Until the 20th century a large percentage of intellectuals were self taught. Going to college is a relatively recent thing whose heyday in some respects may be waning. Today 70% of software developers identify as self-taught.
While formal school attendance is unlikely to vanish the explosion in complexity is challenging academic stovepipes. This combined with advances document storage and online sources may portend a comeback of the autodidact.
With homeschooling returning from dissatisfaction with failing standard systems or through quarantine, it's valid to ask how self motivated learning can be improved.
Ironically self-learning is often the only way to obtain the necessary freedom to pursue new ideas. Universitiess, shunning their traditional role as bastions of academic freedom have become academic jails.
One of the most interesting things about self-directed inquiry is that it is something which tyrannies by their nature cannot do well. China can with sufficient effort duplicate a Harvard but it cannot foster free inquiry without risking the Party.
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The fortunes of the liberal project have declined because not only has reality proved too complex to manage but it must now spend enormous amounts of energy coercing its sullen foes back into the fold even if it wins 2020.
The only chance was to do it cheaply through something like Crossfire Hurricane. But now facing what is at best a protracted campaign it's too expensive.
The progressive project was economical because for decades it could commad grudging assent. Nudges and prestige were sufficient to achieve results but most of that has been expended in the bitter acrimony. The prestige well is dry and friction has gone way up.
A self-referential technical universe defines reality as a plausible fake rather than an external given. It supplies the data on which it performs the analysis. The error terms are minimized by definition. Everything fits but nothing is 'true' in the traditional sense.
The ultimate rebuttal in such a closed system is "it can't be true because it shouldn't be true". There are no surprises.
It looks like foreign involvement in national elections, American or elsewhere, malevolent or not, intentional or otherwise, is now baked into the system.
An Englishman will decide if Americans can hear if there's Chinese collusion in Washington.
Nobody can say for certain whether the H Biden allegations are true any more than of the Steele dossier at the outset. But it they are (and were) substantial enough to merit examination. However you cannot examine a question if the question itself is not allowed to exist.
Certainly the alleged H Biden emails are a curious object.If they are not what they are purported to be then they are surely proof of political fraud or perhaps even foreign intelligence meddling. As such the press should be eager to get to the bottom of it in either case.
We are at the stage where the question itself is regarded as inadmissible because it is 'too ludicrous to fact check'. The idea that some speech is not worth the time is one or the arguments against "weaponized free speech", that some filter is required to reduce the noise.
One of the biggest drivers of deforestation is road construction and mass unemployment. Subsistence agriculture is the social safety net of inefficient economies.
"For centuries, ranchers have used fire to clear fields and new land. But this year, drought worsened by climate change turned the wetlands into a tinderbox and the fires raged out of control."
It is often a poor property regime that drives the destruction of what are in effect the commons. Govt ownership is very often the worst way to manage land. Effectively using land near existing roads removes the incentive to harvest raw nature.
Could there be other "big guys" in Washington? Where you find one there's bound to be another. How can this ever be cleaned up?
One approach being pursued in other countries is to seal up the cracks with legal caulking by tightening requirements for universities, investment laws and campaign donation reporting. Then there are counter-intel equivalent of roach bait traps.