The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education

Now ten years after finish school I think I have learn a hundred time more by myself than from my scholarship.

There is a quote from Taleb which looks something like this "What I learned on my own I still remember."

Take Software Foundations as an example. The tool it's written about, the logical foundations underlying that tool, and generations of pedagogic experimentation in explaining those idea that led to Software Foundations would not have been possible instances of the modern Research University in at least a half dozen countries (but most notably France and the US).

Even the human inputs to such a seminar probably require a university more often than not. The number of self-taught programmers who could work through Software Foundations is certainly miniscule.

There is certainly a viable community-building model here, not dissimilar from the Community Church or Hackerspace models! Just want to call out that it's sort of (virtuously!!!) grifting off of the spoils of research universities.

BTW: I'd love to see a Computer Science "Great Books" Curriculum. TAOCP, SICP, Cinderella, Dragon, Foundations, ... what else?

The Communist manifesto is literally a plan of action. It calls for an authoritarian government in which all financial assets, credit, real assets, and land are centralized and controlled by the state. It calls for seizure of all personal property of anyone who wants to leave the country. It calls for conscripting the public and forcing them to work in agricultural and industrial armies, also controlled by the state. It calls for state monopolization and control of the press and all forms of communication and transportation, etc. From the Communist Manifesto:

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m...

> but only one of them offers a critique of the immediate situation

So you're a socialist. The whole point is that not everyone is, or maybe some people _are_ and they need to read the Republic and then Capital to come to that conclusion. Reading groups are all about access to new ideas, they aren't meetups of political groups. But there's so much more. Read Rousseau to understand the Social Contract, Bakunin for anarchy, etc