Posts by cognisonance

22

Is College Worth It? Clearly, New Data Say...

by NewYork44M in

jw
friends

a new set of income statistics answers those questions quite clearly: yes, college is worth it, and its not even close.

for all the struggles that many young college graduates face, a four-year degree has probably never been more valuable.. here is the article from the new york times:.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?hp.

cognisonance

There are certain courses that REQUIRE classes that you really don't need for what you want to learn.

I totally emphathize. I used to feel that way too.... Why exactly do I need to take an anthropology class to be a computer programmer? This was until I realized that liberal arts education helps people build the reasoning and critical thinking skills that will help them make decisions in all aspects of their lives, not just the career they wish to pursue. Education is not a synonymn for Job Training. It's more than that. Additionally, the reasoning and critical thinking skills, the ability to view things from different perspectives, helps people find novel solutions to problems, something that doesn't necessarily happen when eduction is merely about how to perform a task (such as programming a computer).

I opted to take a terminal associates degree that had more computer science classes and less "fluff" as I called it back then. I'm now regretting that choice and am taking those "fluff" classes now. Back then I thought, why waste my time taking calculus and biology. What do they have to do with programming I thought... Of course if you want to figure out how to program computers to research cures for diseases or to deal with the mass amount of biological data we have acess to today, I guess these are just fluff classes too.

I see so many young people in debt and they are Baristas at Starbucks.

Fair enough, but this is anecdotal evidence, not statistical. I'm sure there are many more workers at Starbucks that don't have a college degree.

College is a HUGE business.

Yep. Sure is. And is why I would like to see the trend to capitalize it even more reversed and be something that all citizens can utilize if they choose to for free, or at least a reasonable cost.

22

Is College Worth It? Clearly, New Data Say...

by NewYork44M in

jw
friends

a new set of income statistics answers those questions quite clearly: yes, college is worth it, and its not even close.

for all the struggles that many young college graduates face, a four-year degree has probably never been more valuable.. here is the article from the new york times:.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?hp.

cognisonance

To Teary Oberon:

The link you provide makes a gross mistake when it sites a Census Bureau report as being false and irrelvant because it uses the mean instead of the median. If you review the report, it is using the median and thus not skewing towards the results by super wealthy individuals. Even this chart not mentioned, but nonetheless showing similar results, uses the median.

To Everyone:

I do think that the education system in America is boken. It's grossly expensive and some members of our government are trying to continue to cut costs and privitize education. They are pushing MOOCs as a way to fight the rising costs, but this will lower the quality of education for all but the most wealthy individuals who can afford to attend the schools where the MOOCs are being produced (flagship, ivy league, etc). I'm not against these types of college classes. I've taken 10 free or nearly free courses in the past year and learned a lot. They are great as supplements, but they currently don't count as credit towards an accerdited degree and 8 out of 10 of them were not as rigorous as a real class would be. You're lucky if you even get the chance to interact with a TA on the forums, let alone the professor as tens of thousands of students are taking the class with you. You watch, in some cases, prerecorded interactions of the professor with students at MIT. It's very engaging (such as professor Eric Lander in Intro to Biology), but you are still watching an interaction, not participating.

One way we can make our education system better is to return to the model we had in the 1950s where the US government invested heavily in education and public universities were free. For example, did you know that in the 1950s the cost to attend UC Berkely was $0. Today it's $11,000 a year. So in my opinion any concern that education has a low return on investment is in part due to the high costs of attending, which is an artifcat of the effort to reduce spending on public inititives like education.

If we want education to offer a better ROI we need to start electing the type of people into our government that will reduce the costs of attending by increase public funding. A healthy working class that is well educated is what will improve our economy. The whole concept of companies and captialists being job creators is faulty. The job creators are those that create demand (the working class). If the working class has supressed income (as we have now with income inequality being nearly as high as it was in the 1920s), our economy will likewise be supressed.

For more details on this see the excellent documentary by Robert Reich, a best-selling author of thirteen books, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, and a foremost expert on economics: Income Inquality for All.

1

Just saw this and thought it's pretty funny.

by cognisonance in

jw
friends

.

cognisonance

Conformity

32

June Study WT Up and Bashing Uni Again

by konceptual99 in

jw
friends

rehashed format but same ole' shite.. hypocritical article on viewing "weak" ones compassionately usign the example of a single mum arriving late yet the may km has a whole article on how rude it is not to be punctual.. read it and weep....

cognisonance

Flavia soon noticed that many students had no interest in ‘saving the planet.’ Also, some programs at the university relied on businesses for funding, so researchers might feel inclined to favor those businesses.

Are there flaws with science and conflicts of interest? Sure. I get this is brought up because it bothered the women interviewed, but I can't help and wonder if they made a point to mention it as well to give a negative impression about the types of people that go to college, and university education in general.

Regardless though, it's just shows how strong a cult can be in attracting people. Give them an idea based on wishful thinking (the idea of a sure-proof solution to environmental problems we face) and even the brightest and best educated people can fall prey. Still part of me finds it incredulous that some with the critical thinking skills that an undergraduate degree would provide could let the fallacies of JW teachings overcome them. But it nonetheless happens (even to me, and I had was an Associate’s degree). The appeal of wanting to live forever, or the earth not being ruined, probably is a big reason why many are attracted to this religion.

