I don't necessarily blame the universities, but we all know ambition and ego poison the well. — theRiddler

I was referring to something Flannery O'Connor said:

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Similarly, becoming an academic or a person with an advanced degree is too easy these days.

All limited to the scope of preconceived "laws of thought." And the ego's crippling desire to be inerrant.

"You talk about day...I'm talking about nighttime."

Nevermind, carry on, truth will out.

Similarly, becoming an academic or a person with an advanced degree is too easy these days. — baker

Really? Just your opinion?

A doctor philosophiae is supposed to be someone who can teach others the love of wisdom. How many people with a Ph.D. do you know who qualify as people who can teach others the love of wisdom?

Similarly, becoming an academic or a person with an advanced degree is too easy these days. — baker

A doctor philosophiae is supposed to be someone who can teach others the love of wisdom — baker

An admirable skill for a modern PhD, but has little to do with the degree. As a mathematician I taught the subject in a way I hoped would spark an ongoing interest, but the love of wisdom? I might have been purely a researcher seeking knowledge with the degree.

And in math a PhD is not a trivial undertaking.

An admirable skill for a modern PhD, but has little to do with the degree. — jgill

It shouldn't have only little to do with the degree. If someone gets to prance around demanding to be reffered to as Dr. So And So, then they better deliver accordingly.

If someone gets to prance around demanding to be reffered to as Dr. So And So, then they better deliver accordingly. — baker

I've actually never known a fellow math PhD who pranced or insisted on the Dr. title. My students called me by my first name or Mr. Gill or professor. It would be fun, however, to witness the prancing. Let me know about it if you see it.

Your previous comment about the ease of acquiring a degree has some merit. There are some "disciplines" where it's a lot easier than math. Sociology, perhaps.

It is more interesting about how this discussion inevitable turns into a conflict for power between one who sees this long standing institution of the university from a higher moral ground and another with an equally extreme materialist mindset. My criticism of the system is that it is currently tending to produce an unbalanced number of materialist thinkers, in my view, paralleling the dualism between its organization in pre/post enlightenment culture to its current form where it is actively stripping itself of these morals and values; what will we have left other than some type of extreme materialism?

Is there any room for free will and a type of transcendence of the learning self in the materialist schema? Whenever anyone explains it to me it usually just comes off as some kind of individual-driven fixation of curiosity and/or semi-religious symbolism of the knowledge as a type of higher spiritual power.

↪jgill
It is more interesting about how this discussion inevitable turns into a conflict for power between one who sees this long standing institution of the university from a higher moral ground and another with an equally extreme materialist mindset. — kudos

Is that what's happened here? Am I arguing from a "higher moral ground"? Thanks for telling me.

I only taught math (and was a college administrator for a short time). Here in the USA, not the USSR.

I’m trying not to label or define anyone, though when we hold this discussion we gravitate into certain roles and this conversation is a long standing one. Actually I interpreted your position as closer to the opposite camp, with all this talk about spreading love of wisdom you seem describe the system more like a self-regulating machine. You responded to baker’s traditionalism-rich musing about prancing about and showing off as humorous.

There is visible business-oriented knowledge to be exploited in the average academic learned person, a growing price tag, harder competition, and a greater role in social and political life. This narrative is validated by those who appeal to the intellectual progress of an elite for whom they are expendable. For examples look to the many techno-fear narratives in the arts and in the media. Like the backlash against Facebook and Twitter and the techno-apocalypse and dystopia narratives being told in the arts. They reflect the fears of individuals who see this progress as assertion of power that threatens to compromise fundamental rights and liberties. A fear of a type of material deterministic world where their freedom will be reduced and their happiness in the present transformed into a debt to the future.

Does the working class really want learned AI techs to replace the drudgery of their work lives? Probably not if they have any sense…. Will it still happen? Almost certainly. The system of exchange of goods for access is symbolic of an inevitable progress, a peg in a larger movement in time and is a cultural gesture towards its completion.

You responded to baker’s traditionalism-rich musing about prancing about and showing off as humorous. — kudos

Indeed it is. Somewhere on the downhill spectrum between love of wisdom and love of money. I fear I just enjoyed math and the lifestyle provided by academia. :cool: