Moreover, it's a very hard thing to test for in a standardized way. How can you leave no child behind, if you don't have a standard by which to determine if they are behind? Facts, on the other hand, are very easy to test for.
Logic is no harder to test for than math skills: it's basically just math with words. I propose that basic logic be taught simultaneously with basic algebra, and as someone presently in school to be an elementary teacher I intend to try to see that that happens, at least in my classes. And I'll market it to the kids as a tool to make the factual tests easier.
Just because some people don't swear a lot - which I stopped doing before I made Sergeant in the Army - some people make assumptions about them that are totally lame. (Emphasis added).
The speed laws I would most favor (if not just a simple "don't be a road hazard", and try accusations of such in actual courts like they should be) would be regulations on relative speed above or below the average flow of traffic, whatever that happens to be. No required, absolute, numeric speed limits - just, say, "plus or minus 15 mph of the average speed of traffic", whatever the average speed of traffic naturally tends to be.
Of course, posted speed *recommendations* would still be a good idea, for informational reasons, i.e. "research suggests that this is the safest average speed for this section of road". And use the real numbers, don't round them down cause you assume people will exceed them. Give people real safety information, and then only ticket them if they blatantly ignore it and other pertinent conditions and create an unsafe situation. These posted recommendations would also be of use in prosecution of people who cause real damage, in that they were warned of what the safe speed there was, and if they ignored it, that could construe reckless endangerment.
To address everyone who's calling me an asshole, you seem to have missed the point that I'm speaking of a *two lane* (each direction) highway, so "one lane over" is the slowest, rightmost lane - and that lane is usually dotted with cars going well below the speed limit, since this is a semi-rural freeway that is used for cross-town traffic (so people are often merging on or off), plus it seems people are afraid of the cops and overcompensate by driving too slow. So my options in this situation are:
1) Stay in the right lane, drive with everybody going to 10-15mph slower than the limit, and take much longer to get to my destination.
2) Stay in the left lane, speed with all the maniacs, and risk a traffic ticket (amongst other dangers).
3) Weave back and forth, merging into the slow lane every time someone wants to speed past me, and back again so I'm not stuck with the slow traffic.
4) Stay in the left lane, passing the slow traffic, and going as fast as I legally can, possibly causing some other people to weave dangerously if they're in such a big hurry and/or don't care about traffic tickets.
None of these options really suits me, but I choose #4 because that's the only one where I'm neither sacrificing my own convenience nor breaking the law nor creating a dangerous situation myself. If some people want to weave through slower traffic on the right to go past someone who's going as fast as they legally can, then *they're the nuisance*. And I don't really blame the people who want to go faster, just the maniacs who drive *way* faster and then weave dangerously so they can continue speeding.
What I blame are the traffic laws that force me to choose between driving safely (with the average speed of faster traffic) or obeying the law. Those same laws also create this situation to an extent, as they encourage people to drive slower than is sensible as well. And I've gotten my fair share of speeding tickets for going ~5mph over around here, so saying "oh just go ahead and speed a little no on will care and it's safer to speed with traffic" won't fly with me. The cops are the ones at fault here, and/or the legislation that they're enforcing. I'm being forced by their bad laws to choose the lesser evil. They're the assholes, not me.
And yes, on bigger highways where there are slower lanes going around the speed limit, I will stay there and out of the left lane. But on a 2-lane highway with slow traffic, you can't fault me for going as fast as legally possible in the fast lane.
In California, it's legal to turn into any lane when you're turning left...
Also in California here, and I'd like to add that the GP was incorrect about passing lanes here as well. The left lane is the "fast lane", not the "passing lane", and if you are driving at the speed limit you are welcome to stay there as long as you'd like. I make a lot of long drives on two-lane highways along the coast where speed traps are prevalent and so are people who like driving 10-15 miles under the limit, so I cruise the entire drive in the left lane going right at 65. Plenty of assholes come flying up on my tail wanting to go 90MPH, but I'm under no obligation to merge every time one of them comes up (and then back again to pass the next slowpoke) just because they want to speed.
Disclaimer: I believe I am a neurotypical but I don't really know how to tell. (In fact, the less context I create for myself, perhaps the more my mind can consider, so usually I avoid defining myself)
I think that's a good approach to take. I also dislike categorizing myself, particularly because I never seem to fit nicely into any category, but also, as you said, because doing so is self-limiting. The way I see it, the 'autistic' mindset and the 'neurotypical' mindset are just the far ends of a continuum, and not only do people fall at different places in between those points, but they don't stay at any one point from moment to moment. As I think I said, I notice myself swinging between the ends a lot; I can be both, just not at the same time.
This is a great comment, thanks for posting it. The concept that *there is no direct evidence that people other than the observer feel anything* is something that I never decided to consider before, although I have always wondered about others' inner experiences and if they even have one. To know that someone else actually considers these things is interesting.
It's actually not an uncommon philosophical topic. It's usually discussed in that milieu as "solipsism", if you want to Google for other conversations or papers about it. Solipsism is actually a little broader than just this though: it's the notion that there's really no way to tell that all of the universe isn't a hallucination or dream from which one cannot awake, and that you may actually be the only thing that exists. A lot of times people say something "reduces to solipsism" as an insult to whatever they're talking about, as though solipsism is an absurd position that you wouldn't want to take, but I see solipsism as a truism: yeah, there's no way to tell that anything other than me really exists. So? In that case the universe still seems exactly how it was before, so why should I behave any differently? If I can't wake up from a dream, ever, then that dream is reality to me, and I ought to treat it as such.
Likewise, whether or not people have inner experiences makes absolutely no difference whatsoever in how other people seem to me. They still behave the same way, and my behaviors still have the same impact on them (and their behaviors), and so on. It's basically a meaningless thing to talk about "inner experiences" at all, as much as it would be to say that there is some big invisible, incorporeal, odorless, tasteless, soundless thing sitting in my living room. That's indiscernible from saying that there not some big thing in my living room (since this supposed big thing is utterly undetectable), so why bother even mentioning it? It makes no difference.
I have a friend that thought, when he was a kid, that he was the only real person and everyone else was a robot. It's interesting because I have thought this as well when I was a kid, and although I continued to consider things as if it were true, I also continued to function as if everyone else were real, perhaps to try and discern if they were or not, to see if I could catch them slipping up. There's no way I could really ever know, but getting caught up in the "human drama" by acting as if it is true is no more right/wrong than acting as if everyone else isn't real. There's no way to know either way.
Precisely! And not only can you not know either way, it's no difference either way - which is why you can't know. Me being the only thing that exists, and having a bunch of experiences of things which don't "really" exist, is no different to me than if I exist and have experiences of things which do "really" exist. All I can know is the experiences. And hell - since my only experience of "myself" is through some sort of experience of myself, there's really no point in saying "I" exist either. There are experiences with the subject of "me" and a variety of objects which compose "the universe", and that is all I can have experience of. There may be other experiences with other subjects (and thus, other subj
If you wanna know how it works and how to get it to do what you want, well, you gotta learn how it works. You must look behind the public mask, grasshopper, and see the reality throuth the lens of the CLI. You must learn to call things by their True Names, which can't be spoken by the mouse.
This is precisely why I *used to* love Apple. The old (pre-OSX) GUI *was* looking directly at every file with their real names and all of that. Using other GUIs, including OSX and of course all varieties of Windows, feels less... direct. Like it a sham pretty face put up to hide the uglyness happening underneath. As opposed to just *not being ugly in the first place* and letting users look directly at it.
Now, not only is the Finder hiding (to some extent) the true nature of the FS structure, but programs are hiding even the structure in the Finder. For example, I really hate the way iPhoto wants to keep all its pictures (the real files) organized in funky folders full of aliases, while presenting it to the user that their files are actually neatly organized as the user directed. It contributes to the "I store my files in Word" syndrome, where users think their files are *in* some program, since they're taught to access the files by opening the program and getting the files fthrough the program's interface - instead of locating the actual files and opening them with some program.
Your docs are not in Word. Your music is not in iTunes. Your photos are not in iPhoto. Clueless users, know where your files actually are - and stupid developers, stop trying to hide them from the users!
