Formal Education

I don't know about you but I get a lot more from having an expert guide me through content than just sitting alone. That said, I do study certain topics on my own but then there are moments where I am reading a theorem or doing a problem and I get completely stuck. Like you read a proof and ask yourself "What the fuck did the author just do?" but if you are in class and the professor is exposing the proof you can just raise your hand and ask for a clarification which they always provide.

Also, all the professors I've had have great personalities and I feel like I am enriched by interacting with them. It is fun.

>1. the argument of "you go to university for connections" is bullshit.

Yeah, I also thought that but let me tell you something. Back when I was an undergrad I got a paper published and was able to give various talks after that about the paper all because I showed a professor some random results I had obtained by applying my autism to some really specific thing and as he liked it and had connections to various journals that was enough to get my autism considered as serious research.

>and would rather pay thousands every year
No, that is an american problem. University here is free. Everything is free. Going to university is as expensive as getting the books. And may be even cheaper because the university has an open library where I can request whatever I want for free. Obviously, this point is kinda moot because literally everyone pirates books anyways.

The undergraduate program I'm training for will not even acknowledge you if you didn't study at MIT. Eat balls.

tell me, where are you and can I attend your free university?

>where are you
Europe

>and can I attend your free university?
Yeah, non-citizens can also attend for free. The only problem is that the government body that hands scholarships works separately and they only give money to citizens which means that you can only get free university, not get paid to study at a university like citizens. This is kinda sad because non-citizens are way poorer than me and yet I am the one getting thousands of dollars each year from the government. I wish we had better social policies but whatever.

Anyways, the plan is this: Sneak into Europe. You can try tanning beforehand so you pass as a muslim and then get in. Then apply for a public university (those are the free ones) and then go get your degree.

>undergraduate program
>if you didn't study at MIT
what

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand sneaking into MIT classes as a high schooler to complete an entire degree without the recognition to then be properly prepared to actually apply to MIT and study everything you've learned again for 4 years to now actually get your degree.

Which country?
>tfw poor British undergraduate

literally this
ITER here I come!

>Europe
what country? I'm from shithole, ky. really few options over here.

Norway.

I had a crazy ex-girlfriend in Norway.
Literal serial killer crazy.
Is it safe?

no point in ever purchasing a text book. people go on subreddit of their choice or a forum such as bodybuilding to learn things. i go to physics forums to learn things based on similar questions people ask. everything is on youtube + other video sources can for sure learn general surgery thru videos alone

Yeah. Just stay away from crazy roasties. I mean, every country has a problem with these kinds of roasties. I don't know why you are singling Norway out. Bitches will be bitches everywhere. It is biological. Just avoid them.

cool. so, could i just move to oslo and start schooling, or is there some sort of catch?

Nice blog faggot

I suppose you're right, but they offer up the best pussy!

I don't know. You have to research this on your own. I've never tried to illegally get into a country to get free gibs. That said, I think you can. Just bring in enough money to survive for 4 years.

I wish you guys were EU, so I could legally flee from Britain.

the immigration process exists for a reason, and Norway is not sweden tier just yet, so whites have not been banned from immigrating

Imagine being that women and planning every meal to be as macronutritionally deprived as possible, save for carbs, just to maintain that sweet thighgap.

Lol, how could any man look at an insecure monkey that clads its most valuable asset in fakeup, just to maintain social standing and approaches from men, and treat them as their equal.

Why hasn't anyone capitalized on a system in which in house opt-out test are proctored based on the fundamentals of the respective course? Those who actively self-study, can still attain accreditation. University is just a hand out, with grad inflation so high, it's a shit indicator of actual intelligence for the majority.

OP, also, even if you wanted formal education, I think it would be cheaper to just pay for private tutoring than to pay for a full college education.

I aggree with you, but without getting formally tested in peson through an exam what you have learned and more importantly your understanding of the material could be incorrect. Confirmation bias and all the rest.

There's one reason for this, capitalism.

>can buy modern, well-made textbooks written by extremely intelligent people that will teach you everything about a subject that you'd ever need to know used for ~$5-$20 at any used book store

You can buy cheap books that are introductory classes, everything above that is either expensive or written in an article that's behind a paywall. And buying old books or editions comes with a risk of having outdated or obsolete information. There's also a problem of choice in books.

>yet people don't bother to buy them and learn as much as possible,

They absolutely do bother.

>and would rather pay thousands every year to drive/walk to a campus and sit in a room with 30-300 other people

Okay? Everything requires transport and socializing.

>to have an older jaded guy try to recite mostly from memory

Recite mostly from the yearly college prepared program (which is changed every year to be up to date) and decades of experience in the field.

>the subject and then be "tested" by having to memorize instead of actually learn anything

You're tested for your knowledge. You can learn it or memorize it, it's up to you how usefully you'll spend your time in college and not to the educators.

