Ethan Hirsch: (Mostly) Positivist Musings

In the spirit of the scientific method, I begun a course on the internet: a truly positivist musing. Rather than rely on my own biased stance, or subjective analysis of players embedded in the argument, I have cast myself directly into the fray, to pursue higher learning, online.

Academic Earth is a website which features online courses from America’s leading universities, including Yale, Stanford, and MIT. The content comes from real classes taking place inside campus lecture halls. All participating students must fill out a waiver to allow their likeness to be displayed online. Prospective students have the option of choosing a particular lecture, or undergo the comprehensive course, as I am choosing to do. For the especially ambitious, a syllabus, in addition to copies of the course examinations and their respective solutions, are attached.

The title of my course is Game Theory, taught by Benjamin Polak, the Chairman of Yale’s Economics department. Game theory has been an personal curiosity for some time due to its many applications, seen across the realms of finance, politics, and behavioral economics.

Two lectures into the course, I have yet to find a notable difference between my “Yale” experience and that of any of my classes in large-capacity lecture halls, albeit with a better seat: the comfort of my own couch. What about the ability to participate, you may ask? As any college student knows, a very small minority regularly participates in these mega-lectures. I rarely (if ever) participate in the class discourse, preferring to use my notebook as a venue for revisiting and reviewing any particulars of the lecture I may have missed. In fact, Academic Earth’s lectures are malleable, with the ability to fast-forward, rewind, and pause as you wish. Try asking a professor to repeat himself in a class of 800 without feeling the collective glare of 799 annoyed cohorts.

Within the confines of the brick-and-mortar campus, I may be disposed to visit a teacher during his office hours. Yet, there are countless resources online that could easily assist me at any time online, which I use just as much when enrolled in a physical class. If anything, the open-source nature of the lectures are more tailored to me: I optimize my learning time by making sure that I’m not tired, distracted, or hungry during the online lectures.

I can unequivocally say that I am enjoying Game Theory. As I get to know Professor Polak better, I’m beginning to laugh at his jokes, and understand where his lectures are heading. Although he’ll never know my name, neither will the countless instructors who are commissioned to administer introductory knowledge to thousands of students each semester.

The primary caveat I see at the moment: I am genuinely interested in gaining footing in game theory, and have chosen this particular curriculum as such. Had the topic strayed dramatically from my interests, I imagine I would find myself hard pressed to remain immersed throughout the 1 hour, 20 minute lecture, void of supervision. Again, this follows my assertion of convergence above: my biggest lectures have mostly been a mixed bag, with the omnipresent variable being my interest in the subject at hand.

The crux of my argument remains: the discourse and argument seen in smaller lectures cannot possibly be re-created with Academic Earth’s recorded format. Although I’m sure the option exists to log onto live video streams, with an embedded chat function allowing for communal discourse, the opportunity for distraction and inability to truly engage in the Socratic method remains. Consider this version 1.0: I have no doubt that the model will continually improve.

In addition to these open-source classes, Academic Earth is a portal for the online bachelors and masters degrees, in addition to the ability to obtain credit for courses completed. I imagine this is Academic Earth’s main revenue stream. In an extreme example, one could theoretically obtain a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics in three years without ever stepping foot across the pond. Tuition is $5,000 USD, without the price of books. Room and board? Well, that depends on your home-country’s cost-of-living index…

Despite being impossibly busy between curricular and extra curricular activities, in addition to the incessant and omnipresent quest for a summer internship, I have begun a new challenge, hopefully something that I will be able to tangibly track on this blog.

Partially inspired by this post (the other two parts being a complete pillage of my uncle’s college textbooks, in addition to a friend’s recent quest to become Gordon Gekko), I have begun a quest to self-educate myself on selected topics. Why, you might ask? Despite the fact that I already dual-major and minor (for inquiring minds: Finance/International Political Economy, Latin American Studies), I find myself yearning additional stimulation.

After a minuscule amount of internet researching, I thought I would open this up to community discourse. Below are the subjects I have narrowed my interests down to, in addition to a rationale behind each one, with the materials I have at my disposal in parenthesis.

