Slashdot Mirror

As with many cosmological argument, that essay called "Imaginary Arguments" by TJ Radcliffe does not prove anything about a potential infinity of nested infinite universes. There is a key hedge there of "given what we currently know of physics". Much of physics (for example the Heisenberg uncertainty principle) is in essence a theory of what we could conceivably learn about the universe and beyond, not actual information on the universe and beyond. Likewise for saying we can see up to a certain distance of some billions of light years in space and time. That tells us essentially nothing about what is beyond those limits. We could, for example, be in an expanding bubble in a larger ocean of such bubbles -- but we could not tell using light-speed-limited electromagnetism. It would take, say, access to universe level bugs or debugger hooks to make an exploit that would let us travel beyond those electromagnetic limits in a human lifetime. :-)

This is where that essay goes off the rails, when i overgeneralizes the issue of what we can know with what might be out there: "Nor will it do to imagine alternative physics to fix all this up: insofar as the philosopher's argument is to have any claim on our attention at all, it must be based on what we know about the universe we actually live in, not some self-contradictory universe of a philosopher's imagination, where particles and computers behave in impossible ways."

That may be a useful sentiment by an observer about an observed box, but it is an overly limiting one when talking about things outside a box the observer appears to be in. At the very best, experimental physics can only tell us about the currently "observable" universe within a very small space-time bubble surrounding the current Earth.

So what if experiments are precise to many digits? When you are dealing with possible infinities and nested universes, anything is possible. It just does not matter how mind-bogglingly large the numbers are, or even if every universe can only simulate 0.5% of itself. The observable universe is already mind-boggling large. What are, say, a few trillion extra zeros tacked on to that regarding data storage needs or time needs for simulations to have billions of virtual turtles simulating nested universes some of the way down? :-)

Or in other words, from xkcd:
"A Bunch of Rocks"
http://xkcd.com/505/

Also, there are probably ways things could appear to be precise in some ways to a limited number of observers (like millions of Earth scientists), but not really being fully fleshed out. However, going down that rabbit hole involves many deep existential questions (like how can I know anything at all exists, or has existed, or will exist, how can I trust my memories, how many observers really exist, etc.) that most physicists may be better off ignoring, either career-wise or for mental health reasons. :-)
http://disciplined-minds.com/
"Upon publication of Disciplined Minds, the American Institute of Physics fired author Jeff Schmidt. He had been on the editorial staff of Physics Today magazine for 19 years. Following advice given in the book itself, Schmidt and free-expression advocates mounted a campaign that brought public judgment to bear on Schmidtâ(TM)s dismissal. Such justice is available to anyone not afraid to go public."

That said, such an essay might fairly criticize specific conclusions in "the simulation argument" itself, since much of that is indeed speculative related to "ancestor simulation" or best practices for living in one. But for anyone who has spent time using computer VMs, as well as the mathematics of infinities, the essay-as-is sounds fairly limited in its thinking.

Of course, even the notion of "infinity" has its controversies: :-)
"Dispute over Infinity Divides Mathematicians "

Slashdot may usually be progressive technologically (sometimes even too progressive in some ways), but it can be backward/conservative in other ways (especially regurgitating mainstream medicine's party line, which is why your amusing-to-me over-generalization got modded flamebait). Obviously, there is still a lot of variety here, so this is just an observation on trends...

A couple things on that tangent:
http://www.disciplined-minds.c...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09...
"They say they believe in freedom and share our values. They say a few bad apples shouldn't bring down judgment on their entire kind. Don't be fooled. Though they walk among us with impunity, they are, in the words of Henry Farrell, a political scientist at George Washington University, "a group that is notoriously associated with terrorist violence and fundamentalist political beliefs."
They are engineers.
Farrell, of course, was kidding. He posted that comment on a blog shortly after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (confessed Al Qaeda operative and engineering student) tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit last winter. But the satire was rooted in a statistical fact: in the ranks of captured and confessed terrorists, engineers and engineering students are significantly overrepresented. Maybe that's a numerological accident. The sociologist Diego Gambetta and the political scientist Steffen Hertog don't think so. ...
Gambetta and Hertog found engineers only in right-wing groups -- the ones that claim to fight for the pious past of Islamic fundamentalists or the white-supremacy America of the Aryan Nations (founder: Richard Butler, engineer) or the minimal pre-modern U.S. government that Stack and Bedell extolled.
Among Communists, anarchists and other groups whose shining ideal lies in the future, the researchers found almost no engineers. Yet these organizations mastered the same technical skills as the right-wingers. Between 1970 and 1978, for instance, the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany staged kidnappings, assassinations, bank robberies and bombings. Seventeen of its members had college or graduate degrees, mostly in law or the humanities. Not one studied engineering.
The engineer mind-set, Gambetta and Hertog suggest, might be a mix of emotional conservatism and intellectual habits that prefers clear answers to ambiguous questions -- "the combination of a sharp mind with a loyal acceptance of authority." Do people become engineers because they are this way? Or does engineering work shape them? Itâ(TM)s probably a feedback loop of both, Gambetta says. ..."

Much of medicine is filled with ambiguity (if you ignore nutritional missteps being at the root of much chronic disease that plays out in a variety of different symptoms). Much of the rest of disease is related to lifestyle or environment (e.g. leaded gas causing the past few decades of increasing crime, now dropping as leaded gas has been banned). As Dr. Fuhrman says, genes may give us weak links, but whether they get pulled on to the breaking point is a function of diet and lifestyle and environment. That is not the sort of thing engineers are going to like to here... They want a quick answer prescribed by an authority like a drug. Dr. Fuhrman calls prescriptions for drugs like blood pressure medicine or diabetes-related medicines for type II diabetics as "permission slips" by authority to continue with current bad behavior regarding diet, lifestyle, and environment. Likewise, getting the label of "bad genes" is another permission slip for misbehavior... Not saying some people don't get dealt a much worse hand of cards in terms of genes, family habits, and environment than others... Still, consider how so much of life is what we make of it:
"An Afternoon with comedian Brett Leake '82"

See also my essay: http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-j...
----
About a book by Jeff Schmidt, a previous editor of Physics Today magazine:
http://www.disciplined-minds.c...

"In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline"."
From Marcia Angell:
http://www.nybooks.com/article...

"The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine."
From the Atlantic from a few years ago:
"The Kept University"
http://www.theatlantic.com/pas...

"Commercially sponsored research is putting at risk the paramount value of higher education -- disinterested inquiry. Even more alarming, the authors argue, universities themselves are behaving more and more like for-profit companies..."
Also from the Atlantic, just recently:
"Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science"
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...

"Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors -- to a striking extent -- still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science."
---

Or where US medicine began to go greatly wrong a century ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
"When Flexner researched his report, "modern" medicine faced vigorous competition from several quarters, including osteopathic medicine, chiropractic medicine, electrotherapy, eclectic medicine, naturopathy and homeopathy.[11] Flexner clearly doubted the scientific validity of all forms of medicine other than that based on scientific research, deeming any approach to medicine that did not advocate the use of treatments such as vaccines to prevent and cure illness as tantamount to quackery and charlatanism. Medical schools that offered training in various disciplines including electromagnetic field therapy, phototherapy, eclectic medicine, physiomedicalism, naturopathy, and homeopathy, were told either to drop these courses from their curriculum or lose their accreditation and underwriting support. A few schools resisted for a time, but eventually all complied with the Report or shut their doors."

