fecklessyouth

>I have a playlist where I pull in my favorites from Discover Weekly

Do you do this manually, or use the API?

>The reason for this lies in the fact that, as the Romans said in the past, Nil nove sul sole

This is from the Old Testament.

http://biblehub.com/ecclesiastes/1-9.htm

>You're ignoring the fact that religions haven't been able to convincingly answer any of these questions, either. Else there wouldn't be so many of them and they wouldn't be having highly intricate theological debates about the half-dozen types of millennialism and interpretations of whether and to what extent Mosaic law is still relevant, among many other things.

The mere presence of debate does not preclude certainty about overarching principles. Various denominations might disagree about what's moral in a situation, but they can at least agree about why this specific kind of morality is important, and what reasoning and evidence should be relevant in the discussion, and how this morality plays into a larger conception of the Christian life. Elements like the Gospel, the Apostle's Creed, and the metaphysics of traditional deism can all be harnessed to conduct and resolve debate. There are more certainties than there are the opposite. And perfect certainty will never be achieved, even on a theological level. Since one of the charges of theology is to adapt and present Christianity to a changing world.

Unlike, say, secular moral discourse, especially manifest in political speech, which makes no effort whatsoever to establish shared principles. There are few, if any, first premises which can initiate debate. There are few agreed-upon standards for what counts as relevant evidence, or how certain values outweigh others.

Wading in secular moral philosophy, the situation becomes even more dire. No one could ever hope to walk into a secular philosophy class with modern material and achieve any guidance about how to conduct their life.

The ability to debate and resolve issues is the marker of a healthy tradition. Not all issues can be resolved. But there should at least be a vehicle to coming to the best available answer. Studying, say, the progression of Catholic theological doctrine is a good example of this. But in our post-Reformation era, in which every theological debate ends up spawning a new Protestant denomination, your lack of confidence is understandable.

I do, of course, agree with you that our broader cultural approach to such issues is entirely arbitrary and resistant to intellectual progress.

Edit: Alasdair MacIntyre's Whose Justice, Which Rationality is a stellar treatment of this problem you're noticing:

http://www.amazon.com/Whose-Justice-Rationality-Alasdair-Mac...

I don't think it's an accident that a modern, secular framework hasn't arisen to replace traditional religion. For what resources could a framework draw upon? The founding principles of the Enlightenment have stricken notions of "value," "good," "bad," and "purpose" from the realm of knowledge. Modern rationality is anti-teleological. It precludes any exploration of first causes. When constrained by the epistemological standards of empiricism, theorizing about such subjects is impossible. For before it produced modern standards of scientific proof, it was a rebuke against Aristotle and Aquinas, whose methods represented the most fruitful exploration of "value," good," etc. Modernity's absence of such a framework is a feature, not a bug.

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has written in far more depth about this change. Anyone who's concerned with modernity's apparent difficulty in handling "meaning of life" questions would be advised to discover how exactly we landed in this situation:

http://www.amazon.com/After-Virtue-Study-Moral-Theory/dp/026...

>'If there's no major reduction in Government loans and grants, we're in good shape,' said Donald Routh, dean for financial aid. 'If there are reductions, then we have some very real problems.'

Yes, if only...

Then what is behind the rise of the Islamic State's recruiting, whose targets aren't suffering any obvious economic strife?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/world/middleeast/from-minn...

Modern liberalism offers no solution to the problem of evil. It assumes that as long as your basic needs are met, and you're mentally sane, that you will behave as a rational, non-violent person. It sees humans as essentially materialist, subject to the same universal desires, which can all be met in similar ways, and which are never distorted to any great degree. So it is stumped by the sort of despair that such jihadists harbor in their hearts, for according to its philosophical principles, such a thing should not be possible.

There seems to exist this technocratic fancy about "critical thinking." As if it were a discrete group of rules which could be cultivated in students by simply sitting them down in a classroom, lecturing to them about the rules, and then asking them to apply them in practice scenarios. This, of course, is how one teaches grammar, and most normal subjects.

But would such a student actually become a critical thinker? Or would they simply become a regurgitator of logical fallacies, able to spot them in encountered arguments, but not able to discern whether the reasoning was ACTUALLY fallacious? Take, for instance, the "slippery slope" fallacy. Which is not necessarily a fallacy, because "doing A will lead to B" is valid if both A and B stem from the same principle C. If affirming A implies affirming its principle C, and if B is related to principle C in the same manner as A, then yes, "doing A will lead to B" is valid reasoning.

This is certain value in studying philosophy generally, and formal logic specifically. But it is not a fundamental subject in the same way that most HS subjects are, and it will be of no avail to students who have not already reached a high level of reasoning.

