/edu/ - Education

>>8813
Intelligence tests indicate that average population intelligence might have increased over the last century.
These tests are very flawed and should not be taken as scientific evidence, but it might be good enough for trend observations. The assumed explanation for this rise is better nutrition and more intellectually stimulating environments.

Intelligence is not self defeating from an evolutionary perspective. Stephen Hawkins for example, was a very intelligent physicist, but he couldn't have survived in any other period of history, because it took a lot of technology to keep him going, proving that intelligent people create a world that benefits the survival of intelligent people.

Capitalism is probably trying to commodify the general intellect, (humanities collective knowledge and technical know how) and that could fracture the knowledge base and cause a decline in the technological level. There might be a counteracting force, if capitalist governments become too tyrannical with persecuting bogus thought crimes like "intellectual property" they will undermine their power and influence by hampering their technical base that is the foundation of projecting influence. So that free and open knowledge system always win over closed ones.

About the biological factors, there are statistical factors at play. If you have a large population size, your chances of having a lot of intelligent people rises as well. Increasing the population size is a more effective way of increasing the absolute number of intelligent people than any kind of eugenics program, where you kill off or sterilize un-inteligent people. What counts for technological progress is the absolute number of intelligent people working towards advancing the means of production , not the ratio of intelligent people in the population.

Eugenics is a dumb idea because, if you propose weeding out the "low quality people" it's in the interest of everybody to kill you off preemptively, because you are telling everybody that you are a potential risk to their survival or evolutionary success. Nobody will believe any test scores you come up with and instead attribute a bad result to malicious intentions or incompetence on your part. Most people will agree to kill off the guy who might be questioning their right to live or have kids. Don't be that guy.

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>>8816
>Intelligence tests indicate that average population intelligence might have increased over the last century.
this is because of environmental factors which doesn't disprove a reduction of human genetic quality
>If you have a large population size, your chances of having a lot of intelligent people rises as well.
Larger societies also need more engineers, doctors, bureaucrats, teachers, planners and highly specialized industrial workers, in fact large societies have much higher amounts of division and specialization of labor, which require more and more education to train.
>
Eugenics is a dumb idea because, if you propose weeding out the "low quality people" it's in the interest of everybody to kill you off preemptively, because you are telling everybody that you are a potential risk to their survival or evolutionary success. Nobody will believe any test scores you come up with and instead attribute a bad result to malicious intentions or incompetence on your part. Most people will agree to kill off the guy who might be questioning their right to live or have kids. Don't be that guy.
Thats the thing, their really isn't a solution to this crisis, just a slow unavoidable slip to doom.

Well first of all there's Society of the Spectacle which you should read if you haven't. You also might want to look into the Frankfurt School in general for this kind of topic, although it's somewhat dated at this point. For instance there's various essays on the culture industry.

For something contemporary there's the recent book by Hans-Georg Moeller You and Your Profile which is about how your identity is shaped by creating images of yourself for consumption by other social media users.

For something more controversial and meme core I know Peter Coffin wrote a book on this subject: Custom Reality and You.

Read Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, it will tell you everything you need to know.

Literally read any internal study done by Facebook, they know they're ruining everyone and simply do not care because it gives them profits.

All 4 Volumes of Wallersteins: The Modern World System

>>5409
Read Vyshinsky instead.
https://archive.org/details/lawofthesovietst008593mbplenin_capLenin Cap

>>5406
>Obscure
I mean just read Lenin and Stalin's main works as well as Mao and his contemporaries.

As for why some of it is obscure? Because there are pragmatic policies that ignore moralistic outcries that Western Liberals don't like and do their best to suppress or attack if they cannot suppress it.

>>5413
Marx himself intended to write on the history of law as part of his critique of political economy.

We just finished reading "'Left-wing' Communism: An Infantile Disorder by Lenin, which thus concludes our initial readings of Lenin! Next up we'll be doing Capital v2.

hey, i'm sorry to be asking such a dumb question, but what do reading groups do? Do you all pick up a book and set 5 year plans to finish it and then move on to different books? Or do you exchange books but still require of members to read them? I imagine it helps a lot with finishing to read them and after that discussing the helps better understand them, yes?

>>8710
>Do you all pick up a book and set 5 year plans to finish it and then move on to different books?
That's about right. Reading groups are quite flexible and you could organize one in a myriad of ways, but our method thus far has been: 1) agree collectively on a little reading list, about a subject or author we are interested in 2) start reading 3) meet up regularly (weekly, biweekly) to discuss the previously agreed upon readings 4) at each meeting, schedule the next meeting and decide what must be read until then. This usually results in weekly meetings, in which we talk for a couple of hours about our weekly reading of 30 to 100 pages, depending on the book. A book like Capital requires we take a slower pace, of 30-40 pages a week, but something like Lenin's State and Revolution can be done in a single week if everyone has the time/availability.

>I imagine it helps a lot with finishing to read them and after that discussing the helps better understand them, yes?
That is true. Not only is it helpful in the sense of ensuring everyone is on the same page, and that each is helping each other understand the book better, but it's also good to just come up with critiques and formulate ideas as a group. Friendly debates and so on are quite good to have.

>>8710
>Do you all pick up a book and set 5 year plans to finish it
kek

Are there any pretty girls in your physics classes??

Also here you go, I think this should help
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF6C6594F42ECEE0D

>>8715
*bonk*

>>7017
MECW https://archive.org/details/MarxEngelsCollectedWorksVolume10MKarlMarx

>>7018
I remember an anon made a post a while back about mass-searching the MECW for keywords. But it seems to me that this overlooks the benefits a topical index would provide. At any rate I don't know how to grep search or whatever it would entail, but I can fool with it. Thanks

>>7017
>topical index
we could make one

Anyone?

Can you just look up the title of the thesis and author on scihub or a torrent site?

ProQuest is terrible. academic institutions are just a racket to gatekeep information

>>8600
Not sure.

>>8600
I did look it up and found nothing.

this is a great book and really explains Marxist themes lucidly.

Haven't been able to find a pdf though

>>5846
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=CB6553D818BE1F07A534A3A88E8B0DBA

Here is the link. Dude, just uhh, use libgen.is — at least for the anglo literature it is vast and very accomodating. I use other sources for literature in my language, but libgen should suffice for most things.

Also archive.org is great for searching things from last past century, old books et cettera.tankieTankie

I find it interesting that ancient societies ran on debt allocation, so much so that debt abolition was an actually platform politicians would campaign on.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/index.htm
also the very idea of mode of production is prolly just unique to capitalism

>>4631
Just learn German

>>4644
Not an anglo so learning german would be pretty hard for me.

>>4647
>Not an anglo
what's your native language then, anon? maybe if you tell us that we can give you recs based on your native lang and then you can look for those editions. I always prefer to read in my native language, even if I'm pretty confident in my english.

>>4649
Spanish.

>>4631
necrobump but i'll answer anyways

>Paris Manuscripts
Martin Milligan https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm
>Germany Ideology
Prometheus https://kalamkopi.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/karl-marx-friedrich-engels-the-german-ideology.pdf
>Civil war in France
the original https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm
>Feuerbach
Engels https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/engels.htm
>Gotha
https://archive.marxists.xyz/library/karl-marx-critique-of-the-gotha-programme-en
>Grundrisse
Penguin https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/
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