The autistic individual tends to treat everything as an object, and they can recognize form and substance, but not emotionality. However, they can learn it, given enough conditioning and reinforcement, albeit it is very artificial and prone to error if certain situations occur which were not anticipated.
As someone who is naturally very autistic but has learned to understand the neurotypical mindset, I can tell you that this is dead-on.
The big difference between a neurotypical and an autistic mindset is that autistics see everything literally, as it is, and do not like to jump to conclusions based on insufficient data. (Though we are often very good at pattern recognition and educated guessing, we recognize that these are guesses and don't mistake them for facts). This quickly gives rise to the typical 'defining characteristic' of an autistic personality in not recognizing others' emotional states, because *there is no direct evidence that people other than the observer feel anything*. An individual's only experience of "inner experiences" is their own, and it is by definition impossible to experience another's inner experiences. To the procedurally-oriented autistic mind, this leads to the conclusion that there's no reason to suspect that such "other people's inner experiences" exist. It's an alien concept to the autistic.
To the neurotypical, certain behaviors exhibited by other people resemble their own behaviors which are triggered, it seems, by "emotions" or "inner experiences", and so the neurotypical jumps to the conclusion that other people have such inner experiences - that there is some "self" or "I" or "ego" or "soul" that is feeling and thinking in there, and not just a bunch of matter that behaves in certain complex ways. I believe this also explains why severely neurotypical people are so prone to religious beliefs in God or gods - if you're already making the jump to ascribe agency (a necessarily undetectable quality) to certain objects we call "people", why not ascribe such agency to other objects or phenomena, or the universe as a whole?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing to do. In fact it's something that borderline autistic cases like your typical geek are often very comfortable with - the anthropomorphization of computer programs that don't "like" each other, or which "fight" over certain resources, or which "talk" to one another. Geeks understand that these aren't literally true descriptions, inasmuch as we are not ascribing inner experience to these programs, but they are very useful, convenient, and accurate shorthand for describing their behaviors. It doesn't take much to realize that talk of other people's thoughts and feelings and inner experiences is really just the same sort of short hand, and that to any given person's honest and literal perspective, all other people really *are* just objects. (Which is not to say that they should be treated unethically or that there is no basis for ethics, but that's a whole other can of worms there).
And it doesn't take a whole lot more to go ahead and extend this shorthand to other complex systems, or even the universe as a whole; and from that comes a sort of pantheistic view of God. To talk of "God" is just to ascribe agency to the whole universe, a thinking feeling intelligence "behind" it all, the same way that we can ascribe agency to other people. Both of these cases are equally valid or invalid. They're invalid in that neither one is literally true, inasmuch as it's fundamentally impossible to ever have evidence that they are true, and so we have no real reason to ever think that they are true. But they are both valid, inasmuch as the ascription of agency to other people, and understanding the nature of those "agents", is useful for modelling interactions between people (including yourself) which should ultimately be of benefit to the individual using this model; and likewise, the ascription of agency to the universe and the understanding its nature (even in personified terms) p
When addressing an autistic person, I'd just be explicit and matter-of-factly, but in a nice way. Like: "I enjoyed the conversation but I want to go and do something else now. Talk to you later", or "Thanks for the chat but I'm tired now and want to rest. See you tomorrow". A person who can't read hints will appreciate getting unambigious communication for a change.
I'd like to add MUCH MUCH emphasis on the "in a nice way" part. When I was younger I was even more prone to ramble than I am now, and a teacher once instructed students to tell me "I don't want to talk to you, Forrest," since I wasn't getting the social cues. (Yes, I am borderline autistic and was much more so when I was younger). But just because we don't pick up on others' emotions well doesn't mean we don't have our own, and other students doing that *pissed me the hell off*, not only them but at the teacher who I figured out had told them to do so.
So yes, be clear and explicit, but also be very gentle. Treat conversations with austitic-type people like internet chats: there is no body language, everything must be communicated verbally, but there's still polite and impolite ways of getting your message across. (This probably explains why autistic type people, including most geeks, are so fond of internet communication...)
I don't know...I like being able to get up-to-the-minute bus schedules on a device I carry in my pocket.
Agreed, that's why I said I'd love a tiny (phone-sized) pocket computer. The thing I want is not a lot different from a phone, it's just that the approach to it is very different. I want one device that can power a (variable) lot of different tools - not just a lot of different tools crammed into one device.
For contrast, imagine a computer which had "Web Mode", "Word Mode", "Video Mode", etc, all built into it, instead of being a device on which you can install whatever programs you can get your hands on. (Although sadly, things are starting to get like that now, with many programs all wanting to be full-screen all the time, and with users thinking their documents are "in Word" or their music is "in iTunes", as though these programs were different places in their computer. Not to mention users treating software more like options for your computer [e.g. "does it have $PROGRAM?" when buying a PC], as opposed to separate products which run ON your computer. Imagine if people treated furniture as options for their home, rather than separate products that go IN your home).
You mentioned a swiss army knife, and conveniently ignored my Leatherman comment. Swiss Army knives are pretty lousy at a lot of tasks. My Leatherman is surprisingly good at a fair number of tasks.
I'm unfamiliar with Leathermen, but after a quick Google I see that it's basically the same type of product as Swiss Army Knife (I'll take your word that it's better quality or whatever). That's fine for knives - you can't really have a multifunction knife without doing it that way, until someone can come up with a tool that morphs like the T-1000 from Terminator 2.
But digital devices don't have to be like that - their tools (software) really CAN morph into just about anything. What I want is, by analogy, a comfortable handle with a morphing blade (nice hardware with which to run software), not a Leatherman or a Swiss Army Knife (a bunch of specialized modes stuck in one device). With digital products that's entirely possible and I see no reason why it shouldn't be done that way.
Even the names reflect this. I'm never buying any multipurpose portable device which markets itself as "a phone (plus other options!)". I want anything which is primarily a phone to be JUST a phone. But a "mobile unit" or some such, which can function as a phone or a camera or a PDA or an MP3 player or what have you... one of those I'll gladly buy. Provided the name change isn't the only difference between the two of them.
Why is it that just about every missive I've ever read about how people never use multi-function devices was generated on the most powerful multi-function device in history?
Precisely! I think the issue so many people have with "convergence" is that the devices which have that term applied to them are devices which at one time did a single utilitarian function, and had OTHER single-function devices stuck in the same box with it, and so on until you've got the digital equivalent of a Swiss-Army knife. I too dislike this: if I'm getting a phone, I want *a phone* and not also a camera and a portable web browser stuck into my phone.
On the other hand, if someone were to make a tiny portable computer with telephony software, photo or video capture software, and so on - and of course a camera and speakers and microphone to make those usable - that would be awesome. Because it wouldn't just have "phone mode", "camera mode", "web mode", and so on. Such a device is not a modal swiss-army knife - it's a general-purpose computer. I would expect to be able to add and remove programs, organize the data on it in my own way, and so on: in a free-form, non-modal, general-purpose fashion.
The problem is, nobody seems to want such a thing, because they don't know what they'd use it for. Tiny pocket multimedia computer? Only a geek needs one of those. But a phone... well, everybody need a phone. And hell, it's got a camera in it too. And it can surf teh intarweb k00d d00d! I need to get me a phone like that!
I think both you and the GP have valid and noncontradictory points.
The GP makes the point that any distinction we make is artificial and arbitrary, that everything is in fact a continuum.
You make the point that we understand things by categorizing them as X or not-X.
There is a kind of philosophical nondualism (c.f. Taoism) which encompasses both of these concepts. It is the notion that, while there are no actual distinctions in reality as separate from our understanding of it (as Kant would say, the "noumenal" reality), we can only ever hope to understand reality in terms of such distinctions. To better understand the complete continuum we must seek to better understand where the endpoints and midpoint of it are: in other words by figuring out where exactly something shifts from being "life" to "not life", in this example.
I have a phrase I like to use for this sort of reconciliation of divergent concepts (especially in political positions, e.g. capitalism vs socialism, or egotism vs altruism, etc): "embrace the paradox and see that it is not".
