I should have been a professor

[Snoggera]

I was pointed that direction by many who knew/know me but chose to go a different route. I can't help pointing out fallacies and discrepancies and simple illogic in people's believed knowledge base.

so.

Ask me anything, with an explanation of your thoughts on the matter, and I will point out a flaw in your reasoning.

[jadedcherub]

1. ?

[Snoggera]

2. I need thoughts on the matter

in order to respond.

[ForrestGump]

21. First thing: replace "in order to" with the simple "to"

[Fenris]

3. I think I should be a professor, but only sometimes

There are days when I feel it would be terrific and there are days when I do not feel intelligent enough to occupy such a distinguished position. The latter occurs more frequently than I would like. What can one really know at 20, though?

[Donkeyboy75]

6. 90% of it is confidence and your ability to sell an idea.

Seriously. If you're like your avatar you won't have any problem with the first part, even if you are a bloody Arsenal fan.

[sir_captain]

8. amen to that

[Donkeyboy75]

4. No offense, but you'd be an a-hole professor

if all you did was walk around and tell people their logic flaws. You're supposed to build your own research program as a professor, and find the flaws in your OWN reasoning.

[sir_captain]

7. you beat me to it!

[Snoggera]

9. A professor has many attributes.

One is to ask questions, and others are to expand one's own knowledge base.

No offense, but taking such a stunted, narrow view of professors seems, to me at least, a bit ignorant.

[Donkeyboy75]

10. I know that, but I wasn't sure you did, based on these lines:

"I can't help pointing out fallacies and discrepancies and simple illogic in people's believed knowledge base.

so.

Ask me anything, with an explanation of your thoughts on the matter, and I will point out a flaw in your reasoning."

You never gave being a person who nutures intellect as a reason you should be a professor. I know these people. Interact with them every day.

[Snoggera]

14. The purpose of this thread is not to critique professors

and their various methods. It was simply an idea that had the intention of hatching other ideas.

Read not only the words, but intuit the meaning behind them.

[Donkeyboy75]

17. I WAS looking at the "hidden meaning,"

which to me was implied cause and effect. You like to point out flaws in reasoning, so you should have been a professor. If the point of your thread was to point out flaws in reasoning, you should have just said that, and left out the professor part. Unnecessary.

Now, tell me the flaw in that. :)

[sir_captain]

18. Heh

a very professorial response ;-)

[sir_captain]

12. Really, most professors have a stunted, narrow view of nearly everything

i'd say the majority of professors, particularly the big-time ones, spend most of their time promoting themselves and the enormity of their own intellect. and this is coming from the child of two ivy league professors. ;-)

edit: there are plenty of great profs, too. teaching is the most admirable profession as far as i'm concerned.

[Donkeyboy75]

15. It's sad, but the way the system is set up,

it's almost what you HAVE to do. That's why I'm getting the hell out of academics in a couple of months...

What fields are they in, BTW?

[sir_captain]

16. You're right on the money

acadamia has gone down the tubes to a large degree, imho.

My father is an American Literature professor, and my mom is an Art History professor.

Luckily, they did not expect me to follow in their footsteps.

[Donkeyboy75]

20. Lots of egos floating around those departments,

to be sure. :)

I'm in the physical sciences, so I think things are a bit different, but surely some of the less savory aspects of academics are the same.

[sir_captain]

22. That's an understatement!

The politics in the humanities are just unbearable nowadays. I majored in history as an undergrad because I enjoyed it from an intellectual point of view, but there was no way I was going to put myself through any further part of it.

I definitely prefer the sciences, but as you say, it is not immune from the ego of higher education either. I've met my fair share of bastard scientists as well. There was one bigtime chemist at my undergraduate institution who had three grad students kill themselves and blame him in the their suicide notes.

[Donkeyboy75]

23. And I now know that you attended Harvard as an undergrad.

Correct?

[sir_captain]

25. Heh..very good deduction

I guess people as infamous as Prof. Corey don't have very low profiles. What a jerk.

