ILX University - first course?

I gotta say all of these choices interest me on some level.

Financial markets sounds good too. I can't take any more philosophy, the internet has forever tainted my interest in it.

do financial markets imo, shiller is cool

voted for comp sci cause it was my nom but fully support financial markets or moral philosophy

we should just spin off the top two or top three

yeah I think we can make a decision based on the results.

I'd take any of these tbh, this is a great idea. Can't wait!

i don't know which to vote for! tempted to do CS just because i actually did start that one but never finished it but economics and architecture are two gigantic blind spots for me....hmmm.

Hebrew bible!

i frankly disbelieve a lot of the core(ish) evo-psych claims. they strike me as are specious and ultimately unsubstantiated, i.e. i don't countenance the assertion that in 2011 "gentleman prefer blondes" happens because younger healthier cavewomen with high chances of reproductive success tended to be more fair, and cavemen evolved a response to fair, slender, less-bearded ladies with a higher waist-to-hip ratio. i mistrust because, let's be honest, this is a highly culturally-based aesthetic, and innate psychological behaviors would tend to be applied with greater distribution and not just to substantiate current behaviors and preferences. a lot of of evo psych tends toward the teleological, and it's mostly non-falsifiable and non-testable. i don't doubt that in the whole field there are interesting and amazing things, but i also don't belief a lot of the chaff that's currently being bandied about. (i agree w/ crüt, for the most part).

let's play 'spot the typo' above.

surely there is, on some level, something that men find attractive about women that is related to evolution?

I think it's the vaginas.

don't forget the boobies!

obviously most (heterosexual-defined) men of reproductive age tend to be drawn toward women who indicate some potential for reproduction, even if there's no intention of reproducing. we're not attracted, by and large, to children and the elderly; to the sickly-skinny or morbidly obese. but the signifiers are many and varied, and individual, it benefits the continued success of the species to cultivate diversity in taste (and breeding partner) rather than depend on a few explicit indicators of beauty and reproductive readiness.

obv i am no expert in this stuff at all, i just took a course on it

I think this kind of caveman sociology gets a lot of attention but doesn't represent a lot of the field (at least in my experience). I also truck w/ the assertion that that kind of thing can sound a lot like, "1950s stereotypes of domesticity are actually authentic original human behavior!" But there's so much in behavioral psychology that doesn't make those claims and stuff like rationality/signaling/group dynamics are really interesting. Just stay away from the justifications for why women should stay in the kitchen.

Has anybody read 'Sex at Dawn'?

Tried to get it out of the lib the other day and they didn't have it, the bastards.

voted for financial markets

women should stay in the kitchen b/c their subcutaneous fat layer makes them better equipped to handle hot pans, clearly.

and men should spend as much time fishing as possible, because their beards are the perfect place to store a whole caboodle of lures and hooks.

<3

Voted excitedly for the chemistry - I think a science course would be best for the whole 'learning a thing that is true' aspect, plus it's harder to get that experience from a book?

remy otm about evo psych

I am kind of assuming that the "what kind of women do men prefer" branch of "evolutionary psychology" is not what's being taught in that course.

guys evolutionary bio is all about fruit flies iirc

fruit flies having s.e.x. though

will the chemistry class teach us how to make meth & bombs?

The class that practically pays for itself!

general chemistry b/c I did so awful in it in college

would actually be interested in taking any of these tbh

Science and Cooking (Harvard)
Intro to Hebrew Bible (Yale)
Financial Markets (Yale)
Moral Foundations of Politics (Yale)
Evolution, Ecology and Behavior (Yale)

so basically you're alright w/ anything as long as it's harvard or yale

oops, didn't mean to have a Harvard one on the list. Yale full-stop accept no substitutes!

General chemistry because I failed it twice in college.

i can see how all of these could possibly be interesting (or make me want to fall asleep and/or barf), but what resonates right now are Financial Markets and Moral Foundations of Politics

so this can also be used to suggests ways this can be run...I can 'run' the first class which means we pick a day and I'll post a link to the lecture on that day.

w/ some of these subjects there are people who know enough to answer questions. if you do, it'd be cool if you'd lurk the thread?

These are like podcasts, right? I can put it on my ipod and listen to it/watch it away from a computer?

If it ends up being comp sci I will be happy to TA.

yeah at least for the yale ones I know there are audio-only files

(there are video files too)

the comp sci one has video, audio & transcripts of lectures all avail

i might follow along w/it by myself lol

do these come with syllabi? the lectures are going to lean heavily on the reading I think, but knowing what some famous and respected professor has to say about Locke is probably just as useful as knowing the original text, probably more so

hoos I would join you

I think they all have syllabuses

The Bits course at Harvard is pretty interesting, and might be a better (more fitting?) option than the Intro to CS one . Bits is designed as a non-major perspective on the field, but not dumbed-down, and with heavy doses of theory and application to current events. The Intro to CS course is a prereq for a lot of later coursework, and tends to be a little drier/techier more intended as a gateway to a later CS career. (Says my girlfriend)

is it online?

all i saw on the harvard extended edu site was some excerpts from lectures, but i'd be down for that for sure

I did about 80% of Shiller's financial markets course. It's fascinating at times but parts are hard to understand without the textbook and homework (it's literally just a recording of him teaching his Yale class live). I think it's useful for general concepts if you're willing to just shrug at the techincal parts that you can't really learn without practice problems and such.

Also IIRC there are cool guest speakers, including the guy who manages Yale's endowment, and Carl Icahn (who is very entertaining and firebrandy).

In fact Carl Icahn goes on a tear about how the top executives at most companies are a bunch of idiot frat boys who got where they are by not making any waves.

yale's endowment guy was pretty legendary until he too got hammered in the 07 crash

Well, I mean him getting slammed in the crash like everyone else doesn't really do anything to discredit his methods.