In cases like this though, I am inclined to side with the GP, at the moment at least. Defining what is life has the same difficulties as defining what is a person: it seems any definition you come up with either excludes some things we'd normally consider life (like viruses) or people (like babies), or includes things we normally wouldn't consider life (like fire) or people (like domestic animals). Defining where life begins in the evolutionary ladder faces the same challenges as defining where an individual's life begins, and as best as I can determine the only logical answer you can give is either "everything is alive" or "nothing is alive", for any non-arbitrary distinction you try to make ends up seeming unsatisfactory - though really, neither are those two options, either.
I normally like to pride myself on having well thought-out answers to (or at least opinions on) pretty much every philosophical problem out there, but this one has always seemed intractable even to me.
Nice summary of why the Eagles don't intervene, but I think it's important to add (for those who don't already know) *why* the Valar have this policy of non-intervention.
Long story short (and the Simlarillion is a very long story), the last time the Gods stepped out to do battle on Middle Earth, various mountain ranges were created and destroyed, and a continent or two sank into the ocean. The couple times before that cause even worse cataclysms - the map of the world was originally round and symmetrical before it was reshaped by those great early battles with Morgoth (Sauron's old master, and a really not nice guy).
Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron, and even the Balrogs are all of the same 'race' as the Gods, called the Ainur. All of the above were members of the lesser class of Ainur, the Maiar - demigods, basically. This is why Gandalf could stand toe-to-toe with the Balrog in Moria. If Gandalf had been so inclined (and permitted), he could have personally waded into Mordor flash-frying orcs left and right and duked it out with Sauron himself. Since Sauron was easily the more powerful of the two, he would have won, but the damage done in the meanwhile would have been terrible. If the Valar themselves came over and tried to put the smack down, Sauron could have been easily destroyed - but only by taking a lot of Middle Earth with him.
So basically, the Gods don't intervene for the same reason we didn't just nuke Cuba back during the Cold War. Nobody really wants to pull out the big guns, cause in the end, the victor won't really be left with much to rule over. That's a nice metaphor, now that I think about it - the great powers of Middle Earth are fighting a sort of cold war, each side hoping not to have to really fight with all their might, just playing chess with the mortal pawns of the world.
To bring it back to the Eagles - yes, they could have used the Eagles. Sauron would have countered with Nazgul. So the Valar would have had to send something else, perhaps a much larger force of Eagles. Sauron probably would have dug up some Balrogs if that were the case. And so on, each side having to escalate in power to counter the other and before you know it there's fire and explosions and chaos and what exactly are we trying to save again? This pile of rubble?
Apple's iTunes music store sells music. We all know that when you buy music, you're buying intellectual property (a "license" to listen to a creative work), not just a physical disc of aluminum and plastic. Isn't that why so many people here on Slashdot complain that when they buy a CD/DVD, and their kid wrecks it, they should be entitled to another copy, free of charge? Now, you're saying that record labels sell physical media, not the creative work itself? Which is it?
The notion that you're buying "intellectual property" comes more from the media distributors than the geeks here on Slashdot. The geeks here simply respond "well if that's the case then I want a replacement on my damaged disc", to point out the hypocrisy of the record labels (asking them, as you said, "Which is it?"). I imagine most people here would rather buy the physical media and use the data on it however they please, rather than buy a license to use some "intellectual property".
From that perspective, it makes perfect sense to say that Apple doesn't sell records/CDs/etc. They have a data distribution service (and associated program) for audio and video files. That said, not knowing the language of their original agreement, if it was something to the effect of "we will stay out of the music business", then iTunes definitely is the music business... but again, as other have pointed out, they don't use the Apple brand name anywhere in the iTunes store (the music-selling business), only on the iTunes program (computer software).
This is going a bit off topic, and I gather you're right in the point you're making in your post, but your title is all off. Centrifugal force *is* gravity.
Aside from the obvious bit about gravity = acceleration (as the "force" in centrifugal force is actually the centripetal force involved accelerating the object away from its inertial path) that inertial path itself is in fact caused by the effects of the gravity of the rest of the universe influencing the system in question. (I recently wrote a paper partly about this for a Philosophy of Space and Time class. It's online here [PDF] if you'd like to read it. For what it's worth, the paper got an A, and the professor was a physisicist. The bit about mass/inertia/gravity begins in the middle of page 6).
Thus the "centrifugal" force you experience pushing you against the walls (or the walls pushing on you) in the teacup ride at Disneyland is in every way the same thing as the effect you feel on your feet pushing you down on the ground (or the ground pushing back up on you). Both are electromagnetic forces interfering with your ability to follow a geodesic, and all geodesics are determined by the curvature of spacetime, i.e. gravity.
I remember hearing about some of the early (Austrian?) spinning superconductor experiments which were largely dismissed many years ago, and I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a long time since I find it so fascinating, but as it's always dismissed as crackpottery, I don't really talk about it much.
But here is a nice opportunity to ask some simple questions for anyone out there who understands the physics described here a little better than me...
The effect in question is not gravitational per se, but rather gravitomagnetic, right? That is, it affects (and is produced by) moving masses in the same manner that an electromagnetic field affects and is produced by moving charges? It seems it would make perfect sense then, that one could create such a gravitomagnet via a rapidly spinning mass, just as spinning charges create electromagnets. I imagine that the reason we do not often notice such gravitomagnetic effects is because the force of gravity (or the amount of mass ordinary matter has, if you like) is so much less than the electomagnetic force. and thus much greater acceleration is needed to produce any noticable effect.
The point of my inquiry here, however, is whether this electromagnetic-gravitomagnetic similarity extends further. Namely, if one takes an electromagnet and moves it back and forth, an electromagnetic wave is produced. A lot of these waves together we call electromagnetic radiation. Would it make sense, then, that a rapidly spinning, oscillating mass would produce gravitomagnetic waves, or gravitomagnetic radiation?
I've been wondering if the Gravity Probe experiments that are described in lay news sources as trying to detect "gravity waves" from planets like Mercury were in fact measuring something like I described above. My question though, is what effect does / would a gravitomagnetic wave have? Would such a wave push or pull the object it collides with? My intuition says that, as photons push what they collide with, these gravtomagnetic 'particles' / waves would pull what they strike.
Is that what "gravitons" are supposed to be?
Someone with more knowledge of contemporary physics, please explain. Thank you.
Am I the only one who saw the title and subconsciously dropped the "s" from "Adults" in reading it, and thus thought this would be about some raunchier version of those Japanese dating sim games?
I'm going to assume that you plan to teach at a public school.
That is correct. Initially, at least. I hope to eventually move into one-on-one instruction for students challenged by (i.e. fed up with) the public school system, contacting *though* the public school system, as such an instructor was provided for me in middle school, and it was one of the best educational experiences of my life. I long to provide that to other children in similar need.
I posit that in that situation you do not serve the students. Your job exists not because the students want you to teach, but because the parents and taxpayers want you to teach, and *they* pay your salary.
I hold that even in that circumstance I still "work for" my students in the sense that I am there to serve their needs. This is why I said that the issue is not who pays the instructors, and also why I said I would be working for the public as a whole, not the children in particular. (The children are a part of the public, and everybody is somebody's child, and most of the public goes through this school system, so working for the children is working for the public).
The attitude I take is that there will be tests that the students are required to take, and that I am paid to administer to them, covering a certain subject matter, and to that extent I will be working for the school district. But the sense in which I mean an instructor "works for" the students is such that his job is to make it as easy as possible for the students to understand what they will need to understand to pass the tests.
Basically, my job will be to make it as easy as possible for the students to pass the tests that will be required of them, by preparing them as best as possible for those test. I don't believe the best method for this is "teaching to the test", but rather teaching general methods of thought which will make it easy to learn and recall or just figure out facts as needed, as well as the particular facts which they will be tested on. People are naturally curious and deep down want to learn, but that natural inquisitiveness is drilled out of people by the same system which purportedly intends to educate them. I intend to help nourish it instead, and show people that learning can be easy if you don't make it a chore. The last thing should be doing in teaching students something is making it hard for them.
To illustrate, imagine that there is a standardized test mandated by law that everyone must take and pass, say at the age of 30 - but without any law mandating any training programs to prepare people for it. All the state cares is that this test is taken and passed. Certain people or organizations who had no involvement in the creation of this standardized test will be paid by the state to administer the test. You can easily imagine in this situation that organizations will spring up who charge to give preparatory training for this test - their job is to make it easier for you to pass it. The easier you fly through those tests, the better they're doing their job; and since they can't change the test material, "making it easier" doesn't mean making the material any less comprehensive, it means teaching better.