>even when that is 100% a complete waste of time because "you won't get a job if you don't do it this way" and I'm considered lesser than someone that does this even if I am more intelligent and learned more than they did by reading my own books and doing my own research on subjects instead of going to university

College isn't a job training program.

I can give you a counter example but you need to read my blog first
have no formal education and am self learning from textbooks, I'm very adept in the life sciences, conceptually atleast. Right now I'm learning logic I started laws of truth 2 weeks ago and have understood half the book, I haven't been too dedicated, 1-2 chapters and their exercises for every hour I spend, after this I will continue with more 1st order logic and model theory and some other logics aswell. Next I will learn calculus, geometry(including fractals and graphs), concurrently with proofs then abstract algebra. Next systems Then I will learn probabilistic logic, and probability theory while studying biostat, dynamic systems, more into network theory will probably start to take serious looks at game theory at this point. Also I will into programing, R, C, probably Python, I will be adept at excell and GIS(I read many "methods in X", principles of x", "x for x" type books, typically in the field of ecology, I neglected to mention these in my education because they have always been what I've read for fun along with books like "systematics and evolution of annelid worms" or B&D introduction to insects" those started with animal encyclopedias when I was a baby. I also spend much time philosophizing and reading philosophy
This whole time I am applying what I am learning to my everyday life
What I am currently learning I am working on modeling biosemiotics, and improving as a learn more. I've started to learn how to use tools that can be used to articulate my mereological ideas about life.
So I learn everything and practice what is valuable.
My goal is to move out of my parents house next summer, buy some land around Olympia WA with my cousin haul my camper up there, continue to self study, even get some credit from prior experience by CLEP and learning counts, on top of my AP and 1 semester of CC, just not so much where I would be considered a 2 year transfer, and ace the SAT(I was ACT)

There is such a system, it's called competency-based learning

anyways the relevant thing I have to say is I want to enroll as a freshman when I'm already capable of doing serious research in whatever i want, at Standford in particular because they let you get a BXc and MXc at the same time I could theoretically get my masters in as little as two years if I kept getting prior learning credits, I could start researching with serious resources rather quickly, I'm sure I could start out taking advanced courses instead of doing all the stupid undergrad bullshit. So it's a networking opportunity.
The thing is I graduated highschool with a 2.0 GPA, supposedly Standford looks past that before they reject you. I have plenty of motivation to go to standford I should satisfy their need for diversity even though I'm a white male. (I am a poor 21 year old who barely graduated highschool that reads a full semesters worth of material in two months and is capable of applying it, I have a passion for what I want to do, and can point out my eccentric personality to show just how valuable I would be to their intellectual atmosphere.
Money is the other problem, my cousin and I should both have plenty of revenue(I'm already a farmer, he's already a brewmaster, i have a sawmill and know how raise crappie using only vegetable peels, lawntrimmings, and mushroom compost to feed them(through trophic interactions) we also both can grow weed, and manufacture all kinds of fun, which is perfect for a cash based business.
There is a good chance I can publish philosophy, theoretical biology and whatnot without ever getting a degree, but I need to leach off of the private power that owns the scientific community to become influential.
What a waste of time this was sorry to everyone who read it

I'm too poor to afford NMR machines, illumina DNA sequencers, or many other units of expensive lab equipment, so it's nice to be paid by the government through grants to study what I love among people who know what they're talking about, and use said expensive machinery.

Ultimately, higher education is for that purpose. Make money in order to advance ability to research. The findings can become public knowledge, but the act of conducting research is expensive, thus, like a microcosm of society you buy into it almost like a tax so you can then benefit the society. It might be meaningless, but for those whose meanings are at least in part defined by their passion for their study, it holds an incredible weight.

>private power that owns the scientific community

what did he mean by this?

private power
states
banks
publishing
tech
private power, you know when a thing has authority(legal, economic, ideological, etc) over something that it doesn't personally possess.

>I want to enroll as a freshman ... at Stanford
>I'm already capable of doing serious research
>I graduated highschool with a 2.0 GPA
HAHAHAHA
the delusion is real

Alright, ignoring the fallacy/contradiction, let's assume I knew what you meant by 'private power', but didn't understand the other clause, which is that the private power owns the scientific community.

The whole point of it being a scientific community is while there may be interest groups nestled within ("private power"), the overall scope is public. Which, especially in the example given of biology earlier (by you, correct?) is most definitely the case.

genome.ucsc.edu/

Take the genome browser, for example. Incredibly comprehensive, scientific project undertaken by thousands of scientists that is constantly being worked on, compiling the data of protein expression in over 50 tissues for every known gene in the human genome (and at a slower rate of discovery, the other genomes listed). Clicking on a gene will not only show all of the known variants in >1% of the population tested, but will link the pubmed and OMIM which are fully free, no account needed that list all articles on each gene, ranging from how its regulated, to its end product, to how mutations might affect it.