I am looking for a) additional subjects that may be deemed essential to my “rounding” that I may have missed out on.

b) tips/resources to implement a self-education regimen.

c) essential resources in addition to the ones I have listed below, whether it be books, websites etc.

I’m not sure whether I can realistically dedicate myself to all 6 of these subjects, and I fear intermittent study would prove more detrimental to anything. The key, as I see it, is to develop a routine: maybe an hour of the day cordoned off for self-education, regardless of any other commitments I may have that day. No doubt, this may be increasingly easier to implement over the summer. I’ll have to begin experimenting, and check back in.

• Chess – The game of Chess has always interested me. As young as elementary school, I played Chess both with my father and during a lunch time Chess club. However, I never significantly committed myself to the game beyond the occasional recreational game. I think the thought processes behind the game could prove vital across many disciples. (Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess)
• The Classics – I love to read. As it stands, reading takes up a significant part of my day. However, I find myself seeking out increasingly recreational reads as my curricular load has grown (although I’m currently LOVING Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball.) I would love to begin delving into some of the “classics,” specifically Don Quixote. This is an area where I could use more recommendations. (The Complete Works of William Shakespeare)
• Lynda.com (Internet-y stuff) – As a student, we have complete access to the Lynda.com library. As Howard Lindzon recently gushed over Twitter, Lynda is the real deal. There are a TON of tutorials that I’d likely find valuable, but some of the ones that I’ve keyed into include Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver (CSS), and Microsoft Excel advanced applications. Again, any recs? (Lynda.com)
• French – A language that I have decent application in. However, like they say about languages, if you don’t use it, you lose it. This is where I grabbed a majority of my booty, I now have a small army of mid-70′s French textbooks at my disposal. (A small army of mid-70′s French textbooks)
• Portuguese – My third language (not counting English), and probably the one I need to study the most, being as I’ll be in Brazil this time next year. I’ve taken all three Portuguese classes that Penn State’s lackluster program has to offer (ahem). I’m considering auditing the most advanced class that I’ve already taken, although I’m unsure whether I’ll find it overly repetitive and/or below my level. I’ve yet to be impressed by the Rosetta Stone series I’ve procured (sorry, impossibly expensive on a student’s budget.) (Ponto de Encontro + Workbook, my college notes, Rosetta Stone)
• Economics – An area that I’ve already pursued somewhat in my curriculum. It seems like between my two areas of study there may be a small information gap, one that I’m happy to fill independently. Moreso macro than micro. (A dated 70′s Macroeconomics textbook that seems pretty comprehensive)

Again, I’m really looking for some assistance on this one. Any tips and/or recommendation would be greatly appreciated.

People read Kafka. and Twain. and Dickens. These are facts of life, like the sun rising and setting with each coming day. Their collective body of work will be read, taught, written on, and scrutinized until the end of time.

These “classics” are (rightly) presumed to have a vast influence on western culture, its authors, and its artists, and as such, are vehemently read.

Despite the fact that the oeuvre of these three individuals are a world’s apart, their work is often categorized within the singular, “classics” section: Huck Finn’s ephebian adventures rests comfortably next to Tolstoy’s complex War and Peace at big box retailers across the US. Obviously, these books do not pertain to the ordinary methods of classification, and deservedly so.

Reading Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, I couldn’t help but delve deeper into this notion of “the classic,” its influence, and its prevalency across various mediums of art.

The Trial itself was a pleasure to read: a good, well-written book with a poignant message. Kafka systematically guides the reader through protagonist Joseph K’s initial clear-headedness and rationality through various stages of baseless paranoia, concluding with the insane psyche of the once-sharp-witted bank clerk.

Obviously, Kafka’s talent lends a serious cause for reverence toward the author himself. Kafka’s prevalent theme, the obfuscation of the modern day man and the society in which he lives, characterize Kafka’s two most famous works, The Trial and The Metamorphosis, and has, in turn, manifested itself into an free-standing adjective.