Now imagine that a single organization offers both of these services, getting paid by the state to administer the test and getting paid by the people to prepare them for it. Then imagine that the state offers a universal grant for such training programs. Voila, you have the public school system. There are still two separate jobs, or tasks if you will - administer the test, and prepare students for it - but they are now performed by the same individuals and paid for from the same source. Doesn't make the two jobs the same one: one serves the state (the administration), one serves the people (the students).
Although in a democratic society, the state and the people are supposed to be one and the same . . .
Right. And could you point out where in the Constitution an exception is made for defamatory speech, speech in the furtherance of a crime, speech that will cause a imminent and serious public harm (shouting "fire" in a crowded theater), speech that will provoke the reasonable man to violence (fighting words), or speech that divulges trade secrets or otherwise violates a contract?
Right, and for that reason, such acts are not legitimately illegal in the United States. By "legitimately" I mean, by the Supreme Law of the Land, the Constitution, any acts of legislation declaring such things illegal are prohibited, and thus any such legislation on the books is illegitimate. Not that that will stop anyone from trying to enforce it.
Now, you can argue that they *should* be illegal, but for that to actually happen, you'll need a constitutional amendment.
For that matter, can you point out what in the Constitution prevents states from regulating speech as well as Congress? (First Amendment only says "Congress shall make no law...." It says nothing about states.)
That would be where the 14th Amendment comes into play, prohibiting the states from violating the rights of American citizens. (In other words, state legislatures are restricted by the Constitution precisely in the ways that Congress is).
Your absolutist pseudo-textualism does not work.
I think it is you who are the pseudo-textualist. I just wrote another post on this same topic yesterday.
If you are going to refer to some source as justification (either for your thoughts or your actions), and use that as evidence that such-and-such is right, then you had damn well take that source literally. If you want to argue based purely on reason and verifiable evidence that such-and-such is right or wrong, then sources become irrelevant, as you must ultimately appeal to self-evident (or at least universally agreeable) premises, but this is a long and inefficient process. The former, textualist stance is actually just a subset of this though, where the agreed-upon premises are whatever your source says. Such sources, like a religious text or a constitution, are the written form of a common agreed upon set of premises.
But if you're going to say "whatever this text says is right", and use that to force your viewpoint, but then turn around and say "but of course this text must be interpreted, not just taken literally", you've effectively given yourself free reign to justify anything you can conceivably interpret your source as saying. Since it's conceivably possible to "interpret" anything out of anything (witness the abuses of the Interstate Commerce Claude), then you can just say "I'm right because this text says so. I know it doesn't *literally* say so, but you've got to interpret it the right way, and my way is the right way, so I'm right".
In the case of academic matters like religious debates or some shit, all that doing the above entails is that you're a self-righteous ass. But when it comes to to political matters, then it makes you a self-righteous ass giving himself the go-ahead to walk all over whoever he pleases, and then justify that to himself with some bullshit "interpretation".
If you're going to have a written body of law, then follow that law to the letter. If you don't like the way things turn out because of that, then change the fucking law.
AMEN! I've had student try to pull the "I pay your salary, so you work for me" line of bullshit once.
While I agree with you that a professor or teacher has to have some control over disruptive influences in the classroom, but there is definitely merit to the notion that the teacher "works for" the student. The purpose of the teacher being there is to serve the student, and I say this as someone intent on going into elementary school teaching. In my case, I'll be teaching the general public, paid for by public tax dollars, and so I will be working for the public, which includes my students. (Children are people too). In your case, as a professor, you are being paid by the university which is paid for by your students, so in that sense you work for them as well.
But the point isn't about who pays who. The point is that the good of the students comes before the whim of the educator. Like a doctor. Like any service profession: the customer is always right. You are doing your job well if you are serving your clientele well. The only way you can reason out of that is balancing the good of many 'customers' or 'clients', e.g. in the case of disruptive students ruining the experience for others.
Consider an anecdotal example. This term now ending, I had a philosophy class (theories of justice) with perhaps the worst instructor I've ever had. He wasn't such a bad person, he was just a really bad teacher. The format of the class was one three-hour meeting per week. We'd come in the first day, be assigned some reading, and immediately the next class we would be told a topic to write an essay about and given an hour to write it. No writing down the question, and no repetition of it. You miss it (which was easy since the guy could barely speak up at all), and you're screwed - or have to ask another student. After that, we the students would spend the remainder of the class discussing the material amongst ourselves, prompted by vague open-ended questions from the professor.
If I had wanted an experience like that, I'd have joined a freaking book club. "Read this, write about it, and now talk about it" is not the kind of instruction that I'm paying for. At no point did the instructor ever actually instruct us on anything, helping to explain the positions of the authors we were reading, or any such thing. When I enroll in a university of an acceptable quality to me, I expect to be able to trust that professors employed by that university will be of that quality. Generally, the instructors at my school are of decent quality, so when one fails to meet that standard, I as the student feel a right to be indignant about it. And it's not so easy to do as you say and "take your money and go elsewhere". Transferring universities is a huge, life-uprooting task, especially if you're attending somewhere that you've got a job, family, friends, secure housing, etc etc. Just abandoning all that because your school is problematic is no small thing.
Your kind of attitude, that you the professor are the King of the Classroom and students should feel privileged to hear you speak, is the exact kind of pompous bullshit that leads to the political problems that pervade civilization. It's akin to a politician saying "well I'm the one in charge and if you don't like it, move to a different country". The people at the top of any hierarchy have a responsibility to those lower down - the top exists only to serve the bottom. It's as true in the classroom as it is in the government, and everywhere else as well.
I've always thought this to be true, without organizing it formally. I find it particularly strange that this viewpoint is so rare in a religion that constantly talks about how difficult it is for us mortals to understand the will and nature of God.
This is apparently standard Catholic doctrine. (I'm not Catholic but half of my extended family is). I don't know how many of that system's adherents actually follow this principle, but officially that's what they supposed to believe if they want to be a part of that club.
That's one way to look at it, certainly a way that the polito-religious would.
Organized systems of religion are by their nature political, as any congregation of humans would be. They may not be political in the sense of trying to influence state governments, but they are political inasmuch as they play the "we're right and if you want to be part of our club you'd better agree with us" game. (Me, I don't care whether anyone wants me in their club or not, so neither do I care whether or not anyone else is right. I'm just concerned with making sure that I'm on the right track myself).
The resistance to such an idea is that religion is ancient and never-changing Truth; to modify the religion to "keep with the times" is blasphemous.
Right. I'm actually harshly critical of those who take a wishy-washy middle stance about this. Some people say "[our doctrine as written] is the Absolute Truth handed down by God" on one hand, and try to use things from it as unquestionable premises in a debate, and then they say "well it's not meant to be taken literally" on the other hand; which sounds to me like nothing but an excuse to say "however I choose to interpret this book is the Absolute Truth and I can't hear you la la la la", which will get nowhere in any sort of dialogue.
Either your (rhetorical "your") book as written is the Absolute Truth and must be taken as is on faith, which will commit you to some pretty silly conclusions that I doubt you'll want to hold. Alternatively, the Absolute Truth is not the gospel as written, but rather the writings are just an attempt to point toward the absolute truth, in which case it should be possible to back up those truth-claims with reasoning and evidence. (As Buddhists say, when a Buddha points to the moon, cast your attention not to the finger that is pointing but beyond it to the moon itself). People with the first position don't need to debate: they've already got the Truth as far as they're concerned, and the best they can do is say "just read this book and believe it". People with the latter position are well equipped for inter-religious and secular philosophical dialog that could actually lead to some sort of agreement between people. Anyone trying to sit on the fence with this is just being a self-righteous ass.
I disagree because I simply see it not as the religious Truth changing, but our human understanding of Truth changing (much as science's view of physical Truth is always changing). This view happens to make it difficult to retain religious dogma, which is probably also part of why it is unpopular.
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Moreover, it's a very hard thing to test for in a standardized way. How can you leave no child behind, if you don't have a standard by which to determine if they are behind? Facts, on the other hand, are very easy to test for.
