The art itself is decent enough, but I don't think that's necessarily the thrust of this.
I think what he (the artist) might be asking us to do is to challange our technological paradigms. I mean, why shouldn't our hard drives have ornamental value as well as technological? A lot of computers are still ugly white rectangles that invade a room's space rather than compliment it. How about a hard drive vase? Maybe a webcam inside of a bust? I don't really know where to take it myself; 'course I'm not an artist. But I think it's a good idea for our gadgets to be works of art as well as utilitarian tools.
Actually, there are some cultural logic systems that don't line up with ours. The Mayans had a system of logic with a lot of dissimilarities to ours. (Sorry, I looked for the reference and couldn't find it. I must have deleted the link.) I'm a big fan of Wittgenstein, and I agree with his accessment that language is a prerequisitve of logic. He can argue things a lot better than I can though, so I suggest checking out "Philosophical Investigations" if you're interested in the Wittgensteinian view.
Higher order logics seem pretty useless though, because they end up not really differentiating between things. Or not really telling you anything. I suppose you could technically quantify everything with "For every A such that there is an A, A is possible," but I don't see what this would accomplish (sorry I don't know the code for modal logic symbols.) S5 is about where things start getting wonky, and after that it sort of (in my eyes) breaks down into intellectual masturbation.
One thing to note, as well... if you view logic as a mere abstraction, you get rid of a lot of the metaphysical worries that accompony modal and other second-order logics. Logic serves as a good foundation for hypotheses, but I'd hesitate to say that it's inviolable.
Using formal logic doesn't help, though, because logic is an abstraction from language and observation, not universal law.
~(A * ~A) only as a product of language. It's only true that the book cannot be both red and not red simultaneously because that's the way our language, based on our experience, is set up. Liebnitz's plan was subsequently doomed to failure - you can't codify everything in terms of natural logic. It simply cannot be done.
600k calling 800k a newborn babe. That's rich. I guess you've got nothing, as far as responding to anything I've said is concerned. You're just a dim troll with nothing better to do than try to wind people up. Maybe you're so used to having people making fun of you that you can't manage to do anything but talk in kind, ne? Well maybe one day you'll grow the fuck up and realize that a world with nothing but electrical engineers would be as boring as a world with nothing but philosophers. You've got the distinction of being the first on my foes list, and kindly go sit on a dick.
Feel free to post something stupid in response to this, but as far as I'm concerned, this conversation is over.
Yes, I'm an obsessive narcissist because I pointed out that the original parent's post about liberal arts was not accurate. I'm sure that no one on/. would ever defend their pet interest against unwarranted and inaccurate attacks. I've never once seen anyone point out a flaw in an anti-Linux argument, nor have I ever seen a flamewar erupt over an anti-Firefox post.
Brave Mr. Anonymous Coward, why don't I ever see you attacking them over defending their hobbies and interests?
I think that philosophy students question a lot more than you're giving them credit for. I know that the minute a prof says something controversial, five hands immediately go up. Maybe it's a product of going to a small private university with small classes - I don't know what it's like at a big school.
I agree with you that philosophy majors should do something with their degree, and I think most of them actually do. Teaching is a very valuable profession, and apart from that, I think a lot of feilds can be benefited by study of philosophy, even when you don't see a direct effect. Philosophy teaches, as I've ennumerated above, a lot of useful skills. I'm sure there are many others that I'm simply to scatterbrained to recall.
I don't know why you think I've been tricked into being a philosophy major, instead of wrestling with the material and deciding that further study of philosophy suited me better than any of the other majors I could have chosen. It seems like an extremely unfair accusation, and one that could be levelled at just about anyone without offering any evidence to back it up.
One thing that a lot of people don't understand about philosophers (IME) is that philosophers revel in direct, pointed confrontation. I know I've alienated more than one person because I'm willing to fight for my opinions; I consistantly back them up and try to get others to do the same. Some people are offended by the challange that offers, and I admit it can be hard to let it go. If you think I'm totally wrong about something, I want to fight about it. I want to challange you, and I want you to challange me. I can't count the number of times I've changed my opinion/belief about something, because they offered a better argument. But until we argue, I don't know what you think, or how you back that up. I don't have the opportunity to decide if you're right, and I'm wrong. I don't know if I'm speaking only for myself here, but one of the big reasons I argue with people is to see if there's something about me that needs to be changed, not them.
Like I said, clearly you don't know what the Hell philosophy majors do. You've either taken no classes on philosophy, or one (which is worse.) So let me give you a little eye-opener as to why philosophy is useful.