The sheer quality of literary “classics” allows them to stand the test of time, and in turn, they are continually consumed to this day. This trend carries itself over various mediums, as impressionist painters and classical composers have remained household names as their work is perpetually digested and debated. Their oeuvre, like that of the authors mentioned at the beginning of this post, are not going anywhere soon.

Upon further analysis, I think it’s safe to conclude that film does not follow the “classics” paradigm. Although most people may be able to recycle American titles such as Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind, few people could aptly tell you who directed these films, let alone have actually viewed them themselves.  Even more disconcerting is the relative anonymity of foreign films and their filmmakers, true artists who have managed to convey overarching themes and ideas through a camera lens. However ironic, George Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy, one movie which could be considered an exception to the “rule,” draws distinct plot parallels with Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, a fact acknowledged openly by Lucas himself.

Watching Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Godard’s Breathless, or Kubrick’s 2001, one cannot help but deduce the influence of these “godfathers of film” on modern day directors. It is difficult to conceive why film takes on such a dramatically different cultural role within contemporary society without discounting movie-going today as a largely passive experience. The rabid popularity of ultra-violent, substance-lacking films like 300 and Saw further illustrate this point, without even touching on the current vampire craze.

The open-ended conclusion of No Country for Old Men was almost universally panned, despite the fact the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel strayed minimally from the book (this review describes it as “an unusually tight adaptation.”) No doubt, the two different mediums placed similar expectations towards the two audiences, to differing reactions. Movie viewers obviously wanted an open-and-close two-hour experience, while readers expressed little uproar, as open-ended conclusions subject to debate and discussion are the norm within literary canon.

While one may have no sympathy for my cultural snobbery, the fact remains: movie making is a business. It’s a business that has seen less and less creativity as high-budget, high-risk films have failed to meet their bottom line.  In lieu of the recent success of low budget thrillers like Paranormal Activity and Taken, creative ventures like James Cameron’s mega-blockbuster Avatar, which the New York Times jokes has audience expectations comparable to “the arrival of technicolor,” are likely a dying breed. Going forward, creative blockbusters like Avatar, Watchmen, and the less-recent Forrest Gump will likely be glossed over in favor of more economically feasible, audience-friendly viewing. (Edit: looks like it’s already begun)

My absence from this blog for the past few weeks has been due to real-life school obligations and activities. Apologies aside, I have been busy. The type of busy that has more or less uprooted my daily routine, including my running and reading regimens. Needless to say, blogging has also fallen by the wayside.

Despite my recent busyness, I can’t say I’m particularly unhappy, or even the least bit stressed. My whirlwind weeks have given me little time to ponder, leaving me focused and goal oriented: truly living in the moment.

I recently spoke with a friend who has expressed feelings of stress, unhappiness, and depression, largely due to existential, “What am I doing with my life?”-type issues. I have received similar calls from many friends over the course of this past semester. All of them are currently attending college, and none of them have found it particularly taxing to this point: they’ve been relatively free to enjoy themselves at their own discretion. As such, they have created new friends and experienced new things: lived life. Bringing these facts to their attention, they were largely dismissive, casting their issues as “more fundamental,” more big picture.

Although I didn’t say this to her (or for that matter, any of them), I automatically assumed that she was bored. The novelty of college parties has largely worn off, and her lack of a daily grind has left her with too much time to ponder exactly what she’s doing with her life, taking classes hundreds of miles away from home.

Busyness is a fundamental aspect in the lives of successful people. Ben Casnocha has recently blogged about two individuals (James Ellroy and Cormac McCarthy) who have taken the notion of being busy to an obsessive level. As such, they have remained productive and creative, and their output has been consistently well-received.

When Daily Routines stopped posting, I was crushed. The blog was littered with tales of the world’s foremost artists crafting daily routines with zen-like proficiency: making the most out of every one of their waking hours. Although my daily routine isn’t quite as static as the featured icons, I took solace in their strict attention to a busy regimen, keeping their body and minds active in order to achieve their lofty goals.

