taking a few months to learn the fundamentals of ecology or climate change or genetics/epigenetics or re-learning the math I've forgotten. (These may seem too big to you, I assure you that when I was healthy I could and did learn such topics in such time periods.)

— Ian Welsh (@iwelsh) December 9, 2019

The fundamentals of most fields aren’t that hard if you’re properly intelligent. Any one can be learned to an undergraduate level in 3-4 months. I know because I’ve done it in many fields. There’s a reason I’ve read hundreds of textbooks; it was not just for fun.

And it’s not that I remember all the facts or even all the principles from all those fields, though I do remember a great deal. Not even an undergrad remembers that much, I must point out; studies shows this pretty conclusively. The reason to do all that reading and learning, then, is that it becomes latent knowledge that’s easily refreshed and it greatly increases the range and accuracy of your bullshit detector. This is absolutely invaluable. It prevents propaganda seepage, or at least greatly reduces it, and it allows you to understand how systems function or do not, which is the primary challenge of our era.

College, mostly, is a racket. If you care about knowledge it’s very easy to obtain yourself, especially now. There’s nothing stopping you but will and time.