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Ah, I'm glad to see that I'm not so horribly stuck in the mud. I don't have many relationships to gauge these things by. Thank you :) I've always wanted to learn how to "think better". To have greater use of my facilities with greater frequency in everyday life. Problem solving, math, social interactions, all of which seem to elude me except in "Spurts" of clear thinking. (I.e. this comment will take quite a while to write, If I was speaking, I would not be able to be as clear in my thoughts.) I think that's why this site excited me so much. Much of what is here seems to get to the root of "thinking".
It should excite you even more then, to know that part of what is on here is a model explaining why this site excites you so much!
I don't know why I'm so excited for you, but I am. It can be easy to feel intimidated by people and comments are sometimes on the blunt side, but if your goal is self improvement people will really respect that (I will at least!)
For what it's worth,I started with the sequences and went from there.
In response to
Willpower: not a limited resource?
How do they know it's not the persons idiosyncratic "availability of willpower" after a demanding task that shapes idiosyncratic beliefs about willpower?
What Sniffnoy said. I don't have any opinion at all about your degree--I just started one myself, and being new to the thread didn't know what yours was in. I was just trying to point out that you were committing the prior investment fallacy in a more polite way than saying "you're committing the prior investment fallacy." The point was not "the degree is useless, bail," it was "don't factor what you've already spent into your calculation about what to do next, just include what you may or may not spend in the future."
Is there a way I could have phrased that which would have made it more clear to you that the comment wasn't personal?
On reflection, you're right. I wasn't aware that the prior investment fallacy existed and I was certainly committing it. Thank you for pointing it out, I'm going to have a look at it in more detail to avoid falling into the same trap in the future.
I think I was a little irked at Daniel Burfoot's comment and those feelings bled through into how I interpreted your post. I feel a bit silly now.
If I stop, I've wasted time, effort and considerable amounts of money
No. If the degree is not valuable, you've wasted time, effort, and considerable amounts of money, and that's true regardless of whether you continue from the present point or not. Your prior investment doesn't actually have a logical bearing on the best course of action after the investment has already been made.
Your reasoning is correct IF AND ONLY IF the degree is not valuable. The degree however is clearly valuable since it will increase my employment options. If you believe that degree is not valuable, I'll ask that you give your line of reasoning.
Apparently some people here look down on a psychology degree. I don't blame you, the curriculum doesn't do the subject matter justice. The condescending attitude is something you might want to examine though.
But the student in uncertain of the value of the degree, especially since that value is function of how others evaluate the quality of the education. You could consider that the gibberish is evidence that the degree might be of low value, or only of value for careers where spouting gibberish is considered a desirable trait.
One of those careers is teaching cultural psychology, but obviously not all students of cultural psychology can become teachers of cultural psychology, which is why some people call higher education a pyramid scheme.
It's also possible that some companies value the ability to unthinkingly accept gibberish as a valuable loyalty signal. It does seem quite likely that loyalty is valued more often than critical thinking.
If you're 80% of the way through a degree in a field that you care about, I see two options, continue or stop. If I stop, I've wasted time, effort and considerable amounts of money. If I continue, I have to put up with my lecturers unpolished set of beliefs.
Continuing the degree is a perfectly rational course of action. Even assuming that my degree was complete bollocks, there is a market for lemons.
In response to
Picking your battles
Who is the more irrational: the lecturer, who utters the gibberish, or the student, who pays to hear the lecture?
Well keep in mind the golden rule of game theory, players payoffs = players payoffs, not the values you assign them.
So students as a whole go to university to get a degree. As this is a core unit that must be completed, gibberish or not, a rational university student will aim to pass the unit. The lecturer (I've no idea what his payoffs are) makes a career out of advancing his own gibberish viewpoint, so he's also rational. Clearly, while I see a clear failing of the university system, all players are achieving their goals. All players are rational in the game theoretic sense.
Does it have value as an experiment?
Well it is a problem I face a lot, so I'd like to find the best solution.
In response to
Picking your battles
It depends partly on your fellow students. What's your impression of their open-mindedness?
You're bringing back memories of a class I took where I thought the teacher was wrong about a number of things (sorry, details forgotten), and being told a number of times by fellow students that they were there to listen to the teacher and not to me.
I'd say that what you're dealing with is not an emergency, and if you want to oppose those ideas to a large extent (if you want to do disagreement in class now and then, I'm not going to argue with you), post it at a social website where students are likely to see it.
My impression of their open mindedness is that it really is an individual thing. Some people agree with me because they want to please people (which isn't what I'm after),
Some people disagree with me and hit me with a confident "but that's just your opinion" (which drives me absolutely insane, what can you even do here?)
Some people listen to my arguments, think about them (this is what I'm after), then come to some sort of conclusion.
I suppose its the second group of people that really frustrate me and make me want to not bother. I say that the idea of "multiple truths" implies that anything can be true. If anything can be true, then nothing is false. If this was the case, why bother coming to University to learn at all? According to what multiple truths implies, if you think it, it's true.
If I'm talking to someone from group 2, I'll get variations on "No you're wrong.", "That's just your opinion" or "I don't care."
All three responses really push my buttons.
In response to
Picking your battles
Is it worth your time and effort to be the lonely voice of dissent in this class? Does the format facilitate persuading other people in the class? Will you enjoy picking the fight anyway?
Considering the amount of time and effort I regularly waste procrastinating, my time doesn't seem to be worth that much. I think there is a very strong chance that if I speak out, other people might too. The well was poisoned early on in the unit where it was declared that "racist people generally have problems with this unit", now most people feel that they'll be vilified if they disagree with any of the coursework. I kind of agree with that assessment too.
Would I enjoy picking the fight? Yes, but I'm also working to change that fact about myself. The fact is, most people in the unit just don't care, they don't see it as an issue. Rather than counter the arguments, they're much more likely to ignore them, leaving me wondering why I bothered trying.
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<sarcasm>Great!</sarcasm>
So I should have taken the advice to come back as a new account after being gang-tackled (to use a polite term).
That does seem like the best way to reset your karma. It does feel like a total negative karma should reset to zero after enough time passes.
Upvoted in the interest of saving you the trouble of making a new account. You're now at 0 total karma.