Quote from: creighto on March 31, 2011, 10:35:40 PM

It may seem that way, I'm sure. But "education" has been surprisingly effective at it's original goals. Horrance Mann is widely considered the "father" of the American education system, by both his supporters and critics. Read what he said about the subject, and it will become bluntly obvious that the "education" system was never really intended to educate the children of the middle and lower classes in America, but to condition them. The next obvious question then becomes, condition them for what?

You will not like the answer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Underground_History_of_American_Education

I wasn't restricting my scope to American history. I was thinking of education in a philosophical sense - to pass on truths.

Quote from: mewantsbitcoins on April 01, 2011, 01:01:54 AM

abstraction I see from your answers to few of my points that you did not understand what I wanted to say, but that is probably my fault. I apologize for my poor English.

I understood your English correctly. Our differences lie elsewhere.

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Politicians are just a bunch of jokers put there so you can think you have choice. You do not!

I have the choice to make up my own mind, and I do. If I can take what I know, create a logically sound message, and tailor the message in such away that it is intuitively understood by just about everybody, then I have mastered the art of persuasion and I have all the choice in the world. I understand this may sound silly to people who don't know me personally, but in meatspace, I'm learning crucial communication skills by forcing myself to converse with a wide variety of minds. I made a lot more errors in judgment before I started going around talking to people.

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As to people "explaining stuff" - all I wanted to say was that most knowledgeable people on a specific subject should be leading the way.

This may be where our greatest confusion comes from. I'm an extremely skeptical person. I try not to trust what anybody says (experts included) unless I understand conceptually what they are saying about something. In other words, determining who the "most knowledgeable people on a specific subject" requires me to understand the subject as well as they do by taking what they say and transforming the concept into some sort of paradigm that is already familiar to me. If I understand the paradigm, I can see where its strengths and weaknesses are relative to other related paradigms I know. If I bring up a "what if this plausible event happens?" question that the "knowledgeable" person did not consider before, then I really dig in on why they did not consider it. I have to translate between my paradigm and theirs to do this.

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Politicians or any other group do not have the means nor the capacity to comprehend everything.

We are a group as well, so in what ways are we blind? That is what I am trying to figure out.

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Education was marvelous when it was moving us forward in a quest to understand more. Now it is merely accumulation of knowledge and conditioning us to do some specific task without understanding why. Current system even punishes us for independent thinking.

Based on my experiences in life, I know I am very independent in my thinking.

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Everybody should get the same opportunity at succeeding, but that's a whole different discussion

Isn't this what free-market capitalism is?

I don't know what free-market capitalism is. My statement is an idea. It does not have to be boxed into some "free-market capitalism" term.[/quote]
I'm working from this definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market except that I view it in what I consider the purest sense - no government at all. I think your idea and my term are compatible, but I'd like you to elaborate on why it is not if you believe it is not.

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As everything else in nature, it can evolve. Only us, humans, have the need to quantify everything. It helps us to comprehend and assign meaning to it for a specific period of time, but it also restricts it. If you study nature, you'll see that nothing is static - everything is moving and constantly evolving. So should our societies.

I understand this. I see change and I seek to understand both its function in the later state and what state induced it.

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I think I have heard this mentality before by some pretty bad dudes in history.

Yes, you may have heard this before. It is called cynicism.

I used to be cynical, but I found it limited my thoughts and I'm a free thinker.

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Emotions are what induce us to act

Yes, and it is a shame. In my opinion rational thought should be the one to induce action.

In my rationale, the complexity in emotion is one part of humanity that distinguishes itself from other species. You used the word "shame" to describe it. Why is it shameful? Shame is not an emotion I understand very well yet. I do know that when I do act rationally, I have a selfish desire to improve my quality of life. I know that the action both makes sense and feels good to carry out. That's why I do it. Both my thoughts and my feelings harmonize, or get in phase on a good plan of action, and then I act.

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You see abstraction, we don't agree on everything, but now we are having a civilized conversation and learning from each other without imposing our value systems on each other

I don't agree with this, yet. I purposefully imposed my value system explicitly so that it could be judged publicly so I could know where I am wrong. I need to know where I am wrong so I can eventually know where I am right. I responded this way to you originally because I sensed how strong your implicit value system is. I don't know what that system is yet, but I still sense it being imposed on me. I would like you to expose it publicly so I can understand it fully, if you don't mind doing that.