Article has been gutted somewhat like many Wikipedia medicine articles. It used to have stuff on how women and minorities had also been disenfranchised by that takeover, so that only rich white guys who could afford college could practice medicine.

Anyway, I may not agree 100% with all your points, an

If the "tired light hypothesis" was true, and the "observable" universe was actually much older than 14 billion years, if could be possible for a system at the edge of what we observe to take information it has observed from further way and repeat it in our direction. Thus, even if photons from further way could not make it to us, in theory information could -- potentially from a distributed internet spanning endless quadrillions of light years of space and time. Thus the idea of a cosmological horizon is incomplete:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_horizon

By the way, Hugh Everett's life is another example of how poorly academia often rewards thinking outside the box: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett

Too bad he did not know how to escape "The Pleasure Trap" (which can be hard under stress):
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Sci-fi author James P. Hogan used the Many Worlds Interpretation is some of his sci-fi novels from around the 1980s and 1990s (not sure exactly when the first was). Hogan often championed the academic underdog, arguing they should get a fairer hearing, whether they were right or not..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_light
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Universe_(physics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halton_Arp
http://www.thesunisiron.com/

Semmelweis is another example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmelweis

One can see more extreme examples in times now despised enough to admit of them like Deutsche Physik or Lysenkoism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

Something to think about for the modern day (a book recommend by JP Hogan):
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"Who are you going to be? That is the question.
In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."

A different-but-related take on that by Freeman Dyson:
http://edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society

http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"Although hardly anyone noticed the change at the time, it is difficult to imagine a more dramatic contrast than the decades just before 1970, and the decades since then. Those were the years in which science underwent an irreversible transformation into an entirely new regime. Let's look back at what has happened in those years in light of this historic transition.
    The period 1950-1970 was a true golden age for American science [due in part to continuing exponential growth that was soon to end]. Young Ph.D's could choose among excellent jobs, and anyone with a decent scientific idea could be sure of getting funds to pursue it. ... By now, in the 1990's, the situation has changed dramatically. ... Since we began with a cosmological analogy, let us return to one now. An unfortunate space traveler, falling into a black hole, is utterly and irretrievably doomed, but that is only obvious to the space traveler. In the perception of an observer hovering above the event horizon, the space traveler's time slows down, so that it seems as if catastrophe can forever be put off into the future. Something like that has happened in our research universities. The good times ended forever around 1970, but by importing students, and employing Ph.D's as temporary postdocs, we have stretched time out, pretending that nothing has changed, waiting for the good times to return. We have about as much chance as the space traveler. ..."

I have the same gut reaction... This research as described in the article summary seems to twist together aspects of horror, torture, and slavery.

But then again, I feel somewhat the same way about the development of AI... And we all may be simulated humans already:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

But somehow that it is not quite the same visceral feeling as thinking about small human brains being created to do arbitrary experiments on...

By the way, on the person who brought up the Parkinson's question:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/lack_of_DHA_linked_to_Parkinsons.aspx
"According to the researchers, among the mice that had been given omega-3 supplementation - in particular DHA - omega-3 fatty acids replaced the omega-6 fatty acids in their brains. Due to the fact that concentrations of other omega-3s (LNA and EPA) had maintained levels in both groups of mice, the researchers suggested that the protective effect against Parkinson's indeed came from DHA.2"

Although that was experiments on mice... Not to say mice don't suffer or probably dream too...

Going far down the slippery ethical slope...

That said, somehow I doubt all scientists will abstain from this research. A couple ideas on scientists:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence. (Albert Einstein)"

So, what is the moral foundation for our work in any profession?

"Grad school provides exciting new road to poverty": http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-04-20/news/wanted-really-smart-suckers/1/
"Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read. Then it's time for advancement: Apply to 50 far-flung, undesirable locations, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of being offered any position at all. You may end up living 100 miles from your spouse and commuting to three different work locations a week. You may end up $50,000 in debt, with no health insurance, feeding your kids with food stamps. If you are the luckiest out of every five entrants, you may win the profession's ultimate prize: A comfortable middle-class job, for the rest of your life, with summers off."

Not that science is much better:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
"This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead. ... What about personal experience? The women that I know who have the IQ, education, and drive to make it as professors at top schools are, by and large, working as professionals and making 2.5-5X what a university professor makes and they do not subject themselves to the risk of being fired. With their extra income, they invest in child care resources and help around the house so that they are able to have kids while continuing to ascend in their careers. The women I know who are university professors, by and large, are unmarried and childless. By the time they get tenure, they are on the verge of infertility. "

And:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/sep/28/post-doc-research-job-hunt
"After completing my PhD in 2001 I worked as a post-doc researcher in biological sciences in two different labs until 2006. Despite best efforts, the second post-doc didn't work out research wise and after two years of negative results my funding ran out. Even though I applied for other positions, by the time my contract ended I was officially unemployed. To save money I decided to move back in with my parents and claim jobseekers allowance, a galling process when you are 33 and have three higher degrees."

All that to become:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"Who are you going to be? That is the question. In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education an

"Lemme guess, you're a HS dropout and you're bitter because nobody will buy your homemade shit, right?"

Ah, if only I had been smarter and more courageous in High School and indeed completely dropped out and focused on making "homemade" stuff. Probably I might indeed have been more successful and happier? But no, instead I left high school early for college and then blew all the money I earned from writing "homemade" computer software on Princeton, graduating the same year as Michelle Obama. And that was even after having read this awesome essay saying why spending money on Princeton was stupid:
"College is a Waste of Time and Money"
http://www.tarleton.edu/Faculty/anewsome/Bird%20Article.pdf

So, just an example of how I was deeply in a bubble back then (and probably still am now in various ways).

But, turning the points around to focus on the presenter generally shows you don't have much to say about the points presented? What is your point? That I am "bitter"? See also:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
"This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead. Why then, does anyone think that science is a sufficiently good career that people should debate who is privileged enough to work at it? Sample bias."

See also:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

Anyway, compared to what I was told about the USA in public school growing up, yes, I am disappointed with where this country has gone in the last thirty years. But there is not just one specific thing I could point to (although neoliberal economics is perhaps a big part of it, which just continues to get worse as we automate jobs away and wealth continues to concentrate).

And I'm not saying all the changes are for the worse though. There is less air pollution in NYC, for example (reflective of an emerging environmental ethic). There is easy access to a wealth of information via the internet. Example:
"The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization"
http://books.google.com/books?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC
We know a lot more about material science. We know a lot more about the science of nutrition and health. There sure are a lot of people trying to make a positive difference in the world. There is much goodness in the USA and abroad.

There remain reasons for optimism as historian Howard Zinn points out:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
" Looking at this catalog of huge surprises, it's clear that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience-whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Vietnam, or workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary, and the Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just. I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?), bu

The biggest thing about this article is it shows how quickly something taught in science textbooks for decades like the notion of "absolute zero" is slowly realized to be, if not 100% false, then at least a gross oversimplification. We may someday say the same about things like LENR (Cold Fusion) or even deep issues like consciousness and spirituality (Charles Tart's work, for example). Examples:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
http://pesn.com/2013/01/03/9602259_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_January3/
http://web.archive.org/web/20090308132014/http://suppressedscience.net/physics.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

Elaborating on my previous posts, as I wrote about in a term paper project for a 1980s college undergraduate course run by Prof. Steve Slaby, called "The Technological Imperative of the Arms Race", technology is an amplifier -- the question is, what sorts of things do we want to amplify?