97

I did it !!!!

by snare&racket in

jw
friends

7 years ago i started on a path i had long ago given up on as impossible.

i met with my elders and told them i could not justify carrying on as a jw.

i went and got my high school qualifications and my higher education diploma (a levels with distinction) in just 12 months.

cognisonance

As someone trying to go back to school, that's awesome! Thanks for the encouraging example.

21

The first step toward apostasy

by Socrateswannabe in

"the first step toward apostasy is a drop in field service activity.

i have read that statement in wts publications and heard it many times from the platform.

i haven't studied philosphy so i'm not sure what type of logical fallacy this is an example of, but it is one for sure.

cognisonance

I'll take a stab... Slippery slop is probably the best fit, but I think this is also a case of Affirming the Conseqent.

"The first step toward apostasy is a drop in field service activity."

More formerly we could phrase this as (since the Watchtower is trying to apply that to you, the reader as a warning):

If a person is becoming an apostate their first step is not participating in field service.

You are beinging to not participate in field serivce

Therefore you are becoming an Apostate.

Compare this with:

If it's raining then the streets are wet.

The streets are wet.

Therefore, it's raining.

This is fallacious because it could be wet because it just finished raining, or it snowed/snowing and the snow melts, or it flooded, or a watermain broke, etc.

More formally, these statements can be summerized as:

If P then Q.

Q.

Therefore, P.

What is logically sound would be:

Modus Ponens	Modus Tollens
If p then q. p. Therefore, q.	If p then q. Not-q. Therefore, not-p.

So back to the JW statement. These would be acceptable:

If a person is becoming an apostate their first step is not participating in field service.

You are becomming an appostate

Therefore you don't participate in field service

and

If a person is becoming an apostate their first step is not participating in field service.

You are still fully active in field service

Therefore you aren't becoming an apostate.

But something tells me that looking at that last example, while logically sound, it's based on a premise that is probably also another logic fallacy, A hasty generalization. It could be possible the "first step" is something else (independent thinking, a scandel, intellectual honesty, etc) or that an "apostate" could be still going in field service to put up a facade.

18

A startling example of a JW ignoring evidence

by Pyramid God in

i happen to work with my father, and today we got into another debate about the origin of life.

during the debate, while rebutting a lot of creationist canards, he said that mutations are always harmful to an organism.. .

after he left i sent him a quick email with a link to talk origins on the subject of mutations.

cognisonance

BluesBorther,

I think JWs now allow for Micro Evolution, and all of what we species are is based on our DNA and the resulting proteins that regulate our bodies. These change via mutation (though I think the expresion of our DNA via epigenetic events like methylation could allow for non-mutations to bring about changes, but I don't know if this has much to do with evolution). Nonetheless, I think what is happening is the old line "Mutations are always harmful," maybe it is just an artifact of old beliefs that never got updated? If that position is still in effect, then yes, they are speaking out of both sides of their mouths, can't have it both ways.

25

How exactly you and your income are being affected by inequality.

by cognisonance in

i found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent robert reich documentary: inequality for all.. .

cognisonance

I found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent Robert Reich documentary: Inequality for All.

35

What was the "logical straw" that broke your camel's back?

by Pacopoolio in

jw
friends

i had a bunch of tiny little nags that always bothered me about the bible/god/etc.

that eventually led to me drifting away, but this was my personal, singular issue that no one could address.

i think i mentioned it before here, but, for summation again:.

cognisonance

The flaw(s) for me were in how they misrepresented science and secular sources.

I was born in and the mind control was strong with me unfortunately. But the two brochures on Was Life Created and the other one dealing with 5 questions got me really thinking. I decided I wanted to independently study evolution (read the book "Why Evolution is True") then came back to those brochures, then looked up the references. Then I took a look at the evolution book, reasoning book, and Is There A Creator book. The later had a quote about intellectual honesty, and what they failed to include was that in addition to having an open mind about views contrary to our own, we should also disclose opposing views to others when talking about our own. In short, we shouldn't sweep with Occam’s broom inconvenient truths under the rug. Of course they didn't talk about that, choosing to sweep that inconvenient point away as well. I also became more aware of the logic fallacies being used in the literature via doing my indepenpent study (specifically studied logic fallacies).

Also there was an article on higher education that insinuated that going to college isn’t correlated with getting a good job. They quote an article incorrectly to essentially say this. What the article was really saying was that going to an Ivy League private prestigious school isn’t correlated with getting a better job than if similarly bright students were to go to public state colleges. Quite a different thing than comparing going to college vs not going to college.

As regards doctrines aside form evolution, I just went along with them even if sometimes they didn’t make much sense to me. Again the mind control was strong with me and I just followed what I was told most of the time. It’s really a shame since it took a while for the damage to be undone. I found myself after being out of the cult, consulting scientific literature to form my opinions on things, not bad per se, but still my critical thinking was a bit dual because I still found it difficult to think fully on my own. I took about 2 years to undo the damage from the cult. Good riddens!

35

What was the "logical straw" that broke your camel's back?

by Pacopoolio in

jw
friends

i had a bunch of tiny little nags that always bothered me about the bible/god/etc.

that eventually led to me drifting away, but this was my personal, singular issue that no one could address.

i think i mentioned it before here, but, for summation again:.

cognisonance

Pacopoolio,

Sounds like you came across, independently perhaps, with the idea of determinism. You might enjoy reading this book: Freedom Evolves by Dannel Dennnet.