Official University Certificate for $200 (best quality deal)

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Life Long Learning, Sep 23, 2020.

Loading...
  1. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    Cool! I signed up. As someone who is left of center, I've been trying to learn more about the right-wing/free-market/privatization solutions to various issues so I can reconcile them with my own beliefs. Hopefully this helps me understand better.
     
  2. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I respect your willingness to consider different views, so as our resident libertarian, if there's any particular issue where it would interest you to hear a cogent pro-market argument, I'd be happy to find you one. (As with any corner of the ideological map, some pro-market think tanks are better than others.)
     
    Life Long Learning and Dustin like this.
  3. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    I'm 4 chapters in, and it's less painful than I was expecting, though I doubt I ever would have read it outside of a course like this. I don't care for fiction can't remember the last one I read. I'm also 500 pages into a 900 page tome chronicling Jimmy Carter's 4 years in office. Now when I get tired or bored of one, I switch to the other. It takes me about 30 minutes to read a chapter so far, so either the chapters get longer or I'm a quick reader. My Kindle noted it takes the average reader 35 hours to read the 30 chapters.

    On the program itself, I really like the structure of the sessions. Each one is 10-30 minutes long (they advertise 30 minutes per but I'd say they're closer to 20 minutes) and each session has 10 or so multiple-choice questions peppered throughout the lecture to prove you've done the reading. I like their Blackboard setup, it reminds me of my undergrad at Athabasca.
     
    Life Long Learning likes this.
  4. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I've read it, but I wouldn't read it again. Of her books I prefer We the Living even though it's her least known novel.
     
    Life Long Learning likes this.
  5. SpoonyNix

    SpoonyNix Active Member

    We The Living is my favorite. I also like Fountainhead. Atlas is a good story, but there is a portion (somewhere around where Dustin is, probably) that slogs along.
     
  6. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    It could have been half as long, to be honest. John Galt's sixty page speech, for example, is totally skippable if you've read the rest of the book. (OMG Dustin, seriously, skip the speech.)

    And if someone really wants to understand the libertarian mindset from fiction, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein is better anyway, both for that purpose and just as a fun read. (IMHO, of course.)
     
  7. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    I'll keep that in mind about the speech. I'm up to Part II, Chapter 2 (12th chapter overall, out of 30) and it's still an enjoyable read. I'm not big on fiction, but I gotta say I'm still very interested in the book.

    On the other hand there's been at least one long, philosophical speech so far that I can remember, and that was a big tough to get through. I can see how Galt's 35,000 word speech would be very frustrating for readers. I'm averaging 1-2 chapters a day (they did get longer so I'm reading in 30 minute chunks now) but at this rate I'll finish the book in about 2 weeks.

    What I like most about the course in general is that it's causing me to question my premises around the way the economy and social programs work. Not to say that I believe my current beliefs are wrong (yet), but that I should be able to articulate what a libertarian or conservative believes and then why I believe the assumptions underpinning that are incorrect or the end-result is different and how my beliefs compare and contrast.

    Before this course, I could articulate the ABCs of my belief system but couldn't compare or contrast them with other systems. It's absolutely worth the $200 and I look forward to finishing it.
     
  8. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    That's very fair. So it's probably worth noting that while Rand is influential, it would be a mistake to say that all libertarians like her views and even more of one to say that all conservatives do.

    In fact Murray Rothbard, a well known 20th century libertarian, wrote a satirical one act play about how goofy she and her followers were: https://mises.org/library/mozart-was-red
     
    Dustin likes this.
  9. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    You're right, I should be more precise in my words. Objectivism is its own distinct philosophy, and while there is overlap among her beliefs and those of conservatives or libertarians, there is definitely a lot of room for dissent.
     
    Life Long Learning likes this.
  10. Life Long Learning

    Life Long Learning Active Member

    Fiction is not my thing. I waited to 1/3 of the way thru the book to draw on large paper the characters and how they are connected to Dagny Taggart who is the protagonist of the novel. Start doing it in the first chapter if you are a visual learner. I wished I had. I needed this visual diagram. Many quiz questions are on these characters. The free Cliff Notes and the free Teacher's Guide helped me understand each chapter and put this fiction in perspective, but they will not give you enough to pass the quizzes.
     
    Dustin likes this.
  11. SpoonyNix

    SpoonyNix Active Member

    You could watch the 3-part movie to get a good, general overview. I imagine that's 5-6 hours, though. Syfy channel production level, I'd say, but they follow the novel fairly well.

    Not saying you (Dustin) should. You're already well into the book, but perhaps others who are considering reading it.
     
  12. Life Long Learning

    Life Long Learning Active Member

    Link to the 3-part movie?
     
  13. SpoonyNix

    SpoonyNix Active Member

    https://www.atlasshruggedmovie.com/watch-now

    Looks like $4 each to stream on Vimeo. I think I watched a couple of them on Amazon Prime. One could probably get the set on Ebay for well under $20.

    All or nearly all the major characters are played by different actors in each film :D
     
    Life Long Learning likes this.
  14. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I'm not the reviews justify such an expenditure, but then, I've never seen them.
     
  15. SpoonyNix

    SpoonyNix Active Member

    Yeah, movie reviews, amiriiiight?
     
  16. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    Some of my favourite movies got bad ratings, but none were quite universally panned as these ones.
     
  17. SpoonyNix

    SpoonyNix Active Member

    I dunno. IMDB is at 5.6, but Amazon has 3.9 stars from 2600+ratings.

    Haha, now that I think about it, I remember watching film 1 at the movie theater. Should have saved the stub :D
     
  18. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    So I'm on Part III, Chapter 1 (the 20th chapter of 30.) Part II of the book definitely drags. Even the quality of the writing (the descriptiveness of the prose) improves in the third part. Very interesting. I'm on the home stretch now, and looking forward to finishing the book and moving on to the video series. I happened to find a copy of Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom at a thrift store for a quarter, so I'll be working on that once this course is done.
     
  19. Life Long Learning

    Life Long Learning Active Member

    I admire your willingness to think and learn.
     
  20. Life Long Learning

    Life Long Learning Active Member

    I admire your willingness to think and learn.
     

Share This Page