Feynman on doubt

It is imperative in science to doubt; it is absolutely necessary, for progress in science, to have uncertainty as a fundamental part of your inner nature. To make progress in understanding, we must remain modest and allow that we do not know. Nothing is certain or proved beyond all doubt. You investigate for curiosity, because it is unknown, not because you know the answer. And as you develop more information in the sciences, it is not that you are finding out the truth, but that you are finding out that this or that is more or less likely.

That is, if we investigate further, we find that the statements of science are not of what is true and what is not true, but statements of what is known to different degrees of certainty… Every one of the concepts of science is on a scale graduated somewhere between, but at neither end of, absolute falsity or absolute truth.

--from chapter 13 of The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman 

How the federal student loan changes could impact borrowers [ PBS NewsHour ]

MORE THAN A DEGREE: Reimagining Higher Education to Meet Future Demands | Mlondi Khoza | TEDxUCT

How AI Enhances – and Diminishes — Learning [ Amanpour and Company ]

"Cautionary Tale": NYC's The New School Guts Faculty & Staff as Colleges Intensify Austerity [ Democracy Now! ]

More Than a Dozen Colleges Will Quietly Cross the $100,000 Mark This Year [ NYmag ]

 The flava:

[ money money money money . . . ]

The article:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/colleges-hundred-thousand-dollars-per-year.html

Jay Caspian Kang on A.I. in college

The Despair of the Professor in the Age of A.I.

By Jay Caspian Kang

https://www.newyorker.com/news/fault-lines/the-despair-of-the-professor-in-the-age-of-ai

New College of Florida: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Vermont’s Most Bizarre Real-Estate Listing Is a Free College Campus [ WSJ ]

The flava:

A year after Green Mountain College closed for good in 2019, the school found an unlikely buyer for its stately campus in rural Vermont.  

Raj Bhakta was a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” an unsuccessful congressional candidate and an embattled whiskey entrepreneur. But he had some big ideas for the property—his plan would include 93 hotel rooms, 18 condos, a micro-distillery, restaurant and spa. He spent less than $5 million for the whole campus.

Six years later, it remains mostly empty, aside from a small elementary school founded by Bhakta’s wife, with the bigger development plans called off. He is now trying to give away the land and 16 buildings.

“If you ever want to feel like you’re going nuts,” the 50-year-old said in an interview, “buy a college campus in the middle of nowhere. . . . ”   

The article:

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/vermonts-most-bizarre-real-estate-listing-is-a-free-college-campus-a499277a

Spelman College Names an A.I. Expert as Its New President [ NYTimes ]

The flava:

Spelman College, the historically Black liberal arts school for women, on Friday named a roboticist and artificial intelligence expert as its next president.

The selection of Ayanna M. Howard, the dean of Ohio State University’s engineering college, represents a departure for a 145-year-old liberal arts school whose modern presidents have included doctors, an anthropologist and a psychologist.

But as the higher education industry grapples with the rise of A.I. and how the technology may reshape the global work force, Dr. Howard argued that liberal arts students at places like Spelman should lean into the development of A.I. . . .     

The article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/us/spelman-college-president-ayanna-howard.html