The book "Descartes' Error" makes the point that we can't "reason" without emotions. This seems obvious to me now, but back in college it did not seem so in a philosophical sense. Modern psychology can show us how our emotions drive our reasoning process (even as reasoning can provide feedback that may affect our emotions and again our reasoning etc.). And our emotions are generally first determined by our values (including psycho-physiologically values, like perhaps a instinctive reaction to a snake or a bad smell). And those values in turn are generally determined by our personal biology, our family upbringing, our friends and neighbors, our personal history, and our culture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error

Albert Einstein talks about aspects of that in an essay at this link where he says that science can perhaps tell us something about what seems to be, but science can never tell us what should be. And our thoughts on what should be are the basis of our actions (including how we direct our thoughts). The essay:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

I haven't finished reading it yet, but there is a recent New Yorker article (still available as full text) about a scientist and his feelings about the ethics about his past research on weapons of mass confusion derived from nerve gas:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/12/17/121217fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all

One discussion of it here:
http://incunabula.org/2012/12/the-doctor-behind-the-armys-psychedelic-manhattan-project-has-some-regrets-weed-isnt-one-of-them/

I was thinking as I read the New Yorker article (around the part I stopped at), that these scientists, or at least the scientific enterprise in general, had other choices than to make the next weapon or the next defense for a theoretical attack. They could have focused on using science to make the world work better for everyone (or at least most people) and thus reduce conflicts, like Bucky Fuller did with his focus on "Livingry". They also could have researched the social and organizational issues behind war and other conflicts, like Morton Deutsch did or Alfie Kohn did. Thus this essay by me mentioning such people:

Building on that theme: http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
====
Some quotes on social problems in science

Here are some related broad quotes on social problems in science, some of which relate to competition for funding.

From an article about a sociologist and anthropologist who studies science and technology, Bruno Latour:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour

"In the laboratory, Latour and Woolgar observed that a typical experiment produces only inconclusive data that is attributed to failure of the apparatus or experimental method, and that a large part of scientific training involves learning how to make the subjective decision of what data to keep and what data to throw out. To an untrained outsider, Latour and Woolgar argued the entire process resembles not an unbiased search for truth and accuracy but a mechanism for ignoring data that contradicts scientific orthodoxy."

A quote from another academic, Brian Martin, involved with Science and Technology Studies:
http://www.suppressedscience.net/physics.html

"Textbooks present science as a noble search for truth, in which progress depends on questioning established ideas. But for many scientists, this is a cruel myth. They know from bitter experience that disagreeing with the dominant view is dangerous - especially when that view is backed by powerful interest groups. Call it suppression of intellectual dissent. The usual pattern is that someone does research or speaks out in a way that threatens a powerful interest group, typically a government, industry or professional body. As a result, representatives of that group attack the critic's ideas or the critic personally-by censoring writing, blocking publications, denying appointments or promotions, withdrawing research grants, taking legal actions, harassing, blacklisting, spreading rumors. (1)"

From David Goodstein, who was Vice Provost of Caltech:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

"Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face. "

About a book by Jeff Schmidt, a previous editor of Physics Today magazine:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

"In this

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
"The universities, for example, are not independent institutions. There may be independent people scattered around in them but that is true of the media as well. And it's generally true of corporations. It's true of Fascist states, for that matter. But the institution itself is parasitic. It's dependent on outside sources of support and those sources of support, such as private wealth, big corporations with grants, and the government (which is so closely interlinked with corporate power you can barely distinguish them), they are essentially what the universities are in the middle of. People within them, who don't adjust to that structure, who don't accept it and internalize it (you can't really work with it unless you internalize it, and believe it); people who don't do that are likely to be weeded out along the way, starting from kindergarten, all the way up. There are all sorts of filtering devices to get rid of people who are a pain in the neck and think independently. Those of you who have been through college know that the educational system is very highly geared to rewarding conformity and obedience; if you don't do that, you are a troublemaker. So, it is kind of a filtering device which ends up with people who really honestly (they aren't lying) internalize the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society. The elite institutions like, say, Harvard and Princeton and the small upscale colleges, for example, are very much geared to socialization. If you go through a place like Harvard, most of what goes on there is teaching manners; how to behave like a member of the upper classes, how to think the right thoughts, and so on. "

And:
http://disciplined-minds.com/
"In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."

Vitamin D deficiency is a hazard of indoors work, and contributes to why academia in general is messed up (along with other parts of the industrialized world). Likewise for people not getting enough good nutrition from omega 3s and vegetables -- poor health just makes people messed up. Other ideas I've collected on improving health:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Here are some links I put together for context about current academia:
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-October/005379.html

See especially:

      "The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, Vice Provost, Caltech
      http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

      "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
      http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

And one other that is not there:
    http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

Good luck.

Science is not a panacea; see: http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

"When we have a nontrivial portion of the population who does not believe that humanity resulted from evolution by natural selection, and that the universe is less than ten thousand years old, did we really expect people to accept science that something bad is going to happen if they do not change their behavior?"

Despite having been in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution, I can entertain the possibility that this world may have been a simulation only running for about 6000 virtual years for some purpose by a creator (or creators) of it and that there may have been extensive design involved with creating that (including either falsifying the fossil record or having run the universe from scratch only once and then running the last 6000 years multiple times from a checkpoint save file like with VirtualBox). See also: http://www.simulation-argument.com/

On a practical basis, the theory of evolution probably gets us further in understanding and succeeding in the world (like understanding how insects become resistant to pesticides, or how antibiotic-resistent bacteria emerge). Although maybe not always? :-)
http://evolution-of-religion.com/
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/04/13/211201/magical-thinking-is-good-for-you

Anyway, science is so often not so cut and dried. A big issue is that, as Einstein said, science can tell you what is, but it can't tell you what you should value or prioritize or assume or study.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

Similarly, there are huge areas of real human experience like consciousness that science has little practical to say about and which can lead to "materialistic scientism" which denies that which it cannot prove (rather that just not having a firm opinion), like Charles Tart talks about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G67CqHPXJDE

Still, I would readily agree that when a lot of money is riding on denying externalities, it may be beneficial for certain financial interests to discourage or confuse any kind of rational thinking based on seemingly sound premises.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

I just read someone's sig elsewhere ("Shannow") that said "Figuring things out for yourself is the only real freedom that you have.". Sounds like a lot of truth to me, even if other scientists say (and I also agree) arguing may have evolved as a collective process to get closer to useful truths:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/researcher-responds-to-arguments-over-his-theory-of-arguing/

I think many people in the USA look around and realize materialism has not actually brought that much more happiness in many ways (compared to community, not that they have to be exclusive), so maybe that rational observation leads to other blowback towards the scientific and technical professions? Even if a lot of that is really about politics of science and technology?

In the case of global warming, there are other problems involved. Global warming is a "tragedy of the commons" type problem, and our US society has trouble dealing with problems like that (including systematic risk). Also, the approaches towards dealing with global warming are often very negative. Why not deal with global warming by investing in research in hot or cold fusion energy, solar panels, or space habitats, in an optimistic way, rather that link that to some kind of green doomsterism as many do? Maybe people cor

According to the article: "The (hot) fusion community is still living with the aftermath of the cold fusion scandal from a quarter century ago".

While I agree it's a terrific response technically, It's incredible to now see hot fusion scientists from MIT blaming their problems on cold fusion in the 1980s when the scandle is more about what MIT did unprofessionally to discredit cold fusion / LENR; see: http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/mitcfreport.pdf
"The events of 1989-1992 are past history, but one must learn from the past or be condemned to repeat it. I hope that MIT students will also study the wrongs that have been done by MIT faculty and staff, which perverted the process of science in this area. Ironically, those very faculty and staff who so loudly pontificated about the alleged unethical actions of cold fusion researchers Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons are themselves most culpable. They launched distortions about cold fusion that have gained such wide currency."