Innoculation: How many otherwise intelligent people do you know who have been duped into something completely, utterly stupid? An unsubstantiated belief that contradicts everything we know about science, for instance? Philosphy helps protect people from falling for these things by teaching the principals of logical, and fallacious, reasoning.
Ethics: As the recent ethical failures of corporations such as Enron show, there's a dire need for a revaluation of ethics in the business world. While ethics can be thought of as a domain in theology, it's much more useful when it's addressed by philosophy. Philosophy can present ethics in a way that's satisfying to people with a multiplicity of beliefs, something ethics derived from theology is unlikely to do.
Formal Logic: Not intellectual masturbation any moreso than mathematics.
Communication Skills: Philosophy teaches students to communicate with their opposition effectively. it is a manner of forcing intellectual confrontations, which hones the argumentation and reasoning skills of both parties.
Introspection: It shows the student how to critically evaluate himself in light of a variety of philosophical theories.
Management Skills: As above, the ability to evaluate claims and communicate effectively is extremely valuable to an effective manager.
Intellectual Freedom: Much like "Innoculation" above, one of the things philosophy can do is protect you from bad philosophy, and I'll be the first to admit there's a lot of that out there. Questions like "What is being?" can come to even the most dull of minds, and good philosophy gives you a way to answer it (In this case, I'd say it's a matter of malformed grammar.)
WHY: I guess some people are just too stupid to ask the "Why" question, but I would have thought on slashdot, people would have a little more intellectual curiosity. Philosophy teaches you ways to answer a variety of "why" questions; "why"s in the humanities instead of sciences. Physics is a way of asking "why" about the natural world, and philosophy is a way of asking "why" about people. Why are people offended by swear words? Why do we look at good and evil the way we do? Why should drugs be legal, or illegal? These are philosophical questions.
Before you spout off with some asinine prejudice, based on insufficient information, why don't you either do a little research or shut the Hell up?
Coming from a Philosophy major - TROLL. Just because our work is different, and requires a different skillset and different kinds of commitments, does not mean that it is easy. I imagine that you don't spend weeks picking apart ethical theories, and then trying to come up with a defense for the least implausable one, while applying it to real world concepts and tying in all the material you read at the same time. For 30 pages. All the while, balancing gen ed requirements that frankly, you're not particularly good at because it requires a different skillset from the one you've been honing.
Just rationalize it. Weird things can happen in the game world just as easily as they can happen in real life. In the example in the article, maybe while he was pursuing the other criminal, the other criminal had a heart attack and died! Just as there is always that random element in the real world, we can expect there always to be a random element in the gaming world as well.
I'll tell you how to get the nasties in Windows. Browse porn. Seriously. Everyone I know in the dorm has some kind of security-related issue on their PCs, and by running Spybot I note that many of the security violations come from porn sites.
Now this might not be a big problem for the average IT admin at work, but I think that even the girlfriend-less guys on my hall should have the right to browse whatever internet sites they want without having vicious trojans installed on their PCs.
I know what you mean! My girlfriend plays at least 4-5 hours a day (we're in college so it's easy to have that much free time.) It's almost frustrating when I want to tell her something, and she's too busy killing some monster, or "No, we can't leave for dinner yet, I'm in the middle of a mission" (and then she promptly forgets I ever wanted to go to dinner, and I sit and wait for her to finish the mission for like an hour.)
No seriously, I think you're right though. And I think that facing that point is inevitable - now that the genetic engineering genie is out of the bottle, nothing short of human extinction is going to put it back in. Even if the UK doesn't allow this, another country will. South Korea, Singapore, or the other technologically inclined Asian nations, perhaps. But I think it's only a matter of time before a wealthy enough couple can make the decision of gender.
And that, of course, will only be the beginning.
I really don't think it'll be all bad, though. If people can get over their prejudices and intolerances, we could really improve the species. (By improve, I mean, eliminate all genetic diseases and deformaties, make everyone smart, attractive, strong, and in all ways biologically fit.) The future always offers us a lot of danger, and a lot of hope.
Slashdot Mirror
The art itself is decent enough, but I don't think that's necessarily the thrust of this.
I think what he (the artist) might be asking us to do is to challange our technological paradigms. I mean, why shouldn't our hard drives have ornamental value as well as technological? A lot of computers are still ugly white rectangles that invade a room's space rather than compliment it. How about a hard drive vase? Maybe a webcam inside of a bust? I don't really know where to take it myself; 'course I'm not an artist. But I think it's a good idea for our gadgets to be works of art as well as utilitarian tools.
I have never wished I had mod points more than I do now... bravo, drew, bravo.