Logic is no harder to test for than math skills: it's basically just math with words. I propose that basic logic be taught simultaneously with basic algebra, and as someone presently in school to be an elementary teacher I intend to try to see that that happens, at least in my classes. And I'll market it to the kids as a tool to make the factual tests easier.
Just because some people don't swear a lot - which I stopped doing before I made Sergeant in the Army - some people make assumptions about them that are totally lame. (Emphasis added).
;-)
Hey now! That's ableism!
It was KMart in "Bowling for Columbine", not WalMart.
Thank you for your agreement.
The speed laws I would most favor (if not just a simple "don't be a road hazard", and try accusations of such in actual courts like they should be) would be regulations on relative speed above or below the average flow of traffic, whatever that happens to be. No required, absolute, numeric speed limits - just, say, "plus or minus 15 mph of the average speed of traffic", whatever the average speed of traffic naturally tends to be.
Of course, posted speed *recommendations* would still be a good idea, for informational reasons, i.e. "research suggests that this is the safest average speed for this section of road". And use the real numbers, don't round them down cause you assume people will exceed them. Give people real safety information, and then only ticket them if they blatantly ignore it and other pertinent conditions and create an unsafe situation. These posted recommendations would also be of use in prosecution of people who cause real damage, in that they were warned of what the safe speed there was, and if they ignored it, that could construe reckless endangerment.
To address everyone who's calling me an asshole, you seem to have missed the point that I'm speaking of a *two lane* (each direction) highway, so "one lane over" is the slowest, rightmost lane - and that lane is usually dotted with cars going well below the speed limit, since this is a semi-rural freeway that is used for cross-town traffic (so people are often merging on or off), plus it seems people are afraid of the cops and overcompensate by driving too slow. So my options in this situation are:
1) Stay in the right lane, drive with everybody going to 10-15mph slower than the limit, and take much longer to get to my destination.
2) Stay in the left lane, speed with all the maniacs, and risk a traffic ticket (amongst other dangers).
3) Weave back and forth, merging into the slow lane every time someone wants to speed past me, and back again so I'm not stuck with the slow traffic.
4) Stay in the left lane, passing the slow traffic, and going as fast as I legally can, possibly causing some other people to weave dangerously if they're in such a big hurry and/or don't care about traffic tickets.
None of these options really suits me, but I choose #4 because that's the only one where I'm neither sacrificing my own convenience nor breaking the law nor creating a dangerous situation myself. If some people want to weave through slower traffic on the right to go past someone who's going as fast as they legally can, then *they're the nuisance*. And I don't really blame the people who want to go faster, just the maniacs who drive *way* faster and then weave dangerously so they can continue speeding.
What I blame are the traffic laws that force me to choose between driving safely (with the average speed of faster traffic) or obeying the law. Those same laws also create this situation to an extent, as they encourage people to drive slower than is sensible as well. And I've gotten my fair share of speeding tickets for going ~5mph over around here, so saying "oh just go ahead and speed a little no on will care and it's safer to speed with traffic" won't fly with me. The cops are the ones at fault here, and/or the legislation that they're enforcing. I'm being forced by their bad laws to choose the lesser evil. They're the assholes, not me.
And yes, on bigger highways where there are slower lanes going around the speed limit, I will stay there and out of the left lane. But on a 2-lane highway with slow traffic, you can't fault me for going as fast as legally possible in the fast lane.
In California, it's legal to turn into any lane when you're turning left...
Also in California here, and I'd like to add that the GP was incorrect about passing lanes here as well. The left lane is the "fast lane", not the "passing lane", and if you are driving at the speed limit you are welcome to stay there as long as you'd like. I make a lot of long drives on two-lane highways along the coast where speed traps are prevalent and so are people who like driving 10-15 miles under the limit, so I cruise the entire drive in the left lane going right at 65. Plenty of assholes come flying up on my tail wanting to go 90MPH, but I'm under no obligation to merge every time one of them comes up (and then back again to pass the next slowpoke) just because they want to speed.
Disclaimer: I believe I am a neurotypical but I don't really know how to tell. (In fact, the less context I create for myself, perhaps the more my mind can consider, so usually I avoid defining myself)
I think that's a good approach to take. I also dislike categorizing myself, particularly because I never seem to fit nicely into any category, but also, as you said, because doing so is self-limiting. The way I see it, the 'autistic' mindset and the 'neurotypical' mindset are just the far ends of a continuum, and not only do people fall at different places in between those points, but they don't stay at any one point from moment to moment. As I think I said, I notice myself swinging between the ends a lot; I can be both, just not at the same time.
This is a great comment, thanks for posting it. The concept that *there is no direct evidence that people other than the observer feel anything* is something that I never decided to consider before, although I have always wondered about others' inner experiences and if they even have one. To know that someone else actually considers these things is interesting.
It's actually not an uncommon philosophical topic. It's usually discussed in that milieu as "solipsism", if you want to Google for other conversations or papers about it. Solipsism is actually a little broader than just this though: it's the notion that there's really no way to tell that all of the universe isn't a hallucination or dream from which one cannot awake, and that you may actually be the only thing that exists. A lot of times people say something "reduces to solipsism" as an insult to whatever they're talking about, as though solipsism is an absurd position that you wouldn't want to take, but I see solipsism as a truism: yeah, there's no way to tell that anything other than me really exists. So? In that case the universe still seems exactly how it was before, so why should I behave any differently? If I can't wake up from a dream, ever, then that dream is reality to me, and I ought to treat it as such.
Likewise, whether or not people have inner experiences makes absolutely no difference whatsoever in how other people seem to me. They still behave the same way, and my behaviors still have the same impact on them (and their behaviors), and so on. It's basically a meaningless thing to talk about "inner experiences" at all, as much as it would be to say that there is some big invisible, incorporeal, odorless, tasteless, soundless thing sitting in my living room. That's indiscernible from saying that there not some big thing in my living room (since this supposed big thing is utterly undetectable), so why bother even mentioning it? It makes no difference.
I have a friend that thought, when he was a kid, that he was the only real person and everyone else was a robot. It's interesting because I have thought this as well when I was a kid, and although I continued to consider things as if it were true, I also continued to function as if everyone else were real, perhaps to try and discern if they were or not, to see if I could catch them slipping up. There's no way I could really ever know, but getting caught up in the "human drama" by acting as if it is true is no more right/wrong than acting as if everyone else isn't real. There's no way to know either way.
Precisely! And not only can you not know either way, it's no difference either way - which is why you can't know. Me being the only thing that exists, and having a bunch of experiences of things which don't "really" exist, is no different to me than if I exist and have experiences of things which do "really" exist. All I can know is the experiences. And hell - since my only experience of "myself" is through some sort of experience of myself, there's really no point in saying "I" exist either. There are experiences with the subject of "me" and a variety of objects which compose "the universe", and that is all I can have experience of. There may be other experiences with other subjects (and thus, other subj
If you wanna know how it works and how to get it to do what you want, well, you gotta learn how it works. You must look behind the public mask, grasshopper, and see the reality throuth the lens of the CLI. You must learn to call things by their True Names, which can't be spoken by the mouse.
This is precisely why I *used to* love Apple. The old (pre-OSX) GUI *was* looking directly at every file with their real names and all of that. Using other GUIs, including OSX and of course all varieties of Windows, feels less... direct. Like it a sham pretty face put up to hide the uglyness happening underneath. As opposed to just *not being ugly in the first place* and letting users look directly at it.
Now, not only is the Finder hiding (to some extent) the true nature of the FS structure, but programs are hiding even the structure in the Finder. For example, I really hate the way iPhoto wants to keep all its pictures (the real files) organized in funky folders full of aliases, while presenting it to the user that their files are actually neatly organized as the user directed. It contributes to the "I store my files in Word" syndrome, where users think their files are *in* some program, since they're taught to access the files by opening the program and getting the files fthrough the program's interface - instead of locating the actual files and opening them with some program.
Your docs are not in Word. Your music is not in iTunes. Your photos are not in iPhoto. Clueless users, know where your files actually are - and stupid developers, stop trying to hide them from the users!