To explain why PhDs may think and act this way, read this book:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

Just search on Widom-Larsen, LENR, and so on.
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=177379

Yet, some at MIT are finally moving beyond the shame:
http://cleantechauthority.com/lenr-resurrected-by-mit-the-early-detractors/
"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) looks to be one of the first academic institutions to validate the claims that cold fusion is real. Cold fusion is now more commonly called Low-Energy-Nuclear-Reactions (LENR), partly to avoid the stigma the term "cold fusion" evokes. And in a strange twist of fate, MIT -- who was one of the most aggressive detractors of cold fusion in the 1990s -- is now leading the charge in resurrecting the technologies it once vilified.
    Dr. Swarts and Prof Hagelstein of MIT publicly demonstrated how a device can not only run itself indefinitely, but their experiment also produced ten times the energy output that was input. They ran the experiment for two days to demonstrate the effectiveness of the technology using a NANOR by Jet Energy. The device, as of this publishing, has been running for five days straight."

Of course, even if LENR does not pan out, we'll have dirt cheap solar long before 2050, too, with widespread consumer-level grid parity in just a few more years, and then probably a stampede of research dollars into solar afterwards (making use of the fusion plant in the sky):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity

That said, I agree with the people at MIT that basic research and applied research should be funded much more lavishly. I think it would be quite reasonable to spend a hundred billion dollars on fusion research just because it is a neat thing and especially would have value in space exploration (assuming other things were also funded at that level like solar panels and LENR and so on).

Although even a vast increase in funds won't really resolve the competition problem in academia given the exponential growth of PhDs; see what this physicist has to say:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

We need a basic income, a bigger gift economy, better local subsistence, and more participatory planning at all levels of government so researchers would truly have more financial freedom to pursue basic research of all sorts.

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
in US academia is part of the reason for that.
See also: http://disciplined-minds.com/

Lots more links: http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-October/005379.html

What we need is a basic income for all (or similar things), which would allow those with intellectual aspirations to live their lives at a graduate student level without senior academics having such life-and-death control over whether other thinkers can lead a life of thought. Likewise, those who wanted a life in the arts or a life raising children could focus on those things. Our society has become so materially wealthy by everything we have learned over the millennia that we no longer need to live by the old scarcity myths that there is not enough to go around for everyone to have a reasonable good life materially even if few choose to be materially productive) given modern industry, robotics, AI, cheap communications, youtube educational videos, etc.) And beyond that, we've even got at least another good 1000 years of exponential growth possible if we expand into space in the local solar system and build space habitats.

Well, maybe I could say that says all I need to know about where *you* are coming from regarding "science"? :-) Oh yea of so little faith in science and inquiry and so much faith in unquestionable dogmas? :-) Did you bother to do even the slightest bit of research before your reaction? See for example:
"Variety in Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and the Risk of Lung Cancer in the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition"
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/729525
"The results show that the risk for lung cancer decreased with increasing variety in fruit and vegetable consumption. The hazard ratio for the quartile of participants with the greatest DDS was 0.77 (95% confidence interval, 0.64-0.94) compared with the quartile that had the lowest dietary diversity (P = .02). Intermediate DDS results were associated with intermediate reductions in lung cancers. The inverse association between dietary diversity and incidence of lung cancers was limited to current smokers, and there was a lower risk for squamous cell carcinomas but not other lung cancers. Data on known potential confounding factors, particularly consumption of meat and alcohol, as well as physical activity and education levels, were available but did not affect the outcome."

And that result is not even by focusing on a possible synergetic effect of bringing together really superior nutrition like Dr. Joel Fuhrman talk about with lots of fruits, vegetables, and beans (plus some nuts, seeds, whole grains, and omega 3s), good vitamin D levels like Dr. John Cannell talks about, and Iodine like others talk about, and wellness strategies like Dr. Andrew Weil talks about. Together, these things may well have a much bigger benefit to someone than quitting smoking, and then, when a person doing these other things is healthier overall physically and mentally, quitting smoking may be much easier. That was Dr. Mercola's point if you watched the video, and he tells the story in relation to his success in getting his own sister to quit smoking but all the health problems she had because he did not focus first on helping her eat better. Sometimes when you want to get a pool ball into a pocket you need to do a bank shot. :-)

Science is a process, not just a storehouse of stale factoids (many of which may even have been imparted due to someone's profit motive and may not be very true, or may be out of context or incomplete). And what facts science as a social enterprise chooses to collect and organize also has a lot to do with politics. See also, by an editor of Physics Today: http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

Do I (or Dr. Mercola in that video) recommend smoking? Of course not. It's a dirty habit, and an expensive one too, and it is harmful to your health and that of those around you. But it is quite likely that smoking is far less dangerous to your health than the Standard American Diet when you consider a SAD diet puts you at increased risk for all sorts of other cancers, plus heart disease, plus diabetes, plus dementia, and so on. Put the two together (SAD and smoking) and that is, of course, really bad news for many people in the USA. As Dr. Mercola points out in the video, most MDs have been trained to prioritize addressing the less important one first (smoking), a prioritization that may indeed be shortening the lives of their patients compared to doing things the other way around of focusing on nutrition first, like Dr. Mercola suggests. Once people are eating better, and reducing stress in other parts of their lives (see Andrew Weil's work or "Blue Zones"), then maybe they eventually will be able to move beyond the "pleasure trap" of smoking.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Anyway, about all I have time for. Perhaps you just can't hear what I'm saying right now b

How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together http://www.paradigm-sys.com/
"Charles T. Tart is internationally known for his more than 50 years of research on the nature of consciousness, altered states of consciousness (ASCs) and parapsychology, and is one of the founders of the field of Transpersonal (spiritual) Psychology. His and other scientists' work convinced him that there is a real and vitally important sense in which we are spiritual beings, but the too dominant, scientistic, materialist philosophy of our times, masquerading as genuine science, dogmatically denies any possible reality to the spiritual. ..."

And see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Jahn

See also, on group think (could apply either way):
http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers.html
http://disciplined-minds.com/

And on LENR / Cold Fusion as another example:
http://nickelpower.org/2011/12/30/replicators-as-if-december-30-2011/#more-227

And:
"From www.lenrforum.eu / How is it possible so many scientist be wrong ignoring LENR"
http://184.171.250.170/~lenrforu/lenrforum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=40#p48

Also:
http://medicine-science.com/as-cold-fusion-events-demonstrate-modern-science-is-ruled-by-conformity-not-the-search-for-scientific-truth/

And my:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

It's one thing to say you don't have good evidence about something; it is another to generalize from that lack of evidence that something does not exists or can never exist. A really good scientist knows the difference and so can acknowledge the limits of the scientific method as a way of appreciating the universe.

http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-October/005379.html

I had related experiences when interested in university teaching (as well as far-off research).

"I challenge you to repeat that post replacing your references to actual papers published in mainstream journals."

Consider:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"Who are you going to be? That is the question.
In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."

And from a previous link:
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/
"The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."

So, that's why it's hard to find this stuff in mainstream "group think" economic journals edited by "disciplined minds" engaging in "group think" that is directly linked to their own paychecks as professors ("those who profess") of mainstream economic dogma.