Actually, there are some cultural logic systems that don't line up with ours. The Mayans had a system of logic with a lot of dissimilarities to ours. (Sorry, I looked for the reference and couldn't find it. I must have deleted the link.) I'm a big fan of Wittgenstein, and I agree with his accessment that language is a prerequisitve of logic. He can argue things a lot better than I can though, so I suggest checking out "Philosophical Investigations" if you're interested in the Wittgensteinian view.
Higher order logics seem pretty useless though, because they end up not really differentiating between things. Or not really telling you anything. I suppose you could technically quantify everything with "For every A such that there is an A, A is possible," but I don't see what this would accomplish (sorry I don't know the code for modal logic symbols.) S5 is about where things start getting wonky, and after that it sort of (in my eyes) breaks down into intellectual masturbation.
One thing to note, as well... if you view logic as a mere abstraction, you get rid of a lot of the metaphysical worries that accompony modal and other second-order logics. Logic serves as a good foundation for hypotheses, but I'd hesitate to say that it's inviolable.
Using formal logic doesn't help, though, because logic is an abstraction from language and observation, not universal law.
~(A * ~A) only as a product of language. It's only true that the book cannot be both red and not red simultaneously because that's the way our language, based on our experience, is set up. Liebnitz's plan was subsequently doomed to failure - you can't codify everything in terms of natural logic. It simply cannot be done.
Man, I read that as "Dorkhollow" at first glance.
Damn Warcraft for stealing my girlfriend...
Or were they drunk? :)
600k calling 800k a newborn babe. That's rich. I guess you've got nothing, as far as responding to anything I've said is concerned. You're just a dim troll with nothing better to do than try to wind people up. Maybe you're so used to having people making fun of you that you can't manage to do anything but talk in kind, ne? Well maybe one day you'll grow the fuck up and realize that a world with nothing but electrical engineers would be as boring as a world with nothing but philosophers. You've got the distinction of being the first on my foes list, and kindly go sit on a dick.
Feel free to post something stupid in response to this, but as far as I'm concerned, this conversation is over.
Yes, I'm an obsessive narcissist because I pointed out that the original parent's post about liberal arts was not accurate. I'm sure that no one on /. would ever defend their pet interest against unwarranted and inaccurate attacks. I've never once seen anyone point out a flaw in an anti-Linux argument, nor have I ever seen a flamewar erupt over an anti-Firefox post.
Brave Mr. Anonymous Coward, why don't I ever see you attacking them over defending their hobbies and interests?
If that's what you call all intense discussion not instigated by yourself, then yes.
I think that philosophy students question a lot more than you're giving them credit for. I know that the minute a prof says something controversial, five hands immediately go up. Maybe it's a product of going to a small private university with small classes - I don't know what it's like at a big school.
I agree with you that philosophy majors should do something with their degree, and I think most of them actually do. Teaching is a very valuable profession, and apart from that, I think a lot of feilds can be benefited by study of philosophy, even when you don't see a direct effect. Philosophy teaches, as I've ennumerated above, a lot of useful skills. I'm sure there are many others that I'm simply to scatterbrained to recall.
I don't know why you think I've been tricked into being a philosophy major, instead of wrestling with the material and deciding that further study of philosophy suited me better than any of the other majors I could have chosen. It seems like an extremely unfair accusation, and one that could be levelled at just about anyone without offering any evidence to back it up.
One thing that a lot of people don't understand about philosophers (IME) is that philosophers revel in direct, pointed confrontation. I know I've alienated more than one person because I'm willing to fight for my opinions; I consistantly back them up and try to get others to do the same. Some people are offended by the challange that offers, and I admit it can be hard to let it go. If you think I'm totally wrong about something, I want to fight about it. I want to challange you, and I want you to challange me. I can't count the number of times I've changed my opinion/belief about something, because they offered a better argument. But until we argue, I don't know what you think, or how you back that up. I don't have the opportunity to decide if you're right, and I'm wrong. I don't know if I'm speaking only for myself here, but one of the big reasons I argue with people is to see if there's something about me that needs to be changed, not them.
Like I said, clearly you don't know what the Hell philosophy majors do. You've either taken no classes on philosophy, or one (which is worse.) So let me give you a little eye-opener as to why philosophy is useful.
Innoculation: How many otherwise intelligent people do you know who have been duped into something completely, utterly stupid? An unsubstantiated belief that contradicts everything we know about science, for instance? Philosphy helps protect people from falling for these things by teaching the principals of logical, and fallacious, reasoning.