The mistake Paul and other technocrats make when calling for "critical thinking" is that they treat it as an actual subject matter. But there is not textbook for "critical thinking," with which a teacher can instruct a class. It is an intellectual virtue, like curiosity, or honesty. It is not taught directly, but indirectly, through other subjects. THROUGH the constraints and methods of science, one learns to think critically about evidence and causation. THROUGH reading and analyzing literature, one learns to detect intentions, both explicit and implicit, in the voices it encounters. THROUGH algebra and calculus, one learns to think about abstract objects and their relationships.

There is no "shortcut" to critical thinking, just like there is no shortcut to teaching children to be responsible or caring or hardworking. It is a skill that has to be practiced in the various arenas of life.

One less obvious area in which Kuhn has exerted tremendous influence, and one not mentioned in this story, is on philosophy, and especially the history of ethics. Alasdair MacIntyre's framing of moral thinking as "history-constituted tradition" was sparked by Kuhn's similar framing of scientific thinking. Except MacIntyre uses this approach to discredit the entirety of academic moral philosophy, from Hume to Rawls. And, while doing so, exposes popular ethical maxims as the arbitrary parodies of such work. He now advocates a return to "Thomistic realism," initiated by Aristotle and developed by Aquinas.

Here's one of his papers that outlines the application of Kuhn to philosophy: http://www.ifac.univ-nantes.fr/IMG/pdf/Texte_de_Macintyre_19...

On a slightly different note:

>Kuhn, like Popper, thought that science was mainly about theory, but an increasing amount of cutting-edge scientific research is data- rather than theory-driven.

Science always proclaims to be "data driven." Galileo and the Ptolemaics were working with the same "data." When Aristotle examined the bones of animals, he was working with the same "data" as Darwin. What changes is how they interpret it: what standards of truth and observation they observe in its collection and synthesis. There is no such thing as "raw data."

Anyone interested in the necessity of understanding history for philosophical and moral thinking ought to read MacIntyre's Whose Justice, Which Rationality. It argues that a "history-constituted tradition" is the inevitable system in which we make intellectual progress, and analyses the major movements in philosophy as support.

http://www.amazon.com/Whose-Justice-Rationality-Alasdair-Mac...

>What if the fence was put there for purposes of adverse posession?

Answering that question is the very reason for pausing to investigate its purpose. Questioning past purposes before reforming is not equivalent to "defending the fence absent any documentation." Your own characterization of this "mindless conservatism" is itself a straw-man of the behavior Chesterton's fence recommends.

The alternative is an endless cycle of deconstruction that impedes any progress, as every possible step or rational for it brings a possible mask to power. The Nietzschean project, though fun, has produced nothing besides criticism, and would never succeed in taking any kind of action about said fence.

I find it funny that so much scientific research attempts to prove the existence of a biological contrast that's blatantly obvious, but which has been completely deconstructed and obscured by modern literary theory/philosophy.

>John Bunch, technical adviser at Zappos and leader of the Holacracy transition

...right

"Is Marriage for White People?" attempts to answer that question. As I remember it, the main answer was that black women don't want to date outside their race.

http://www.amazon.com/Is-Marriage-White-People-American/dp/B...

The idea that boys need exposure to women before adulthood, with the exception of their mother, is a relatively modern one. The extent to which the modern west mixes the sexes through education and other social activities is unprecedented, so the Middle East is not nearly alone in this respect.

Of course, things change in adulthood, and if young Middle Eastern men who would normally be entering stable relationships with women are prevented from doing so, I can imagine how that would enable angry jihadists. But at that age, the blame probably lies with other social/economic factors and less with their family unit.

And the effect that marriage has on the behavior of men is fairly well-known: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/04/...

>The N.Y.U. political psychologist John Jost made the point even more strongly, calling Haidt’s remarks “armchair demography.” Jost wrote, “Haidt fails to grapple meaningfully with the question of why nearly all of the best minds in science find liberal ideas to be closer to the mark with respect to evolution, human nature, mental health, close relationships, intergroup relations, ethics, social justice, conflict resolution, environmental sustainability, and so on.”

A comment meant to combat Haidt's criticism ends up embodying it.

>It's 2014, I thought the sillyness about being addicted to video games and computer was over. Apparently not.

It's never going to be over, as long as young children have access to technology.

HN seems to preach a perverse gospel about this subject: that you should never limit a child's technology access, because not only will nothing bad come out of, but in fact, it will make them more capable. It will turn them into developers and engineers!

I'm guessing the reason HN thinks this way is because they themselves got into technology in the first place through such avenues: dicking around as a kid, sometimes with the help of their parents, sometimes contrary to their wishes. If THEY had been restricted, they wouldn't be where they are today.