However, if you actually looked at any of those links I previously supplied, you would find several of them actually lead to either journal publications (Luthar) or items that cite journal publications in other fields or even some books written by professional economists. A little bit of reality sometimes even seeps through past the group think and self-serving apologies of the current high priests of the mythology of wealth like in the links to the NY Time article. Again:
"Economists Who Did Their Homework (800 Years of It)"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/economy/04econ.html
"But in the wake of the recent crisis, a few economists -- like Professors Reinhart and Rogoff, and other like-minded colleagues like Barry Eichengreen and Alan Taylor -- have been encouraging others in their field to look beyond hermetically sealed theoretical models and into the historical record. "There is so much inbredness in this profession," says Ms. Reinhart. "They all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded.""

Here is more on that mythology and the consequences:

"BTW, grad school was pretty goddamned good at getting me and my peers to "think, for ourselves, beyond the confines of chosen orthodoxies""

Please read: http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"Who are you going to be? That is the question. In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."

That said, I'd agree 5% to 10% of professors are really special... Good for you you found some.

People start off being able to reason, school stomps it out of most of them:
http://www.alisongopnik.com/TheScientistInTheCrib.htm

Well-rounded (or rather, healthy, which does not always mean being perfectly rounded) human beings are more likely to come out of healthy communities and healthy families...

Some other links;

"The Underground History of American Education" by 1991 NYS Teacher of
the Year John Taylor Gatto
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

"The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

"State Controlled Consciousness" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html

"The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, Vice Provost, Caltech
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

"Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

"What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream" by Noam Chomsky
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

"University Secrets:Your Guide to Surviving a College Education" by
Robert D. Honigman
http://web.archive.org/web/20060707100524/www.universitysecrets.com/us.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20060710145531/www.universitysecrets.com/table.htm

"The Kept University"
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/03/press.htm

"In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness " by Chris
Mercogliano, who spent thirty-five years teaching at the Albany Free School
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm

"Teach Your Own" by John Holt (and other books)
http://www.holtgws.com/

"The Teenage Liberation Handbook" by Grace Llewellyn (and other books)
http://gracellewellyn.com/

"The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and Anarchist Resistance" By Matt Hern
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/Compulsory-Schooling-AnarchistMar03.htm

"Sustainable Education" by Jerry Mintz
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?articleid=195&newsletterid=1

"Federated Learning Communities"
http://www.ericdigests.org/2000-1/learning.html
http://www.

As Gatto points out, schooling is segmented, with 1% or so of students receiving an education intended for them to be part of a top elite, and then about 10% or so more receiving a somewhat different education to be part of a managerial/professional class (doctors, lawyers), and then the rest intended for worker class status.

Whatever the level of "interactivity", there is still the issue of who sets the agenda, who tells whom what to learn and when, and so on. Is the situation learner-directed (like a public library) or is it state-directed (or employer-directed) like in a public school or private workplace?

If you think about what most businesses want, whatever they say, it is not "curiosity" but "assignable curiosity", which is a big difference. It is not critical thinking, but it is thinking critically about business problems within business assumptions while not rocking the boat where it matters. See also Jeff Schmidt's "Disciplined Minds" book which goes into that:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

The primary function of top 50 schools is not really "education" so much as "filtering". See Goodstein or Chomsky:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
"People within them, who don't adjust to that structure, who don't accept it and internalize it (you can't really work with it unless you internalize it, and believe it); people who don't do that are likely to be weeded out along the way, starting from kindergarten, all the way up. There are all sorts of filtering devices to get rid of people who are a pain in the neck and think independently. Those of you who have been through college know that the educational system is very highly geared to rewarding conformity and obedience; if you don't do that, you are a troublemaker. So, it is kind of a filtering device which ends up with people who really honestly (they aren't lying) internalize the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society. The elite institutions like, say, Harvard and Princeton and the small upscale colleges, for example, are very much geared to socialization. If you go through a place like Harvard, most of what goes on there is teaching manners; how to behave like a member of the upper classes, how to think the right thoughts, and so on."

It can take a long time to accept all this, especially after one has been through decades of schooling where the number one thing taught is how much you need schooling... It took me a long time to accept that... It can be especially hard for those who get the best grades in school...

When I was in high school (1970s) and we had just gotten Commodore PETs, I was thinking how this mean everyone could get cheap-to-copy tapes with content and programmed instruction so they could learn all sorts of stuff. I saw the big issue as being the cost of textbooks. I did not see then that such a thing would have violated the basic idea of schooling, that you are learning what the school system wants you to learn when it wants you to learn it, and what it already had was sufficient to that task. Schools were not interested in having their routines disrupted by people learning what they wanted when they wanted in as much depth as they wanted and without much oversight and tracking.

That is why educational computing has gone pretty much nowhere within most schools, except when it has been very narrowly crafted to essentially be just like a text-book (maybe just a bit better) and when it has been linked into a pervasive system of monitoring and evaluation and fine-grained control. Some of that is changing, but it is changing despite what schools are, not because of what schools are. Any change is from some few dedicated educators who often are risking everything to try something that would actually help kids a lot (like Gatto).

Th

"People who start off vowing to "change it from the inside" almost always end up just becoming corrupted themselves."

Yes, that is a big risk. You are right that institutions have their own internal dynamics. Langdon Winner talks about this, how a person not filling their role in an organization will be replaced like we might swap out a bad memory stick in a computer. So does Noam Chomsky when he talks about "What makes the mainstream media mainstream".

There are no easy answers, though I tried to "think outside the box" with some of my essays that I linked to.

There is also some useful advice in books like these:
    http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
    http://www.amazon.com/Have-Fun-at-Work-Livingston/dp/0937063053

But others might suggest that total institutional collapse will be the only way "forward":
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse

But I'm not sure we have that "luxury" considering how many WMDs the USA has stockpiled... It would be better and less risky to find a transformational or transcendent way forward to something better.

Better suggestions always welcome.
   

I liked it too...

One can question the whole issue of graduate / business schools in other ways too:
    http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

And this:
    http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/
    http://dublinopinion.com/2011/05/06/an-appeal-from-teachers-and-researchers-of-economics/
"The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. ... Professors, lecturers and researchers have been entrusted by society with the task of serving the society through their search for a better understanding of reality. Only in this context does academic freedom have a real meaning. ..."

The question is, how repeatable is it for everyone to be in on something at the right time in the right place? How about instead building a world that works for everyone?
    "RSA Animate - 21st century enlightenment "
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo
    "RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome did not have compulsory education, were they not "advanced" for their time?

The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) had no compulsory schooling as we know it hundreds of years ago, but the USA borrowed ideas from their society for its constitution.

The USA did not have compulsory education for most of the 1700s and 1800s. Was US American not advanced for its time? Was it perhaps in some ways more advanced back then, as Gatto suggests, with more independent self-educated people with a higher degree of literacy?

Anyway, another reply by someone else (who you may have confused with me?) makes a related point.

There are lots of better educational alternatives than compulsory mainstream public schooling listed here:
    http://www.educationrevolution.org/

Why not just give the money that now goes to compulsory schools directly to the parents to let them decide how to spend it on their children's behalf? A related specific proposal:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html

And if you say, you can't trust the parents to look out for their own children's interests, then what does that say about the value of thirteen years of compulsory schooling?

Anyway, there are lots of alternative ideas out there if you look around with an open mind. But the whole point of compulsory schooling is to close people's minds and distract them. That may not be the intentional purpose of most schoolteachers, but it is the end result of the systemic process, and as Gatto suggests, that process is doing exactly what it was designed to do, so if you give it more resources, it will only dumb people down faster and more comprehensively.

