It is because of students like you that I advertise in the Gulch.

I have a nanotechnology minor program at Florida Tech and am developing a maker minor and a new double major in (biomedical or chemical) engineering along with a new degree called "maker engineering". In Atlas Shrugged terms, if you are a future John Galt or Sebastian D'Anconia, I am more like Quentin Daniels than Robert Stadler.

https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

Thank you, I'll try to meet your expectations! I plan to go into a job field where I'm more likely to meet introspective individuals- so I do hope I'll be able to connect with more people in the future. I really appreciate the faith you have in me though!

Well, of course, it depends on how you run the discussion. In ours, each person uses their own judgment to decide what they think is true. But it's surprising how much a good evidence and reason based collaborative discussion helps each person arrive at it because you get to hear so much good thinking.

Big shooter isn’t so bad. LOL

Thank you for the advice. I will definitely use it next time.

Still, probably better than BS for initials (at work I was Captain BS).

The apostrophe in my name has been nothing but a headache. So many people at banks and other businesses skip it . In the digital age it creates confusion.

And let me assure you of one thing, the 'other' school got the same things we did!

No, it was funded by Texas oil! But used for a very good cause. Athletes even had their socks bought for them. You should have seen our school buses and the limo the band seniors rode in.

In Texas. Of course there were oil wells pumping on the school property. We had electric typewriters in the 50's in the Typing Room and electric adding machines in the Bookkeeping and Accounting Room. Our band instruments were paid for by the school and everyone who needed one got free meals in the dining hall (and no one knew who got what!) When the Robinhood thing passed, that school district helped fund a number of districts in Texas.

Thanks. I listened for a few moments but without hormones it's (or is it its, or its'?) I couldn't relate.

Zappa cared. https://youtu.be/zXP_pr7np-o

Many who are even college educated think a apostrophe makes a word plural. Or maybe it's spell check, but there seems to be a great future for anyone interested in editing. Or does nobody care?

My notion of a collaborative discussion is one that ends in truth being defined as consensus. This seems the basis of social media's banning of conservative or outside-the-box thought.

You're right that it's not easy to have collaborative discussions these days. They have to be explicitly set up and everyone involved has to agree to the terms of civil discussion. But there are some!

One of the things I do is call people out when they try to use intimidation, argument from the majority, from authority and any of the fallacies. I say "that's ad hominem, that's XYZ, it's not an argument. What is your evidence and your reasoning."
Sometimes it gets them to step back and reevaluate what they're saying but, if nothing else, they're made aware that I know what they're doing AND so will anybody else listening to the discussion.

WOW! But I am so very glad there are still kids out there like you. Keep up the good work. There are many more like you so do not give up hope.

Teachers nowadays are hamstrung by their respective school districts, as mentioned in the podcast wrought memorization and testing. I remember way back when I had a handful of teachers and Profs that were inspirational in their teaching style. Sadly, that is not how they do it today. Collaborative discussion in today's world is out of the question even among adults. My wife and I went to a summer house party and when my wife was hearing a lot of the neighbors discussing politics disparaging the current US Govt administration she warned me not to get involved. Many of the neighbors moved to Sedona from California and are liberal minded. The only I could talk to was my next door neighbor who is from Maine and lives part-time there and Sedona. He is semi-retired from US Park Service. Both my wife and I are politically independent.

The active minority are the ones who make a difference in the culture. Most other people just absorb the ideas around them; that's why it's important to get ours out there in many different ways (see my review of Anthem: The Graphic Novel).

See the people in the Intellectual Dark Web group: http://intellectualdark.website/

The Weinsteins, Hoying and Nawaz do not consider themselves on the right.

Great story about your high school. Which was it? Where? It fits with the research that the smaller schools are better - generally because the students get a lot more individual attention and latitude.

That sounds great! I can't even imagine a school like that; it sounds like it belongs in Galt's Gulch. Was it a private school?

DHRJK, thanks for the nice post. Congrats to you! When I was in high school, a very long time ago, any high school teacher in my School District was required to have a Master's. Some had PHD's (they were the Dept Heads). My graduating class wasn't required to take entrance exams to any college we applied for. Our GPA was 4.0 as an average! Now we only had 39 graduates but we were all 200%'ers. One guy discovered a new species of life! One ended up telling Monsanto where to put their refineries, nurses, doctors, engineers, career military officers, inventor, writers, and teachers, teachers, teachers!

I'll check out that website, along with The Comprachicos! Occasionally I'll talk about different books and libertarian viewpoints in school with the intent that maybe someone will think back on it in the future. Again, it sounds pretty elitist.
I do make good friends with some adults though, specifically a math lab teacher, English teacher, and my counselor (who loves Stefan Molyneux). Maybe if there is a crash in the future, my friends will think back to when I complained about the Fed haha.
I certainly hope a great majority of my class is interested in philosophy in the future.

I'd like to know who are civil on the left.

They are soaked in "ideas" only they think are great and keep pushing them no matter how unlikely they would be implemented.

Anyone having a sane opinion is shunned or worse.

qhrjk It was depressing to see..
This behavior is a characteristic of adolescents.
Do not take it too seriously, but try not to join in.
Always complaining- this is the same. In this event you can join in, as an exercise try to make one point of praise for one point of criticism.
Always complaining is intended by the ignorant to give a facade of sophistication.

agree with the most socially acceptable opinions
This is another characteristic of the immature. All will go along with whatever meme is going round, no one dares to say anything original and so risk becoming unpopular.

I hope the Education Program of this thread can enable young people to bypass this kind of destructive behavior.