But this reason suffers from selection bias. While people like yourself (unless I'm misreading you. In which case, substitute the stereotypical HN user for yourself) may have used videogames and computer access as a spring board for your career, I'm willing to wager that you are minority among videogame and computer-saavy youth.* You are a bigger majority, however, on HN, and in the tech world in general, so such reasoning becomes canon without being subject to enough criticism. Plenty of technologists were gamers, but not all gamers become technologists. It's just that the former dominate here.

*I don't have any statistics on hand to support this. But since the videogame industry is as big (and growing) as it is, where are the rising mountains of developers and engineers that supposedly spring from it? Why aren't girls, who spend comparable time with technology, catching the wave as well?

My little brother has been addicted to Minecraft for the past 2 years. I keep waiting for him to "discover" something else as a result of it. To get into programming, or design, or architecture, or something more constructive. Hell, even building things in Minecraft would be more productive than what he does now: go on PvP servers and throw snowballs at people--for 12 hours a day, if my parents let him. He's tried programming lessons a few times, but he usually gives up, because learning a new skill is harder than playing (even difficult) games. He lacks the trait of perseverance. And he's not going to learn it by playing videogames.

Love the idea. My first thought is that the icon looks like an alarm clock.

Currently, the way I track album releases is by following every conceivable artist on Spotify, which will then notify me. What I like about this is that I can then stream the whole work, for free. However, Spotify doesn't always have works when they're immediately released. Additionally, I have to follow the artist in the first place--there's no library scanning. There's also the chance that I'll have work by an artist in iTunes but won't have ever followed/listened to them on Spotify.

In other words, could you also make a Spotify plugin which scans listening history, and combines this with your iTunes library?

I've slowly been shifting my music listening from Spotify to Soundcloud.

Music discovery on Soundcloud is much easier, thanks to its news feed. With Spotify, I usually end up digging through "related artists" for artists I already like--which can be effective, but is also time consuming. With Soundcloud, I can follow a few record labels, and discover lots of new music, easily.

Because of this, Soundcloud serves as a great platform for trending music. A song can be posted there and spread solely within the site, without much outside help, thanks both to the liking/reposting of songs and Soundcloud's "trending" section. With Spotify, you either have to already follow the artist or hope one of your Facebook friends is listening.

Which is another advantage of Soundcloud--it's nearly impossible to find other users with the same tastes. In essence, you're limited to Facebook friends.

I wish you were right. I wish my little brother's Minecraft addiction would lead to something productive. He's talked about learning to program because of it; but of course, he hasn't actually started. That's because he's a child, and lacks the force of will to do anything which is not as immediately satisfying as playing videogames. If he was forced to learn programming, he would probably like it, but he's never going to do it on his own. Because it's hard.

Cartoons are even worse. There is nothing more vegetative than watching TV.

I don't mean "nature" as an explanation for action, as in your second line, but as a guide for it. The context in the article uses it in the guiding sense. My point is that the article uses "nature" in a very short-sighted and artificial sense. I do think that discussion of "nature" can be part of a broader teleology for human action, but that's obviously not what the author is attempted.

I recognize the irony. The reason it's ironic is because it's doomed to fail. You cannot raise money in order to lessen the influence of money. If this campaign does anything, it will simply invite opposing groups to raise more money in order to elect anti-campaign finance reform candidates.

>If you thought contraception brought on a sexual revolution, a world without sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy or social restrictions will for the first time in thousands of years allow us to mate in the way nature intended: without restriction.

If this is how nature intended, why does it require thousands of years of technological progress to get there?

Please tell me I'm not the only one who recognizes the utter irony of his approach.

That perfectly supports my point. Because the value you mention is derived solely from utility--actions have no intrinsic value themselves. As yourself say, "assuming all value/morality is ultimately subjective." That's the working assumption of modernity, which limits the results of social movements like Occupy.

Thanks. My point is, activists like Graeber are bound by philosophical systems they don't recognize, which have been in place for hundreds of years and which form the foundation of our entire modes of thought. He may dislike modern capitalism, but he probably accepts the core tenets of modernism which allow it, like the assumption that the good of man is to be achieved by man pursuing whatever his interests happen to be. He might be radical, but I'm guessing he's not a radical as to reject Hume. (the source for the aforementioned tenet).

