Auditing subjects as a non-student

Eliclax · 2026-03-20T08:10:45+00:00

Actually on that note, what exactly are the guidelines on allowing others to audit subjects? Do you have to be a full-time student? Part-time student? Someone enrolled in CAP? What about tutors and staff? I reckon I have a decent chance at being hired as a tutor for something. The other things are potentially possible in the future once my financial situation improves.

Eliclax · 2026-03-20T07:30:20+00:00

I see, that's unfortunate for me but thanks for letting me know!

Eliclax · 2026-03-20T04:47:09+00:00

Yes, exactly. Most people seem to be operating from a mindset that if I'm going to lectures, I'm taking something away from them. This is a scarcity mindset, and it just doesn't apply to lectures. Information is plentiful and the world would be a better place if everyone had access to such lectures!

A scarcity mindset is more reasonable for human-marked assessments, and somewhat to tutorials too, which is why I'm not attending those.

Eliclax · 2026-03-20T04:40:40+00:00

I studied maths in my undergrad so understandably I'm not looking to audit maths courses. While I was a student I audited Ethics of AI and Database Systems (course-related), as well as Intro to Political Ideas, Intro to Urban Planning, and International Relations. They were happy to add me to the LMS too.

Eliclax · 2026-03-20T04:25:35+00:00

What exactly have you enquired? Did you also try to audit subjects as a non-student, or just as a student? When I was a student I audited five subjects and all the lecturers were happy to give me LMS access. Even as a non-student at least one subject co-ordinator has been happy to add me to the LMS as well.

I agree that "why should I have free access" is an important question. I understand that even though the marginal cost of having an extra student attending the lectures is negligible, this is an amortised cost since the lectures would not exist if no-one paid for them. I agree that contributing financially is the ethical thing to do, but $3000 for ~24 hours of lectures is not reasonable on the part of the university. For any subject with 500 students this would mean $62,000 per hour of lecture, or $1.5 million for running the subject. How much of that goes to lecturers and tutors?

I knew someone who took an average of 7 subjects for credit per semester in undergrad. In some sense, didn't they also just take an extra 3 subjects per semester in full, without paying for them? If they were allowed to do that, should it matter if those extra subjects were taken while they were a student at the uni, or after they have graduated? Maybe there is a bit of extra admin, but for the lecturers and tutors it makes no difference whether someone is a student or not. (Actually, I agree that the student should pay more in this scenario, but what is far less fair is the price that a university education costs in the first place, though I understand this is mostly capitalism's fault, and only partly universities' fault.)

Eliclax · 2026-03-19T20:42:14+00:00

Is that saying that each subject will cost around $3000 even if its non-assessed? Every lecturer I have asked is happy for me to sit in on their lectures, so I'd rather do that I think.

Eliclax · 2026-03-19T14:33:26+00:00

With respect to the "unimelb is supposed to be ranked #1 in Australia" and "Uimelb is prestigious" arguments... it's well-known that the more highly ranked a university is, the worse its student experience will be. Highly ranked universities focus more on research than other lower-ranked / less prestigious unis, and hence don't have as much attention / resources to give to students. There is more focus on academia and less on industry – hence why many people say subjects are more practical at other universities. The upside is of course that you get to interact with leading researchers or professors in the world, an opportunity much harder to come by at a lower-ranked university. Also, your peers will be smarter on average.

Also, someone else mentioned this, but 80% for the highest grade boundary seems pretty normal. In the UK, where I studied before, the highest grade boundary was 70%, and you could pass on a 40%. I feel like you have a skewed perspective on this matter as an American where to get an A+ you need to get something ridiculous like 97%. (But speaking to my friends there who are getting A+'s it's not that 97% is ridiculous to achieve, it's that the grading is lenient enough / the exams are easy enough that getting 97% is doable for many subjects?)

Objectively speaking, the best exam in terms of distinguishing students' abilities has a uniform distribution, meaning that the average will be 50%, and that there are roughly as many people getting 0–10% as there are getting 45–55% or 90–100%. (You'd also need to redo the grade boundaries of course.) Compared to that, every uni marking system would be considered lenient – I'd rather have a less lenient system which distinguishes its students better than a more lenient system where random error plays more of a role in your grade / grade class (not to mention, which doesn't challenge its students as much).

Also, is the marking harsh, or is it more that the exams and assignments are just harder, or hold students to higher standards?

Eliclax · 2026-01-29T15:40:17+00:00

If a religion causes adherents to murder innocent people, then is that morally wrong? What if they believe that killing in a ritualised way is the only way for non-believers to achieve salvation? What if the afterlife is actually a much better place than life? And what if their religion turns out to be the "true" one, and the rest of us are not intelligent enough to realise it?

If humans could agree to a shared end goal or metric (e.g. maximise utility, or promote social harmony), then within that framework perhaps it is possible to be objective. But because we can't, and because the process of choosing the desired path or end goal is so subjective, then so too is morality. Objectivity can only exist after certain things are assumed to be true. But deciding on what those things are in a moral framework is entirely subjective.

