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--></style></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>The shift to online learning is a great fit for highly self-motivated individuals. It offers much greater freedom and efficiency to the students. As you said, some take advantage of it and others do not. This development is very exciting for me because I am one of those who has struggled to learn from traditional classroom lectures. Nearly everything I know and all my skills are self-taught. People are beginning to realize that top notch teachers on every subject are available online for free. I predict that most universities will either become artifacts of the past or morph significantly to stay competitive with what is offered online for free.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal style='border:none;padding:0in'><b>From: </b><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">spike jones via extropy-chat</a><br><b>Sent: </b>Monday, December 13, 2021 12:44 PM<br><b>To: </b><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">ExI chat list</a><br><b>Cc: </b><a href="mailto:spike@rainier66.com">spike@rainier66.com</a><br><b>Subject: </b>Re: [ExI] The Future Is Going to Be Extremely Lonely</p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>…</b>> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] The Future Is Going to Be Extremely Lonely<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><div><div><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-top:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:5.0pt'><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:4.8pt'>>>…In the future, you’ll be “connected” constantly, and “socializing”<br>digitally, but you’ll be lonelier than you’ve ever been. Because<br>you’ll never be about to fool your glorious, physical, homo sapien<br>body. BillK<o:p></o:p></p></blockquote><div><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>>…You get used to it. If you need some face to face time, there are parties and gatherings one can go to (where all the strictures against socializing with or even possibly dating coworkers do not apply). But it is all too easy to never have time for that, if one does a lot of online socializing. Adrian<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Thanks BillK and Adrian, this is very thought-provoking.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Since I have been closely associated with schools and scouts for the last several years, this caused me to think of this from another angle perhaps not immediately obvious to everyone here. In the student life, we saw an immediate stratification between the students who were good at online instruction and those who failed to prosper. I saw right here on my own street a perfect example, the daughter of an engineer and a college professor, who got exactly nothing out of online instruction. She disengaged completely once outside of the classroom, and after regular in-person instruction came back online, it was immediately obvious that more than a year of instruction was lost. Now it appears she will drop out.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Other students hit the gas and still haven’t let off. They found new (and really better) instruction resources than that which is available in any classroom regardless of how good the teacher.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Please let me offer an excellent example, one of many, my own son and I explored during the 17 months he was home for the shutdown. I do wish everyone here would take the time to view just one of these, a particularly superior instructor, who does things in this video one cannot do in a classroom setting. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RdOwhmqP5s"><span style='color:#0563C1'>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RdOwhmqP5s</span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Is there anyone here who viewed this without learning something new? I have been fooling with fractals for decades, but this young guy taught me many new cool things about it I never knew. OK then, content like this is available to everyone everywhere on the planet now, not just those few lucky proles who attend a top-notch university that hire people like this.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>To reel this back in, to the topic of lonely futures… <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>We saw students who not only prospered in online instruction, they excelled in it. I would argue that the one school year out was worth two for some students and for a few already skilled in online research, at least three years. Study was very efficient. They could sleep right up until about 3 minutes before class started, attend in their pajamas, eat breakfast during the first class session, do homework during the less-engaging classes, really drive the efficiency toward a maximum. Some did. Others did not.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>We are now dealing with an enormous stratification at our local high school. I am one of the lucky volunteers assigned not to picking up the broken pieces, but rather to offering instruction to the elite who did prosper, such as the competition math team, the science Olympiad, the entrepreneur’s club, generally the elite students. They asked me to do it, of course I accepted: I have no insights on how to help struggling students. But I can teach the tech-elite stuff their own teachers cannot, for their teachers have not the real-world experience. So… I do.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>If we are working toward a society where more and more socializing is done online rather than in person, we can expect still greater stratification analogous to how high schools are now. Works well for some, not at all for others.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Do view that Sanderson video, oh so good. It that cool or what?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p></div></div></div><p class=MsoNormal>spike <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>