In response to my previous post on the rise of undergraduate business schools, I came across an excellent article in American Scholar, written by William M. Chace, an English Professor in of 40 years. The article analyzes on the decline of humanities within higher education, and the subsequent rise of the undergraduate business degrees. Mr. Chace’s analysis of the Humanities’ decline breaks down into three parts: the rise of public institutions, student anxiety, and the need for a dramatic revamping of Humanities’ curriculum.

During the most recent period for which good figures are available (from 1972 to 2005), more young people entered the world of higher education than at any time in American history. Where did they go? Increasingly into public, not private, schools. In the space of that one generation, public colleges and universities wound up with more than 13 million students in their classrooms while private institutions enrolled about 4.5 million. Students in public schools tended toward majors in managerial, technical, and pre-professional fields while students in private schools pursued more traditional and less practical academic subjects. With their ascendancy, the presiding ethos of public institutions—fortified by the numbers of majors and faculty, and by the amounts of money involved—has come to exert a more and more powerful thrust in American higher education. The result? The humanities, losing the national numbers game, find themselves moving to the periphery of American higher education.

Mr. Chace correctly creates this dichotomy, a dichotomy that I am all too familiar with as an enrolled student at a public university. I’d surmise that students within public universities are exposed to the insecurities of the job market and their vocational future at a much higher frequency than private institutions. Sprawling career centers, omnipresent career fairs, and suit-and-tie clad cohorts are regular occurrences on public campuses. A good friend at a California private institution (majoring in Cognitive Science) recently remarked to the degree to which “he lives in a bubble.” That is to say, his peers are surrounded by tenured professors who place little emphasis on the importance of co-ops, resumes, and internships.

With the cost of a college degree surging upward during the last quarter century—tuition itself increasing far beyond any measure of inflation—and with consequent growth in loan debt after graduation, parents have become anxious about the relative earning power of a humanities degree. Their college-age children doubtless share such anxiety. When college costs were lower, anxiety could be kept at bay. (Berkeley in the early ’60s cost me about $100 a year, about $700 in today’s dollars.) Alexander W. Astin’s research tells us that in the mid-1960s, more than 80 percent of entering college freshmen reported that nothing was more important than “developing a meaningful philosophy of life.” Astin, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, reports that “being very well off financially” was only an afterthought, one that fewer than 45 percent of those freshmen thought to be an essential goal. As the years went on, however, and as tuition shot up, the two traded places; by 1977, financial goals had surged past philosophical ones, and by the year 2001 more than 70 percent of undergraduate students had their eyes trained on financial realities, while only 40 percent were still wrestling with meaningful philosophies.

Mr. Chace couldn’t be more closer to the truth, and pulls out telling statistics to further bolster his point. The dramatic shift in college-aged students’ importance placed upon gaining “life philosophies” explains why many of today’s collegians are so frequently finding themselves “half-listening” to the advice of our parents generation.

Studying English taught us how to write and think better, and to make articulate many of the inchoate impulses and confusions of our post-adolescent minds. We began to see, as we had not before, how such books could shape and refine our thinking. We began to understand why generations of people coming before us had kept them in libraries and bookstores and in classes such as ours. There was, we got to know, a tradition, a historical culture, that had been assembled around these books. Shakespeare had indeed made a difference—to people before us, now to us, and forever to the language of English-speaking people.

Finding pleasure in such reading, and indeed in majoring in English, was a declaration at the time that education was not at all about getting a job or securing one’s future. In comparison with the pre-professional ambitions that dominate the lives of American undergraduates today, the psychological condition of students of the time was defined by self-reflection, innocence, and a casual irresponsibility about what was coming next.

I lament this paradigm shift, and appreciate that others are noticing it. While I find myself perpetually reading outside of the curriculum, I’ve witnessed an increasingly whittling minority of students sharing my zeal for extra-curricular refinement through reading. As the state of the international job market and the importance placed upon financial security becomes increasingly transparent, I fear that Universities will truly never return to their platonic state.