See also from a previous vice-provost of Caltech and a previous editor of Physics today that say related things:
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
    http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

"All anarchistic links, it appears. Which is great, except anarchy fails, in education. Miserably."

How can you call Alfie Kohn or John Holt or Jeff Schmidt anarchistic?

I'd say those links were about trying to find a more appropriate balance between meshworks and hierarchies than authoritarian schooling represents. From Manuel DeLanda:
    http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
"Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation."

BTW, if Gatto is insane, how was he selected as NYS Teacher of the Year and how did he teach for so many years in public schools? :-)

Also, it seems like you are admitting kids don't get to practice either freedom or democracy in mainstream public schools. So, how are they supposed to learn to do those things when they turn 18 and can vote?

If the schooling idea is so great, why is creativity plummeting?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/07/11/1159241/The-Creativity-Crisis

Is this guy, knighted by the Queen of England for services to education, an anarchist?
"Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

How can you say that the Prussian model was rejected when just about everything about schools reflects it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system
"The Prussian system instituted compulsory attendance, specific training for teachers, national testing for all students (used to classify children for potential job training), national curriculum set for each grade and mandatory kindergarten."

A link from there to a documentary on Prussian Schooling:
http://www.quantumshift.tv/v/1198046178

How come the people who started Google went to Montessori schools?

Did you go to school? Do you spend much of your time talking to school people? Then you are in the system...
    http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict “ideological discipline.” The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional’s lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."

Have you looked at this?
    http://www.thewaronkids.com/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlnwm11d6II

How do you evaluate schools on how creative or cooperative or democratically-oriented or critical thinking or kind or helpful or healthy or resilient most kids are after they come out of them?

Why was the parent marked Flamebait? It's so sarcastically true. :-) Except maybe for aspects of the "collectivist" bit, depending what is meant by that (can you have a collectivist society that alienates individuals from themselves and others?).

To understand why it is true as far as the "indoctrinaton bit", see all the links I've collected here:
"[p2p-research] Rebutting Communiqué from an Absent Future (was Re: Information on student protests)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html
"I'm going to make some comments on student unrest, mostly focusing on how students could make positive changes to the university without being directly obstructive. So, this mostly agrees with the first half of "Communiqué from an Absent Future" and then disagrees with the second half."

Essential links from there to other lists of links:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005584.html

And essential reading that backs up some of the parent's sarcasm:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
That book suggests studying US Armed Forces anti-brainwashing manuals for GIs captured as prisoners of war, in order to resist the indoctrination of graduate school (which could be seen as collectivist in the sense of joining an elite that is collectivist for itself in a sense, even as it preys on others).

http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ "The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."

See my other post in this thread, too:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1738326&cid=33090340

These posts of mine lead to endless links about what is wrong with the current schooling system at all levels:
"[p2p-research] College Daze links (was Re: : FlossedBk, "Free/Libre and Open Source Solutions for Education")"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
"[p2p-research] The Higher Educational Bubble Continues to Grow"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005584.html
"[p2p-research] Rebutting Communiqué from an Absent Future (was Re: Information on student protests)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html

But key ideas can be found at these links:

      "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
      http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

      "The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, Vice Provost, Caltech
      http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

      "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream" by Noam Chomsky
      http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

      "University Secrets:Your Guide to Surviving a College Education" by
Robert D. Honigman
    http://web.archive.org/web/20060707100524/www.universitysecrets.com/us.htm
    http://web.archive.org/web/20060710145531/www.universitysecrets.com/table.htm

      "The Kept University"
      http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/03/press.htm

      "We're NOT Off to See the Wizard: REVISITING THE IDEA OF COLLEGE"
      http://unconventionalideas.wordpress.com/?s=wizard

      "The Underground History of American Education" by 1991 NYS Teacher of
the Year John Taylor Gatto
      http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

      "In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness " by Chris
Mercogliano, who spent thirty-five years teaching at the Albany Free School
      http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm

And there are many more I link to in the posts, but these are starting points.

It would take years to read through all the references I link to in the three posts (and it has. :-)

AERO is one place that catalogs most of the alternatives:
    http://www.educationrevolution.org/

I wonder if it was a "disciplined mind" http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ who marked that comment down? :-)

First, check out: http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ "Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives"
"""
Who are you going to be? That is the question.
    In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
    Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job.
"""

Some very interesting psychologists; maybe look up some of their students?
    http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Seligman#Positive_psychology

By a practicing psychiatrists on how vitamin D is related to much mental illness:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

By others on the psychological aspect of our society, personal troubles in it, and its infrastructure:
    "Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy" by Bruce E. Levine
        http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
    "Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals" by Thomas Moore
        http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
    "About the AARP/Bluezones Vitality Project"
    http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about

On how improved nutrition will make people healthier and happier:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
And holistic aspects of health and diet too:
    http://www.drweil.com/

Thanks for the great link. And here is another that relates to that:
    http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"""
[Schmidt] argues in Disciplined Minds that work is an inherently political activity and that hiring therefore involves political screening. ...
    Who are you going to be? That is the question.
    In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
    Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job.
"""

Example review:
    http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/01BRrt.html

And in some ways, that is not too different from Noam Chomsky's argument here:
    "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream"
    http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

Thanks for the reply, and it's an interesting analogy with the human body and cancer. Still, the human body is about 90% bacterial cells by number, and about 10% bacteria by weight, so it that sense the human immune system is in that sense mostly a legal constitution about getting some bacteria to work well together. :-)

Also, note that populations of living things tend to change over time, so some dissenting cells (mutations) may lead to a very different next generation (though that is rare).

Also, note that classically entropy is about a "closed system". In an "open system" with an energy flux, like the Earth getting thousands of times what our industry uses from solar energy, and with an infinite cosmos for material expansion, different laws or different perspectives may apply, since the energy flux and endless matter can be used to rebuild systems (or duplicate systems, or spread duplicates).
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=entropy+closed+system
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=entropy+open+system

Anyway, the most fundamental issue, as told to me by the late professor Larry Slobodkin (very wise guy) in a course on Philosophy and Ecology, is that even if every organism in the universe behaved a certain way, human still have moral choices to make, and could decide to do things differently. I think the same is true for physics. Whatever we see when we look at the physics of the world, people still make moral choices. Although another way to look at that, as a variant on Einstein's point, is to look at the idea of Memetics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

But, even with that idea, ultimately human reason still rests on emotion (or religion) as Einstein suggest.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
Or, George Lakoff saying that:
http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3014
Or, Antonio R. Damasio saying that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error
Or, E.F. Schumacher saying that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_for_the_Perplexed

Again, science can tell you what is, what was, and even the theoretical limits of what might be possible, but it can't tell you what should be. Only emotion (or some sort of religion) can tell you that. Or, taken to another level, politics.

Although, as is pointed out here:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
it seems the biggest political issue is often that professions (including science) usually deny they have politics built in to them, so, stating they actually do have politics of various sorts is a political issue... :-) So, what we have now is a poverty crisis in the USA related to jobs, but people claim it has nothing to do with politics (or religion, or emotion), it is just "economics". Or we have an illness crisis in the US, but people claim it has nothing to do with politics (or religion, or emotion), but again, it is just about professional choices, economics, health science, and so on.