The autistic individual tends to treat everything as an object, and they can recognize form and substance, but not emotionality. However, they can learn it, given enough conditioning and reinforcement, albeit it is very artificial and prone to error if certain situations occur which were not anticipated.
As someone who is naturally very autistic but has learned to understand the neurotypical mindset, I can tell you that this is dead-on.
The big difference between a neurotypical and an autistic mindset is that autistics see everything literally, as it is, and do not like to jump to conclusions based on insufficient data. (Though we are often very good at pattern recognition and educated guessing, we recognize that these are guesses and don't mistake them for facts). This quickly gives rise to the typical 'defining characteristic' of an autistic personality in not recognizing others' emotional states, because *there is no direct evidence that people other than the observer feel anything*. An individual's only experience of "inner experiences" is their own, and it is by definition impossible to experience another's inner experiences. To the procedurally-oriented autistic mind, this leads to the conclusion that there's no reason to suspect that such "other people's inner experiences" exist. It's an alien concept to the autistic.
To the neurotypical, certain behaviors exhibited by other people resemble their own behaviors which are triggered, it seems, by "emotions" or "inner experiences", and so the neurotypical jumps to the conclusion that other people have such inner experiences - that there is some "self" or "I" or "ego" or "soul" that is feeling and thinking in there, and not just a bunch of matter that behaves in certain complex ways. I believe this also explains why severely neurotypical people are so prone to religious beliefs in God or gods - if you're already making the jump to ascribe agency (a necessarily undetectable quality) to certain objects we call "people", why not ascribe such agency to other objects or phenomena, or the universe as a whole?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing to do. In fact it's something that borderline autistic cases like your typical geek are often very comfortable with - the anthropomorphization of computer programs that don't "like" each other, or which "fight" over certain resources, or which "talk" to one another. Geeks understand that these aren't literally true descriptions, inasmuch as we are not ascribing inner experience to these programs, but they are very useful, convenient, and accurate shorthand for describing their behaviors. It doesn't take much to realize that talk of other people's thoughts and feelings and inner experiences is really just the same sort of short hand, and that to any given person's honest and literal perspective, all other people really *are* just objects. (Which is not to say that they should be treated unethically or that there is no basis for ethics, but that's a whole other can of worms there).
And it doesn't take a whole lot more to go ahead and extend this shorthand to other complex systems, or even the universe as a whole; and from that comes a sort of pantheistic view of God. To talk of "God" is just to ascribe agency to the whole universe, a thinking feeling intelligence "behind" it all, the same way that we can ascribe agency to other people. Both of these cases are equally valid or invalid. They're invalid in that neither one is literally true, inasmuch as it's fundamentally impossible to ever have evidence that they are true, and so we have no real reason to ever think that they are true. But they are both valid, inasmuch as the ascription of agency to other people, and understanding the nature of those "agents", is useful for modelling interactions between people (including yourself) which should ultimately be of benefit to the individual using this model; and likewise, the ascription of agency to the universe and the understanding its nature (even in personified terms) p
When addressing an autistic person, I'd just be explicit and matter-of-factly, but in a nice way. Like: "I enjoyed the conversation but I want to go and do something else now. Talk to you later", or "Thanks for the chat but I'm tired now and want to rest. See you tomorrow". A person who can't read hints will appreciate getting unambigious communication for a change.
I'd like to add MUCH MUCH emphasis on the "in a nice way" part. When I was younger I was even more prone to ramble than I am now, and a teacher once instructed students to tell me "I don't want to talk to you, Forrest," since I wasn't getting the social cues. (Yes, I am borderline autistic and was much more so when I was younger). But just because we don't pick up on others' emotions well doesn't mean we don't have our own, and other students doing that *pissed me the hell off*, not only them but at the teacher who I figured out had told them to do so.
So yes, be clear and explicit, but also be very gentle. Treat conversations with austitic-type people like internet chats: there is no body language, everything must be communicated verbally, but there's still polite and impolite ways of getting your message across. (This probably explains why autistic type people, including most geeks, are so fond of internet communication...)
I don't know...I like being able to get up-to-the-minute bus schedules on a device I carry in my pocket.
Agreed, that's why I said I'd love a tiny (phone-sized) pocket computer. The thing I want is not a lot different from a phone, it's just that the approach to it is very different. I want one device that can power a (variable) lot of different tools - not just a lot of different tools crammed into one device.
For contrast, imagine a computer which had "Web Mode", "Word Mode", "Video Mode", etc, all built into it, instead of being a device on which you can install whatever programs you can get your hands on. (Although sadly, things are starting to get like that now, with many programs all wanting to be full-screen all the time, and with users thinking their documents are "in Word" or their music is "in iTunes", as though these programs were different places in their computer. Not to mention users treating software more like options for your computer [e.g. "does it have $PROGRAM?" when buying a PC], as opposed to separate products which run ON your computer. Imagine if people treated furniture as options for their home, rather than separate products that go IN your home).
You mentioned a swiss army knife, and conveniently ignored my Leatherman comment. Swiss Army knives are pretty lousy at a lot of tasks. My Leatherman is surprisingly good at a fair number of tasks.
I'm unfamiliar with Leathermen, but after a quick Google I see that it's basically the same type of product as Swiss Army Knife (I'll take your word that it's better quality or whatever). That's fine for knives - you can't really have a multifunction knife without doing it that way, until someone can come up with a tool that morphs like the T-1000 from Terminator 2.
But digital devices don't have to be like that - their tools (software) really CAN morph into just about anything. What I want is, by analogy, a comfortable handle with a morphing blade (nice hardware with which to run software), not a Leatherman or a Swiss Army Knife (a bunch of specialized modes stuck in one device). With digital products that's entirely possible and I see no reason why it shouldn't be done that way.
Even the names reflect this. I'm never buying any multipurpose portable device which markets itself as "a phone (plus other options!)". I want anything which is primarily a phone to be JUST a phone. But a "mobile unit" or some such, which can function as a phone or a camera or a PDA or an MP3 player or what have you... one of those I'll gladly buy. Provided the name change isn't the only difference between the two of them.
Why is it that just about every missive I've ever read about how people never use multi-function devices was generated on the most powerful multi-function device in history?
Precisely! I think the issue so many people have with "convergence" is that the devices which have that term applied to them are devices which at one time did a single utilitarian function, and had OTHER single-function devices stuck in the same box with it, and so on until you've got the digital equivalent of a Swiss-Army knife. I too dislike this: if I'm getting a phone, I want *a phone* and not also a camera and a portable web browser stuck into my phone.
On the other hand, if someone were to make a tiny portable computer with telephony software, photo or video capture software, and so on - and of course a camera and speakers and microphone to make those usable - that would be awesome. Because it wouldn't just have "phone mode", "camera mode", "web mode", and so on. Such a device is not a modal swiss-army knife - it's a general-purpose computer. I would expect to be able to add and remove programs, organize the data on it in my own way, and so on: in a free-form, non-modal, general-purpose fashion.
The problem is, nobody seems to want such a thing, because they don't know what they'd use it for. Tiny pocket multimedia computer? Only a geek needs one of those. But a phone... well, everybody need a phone. And hell, it's got a camera in it too. And it can surf teh intarweb k00d d00d! I need to get me a phone like that!
Not.
I think both you and the GP have valid and noncontradictory points.
The GP makes the point that any distinction we make is artificial and arbitrary, that everything is in fact a continuum.
You make the point that we understand things by categorizing them as X or not-X.
There is a kind of philosophical nondualism (c.f. Taoism) which encompasses both of these concepts. It is the notion that, while there are no actual distinctions in reality as separate from our understanding of it (as Kant would say, the "noumenal" reality), we can only ever hope to understand reality in terms of such distinctions. To better understand the complete continuum we must seek to better understand where the endpoints and midpoint of it are: in other words by figuring out where exactly something shifts from being "life" to "not life", in this example.
I have a phrase I like to use for this sort of reconciliation of divergent concepts (especially in political positions, e.g. capitalism vs socialism, or egotism vs altruism, etc): "embrace the paradox and see that it is not".