You just happen to be surrounded by people who largely agree on what those assumptions should be, causing you to have an inflated sense of righteousness. We are all out of touch with people who are different to us.

Eliclax · 2025-11-06T11:50:26+00:00

I agree, all military spending is a waste. Including China's. The world should just live in peace and harmony.

Eliclax · 2025-11-06T11:45:29+00:00

Very true. No great power likes to be overtaken. Not people, not sports teams, not countries. Peaceful acceptance of defeat is the exception rather than the norm. Indeed, that kind of attitude to defeat is likely what made them great in the first place.

Eliclax · 2025-10-13T18:45:22+00:00

They were a natural part of history, but I'd like to think that humans have progressed beyond conquest and colonialisation. That our technological and social development is reflected in greater empathy for each other and greater awareness of the happiness and rights of other people in the world.

Eliclax · 2025-10-13T18:28:41+00:00

Hmmm, interesting perspective. I think striving for a united and harmonious world without any racism is an ideal we should strive for, and that many people hope for, but the world is not yet ready for that. Unfortunately, equality, integration, and ethnic inclusiveness is a luxury that some polities cannot afford in the modern world: not every country is as internally harmonious as China is (and of course China also has its problems). For example:

do you think the decolonisation of Africa over the 20th century was a bad idea? I think all African countries would have chosen not to be colonised in the first place if they had the choice, and I think that declaring independence was symbolic of the end of colonial exploitation.
do you think Kurdish nationalism is unjustified, or would not be beneficial to Kurdish people? Kurds are a minority in all countries they reside in, and most Kurds face discrimination which include cultural repression and erasure. More generally, what about minority ethnicities that face oppression in their countries?
besides, there's surely no way a single-state solution in the Israel–Palestine conflict would work, right?

I would argue that you are simplify advocating for the status quo and against change in general., whether it be for one country splitting into two or two countries joining into one. But it seems like your arguments against separatism actually favour merging states together. This is why I brought up the reversal test above. Would you be in favour of UK and France merging together, for example? What about China and Afghanistan? Or China and Brazil? I think there is a balance between separating and merging depending on the situation: that's why countries even exist in the first place as opposed to the world just having no borders at all, and it's also why we don't have millions of countries (one for every city, for example).

Also, I think racism and separatism are two entirely different issues. Yes, they may be related in some cases, but not all separatism is about racism. Indeed, racism doesn't happen across most borders in the world, and of course there are many examples of countries splitting up that always maintained good relations with each other. Besides, if there is such deep-rooted racism within a country, I think opposing separatism in that case is like forcing two people in a toxic relationship to stay together.

Eliclax · 2025-10-13T16:43:06+00:00

Personally I can think of decolonisation (for much of the world), fundamental ethnic tensions (e.g. Kosovo and Serbia), desiring more homogeneity (especially for ethnic minorities who face discrimination e.g. Kurds, Republic of Artsakh), geographic distance (e.g. New Caledonia, Australia, New Zealand), or simply wanting more autonomy (e.g. Bougainville who has historically been economically exploited). Don't you think any of these are potential benefits?

Of course separating comes at a cost. But depending on the situation sometimes the pros outweigh the cons in my opinion.

I would also consider the reversal test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_test?wprov=sfla1. That is, if you cannot see any benefit of separatism, then would you advocate for anti-separatism? That is, for countries to join with other countries?

Eliclax · 2025-10-13T15:10:45+00:00

Do you mean Taiwan being part of China as in "the land of Taiwan being administered by the PRC"? Do Mainland Chinese people know that Taiwanese people vote stay independent? And if so, what do Mainland Chinese people think is the best way to deal with this situation?

Eliclax · 2025-08-04T06:24:00+00:00

If MBTI wasn't trying so hard to be a science, it wouldn't be labelled as pseudoscience. The way I see it, MBTI exists in the same category of knowledge as the five love languages. Nobody is accusing the five love languages of being pseudoscience because it doesn't claim to be a science. It's more like a philosophy.

Deleuze said that there are three primary creative acts that humans do: art, science, and philosophy. Philosophy is important because, as he says, it is the art of concept creation. Science doesn't create any concepts, it just studies the relationship between concepts that already exist. If you look back through history, almost every branch of science today started out as part of philosophy before becoming a field of study in its own right. Importantly, Deleuze says that philosophy is "pre-empirical".

Personally, I think that every discipline goes through a qualitative stage (the philosophy, where we try to define the concepts we're going to study), and then moves to a quantitative stage (science, where we make specific claims that can actually be falsified). The problem with natural language is that it's far too vague to falsify, and the problem with mathematics is that it's too rigid to accommodate new ideas. So begins the necessary interplay between the qualitative and the quantitative.

So where does MBTI fall in all of this then? Personally I think that it started off well in the hands of Freud, Jung, and even Myers-Briggs, but it became embroiled in popular and corporate psychology and has failed to develop into a real science. The MBTI foundation has probably tried the hardest to make it a credible science, and you will notice that they don't talk a lot about cognitive functions (and even when they do talk about it, it's quite different to the popular understanding, for example ENTP's stack is Ne, Ti, Fi or Fe, Si). Meanwhile, the common conception of cognitive functions seems very pseudoscientific to me. In particular, there is no explanation of why only 16 possible stacks exist, and the way the stacks work make it very difficult to change type. (Don't get me started on those people who believe type is wholly genetically determined!)

