To earn Participation credit for this Discussion, please respond to one or more of the following prompts after you have watched the lecture on this subject matter: (1) You may answer this question based on your own experience or from your own thoughts about the subject: "Why are you in college?" OR "What are some reasons someone would go to college?" (2) Share an example of the "Environmental Fallacy" or "Ecological Fallacy" from your own life or which you have learned about previously or just researched recently. (3) In addition to the variables of education, income, and age, what other factors do you think might affect the likelihood that voters will participate in future US elections? Why do you think this might be the case? (4) How do you define "success in school?" What variables do you think are causally related to your definition of success in school? (5) Share one or more examples that illustrate the idea that "correlation does not equal causation" from your own life experiences, from a class you've taken, and/or from some small bit of research you do in response to this question. (6) Share one or more examples that illustrate the idea that "correlation does not equal causation" from the experience of someone that you know or have read about (Be sure to respect this person's right to privacy if you answer this question). PART TWO (SEPERATE) To earn Participation credit for this Discussion, please respond to one or more of the following prompts which you will find following the clarification on terminology that you are about to read: I told you in an Announcement yesterday that you should write into your notes and mentally process the term "Marxists today" instead of the term "Neo-Marxists" which was used in the lecture. Last semester after I made and uploaded this lecture a student contacted me to tell me a little bit more about the concepts I was using. I encouraged that student to share those comments with their class so that we could all learn from them. That is what they did. I copy and paste those comments immediately below so that you may learn more about this subject as well. Again, following this comment are the prompts for this Discussion. Here is the message the student sent me last semester and which I learned a lot from: Some notes regarding Marxism/Communism as an ideology. It might be helpful to note that "Communism" (big C!) is a reference to Marxism or more often Marxism-Leninism. There are many other ideologies that are "communist" (little c!) that are simply non Marxist, such as anarcho-communism and Christian communism! The "dictatorship of the proletariat" as written in the Communist Manifesto was suggested to be furthered through a unified party of communists. In many of Marx's other writings, though, he stressed the ability of the working class to organize on their own. So, while Marx is certainly not against authority, you'll find a significant portion of Classical or Libertarian Marxists argue against this interpretation of Marx endorsing "revolutionary leaders" taking control. He certainly has not consistently made the argument for the single-party dictatorship that Lenin implemented in his own writings. I know that you mention this in the lecture, but it's important to emphasize how far Lenin took the liberty of interpretation in his writing. It's pure speculation, but he likely would have been against it. Furthermore, Marx uses "communism" and "socialism" interchangeably in his own writings. Making a distinction between the two as separate modes of production was something Lenin did that was totally separate from Marx. The way Marx uses the term "state" is also as a means of control of class society. So, Marx, in his original writings, actually bears more resemblance to anarchism than it would Stalinism. Marxism-Leninism also wasn't created by Lenin himself. It was codified by Stalin after Lenin died, and arguably contains many contradictions to Lenin's original thoughts. Trotskyism, or "Bolshevik-Leninism" as he referred to it, has been argued to be a more authentic successor to Lenin's theories. In general, Marxists simply refer to his methods of revolution ("praxis") as Leninism. Not Marxism-Leninism! I'm also not trying to be too nitpicky here. But Neo-Marxism, in its original time, was also a contemporary movement to Marxism-Leninism. Antonio Gramsci, perhaps the most important Neo-Marxist, came up with his ideas during fascist imprisonment in Italy. Many other strands of "Marxism" identify as post-Marxist, such as some writers from the Frankfurt School. * To earn Participation credit for this Discussion, answer one or more of the prompts: (1) Have you heard of, learned about, or researched a definition of the concept of a "theory" that is similar to or different from the one I used in our class lecture? Tell us what that definition is and/or how it is similar or different from the one I used. (2) Are there theories you know of, including in the hard or physical sciences, which have changed over time due to changing societal circumstances- economic, social, political, technological, and/or scientific- and/or by individuals who actually developed theories in one or another of these fields? (3) What is your view of human nature? Do you think that people are, in general, more or less trustworthy, more good or more bad (if not evil)? If you are not comfortable writing about yourself or simply don't want to write about yourself, tell us about someone in your life and about their view of human nature. (4) Do you have any personal experiences with life in a non-democracy and/or knowledge of how these systems operate from past learning or some brief research on your part? Share what you know with us. (5) In the lecture I stated that accurate predictions can sometimes be made without proper explanation such as, for example, predicting the sun rising in the east and setting in the west because the Earth is at the center or the Universe. Give another example or examples, from your own knowledge and/or short research, of situations in which predictions can be quite accurate despite faulty explanation.