Comments on: Liberty upsets patterns

By: Matthew Yglesias

Matthew Yglesias — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Interestingly, I was in the last undergraduate class Nozick taught. Enrollment was capped at 18 but it was actually undersubscribed.

By: micah

micah — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

That is interesting. What was the topic?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I took “Thinking about Thinking” a decade or so ago, with Nozick, Stephen Jay Gould, and Alan Dershowitz at the helm. Huge lecture hall class and, frankly, not worth all that much.

The upshot was lawyers, scientists, and philosophers tend to approach problems differently. Who knew?

By: washerdreyer

washerdreyer — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Fortunately, NYU has already solved this problem for 1L’s by not giving us any meaningful choices at all.Our only choice is which of six professors to take “The Administrative and Regulatory State” with.

By: washerdreyer

washerdreyer — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Also, the real issue is a) whether or not Wilt Chamberlain could trade some period of time of watching him play basketball for a seat in Neuborne’s class, and b) can a school force Wilt to redistribute his seat without violating anyone’s rights?

By: Backword Dave

Backword Dave — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Am I missing something here? But when I was an undergrad, I only went to lectures to get a clue about what would be in exams. Most of my learning was from books or journals. As long as you keep up with the reading material, you’re set. A photocopy of a handout must be a lot cheaper than $500. Almost all the ‘teaching’ was in tutorials, and they were complsory. (The exception was one class where there were only six of us—probably because there were only six of us.)

When Noam Chomsky came to the Cardiff Law School, they used CCTV to show him in other lecture theatres for all those who couldn’t in. Why is this beyond NYU who charge $38,000 a year?

By: hick

hick — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I might have paid someone hundreds would that have kept me from witnessing the Nozickian wind turbine.

Dershowitz shoud be attached to a polygraph and asked a few questions—such as, was OJ guilty? Have you ever lied while defending someone accused of murder? etc.

SJ Gould, with his flaws, was not such a bad thinker or writer.

By: quitter

quitter — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Nozick once gave a lecture at my college. SRO at first; 30 minutes later 80% of the audience (including yours truly) had walked out.

By: bza

bza — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I took a graduate seminar with Nozick in the mid-90s. He was most definitely coasting in his later years.

By: backword dave

backword dave — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

SJ Gould, with his flaws

Ah, care to explain that? I assume you mean something beyond the trivial ‘he, like everyone else, had flaws.’ He could be a trifle dull about baseball, but he was a very decent man with very decent principles who confounded the stereotype of academic experts and wrote very clearly.

By: hick

hick — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

As I indicated, SJ Gould was an admirable though occasionally arrogant writer on science topics, yet I think he was mistaken in his attacks on the psychologist Jensen and the g factor. There is no evidence that suggests Jensen was a racist: his education research did however lead to some conclusions which would tend to disappoint naive liberals.

By: Micha Ghertner

Micha Ghertner — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

And he was a dirty, dirty communist. :D

By: hick

hick — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Is there anything more amusing and really pathetic as the Ivy League faux-leftist? A Galbraith or Gould is understandable, but some of us out in hinterlands, imbibing the overwritten theoretical productions of the typical multicultural, marxist, or feminist humanities major/dupe reach for a barf bag. Ivy League Inc. is about as close to meritocratic and democratic educational ideals as well, the English monarchy—whose elite, private universities it was formulated upon. For most Ivy League bourgeois students, marxism and leftism are sort of a phase, like pot smoking: dispensed with (or at least converted into corporate liberalism) when they land their first urban professional job, or are admitted into law school.

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

“He could be a trifle dull about baseball,”

My god! And the sun is somewhat warm. I took one of his books on tape to keep me amused on a long drive, and it nearly cost me my life when I nodded off during an extended metaphor about baseball statistics.

By: washerdreyer

washerdreyer — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Gould’s Joe DiMaggio essay is a classic. Seriously, most baseball fans I know like his work in that area. Also, his essay on how his knowledge of statistics helped him deal with being diagnosed with cancer was fantastic.