In cases like this though, I am inclined to side with the GP, at the moment at least. Defining what is life has the same difficulties as defining what is a person: it seems any definition you come up with either excludes some things we'd normally consider life (like viruses) or people (like babies), or includes things we normally wouldn't consider life (like fire) or people (like domestic animals). Defining where life begins in the evolutionary ladder faces the same challenges as defining where an individual's life begins, and as best as I can determine the only logical answer you can give is either "everything is alive" or "nothing is alive", for any non-arbitrary distinction you try to make ends up seeming unsatisfactory - though really, neither are those two options, either.
I normally like to pride myself on having well thought-out answers to (or at least opinions on) pretty much every philosophical problem out there, but this one has always seemed intractable even to me.
Nice summary of why the Eagles don't intervene, but I think it's important to add (for those who don't already know) *why* the Valar have this policy of non-intervention.
Long story short (and the Simlarillion is a very long story), the last time the Gods stepped out to do battle on Middle Earth, various mountain ranges were created and destroyed, and a continent or two sank into the ocean. The couple times before that cause even worse cataclysms - the map of the world was originally round and symmetrical before it was reshaped by those great early battles with Morgoth (Sauron's old master, and a really not nice guy).
Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron, and even the Balrogs are all of the same 'race' as the Gods, called the Ainur. All of the above were members of the lesser class of Ainur, the Maiar - demigods, basically. This is why Gandalf could stand toe-to-toe with the Balrog in Moria. If Gandalf had been so inclined (and permitted), he could have personally waded into Mordor flash-frying orcs left and right and duked it out with Sauron himself. Since Sauron was easily the more powerful of the two, he would have won, but the damage done in the meanwhile would have been terrible. If the Valar themselves came over and tried to put the smack down, Sauron could have been easily destroyed - but only by taking a lot of Middle Earth with him.
So basically, the Gods don't intervene for the same reason we didn't just nuke Cuba back during the Cold War. Nobody really wants to pull out the big guns, cause in the end, the victor won't really be left with much to rule over. That's a nice metaphor, now that I think about it - the great powers of Middle Earth are fighting a sort of cold war, each side hoping not to have to really fight with all their might, just playing chess with the mortal pawns of the world.
To bring it back to the Eagles - yes, they could have used the Eagles. Sauron would have countered with Nazgul. So the Valar would have had to send something else, perhaps a much larger force of Eagles. Sauron probably would have dug up some Balrogs if that were the case. And so on, each side having to escalate in power to counter the other and before you know it there's fire and explosions and chaos and what exactly are we trying to save again? This pile of rubble?
Apple's iTunes music store sells music. We all know that when you buy music, you're buying intellectual property (a "license" to listen to a creative work), not just a physical disc of aluminum and plastic. Isn't that why so many people here on Slashdot complain that when they buy a CD/DVD, and their kid wrecks it, they should be entitled to another copy, free of charge? Now, you're saying that record labels sell physical media, not the creative work itself? Which is it?
The notion that you're buying "intellectual property" comes more from the media distributors than the geeks here on Slashdot. The geeks here simply respond "well if that's the case then I want a replacement on my damaged disc", to point out the hypocrisy of the record labels (asking them, as you said, "Which is it?"). I imagine most people here would rather buy the physical media and use the data on it however they please, rather than buy a license to use some "intellectual property".
From that perspective, it makes perfect sense to say that Apple doesn't sell records/CDs/etc. They have a data distribution service (and associated program) for audio and video files. That said, not knowing the language of their original agreement, if it was something to the effect of "we will stay out of the music business", then iTunes definitely is the music business... but again, as other have pointed out, they don't use the Apple brand name anywhere in the iTunes store (the music-selling business), only on the iTunes program (computer software).
This is going a bit off topic, and I gather you're right in the point you're making in your post, but your title is all off. Centrifugal force *is* gravity.
Aside from the obvious bit about gravity = acceleration (as the "force" in centrifugal force is actually the centripetal force involved accelerating the object away from its inertial path) that inertial path itself is in fact caused by the effects of the gravity of the rest of the universe influencing the system in question. (I recently wrote a paper partly about this for a Philosophy of Space and Time class. It's online here [PDF] if you'd like to read it. For what it's worth, the paper got an A, and the professor was a physisicist. The bit about mass/inertia/gravity begins in the middle of page 6).
Thus the "centrifugal" force you experience pushing you against the walls (or the walls pushing on you) in the teacup ride at Disneyland is in every way the same thing as the effect you feel on your feet pushing you down on the ground (or the ground pushing back up on you). Both are electromagnetic forces interfering with your ability to follow a geodesic, and all geodesics are determined by the curvature of spacetime, i.e. gravity.
I remember hearing about some of the early (Austrian?) spinning superconductor experiments which were largely dismissed many years ago, and I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a long time since I find it so fascinating, but as it's always dismissed as crackpottery, I don't really talk about it much.
But here is a nice opportunity to ask some simple questions for anyone out there who understands the physics described here a little better than me...
The effect in question is not gravitational per se, but rather gravitomagnetic, right? That is, it affects (and is produced by) moving masses in the same manner that an electromagnetic field affects and is produced by moving charges? It seems it would make perfect sense then, that one could create such a gravitomagnet via a rapidly spinning mass, just as spinning charges create electromagnets. I imagine that the reason we do not often notice such gravitomagnetic effects is because the force of gravity (or the amount of mass ordinary matter has, if you like) is so much less than the electomagnetic force. and thus much greater acceleration is needed to produce any noticable effect.
The point of my inquiry here, however, is whether this electromagnetic-gravitomagnetic similarity extends further. Namely, if one takes an electromagnet and moves it back and forth, an electromagnetic wave is produced. A lot of these waves together we call electromagnetic radiation. Would it make sense, then, that a rapidly spinning, oscillating mass would produce gravitomagnetic waves, or gravitomagnetic radiation?
I've been wondering if the Gravity Probe experiments that are described in lay news sources as trying to detect "gravity waves" from planets like Mercury were in fact measuring something like I described above. My question though, is what effect does / would a gravitomagnetic wave have? Would such a wave push or pull the object it collides with? My intuition says that, as photons push what they collide with, these gravtomagnetic 'particles' / waves would pull what they strike.
Is that what "gravitons" are supposed to be?
Someone with more knowledge of contemporary physics, please explain. Thank you.
I'm not trying, it just comes naturally.
Am I the only one who saw the title and subconsciously dropped the "s" from "Adults" in reading it, and thus thought this would be about some raunchier version of those Japanese dating sim games?
GOOGLE SMASH!
I'm going to assume that you plan to teach at a public school.
That is correct. Initially, at least. I hope to eventually move into one-on-one instruction for students challenged by (i.e. fed up with) the public school system, contacting *though* the public school system, as such an instructor was provided for me in middle school, and it was one of the best educational experiences of my life. I long to provide that to other children in similar need.
I posit that in that situation you do not serve the students. Your job exists not because the students want you to teach, but because the parents and taxpayers want you to teach, and *they* pay your salary.
I hold that even in that circumstance I still "work for" my students in the sense that I am there to serve their needs. This is why I said that the issue is not who pays the instructors, and also why I said I would be working for the public as a whole, not the children in particular. (The children are a part of the public, and everybody is somebody's child, and most of the public goes through this school system, so working for the children is working for the public).
The attitude I take is that there will be tests that the students are required to take, and that I am paid to administer to them, covering a certain subject matter, and to that extent I will be working for the school district. But the sense in which I mean an instructor "works for" the students is such that his job is to make it as easy as possible for the students to understand what they will need to understand to pass the tests.
Basically, my job will be to make it as easy as possible for the students to pass the tests that will be required of them, by preparing them as best as possible for those test. I don't believe the best method for this is "teaching to the test", but rather teaching general methods of thought which will make it easy to learn and recall or just figure out facts as needed, as well as the particular facts which they will be tested on. People are naturally curious and deep down want to learn, but that natural inquisitiveness is drilled out of people by the same system which purportedly intends to educate them. I intend to help nourish it instead, and show people that learning can be easy if you don't make it a chore. The last thing should be doing in teaching students something is making it hard for them.
To illustrate, imagine that there is a standardized test mandated by law that everyone must take and pass, say at the age of 30 - but without any law mandating any training programs to prepare people for it. All the state cares is that this test is taken and passed. Certain people or organizations who had no involvement in the creation of this standardized test will be paid by the state to administer the test. You can easily imagine in this situation that organizations will spring up who charge to give preparatory training for this test - their job is to make it easier for you to pass it. The easier you fly through those tests, the better they're doing their job; and since they can't change the test material, "making it easier" doesn't mean making the material any less comprehensive, it means teaching better.
