Approaching Omega — Where the Knowledge Is in 2019

Just a quick post here — examples abound.

Never has it been more true than now that those who can do so, and those who cannot teach instead.  And one of the problems we face in Western Culture these days is an undeserved elevation of the teaching types to positions of power.  Professorial sorts should almost always be denied positions of power, and that includes power over educational institutions.

The amount of information available on YouTube, WikiPedia, and all around this great big web (and the internet in general for non-web assets) puts academia to shame.  The fact that you have to wade through a lot of nonsense to get to the good sense makes it more an asset than the University.  In University, students are not taught to exercise selective criteria.  They are indoctrinated into the greatest argument from authority — that the University said it.  In fact, to a great degree, university students are taught not to exercise selectivity, which is more pernicious than merely not being taught to be selective.

University-imposed thought police dicta such as respecting all points of view mean that the critical faculty must be checked at the door.  Thank Heaven for the internet!  On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.  Your words are evaluated for their content and nothing else.  You’re not the professor, you’re not the triple-diversity sweepstakes ringer, and you’re not the white male oppressor who must be ignored.  *You* as such, do not exist — only your words.  Obviously, you can make some (or all) of these status markers visible, and of course, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook all know who you are, in ways that your ISP doesn’t even know.  But that’s different.

I have been rummaging around through corners of the web which I haven’t seen in years, and you know what?  Some of them have filled up with thoughtful communities.  They swear.  They make politically incorrect jokes.  And they just crush the university-approved content of the modern stapled mind with facts, reason, examples, and common appeals to what we all know is true.

Just because a university says that a particular premise should be examined, this does not make it false.  Treating that premise as false is just committing the same error as treating it true, but contrary to the evidence of long observation!  Treating the premise as suspect is fair, but it is not fair to question all conclusion stemming from that premise when those conclusions have held up against the harsh justice of time.

Anyway.  I said this would be a quick post.  Go find your own examples.  That’s what the web is here for.  And take your mind back from the university thought police.