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<p>Yeah - the most intellectually open people I ever met came from online forums (that does not speak much - since none of my classmates were anything close to intellectually open). It’s actually interesting - forums tend to be highly self-select communities where you’re judged solely on the basis of your ideas. Ever since I was 13, I noticed how most of my fellow forummers were far smarter than average - and that there were many forum debates that gone into depths that none of my classmates could ever go into (and those forums were gaming forums - though I had the luck of the draw - not that many gaming forums actually do have forums with intellectual and historical discussions). That being said though - I’m not one who really partakes in political discussions. I later became somewhat annoyed that most of the intellectual discussions on forums tend to be political discussions - rather than discussions of an academic nature. Social incentives are particularly powerful - but since the vast majority of one’s fellow grade school students are unlikely to be particularly academically motivated - one can only find the Internet for such social incentives. Even then I haven’t met anyone with similar academic interests as me - even if many of those people are across the blogosphere. Certainly though, I’d like to be able to contact people of my age who have similar interests as myself - and that hasn’t been much of an option (I did set up Facebook groups - they seem to have some audience - hm - maybe I need to be more proactive there)</p>
<p>Another thing is that society tends to reward pursuits that can be operationalized by means of some standardized test or school grades. This provides few incentives for people to read books on their own initiatives (and they often need such incentives to initially pique their interest - otherwise they’d probably prefer to play computer games - especially if they already have straight A’s and good test scores). I was socialized into such a mentality as well. I wanted to go beyond my school system - but I didn’t know of any good options to go beyond it (some of my erratic self-study habits in 7th and 8th grade were not particularly efficient ones). I was socialized into believing that learning history and literature was more important than learning more recent and relevant research in the social sciences. And as a result - I took the care to memorize minute details such as the individual details of particular battles or of mere historical facts that weren’t relevant to anything. Honestly - I think that history needs to be taught in a completely different way. I certainly learned A LOT about the educational system through learning the history of the educational system - and learning the history of its development certainly puts me in a much better position to critique it. On the other hand - learning the individual battles of the Civil War or of the Missouri Compromise - well - that is unlikely to be cited in any of the social science literature. I finally learned that I could self-study APs - but even then - we’re socialized only into achieving an outcome - and come to over-rely on our prep books. That outcome - a score of 5 - is merely contingent upon formulaic thinking - not upon investigating resources for our own benefits.</p>
<p>Anyhow - of course I seem to value some subjects more than others. I do think that people would make better decisions if they actually learned more about the behavioral sciences. </p>
<p>Meanwhile - most of my erstwhile schoolmates don’t have much of an option to explore. They only have a few areas to explore - and not much time at that. Some people do become more enlightened as adults - however - it is well known that adults are less prone to belief-system changes than teenagers are.</p>
<p><a href=“Btw,%20my%20favorie%20book%20is%20%22Goedel%20Escher%20Bach%22.%20You%20have%20to%20read%20it.%20It’s%20very%20star%20trekkie%20and%20sends%20your%20mind%20into%20a%20complete%20tailspin.”>quote</a>
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<p>Haha - you’re the fourth person to recommend the book to me. The story-ish nature of the book irritated me a bit - but I’ll have to get at it sometime. I do have it though. :)</p>
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<p>The sad thing is that school tends to encourage such a mentality. We’re told that it’s “fine” to stop learning as soon as the class ends - we’re told that all activities should be focused on preparing for the test - and school also taxes our time - such that we just don’t have enough time to study things by ourselves unless we allow our grades to suffer</p>