Now imagine that a single organization offers both of these services, getting paid by the state to administer the test and getting paid by the people to prepare them for it. Then imagine that the state offers a universal grant for such training programs. Voila, you have the public school system. There are still two separate jobs, or tasks if you will - administer the test, and prepare students for it - but they are now performed by the same individuals and paid for from the same source. Doesn't make the two jobs the same one: one serves the state (the administration), one serves the people (the students).
Although in a democratic society, the state and the people are supposed to be one and the same . . .
Right. And could you point out where in the Constitution an exception is made for defamatory speech, speech in the furtherance of a crime, speech that will cause a imminent and serious public harm (shouting "fire" in a crowded theater), speech that will provoke the reasonable man to violence (fighting words), or speech that divulges trade secrets or otherwise violates a contract?
Right, and for that reason, such acts are not legitimately illegal in the United States. By "legitimately" I mean, by the Supreme Law of the Land, the Constitution, any acts of legislation declaring such things illegal are prohibited, and thus any such legislation on the books is illegitimate. Not that that will stop anyone from trying to enforce it.
Now, you can argue that they *should* be illegal, but for that to actually happen, you'll need a constitutional amendment.
For that matter, can you point out what in the Constitution prevents states from regulating speech as well as Congress? (First Amendment only says "Congress shall make no law...." It says nothing about states.)
That would be where the 14th Amendment comes into play, prohibiting the states from violating the rights of American citizens. (In other words, state legislatures are restricted by the Constitution precisely in the ways that Congress is).
Your absolutist pseudo-textualism does not work.
I think it is you who are the pseudo-textualist. I just wrote another post on this same topic yesterday.
If you are going to refer to some source as justification (either for your thoughts or your actions), and use that as evidence that such-and-such is right, then you had damn well take that source literally. If you want to argue based purely on reason and verifiable evidence that such-and-such is right or wrong, then sources become irrelevant, as you must ultimately appeal to self-evident (or at least universally agreeable) premises, but this is a long and inefficient process. The former, textualist stance is actually just a subset of this though, where the agreed-upon premises are whatever your source says. Such sources, like a religious text or a constitution, are the written form of a common agreed upon set of premises.
But if you're going to say "whatever this text says is right", and use that to force your viewpoint, but then turn around and say "but of course this text must be interpreted, not just taken literally", you've effectively given yourself free reign to justify anything you can conceivably interpret your source as saying. Since it's conceivably possible to "interpret" anything out of anything (witness the abuses of the Interstate Commerce Claude), then you can just say "I'm right because this text says so. I know it doesn't *literally* say so, but you've got to interpret it the right way, and my way is the right way, so I'm right".
In the case of academic matters like religious debates or some shit, all that doing the above entails is that you're a self-righteous ass. But when it comes to to political matters, then it makes you a self-righteous ass giving himself the go-ahead to walk all over whoever he pleases, and then justify that to himself with some bullshit "interpretation".
If you're going to have a written body of law, then follow that law to the letter. If you don't like the way things turn out because of that, then change the fucking law.
AMEN! I've had student try to pull the "I pay your salary, so you work for me" line of bullshit once.
While I agree with you that a professor or teacher has to have some control over disruptive influences in the classroom, but there is definitely merit to the notion that the teacher "works for" the student. The purpose of the teacher being there is to serve the student, and I say this as someone intent on going into elementary school teaching. In my case, I'll be teaching the general public, paid for by public tax dollars, and so I will be working for the public, which includes my students. (Children are people too). In your case, as a professor, you are being paid by the university which is paid for by your students, so in that sense you work for them as well.
But the point isn't about who pays who. The point is that the good of the students comes before the whim of the educator. Like a doctor. Like any service profession: the customer is always right. You are doing your job well if you are serving your clientele well. The only way you can reason out of that is balancing the good of many 'customers' or 'clients', e.g. in the case of disruptive students ruining the experience for others.
Consider an anecdotal example. This term now ending, I had a philosophy class (theories of justice) with perhaps the worst instructor I've ever had. He wasn't such a bad person, he was just a really bad teacher. The format of the class was one three-hour meeting per week. We'd come in the first day, be assigned some reading, and immediately the next class we would be told a topic to write an essay about and given an hour to write it. No writing down the question, and no repetition of it. You miss it (which was easy since the guy could barely speak up at all), and you're screwed - or have to ask another student. After that, we the students would spend the remainder of the class discussing the material amongst ourselves, prompted by vague open-ended questions from the professor.
If I had wanted an experience like that, I'd have joined a freaking book club. "Read this, write about it, and now talk about it" is not the kind of instruction that I'm paying for. At no point did the instructor ever actually instruct us on anything, helping to explain the positions of the authors we were reading, or any such thing. When I enroll in a university of an acceptable quality to me, I expect to be able to trust that professors employed by that university will be of that quality. Generally, the instructors at my school are of decent quality, so when one fails to meet that standard, I as the student feel a right to be indignant about it. And it's not so easy to do as you say and "take your money and go elsewhere". Transferring universities is a huge, life-uprooting task, especially if you're attending somewhere that you've got a job, family, friends, secure housing, etc etc. Just abandoning all that because your school is problematic is no small thing.
Your kind of attitude, that you the professor are the King of the Classroom and students should feel privileged to hear you speak, is the exact kind of pompous bullshit that leads to the political problems that pervade civilization. It's akin to a politician saying "well I'm the one in charge and if you don't like it, move to a different country". The people at the top of any hierarchy have a responsibility to those lower down - the top exists only to serve the bottom. It's as true in the classroom as it is in the government, and everywhere else as well.
I've always thought this to be true, without organizing it formally. I find it particularly strange that this viewpoint is so rare in a religion that constantly talks about how difficult it is for us mortals to understand the will and nature of God.
This is apparently standard Catholic doctrine. (I'm not Catholic but half of my extended family is). I don't know how many of that system's adherents actually follow this principle, but officially that's what they supposed to believe if they want to be a part of that club.
That's one way to look at it, certainly a way that the polito-religious would.
Organized systems of religion are by their nature political, as any congregation of humans would be. They may not be political in the sense of trying to influence state governments, but they are political inasmuch as they play the "we're right and if you want to be part of our club you'd better agree with us" game. (Me, I don't care whether anyone wants me in their club or not, so neither do I care whether or not anyone else is right. I'm just concerned with making sure that I'm on the right track myself).
The resistance to such an idea is that religion is ancient and never-changing Truth; to modify the religion to "keep with the times" is blasphemous.
Right. I'm actually harshly critical of those who take a wishy-washy middle stance about this. Some people say "[our doctrine as written] is the Absolute Truth handed down by God" on one hand, and try to use things from it as unquestionable premises in a debate, and then they say "well it's not meant to be taken literally" on the other hand; which sounds to me like nothing but an excuse to say "however I choose to interpret this book is the Absolute Truth and I can't hear you la la la la", which will get nowhere in any sort of dialogue.
Either your (rhetorical "your") book as written is the Absolute Truth and must be taken as is on faith, which will commit you to some pretty silly conclusions that I doubt you'll want to hold. Alternatively, the Absolute Truth is not the gospel as written, but rather the writings are just an attempt to point toward the absolute truth, in which case it should be possible to back up those truth-claims with reasoning and evidence. (As Buddhists say, when a Buddha points to the moon, cast your attention not to the finger that is pointing but beyond it to the moon itself). People with the first position don't need to debate: they've already got the Truth as far as they're concerned, and the best they can do is say "just read this book and believe it". People with the latter position are well equipped for inter-religious and secular philosophical dialog that could actually lead to some sort of agreement between people. Anyone trying to sit on the fence with this is just being a self-righteous ass.
I disagree because I simply see it not as the religious Truth changing, but our human understanding of Truth changing (much as science's view of physical Truth is always changing). This view happens to make it difficult to retain religious dogma, which is probably also part of why it is unpopular.
I agree entirely.
Ack... revoke my geek card and s/Fetts/Hutts. Gah.