I'm pretty sure we've talked about similar things before - the closest thing I could find after a quick search is a list of math prerequisites.

A suggestion: to make this concrete, we could identify specific courses on MIT's open coarse project. Then people could actually "get" this degree in some sense.

I'll start with the obvious: Math 18.05, Introduction to Probability and Statistics.

What do you study at Stanford? Why?

This looks very much like an ultimatum game, with Player A playing the proposer (how much of her $500,000 will she share?) and Player B as the responder (his role is to either accept or decline).

Because you don't want to pad your bibliography and give the impression you know more about the topic than you really do. Also, the body may not match the abstract, the body may poorly substantiate its claims in the abstract, you should understand any document you're relying on to make your point, etc.

Why is this controversial?

Edit: In fairness, some people do intend "efficient scholarship" to mean "cite any paper with an abstract that looks like it agrees with you and hope no one asks questions", but I don't think that's what lukeprog means.

Thus the barriers to going from knowing nothing about a field to being able to write a publishable paper are actually relatively low in quite a few fields, particularly those where you don't need lab equipment or great mathematical sophistication.

I think your impression is wrong. You are right that in many areas, if you're reasonably smart and have a strong amateur interest, it doesn't take very much time and effort to start asking questions and possibly even generating insight at the same level as accredited scholars. However, in such areas, and in many others as well, the most difficult obstacles are of different sorts.

First, a perfectly clear, logical, honest, and readable account of your work is often ipso facto unpublishable: what is required is writing according to unofficial, tacitly acknowledged rules that are extremely hard to figure out on your own. (If anything, academic publishing is so competitive that unless you have an earth-shattering breakthrough, it is difficult or even impossible to publish without intensely optimizing for passing the actual review and editorial process, rather than following some idealistic criteria of quality.)

Second, of course, there is the factor of brand-names, networking, and patronage. Each publication venue has some minimal status threshold for authors and their affiliation, below which your chances of publication are practically nil no matter what the content of your paper may be. (Again, with the possible hypothetical exception of evident stunning breakthroughs.)

One thing you should avoid doing is cite an article when you've only read the abstract.

I'm not sure this is helpful (or news), but I've been wondering if problems with "natural" social skill aren't due to an underactive System 1, but an overactive System 2. Meaning, most people have normal social capabilities, but exceptionally bright people tend to let their intellect interfere with what might run somewhat normally if it weren't being looked at through an electron microscope.

This doesn't mean that if you were dumber, you'd be "normal-er" (read: mirror people more effectively), but you might fret less about your differences, which could in turn prevent a paralyzing negative feedback loop. I've personally observed that (after high school, at least) people are much more tolerant of my idiosyncrasies than I am... and if I could truly update this belief, I'd in turn be more tolerant of their idiosyncrasies, and so forth.

2) (xkcd 773)

This may be a little tricky, since it still has to project the "university website" image. A fancy university site at least needs an attention-getting slideshow with the pretty pictures and links to press releases.

I don't know if this has anything to do with autism (I'm not autistic), but I would like for schools to allow students to focus on one subject at a time. Instead of four semesters where they have to simultaneously study language, math, science, and history, have one semester devoted exclusively to each of those.

I've always been interested in how stuff works and I've taken apart or built from scratch a lot of the stuff I've owned. I've built stuff as small as a molecule or as big as a hangglider without even considering asking for expert help - it's just so easy and enjoyable, I can think things through, do research and come to understand something new...

But I've never been interested in how people work. It seems to me it's impossible to understand things that are outside my experience and there's a lot I can never experience for myself, to understand. I've never know how to play or party - it's something I mostly have to pretend to do. People are fundamentally unsolvable to me. Friendship seems primarily a feedback loop, love a temporary form of insanity...