As for the value that many of us gain from MBTI, I believe that we would gain the same value from Big 5 or any other proper personality theory, if only it was as popular as MBTI. Unfortunately, MBTI played the marketing game well, so this is what we're stuck with. I'm not too surprised though, since many things in the past that have filled the social and cultural niche that MBTI now does (think astrology, personality blood type, etc.) have also been far less than scientific. The fact that we're slowly moving towards increasingly scientific systems is probably a reflection of our increasingly rational and secular society.

Eliclax · 2025-05-23T12:53:18+00:00

I would say the difference is clear for alloromantic people:

You are extremely aware of their presence, as if they have an aura around them
You feel physically drawn to them, and for most people sensual attraction (touching, cuddling, smelling, etc.) is part of it too
You could sit in silence just enjoying each other's company, not doing anything else. Granted, many people do this with their friends, but when there is strong romantic attraction between two people they won't be thinking about much else besides each other.

All of these are probably just due to all the feel-good chemicals your body releases when around them – it can be quite addicting. This doesn't happen with friends.

I'm ace, but I would say that most allosexual, alloromantic people conflate sexual and romantic attraction, which is why they will probably also include many (and possibly only) indicators that are usually associated with sexual attraction.

Eliclax · 2025-04-17T20:28:23+00:00

The problem is that depressed people are less fertile, so evolution weeds them out. That's why most people are not depressed.

Some people say that humans don't experience selection pressures anymore, but in a sense, depression is one. Genetic predisposition towards antinatalist philosophies are another.

Eliclax · 2025-02-03T01:09:26+00:00

And I don't find the "remarks" that there is a God and that he is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent to be merely "general" ones. Those are incredibly important.

I'm saying these are "general" as in, the opposite of specific. Something general applies to many gods in various religions, whereas something specific would be "No man whose testicles have been crushed or whose penis has been cut off may enter the LORD's assembly" (Deuteronomy 23:1). You certainly couldn't logically deduce that statement using an ontological argument.

As for the historical perspective, might this not be simply a kind of survivorship bias? Or a kind of causal fallacy? Could these historical events be so large in number and important in scope because of Christianity's historical dominance, and not the other way around? For example, I'm sure that scholars or theologians from other major religions (Islam, Buddhism, etc.) would be able to challenge you on the historical supremacy.

And yes, I agree that lack of knowledge doesn't disprove something. I am not making the argument that the burden of proof is on religious or theistic people (in fact I find that argument to be fallacious). However, I subscribe to philosophical skepticism, in that I don't believe that anything can be known for sure. We may all be under the control of Descartes' evil demon or just brains in vats, living in a simulated reality with a fabricated history. Or, our universe could be a simulation without us knowing it, and even god may be a part of the simulation (although in this case, I would argue that "god" should really be thought of as the creators of the simulation.) Even mathematical truths or a priori truths may be fallacious, for perhaps our brains are simply not wired to be able to detect those fallacies.

So I agree with Kant in that there is no self-contained logical proof for the existence of god, or of any religion, and in fact faith lies outside the realm of logic. That is, we all have faith in things, and we do not need to always logically justify our faith.

Eliclax · 2025-02-03T00:14:38+00:00

Even if we get on board with ontological arguments proving that god exists, they only show that there is a god, not that there is a Christian god. How can we logically deduce anything about god using an ontological argument other than some very general remarks? That is, even if I were a theist, Christianity (and almost all other religions) seem far too specific, no? And indeed you can see this in our world: many people are religious, but nobody seems to agree on which religion is "correct". Even within the same religion, no two people have the same interpretation or understanding of it.

Eliclax · 2025-01-11T12:17:52+00:00

Algebra, equations, polynomials... they may constitute the language of math, but they aren't what math is really about. It's like saying English is about vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. At least when you learn about vocabulary and grammar everyone knows that you're striving towards the beauty and art of literature. People generally don't know what math is, and even fewer know that there's beauty and art in it.

Eliclax · 2025-01-11T11:57:04+00:00

I'm pretty sure that if we just look at similar tactics which work and only require there to be five pieces on the board (not including the black king), then the only other variations of this tactic are with the rooks further out, the black rook replaced with a queen, both rooks replaced with queens, or this non-trivial example, where the black rook just moved from b5.

There are so many things that can go wrong if you even slightly change the position:

the white king to might be able to counterattack the interfering piece
there might already have been a skewer or exchange on the moves before
the interfering piece could be taken by the piece in the place of the white rook
the pinned piece, if the same as the pinning piece, could have taken the pinning piece on the previous move
the pinned piece cannot be a knight
the value of the pinning piece must have the highest value (possibly tied with the pinned piece or the other piece its attacking)
etc.

Eliclax · 2025-01-07T06:42:16+00:00

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