[Donkeyboy75]

26. Well, it doesn't hurt that I'm in grad school

for Chemistry right now, and I actually know a couple people that were in or are in his group right now.

He has apparently chilled out, but he's not allowed to have graduate students anymore. Post-docs only.

[sir_captain]

27. Yeah, I heard about that

I have a lot of respect for you chemists. I'm vaguely studying for an Orgo exam at the moment though I'm spending a lot more time cursing its existence--anyone who actually gets this stuff must be a genius as far as I'm concerned. I can follow the logic of, say, the Fischer proof, but cannot even fathom how he managed to think of that stuff originally. Crazy, I say.

[Donkeyboy75]

29. Well, I'm in Bioorganic Chemistry, and I can assure you that

I'm no genius. It's incredibly amazing what some of these guys did with the limited tools at their disposal. It's quite humbling. Of course, the most brilliant chemistry mind of the 20th century had to be R.B. Woodward, IMO, of your beloved Harvard. He was at LEAST 15 years ahead of his time in two completely different areas of chemistry. It was rumored you could name a reaction, and he'd be able to give you a reference...Journal name, year, and page number!!!

Unfortunately, he met an early demise with a drinking problem. I'm at the University of Chicago, and one of my profs had him for a class. He would drink brandy during the lecture...pretty amazing!

[sir_captain]

30. Haha

Dudley Herschbach was my freshman chem professor ages ago, and he didn't drink in lecture, but he'd usually forget his notes and we'd have to wait for his wife to drive them in.

But seriously, it really is awe-inspiring to imagine the intellect that was required to advance modern science. I don't really think there is an analogy to that in the humanities. Well, I take that back--I read some historians who were obviously geniuses as well. But it's still not quite the same.

[Donkeyboy75]

31. Yep. It's always fun to guess who the next "great one" will be

Best of luck to you. I'm signing off and hitting the hay.

[sir_captain]

5. No offense intended

but it's only the bad professors who like trying to make themselves seem smarter than everyone else--the good ones are a bit more encouraging.

[Mattforclark]

11. I can see my hand

therefore my hand exists.

I look forward to your response. :D

[Snoggera]

19. Obviously

your hand exists for you. But does it actually exist for others?

You may ask them - they will tell you that, yes, your hand does indeed exist. However, "they" may be creations of your own uncertain mind, just as the hand was. They may exist only to create a reason not to resist your hypothesis.

[Mattforclark]

28. Whether "they" "actually" "exist"

is irrelevant to my linguistic speach patterns.

"But does it actually exist for others?"

When someone says, "look at your hand," then I know that my hand exists for them.

"You may ask them - they will tell you that, yes, your hand does indeed exist. However, "they" may be creations of your own uncertain mind, just as the hand was. They may exist only to create a reason not to resist your hypothesis."

Whether it "actually" exists for them makes no difference, because you can't tell a difference. And if I can't tell that there's a difference, there is no reason to posit that there is one.

Also, when we speak like this, we are abusing language.

[strategery blunder]

13. Is bu$h* evil?

My thoughts

Started a war that has killed approximately 10-12 thousand people ("coalition" and Iraqi dead combined) by lying about phantom WMD so his cronies could get richer

Corporate scandals galore--need I say more?

Has cozy relationships with brutal dictatorships--such as the House of Saud

Lets corporations do whatever they want, including virtual enslavement of overseas workers

Flaws in my reasoning?

Edit: I'm sure there's lots of things I'm forgetting, but I need to study for a test and only have a little bit of time for stuff like this.

[Snoggera]

24. Finding the answer to that requires questions

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

There must be an answer, of course. But what is it?

When one questions the acts of others, and places emotion laden terms upon them, they will, through that very process find their own answers.

If one no longer questions acts, and places "terms" upon them, one enters another area of questioning.

There is no evil. There is only that which causes one to react emotionally to that which they do not understand.

[bobbieinok]

32. there are 3 reasons to be a professor

1- students have to buy your book(s)

2- captive audience that will laugh at all your jokes, no matter how often they've heard them

3- office door for cartoons, articles