90% of people were peasant farmers, but probably <1/100 people in the world now would be able to tell me how the corporate empire collects it's tribute from the third world. Of course if we had an honest educational system that number would be far greater.

There's a lot of evidence that mathematicians do their best work around their mid 20's to late 30's, but I think that just largely coincides with responsibilities, having kids. Post Doctoral stage seems to be where academics are min-maxing duties and talent.

In any case, there are a decent number of counterexamples to this correlation.