Also related:
"ivan illich: deschooling, conviviality and the possibilities for informal education and lifelong learning"
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm
"Known for his critique of modernization and the corrupting impact of institutions, Ivan Illich's concern with deschooling, learning webs and the disabling effect of professions has struck a chord among m

Related Links About Academia:
        http://novia.net/~pschleck/academia/
Sample link:
        "Generation Debt; Wanted: Really Smart Suckers: Grad school provides exciting new road to poverty"
        http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0417,kamenetz,53011,1.html
        "Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read. Then it's time for advancement: Apply to 50 far-flung, undesirable locations, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of being offered any position at all. You may end up living 100 miles from your spouse and commuting to three different work locations a week. You may end up $50,000 in debt, with no health insurance, feeding your kids with food stamps. If you are the luckiest out of every five entrants, you may win the profession's ultimate prize: A comfortable middle-class job, for the rest of your life, with summers off. Welcome to the world of the humanities Ph.D. student, 2004, where promises mean little and revolt is in the air. ..."

Sounds like it is getting worse. Here is part of why:
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
    http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
   

Another approach:
    http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"""
[Jeff Schmidt] argues in Disciplined Minds that work is an inherently political activity and that hiring therefore involves political screening. ...
    Who are you going to be? That is the question.
    In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
    Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job.
"""

"On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school."

I should have caught that as a problem too. Someday, public schools may be much more like public libraries open to anyone to use than day prisons for children of working parents, but until then, consider:

"Links about alternative peer-oriented education"
http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Education

"The Underground History of American Education" by 1991 NYS Teacher of
the Year John Taylor Gatto
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

"The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

"State Controlled Consciousness" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html

"The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, Vice Provost, Caltech
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

"Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

"What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream" by Noam Chomsky
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

"University Secrets:Your Guide to Surviving a College Education" by Robert D. Honigman
http://web.archive.org/web/20060707100524/www.universitysecrets.com/us.htm

"In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness " by Chris
Mercogliano, who spent thirty-five years teaching at the Albany Free School
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm

"Teach Your Own" by John Holt (and other books)
http://www.holtgws.com/

"The Teenage Liberation Handbook" by Grace Llewellyn (and other books)
http://gracellewellyn.com/

"The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and ... Resistance" By Matt Hern
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651

"Sustainable Education" by Jerry Mintz
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?articleid=195&newsletterid=1

"Federated Learning Communities"
http://www.ericdigests.org/2000-1/learning.html
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ilc/models.html

"The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them: An Introduction to
Life/Work Planning" by Richard N. Bolles (also writes "What Color is Your
Parachute")
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Boxes-Life-How-Them/dp/0913668583

General related:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me

I'm shocked by the amount of ignorance in the comments here about schooling and the reason for alternatives. I can only think the "Stockholm Syndrome" is in play. With that said, I did not understand these issue when I was in school, either, and I resisted accepting them even when they were pointed out once or twice back then.

Some links:

"John Taylor Gatto - State Controlled Consciousness"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ogCc8ObiwQ

http://www.school-survival.net/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200909/why-don-t-students-school-well-duhhhh
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/18s.htm
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?articleid=195&newsletterid=1
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/freeschool.htm
http://www.holtgws.com/faqabouthomescho.html

My writings:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html

From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
"""
During this time, the American educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy
Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early
Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studies by
other researchers and a review of over 8,000 studies bearing on Early
Childhood Education and the physical and mental development of children.
They asserted that formal schooling before ages 8-12 not only lacked the
anticipated effectiveness, but was actually harmful to children. The Moores
began to publish their view that formal schooling was damaging young
children academically, socially, mentally, and even physiologically. They
presented evidence that childhood problems such as juvenile delinquency,
nearsightedness, increased enrollment of students in special education
classes, and behavioral problems were the result of increasingly earlier
enrollment of students.[9] The Moores cited studies demonstrating that
orphans who were given surrogate mothers were measurably more intelligent,
with superior long term effects - even though the mothers were mentally
retarded teenagers - and that illiterate tribal mothers in Africa produced
children who were socially and emotionally more advanced than typical
western children, by western standards of measurement.[9]
Their primary assertion was that the bonds and emotional development made
at home with parents during these years produced critical long term results
that were cut short by enro

Now, that is a very inflammatory subject title, so let me explain what I mean.

I was glad to see a previous comment referencing John Taylor Gatto. I do not see Gatto's name in the PDF document. Neither do I see John Holt's name. The fact is, the purpose of "schooling" (which is not the same as "education", and you would expect a mathematician to be more precise in a use of terms) is precisely to do what the mathematician decries at the end: "And there you have it. A complete prescription for permanently disabling young minds-- a proven cure for curiosity. What have they done to mathematics! There is such breathtaking depth and heartbreaking beauty in this ancient art form. How ironic that people dismiss mathematics as the antithesis of creativity. They are missing out on an art form older than any book, more profound than any poem, and more abstract than any abstract. And it is school that has done this! What a sad endless cycle of innocent teachers inflicting damage upon innocent students. We could all be having so much more fun."

Education in the USA will not improve until people like this mathematician accept that what he said is the intentional purpose of schooling in all subjects for almost all children. See things like:
    "The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher" by John Taylor Gatto, NYS Teacher of the Year
    http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
or:
    "The Big Crunch" by Dr. David Goodstein, Vice Provost Caltech
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
or:
    "Growing Without Schooling" about John Holt's work, including failed attempts to reform schools
    http://www.holtgws.com/

At this point, it is people like Paul Lockhart who are the problem. People who think school is about education, when it is about socialization in a certain way intended for the most part to produce compliant workers, obedient soldiers, and mindless consumers. School is for fish. Curriculums are race tracks. And "class rooms" are literally to build social classes through selective breeding by genetics. Those are the origins of all those terms, at least according to Gatto, and, again, you would expect a mathematician to be precise about the origins and use of terminology.

With all that said, of course Paul Lockhart is right about how to improve mathematics education. But, it will never work within a Prussian-derived school system with no interest in truly educating children, despite every person who works at a school calling themselves an educator, and despite the truth that most of the people in schools might be fine educators if given the chance and a few years of untraining of their bad habits.
    "The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and ... Resistance"
    http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651

Anyway, sorry to be so harsh on you, Paul. Read "Disciplined Minds" and start building a social network to help you and them and others break out of the prison around you:
    "Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives"
    http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

The good news is, you have already taken the first step of getting out of the prison others have forced you to build for yourself.

Someone can want to be a "scientist" starting in K-12, but he or she can still be discarded by the system in college or graduate school because you don't fit the expected profile of a scientist "diamond in the rough".

On people from other countries studying in the USA, you have an excellent point, but Goodstein didn't say it was impossible to recognize a peer by those artificial standards, just harder. And foreign students have already gone through K-12 and maybe college in their own countries. He isn't claiming any superiority of "white males", he is just pointing out a historical situation.

Actually, there is a much deeper problem with Goodstein's remarks in that he fails to acknowledge this deeper problem of scientific elites, which implies our selection of "scientists" and other professionals are actually fairly political:
    "Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives"
    http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
One reviewer: "I have been waiting a long time for someone to write this book, and Jeff Schmidt has done it. He exposes, in crystal-clear prose, the inevitably political nature of the professional in our society, and, most importantly, suggests a strategy for resistance. This is an extraordinary and valuable piece of writing."

From the Amazon blurb: "This book details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker, showing how an honest reassessment of what it means to be a professional in today's corporate society can be remarkably liberating. Poignant examples from the world of work reveal the workplace as a battleground for the very identity of the individual. Schmidt contends that professional work is inherently political--that the unstated duty of professionals is to maintain strict ideological discipline. Career dissatisfaction evolves as workers lose control over the political component of their creative work."