This is just one good example, but the scientific community is still, by and large, a healthy community with a key public focus- expanding the system of scientific knowledge via the scientific method.

>>I want to enroll as a freshman ... at Stanford
>Graduated highschool with a 2.0
I graduated highschool in 2014, and I had very high test scores on AP exams and moderately high on the ACT
It would probably be a couple years before I applied to Standford and I certainly wouldn't be looked at as another outgoing highschooler, I can emphasize what I have learned on my own and demonstrate my abilities. I will have credit from prior learning experience that will look very good, if I need to I will go to office hours of relevant Standford professors and Beg them into letting me show my worth to try to get a recommendation. I would be an incoming freshman with a lot to offer and a demonstrated drive to succeed. After reading over Standford website I think I would be looking pretty good.
I never said I was capable of serious research, while I read a lot of research and have many ideas in my interests, I lack the mathematical maturity, resources, and social connections to do research I want to do, if I keep self learning as I have been, I should be ready in a couple years.i have many ideas that I know are worthy, have many questions I want to answer. I think ill be capable of publishing serious philosophy/ontology/semiotics by next spring if I keep up with the logic, the research in theoretical life sciences is more distant. As of now I am totally capable of studying life history/ecosystem dynamics if I really try.

Anyways im only interested in Standford because I could get my bachelors and masters at once. Otherwise I will just got to a public school. Maybe even try to transfer to Standford, I honestly would look stronger as a 2 year with a 4.0 than as a freshman, it's just their transfer acceptance rate is even lower.
Anyways if that doesn't work out I will just finish my bachelors in a few semesters and get some research experience on the way, then get into a good masters program.

I agree with you, academia in general and particularly science is as close to socialism as it gets, but let's not kid ourselves scientists aren't the ones that control the means to do science and they aren't the ones that see a profit from their work, they get paid a salary from their university and a penance from the publisher.
So science is a great example of mutual aid and cooperation, within a system that works contrary to those things.

Also you can find a lot of textbooks online anyways

But really, they are. I've worked closely with many PIs, and most find applying for grants to be a pain, but nobody seems to have the idea that it's necessarily rigged- of course, it depends who you're applying from, but for the most part it follows a general economic trend rather than being based on some scheme of an individual or corporations.

Take a similar path to what I discussed earlier involving genomics. The reason why organisms such as cats or bats might not have as fleshed out genomes even though we have the sequencing capability is because there are fewer people researching them, because there are fewer people interested and/or there are fewer people willing to give out grants for researching them. While I agree that this is a way in which economic influence is "controlled" with regards to science, it's only natural that research that leads to medical advancement for the sake of humans, for our own sake as a society and the economic benefit of drug production, would take precedent.

It's much less a matter or 'ownership' of the scientific community, and much more to do with just trends in the economy, and following the money around.

>economic benefit of drug production

I was in a conversation while writing that, I apologize for how retarded that sounds

>Its just a general economic trend
Exactly what I am saying, it's the way capitalist markets work. Capital depends on the legal construct of private property to work.
Scientific communities would work much better if they were collectivized and supported each other through mutual aid the allocation of new scarce resources would be democratically managed by pooling capital gains into trusts specific to the various compartment doing the research, then to be used as needed.
This of course would exist internal to the larger capitalist economy and use the profits from their work to expand the sub economy I just described.
I believe something like that would be much more efficient and free, without having to deal with financial hegemony from states, banks, and industry academia could be free to do what it wants and would grow as more people come into the various economies to learn.
It's not that hard to imagine. These academic syndicalist economies would be far superior to a global consumer market, and the state and private command economies that dominate it.

I like using a textbook because it keeps me on track.

>Recite mostly from the yearly college prepared program (which is changed every year to be up to date) and decades of experience in the field.
but that's not what actually happens

>College isn't a job training program.
It is. Sorry but it isn't 1870 anymore when you HAD to go to college to learn anything significant.

OP, the advantage of schools is that they offer a strict curriculum that teaches you things that are either directly or indirectly relevant to the field you hope to work in.
All the intelligence in the world isn't all that useful if your mind is scattered and you don't actually know what the currently relevant questions of any given field are.
On you're own, you accumulate information. That in itself isn't as likely to be useful in a particular subject as the information layed down for you to learn by people who've already emmersed themselves.

Other reasons why schools are more important than your self paced shit include, testing your ability to endure hardship and continue moving forward and standardized reference for measuring your quality as a thinker.

You may know more about math than a mathematician but that means fuck all to me if I can't test you on it.

If that's too much of an obstacle to your success then invent a portable way for people to be psycic that way education will be forgone in the employment office in favor of a quick five minute mindmeld.
You're so god damned smart after all OP.

care to share? I'm applying to college at 25 and would like some form of mentor or professional's assessment beyond my high school teachers who probably barely remember me

Switch schools.

Yeah, no. Even for engineering degrees. There's a difference between getting qualifications and actually being capable to do something.