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Comment by kafkaesq | Hacker News Reader

My favorite part:

Q: How exactly does one teach heroism to college students?

A. We teach aspirational ethics. What I teach my students is, You’re born heroic. I go into these animal studies, and heroism is actually in our nature. What you have to do is make sure that the system doesn’t change you, that our educational system doesn’t teach you to be willfully blind and to forget your aspirations, because that’s the default position. ... The main thing is, Do not let our educational institutions make you into something that you will be ashamed of.

Q. And you sort of warn them that you’re preparing them for a life of possible sadness and alienation?

A. Well, yeah. There’s a price to be paid.

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What's sad about being alienated from fools?

Probably something along the lines of, "If you call them fools, you probably deserve the alienation."

Edit: Read that wrong, but I'll change my answer:

I feel that a large amount of the issues in science and "exclusive knowledge groups" stem from alienation at its root. Exclusivity, obfuscation, lack of publishing, "no true Scotsman", "othering", etc. By calling them fools, you're only contributing to the sorts of alienation that causes these issues to exist.

There are so many issues here I hardly know where to begin. I've made similar arguments myself in the past and you have to be very careful to compartmentalize what you hope to say and accomplish when debating someone directly affected by these issues.

What do you want to accomplish? Do you believe that all the world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations?

Do you believe that the complexity of modern science and the scale of the problems inherently requires increasing specialization and an inherent detachment for modern scientists from the impact of the work in a cultural context? Does that lead us toward a specialization in being a spokesperson for science? Should large institutions feel obligated to create such positions?

Because if you're simply pining for the days of natural philosophers who were statesmen, lawyers, political figures, and leading minds embodied in one person you're at a dead end.

Whatever you do, don't bring up ethics. A required college course wraps up any and all debate on that front!

We are all fools to some extent - to be totally alienated from fools is to be alone.

I'm not sure that when problems are systemic that everyone swayed by that system, knowingly or unknowingly, is a fool by the definition you mean. Not being foolish in this regard is only something you can be constantly vigilant about, you can't master it. You can never say "I am not such a fool." If you do, you increase your chances of being what you despise.

Many people often have friends and other useful people that turn out to be fools.

I wouldn't call them "fools".

They're just vested in a system which (seem to) promise some semblance of security and (a feeling of) group belonging, in exchange keeping their heads down, and their nose to the grindstone -- and not rocking the boat, generally.

It's a trap that's very, very easy to fall in. Especially if you have people who depend on you -- you know, kids, older family members -- that sort of thing.

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