Anyway, foreign students are usually in such constrained circumstances that they make near ideal slavish grad students who are easily exploited. Some may be exceptions of course, same as the issue with H1B visa holders. So, that is a reason professors may be more tolerant of some of their differences -- it's the cost of cheap labor.

Old school advice...

First of all, school up to the PhD is a pyramid scheme (currently failing):
"The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein (Vice Provost CalTech)
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
The end result is "disciplined minds" who will not step out of line politically:
http://disciplined-minds.com/
Or journalistically:
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20051207.htm
"By the time you've gone through, you know, Oxford and Cambridge and here you could say Harvard and Princeton and so on, and even less fancy places, you have instilled into you the understanding that there are certain things that just wouldn't do to say, and that's what a good deal of education is. So the people who come out of it - and there are many filters, if people go off and try to be too critical there are many ways of discouraging them or eliminating them one way or the other. Some get through, it's not a uniform story. ... The more educated you are the more indoctrinated you are. And you believe you are being free and objective, whereas in fact you're just repeating state propaganda."

The reason schooling exists in its current form is to teach these seven lessons:
"The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher" by John Taylor Gatto - 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year
http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm
in order to prepare most people for a life of servitude to the military or factories (and to not be very thoughtful about consumption or politics either).
"The Prussian Connection" -- Gatto
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/7a.htm
And from:
"A conversation with historian and author James Loewen. Sort of."
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/18/loewen.html
"We like to believe schooling is a good thing. But when it comes to understanding any problem with historical roots, we might expect that the more traditional schooling in history that Americans have, the less they will understand it. Students who have taken math courses are better at math. The same is true for English, foreign languages, and almost every other subject. But in history, stupidity is the result of more, not less, schooling."

Still, studies have shown that the only people who really get economic value out of an Ivy League degree or equivalent are those from lower middle class backgrounds. All other things being equal, for most other people it's not worth the money as an investment. See the book "Class" for some other details:
http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253
Otherwise, consider:
"College is a Waste of Time and Money" (1975)
http://www.grossmont.edu/bertdill/docs/CollegeWaste.pdf
"College, then, may be a good place for those few young people who are really drawn to academic work, who would rather read than eat, but it has become too expensive, in money, time, and intellectual effort to serve as a holding pen for large numbers of our young. We ought to make it possible for those reluctant, unhappy students to find alternative ways of growing up, and more realistic preparation for the years ahead."

And consider those years ahead following Moore's Law will include computers 10000X faster than what we have now for the same price in 20 or so years.
http://www.transhumanis

"The critical question is, How good and different are [the cold fusion researchers'] new results?" says Allen Bard, a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin. "If they are saying, 'We are now able to reproduce our results,' that's not good enough. But if they are saying, 'We are getting 10 times as much heat out now, and we understand things,' that would be interesting. I don't see anything wrong with giving these people a new hearing." In ERAB's cold fusion review in 1989, he adds, "there were phenomena described to us where you could not offer alternative, more reasonable explanations. You could not explain it away like UFOs."

Isn't this basically a smoking gun? New fundamentl physics is often revealed by results that differ by as little as one part in a million from preditictions of current theory, or one part in whatever. If there is any discrepancy, whatsoever, within the statistical and systematic errors, that is enough. Your old theory is incorrect. This is completely bonkers. He is saying that consistent excess heat production is not enough, unless it is bigger than before.

Personally I suspsect the writer of this article, Toni Feder, intentionally tricked Dr. Bard into revealing this on the record. That last bit -- about phenomena that you can't just "explain away" -- seems as though Dr. Bard thinks he is speaking to a member of the group that is sympatico to repressing cold fusion research, doesn't it?

There is known to have been disputes between editorial staff and management at Physics Today over the coverage given to less mainstream areas of research. The following exerpt from a letter to the American Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics Today, protests the treatment suffered by a past editor, Jeff Scmidt:

Indeed, we understand that you were displeased with Jeff's workplace activism and had tried to silence him through a number of very repressive measures short of dismissal.

As you know, Jeff worked with other Physics Today staff members to ... increase staff participation in decision-making, broaden the narrow range of viewpoints allowed in the magazine ...

By the way, Jeff Schmidt is the author of Disciplined Minds [disciplined-minds.com], and I think this book includes more coverage of this editorial dispute at Physics Today.

Back to the question of how anomalous the results have to be, we move from the comments of scientists to the behavior of the reporters, in this case Gary Taubes, with What If Cold Fusion Is Real?, Wired, November 1998:

Meanwhile, electrochemist John Bockris announced that one of his graduate students at Texas A&M, Nigel Packham, had collaborated on a successful cold fusion experiment. Packham had even detected small amounts of tritium, a radioactive by-product virtually guaranteeing that fusion had taken place.

A science writer named Gary Taubes, who has written two books and several articles investigating allegations of fraudulent activity in science, went to Texas A&M on a fact-finding mission.

"We thought Taubes was genuine at first," Bockris told me recently, speaking in a clipped, precise British accent that he acquired before he moved to the U

"The critical question is, How good and different are [the cold fusion researchers'] new results?" says Allen Bard, a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin. "If they are saying, 'We are now able to reproduce our results,' that's not good enough. But if they are saying, 'We are getting 10 times as much heat out now, and we understand things,' that would be interesting. I don't see anything wrong with giving these people a new hearing." In ERAB's cold fusion review in 1989, he adds, "there were phenomena described to us where you could not offer alternative, more reasonable explanations. You could not explain it away like UFOs."

Isn't this basically a smoking gun? New fundamentl physics is often revealed by results that differ by as little as one part in a million from preditictions of current theory, or one part in whatever. If there is any discrepancy, WHATSOEVER, within the statistical and systematic errors, that is enough. Your old theory is TOAST. This is completely bonkers. He is saying that consistent excess heat production is not enough, unless it is bigger than before.

Personally I suspsect the writer of this article, Toni Feder, intentionally tricked Dr. Bard into revealing this on the record. That last bit -- about phenomena that you can't just "explain away" -- seems as though Dr. Bard thinks he is speaking to a member of the group that is sympatico repressing cold fusion research, doesn't it?

There is known to have been disputes between editorial staff and management at Physics Today over the coverage given to less mainstream areas of research. The following exerpt from a letter to the American Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics Today, protests the treatment suffered by a past editor, Jeff Scmidt:

Indeed, we understand that you were displeased with Jeff's workplace activism and had tried to silence him through a number of very repressive measures short of dismissal.

As you know, Jeff worked with other Physics Today staff members to ... increase staff participation in decision-making, broaden the narrow range of viewpoints allowed in the magazine ... .

By the way, Jeff Schmidt is the author of "Disciplined Minds", and I think this book includes more coverage of this editorial dispute at Physics Today.

Back to the question of how anomalous the results have to be, we move from the comments of scientists to the behavior of the reporters, in this case Gary Taubes, with "What If Cold Fusion Is Real?", Wired, November 1998:

Meanwhile, electrochemist John Bockris announced that one of his graduate students at Texas A&M, Nigel Packham, had collaborated on a successful cold fusion experiment. Packham had even detected small amounts of tritium, a radioactive by-product virtually guaranteeing that fusion had taken place.

A science writer named Gary Taubes, who has written two books and several articles investigating allegations of fraudulent activity in science, went to Texas A&M on a fact-finding mission.

"We thought Taubes was genuine at first," Bockris told me recently, speaking in a clipped, precise British accent that he acquired before he moved to the U