The Enlightenment produced a society which identified pleasure as its most fundamental social value. As Locke says, individuals are hardwired to pursue pleasure. And as Smith says, capitalism is the economic system best able to produce the most total pleasure. Thus, if you can produce lots of pleasure for people, if you are useful, if you can make money appear out of the stock market, you are rewarded. The jobs most rewarded by society are those that are most pleasurable to others, like CEOs who can turn profits for board members. The group who's pleasure is the deciding pleasure is the dominant social group, who has the most of whatever currency matters to society. (Status, property, now cash)

Whether someone is virtuous, or caring, or helps others, is irrelevant in ascertaining their value, and thus how they should be paid. A teacher might produce pleasure in a student, but that student is in no capacity to makes its pleasure the deciding one. The moral good of a job is, at best, a footnote, and only valuable insofar as far as the dominant groups are pleased by them. The market doesn't care about your moral good.

The mistake of writers like this one is supposing that such a system can be fixed within the confines of modern capitalism. It cannot. People will conduct their campaigns, and go on strike, and create new movements, and perhaps pay teachers more out of social duty and pity, but they will ultimately butt heads with the philosophical underpinnings of modernity. If this writer is serious, the solution is not to turn to mere Marxist-inspired theories of labor, but to Aristotle and Aquinas.

For what Aristotle, Aquinas, and essentially the entire stock of pre-modern philosophy, approached differently was the question of, "what should our fundamental social value be?" Their answer was not, "pleasure." For Aristotle, it was the good produced by a life trained in socially-imparted virtues--which ultimately allowed one to contemplate the divine. For Aquinas, it was more explicitly religious: loving God, which entailed doing and believing all the things He wants us to do. And as was the case with the Enlightenment, the cultures that both these thinkers embodied were constructed around such answers, from the top down. In either system, the moral worth of work is not irrelevant, it's the only thing relevant (with differences in how moral is defined).

In-depth rebuttals should be directed to Alasdair MacIntyre, a Scottish philosopher whose book "Whose Justice, Which Rationality," I just paraphrased in part. (But seriously...)

Well, one would hope that classroom management and people skills are imparted by a 5+ years of TA'ing.

I don't see why there isn't a bigger push to move all these jobless PhDs to high school teaching positions. They'll make more money and get better benefits than what they get as an adjunct. They won't necessarily get much time to "research," but with their own knowledge and experience, lesson planning should be a breeze.

More importantly, they'll be bringing something vitally important to high school education: instructors who are passionate about their subject, and well-equipped to improve students' skills. They'll still get exposure to their beloved subject, but also spread that exposure to those who need it.

To be clear, I'm not necessarily arguing that it's advantageous. I'm arguing that his experience does not qualify as a liberal arts education, and he shouldn't criticize it at such. You seem to place his experience into a second category:

>as opposed to receiving a generalized American-style "liberal arts education" (referring to the uniquely American method of having a core curriculum and general education requirements)

Neither a core curriculum nor general education requirements qualify an education as "liberal." At least, they shouldn't. The liberal arts are subjects, first and foremost. The humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences. Their power lies in their great history of consideration throughout civilization, their prevailing and constant influence on the affairs of the world, and the nuanced questions that lie at their center.

The liberal arts are inherently inter-disciplinary, and thus invite exposure to more than one. Moreover, the "teaching" of the liberal arts is far different than "research" in the liberal arts, a point often missed in larger university settings. If they are not taught well, you're not receiving an education of any sort.

I'm not criticizing Nelson's education, or at least, don't mean to. But what he's criticizing is not what he thinks. It may be that pre-professional economics degrees normally do impart critical thinking skills. Nelson seems to think they don't. I don't really care; what I know is that these requirements don't meet the demands of the liberal arts: http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/undergrad/academic-excellence/f...

I suppose we're splitting hairs here about what he's aiming for, but consider his comments, first, about what he learned on the job:

>"My first six months, what did the consulting firm teach me? They didn't teach me the basics of how they do business. They taught me how to think. I didn't know how to check my work. I didn't think about order of magnitude.

and then his goals for Minerva:

>"We want to teach you how to think," Mr. Nelson says. A course on "multimodal communications" works on practical writing and debating skills. A "formal systems class" goes over "everything from logic to advanced stats, Big Data, to formal reasoning, to behavioral econ."

Both these comments suggest that he's looking to improve the core critical thinking skills of his students. Indeed, he explicitly says as much. Thinking, reading, writing...these are historically fundamental goals of education.

They are not, however, merely "useful things" which can be pointed out. You cannot simply sit down and "learn" how to read/write/think, anymore than you be can taught a foreign language without actually speaking or writing it, or programming without coding.

They are "basic" in the sense that they form a foundation for other skills. What he seems to be aiming for is not "basic" in the sense that you use, which seems to cover tasks like "how to perform this financial function" or "how to use this technology." (But maybe that's not the sense you're using "basic in).