Ethics: As the recent ethical failures of corporations such as Enron show, there's a dire need for a revaluation of ethics in the business world. While ethics can be thought of as a domain in theology, it's much more useful when it's addressed by philosophy. Philosophy can present ethics in a way that's satisfying to people with a multiplicity of beliefs, something ethics derived from theology is unlikely to do.
Formal Logic: Not intellectual masturbation any moreso than mathematics.
Communication Skills: Philosophy teaches students to communicate with their opposition effectively. it is a manner of forcing intellectual confrontations, which hones the argumentation and reasoning skills of both parties.
Introspection: It shows the student how to critically evaluate himself in light of a variety of philosophical theories.
Management Skills: As above, the ability to evaluate claims and communicate effectively is extremely valuable to an effective manager.
Intellectual Freedom: Much like "Innoculation" above, one of the things philosophy can do is protect you from bad philosophy, and I'll be the first to admit there's a lot of that out there. Questions like "What is being?" can come to even the most dull of minds, and good philosophy gives you a way to answer it (In this case, I'd say it's a matter of malformed grammar.)
WHY: I guess some people are just too stupid to ask the "Why" question, but I would have thought on slashdot, people would have a little more intellectual curiosity. Philosophy teaches you ways to answer a variety of "why" questions; "why"s in the humanities instead of sciences. Physics is a way of asking "why" about the natural world, and philosophy is a way of asking "why" about people. Why are people offended by swear words? Why do we look at good and evil the way we do? Why should drugs be legal, or illegal? These are philosophical questions.
Before you spout off with some asinine prejudice, based on insufficient information, why don't you either do a little research or shut the Hell up?
Obviously, you have no idea whatsoever of what we actually do in philosophy, or what it's for, so your opinion doesn't interest me much.
Coming from a Philosophy major - TROLL. Just because our work is different, and requires a different skillset and different kinds of commitments, does not mean that it is easy. I imagine that you don't spend weeks picking apart ethical theories, and then trying to come up with a defense for the least implausable one, while applying it to real world concepts and tying in all the material you read at the same time. For 30 pages. All the while, balancing gen ed requirements that frankly, you're not particularly good at because it requires a different skillset from the one you've been honing.
Just rationalize it. Weird things can happen in the game world just as easily as they can happen in real life. In the example in the article, maybe while he was pursuing the other criminal, the other criminal had a heart attack and died! Just as there is always that random element in the real world, we can expect there always to be a random element in the gaming world as well.
This is totally awesome! It's going to put a major wrench in the RIAA/MPAA's tactics.
Too bad all those people who payed settlements rolled over for them... it looks like they had a chance to fight back with rulings like these.
I'll tell you how to get the nasties in Windows. Browse porn. Seriously. Everyone I know in the dorm has some kind of security-related issue on their PCs, and by running Spybot I note that many of the security violations come from porn sites. Now this might not be a big problem for the average IT admin at work, but I think that even the girlfriend-less guys on my hall should have the right to browse whatever internet sites they want without having vicious trojans installed on their PCs.
See, the real news in this is-
I'm going to get a mind-piloted Evangelion someday!
I think what you're looking for is Kismet
I don't understand the guts of launchd, but wouldn't it be possible to recode it to use simple (and in my opinion, superior) text-files?
Hey WinME wasn't so bad... crashing every two hours is what got me to discover Linux. ;)
I know what you mean! My girlfriend plays at least 4-5 hours a day (we're in college so it's easy to have that much free time.) It's almost frustrating when I want to tell her something, and she's too busy killing some monster, or "No, we can't leave for dinner yet, I'm in the middle of a mission" (and then she promptly forgets I ever wanted to go to dinner, and I sit and wait for her to finish the mission for like an hour.)
It felt good to rant.
Three words:
Los Angeles traffic
Do you mean this little fellow?
bonzai!
Remember back when patents were used to stimulate researchg and development, rather than to emasculate it?
Neither do I, I'm only 22.
And they will be called... Coordinators.
No seriously, I think you're right though. And I think that facing that point is inevitable - now that the genetic engineering genie is out of the bottle, nothing short of human extinction is going to put it back in. Even if the UK doesn't allow this, another country will. South Korea, Singapore, or the other technologically inclined Asian nations, perhaps. But I think it's only a matter of time before a wealthy enough couple can make the decision of gender.
And that, of course, will only be the beginning.
I really don't think it'll be all bad, though. If people can get over their prejudices and intolerances, we could really improve the species. (By improve, I mean, eliminate all genetic diseases and deformaties, make everyone smart, attractive, strong, and in all ways biologically fit.) The future always offers us a lot of danger, and a lot of hope.