You've read Kafka. Great.
Now read Wittgenstein.
1,328 karma · joined January 6, 2012
Now read Wittgenstein.
As for point 3, text images seem like a poor way to digitise text, because it makes it very unsearchable and is prone to pixelation if you are writing a lot of it. It seems like a silly solution to something that was never a problem.
Actually, I sense a hostility in your response that I sense in Twitter users often when I bring up things I don't agree with. I am not at all attacking you, but rather find the way users use Twitter interesting, because it is something I no longer do. I know every single point you have made because I was a Twitter user for about 4 years -- I deleted my account last year.
Why would I Google arguments for and against Twitter when what I am interested is in your opinion? I would hate to put words in your mouth.
You could have easily gotten into those other areas via Google or following their conversations on their online communities, no?
And yes, your viewpoint is tainted, because, as the article says, it hasn't added active US users in 2015.
I also majored in literature and philosophy and had to write essays a lot. I got a lot of As.
The first thing to learn is that every group of writers follows different rules.
Think about why you want to publish your writings. Learn that context matters -- that is, your target audience matters. People reading my blog posts don't want the same thing as the people reading my essays at university. My university essays have a different tone and style. To be sure, the essays on my blog are the least popular, because they are very academic. That's okay. I like to write that way sometimes.
Often the things that others find interesting in our writings are things the writer would have never guessed. Because of this, it's all right to swallow your pride and just hit "Publish." Some of it will be horrible, some of it will be great. And there is always the stuff in between.
From a strictly academic perspective, the easiest type of essay to write is a comparative essay. Compare books, ideas, or topics that are similar enough to warrant a comparison; e.g., sexual parallels in Fifty Shades of Grey and Marquis de Sade's literary oeuvre, if you're going for a wide appeal. I just made that up. It's all experimentation.
Another academic "lesson" is when you're stuck writing an essay, it's time to bring in another example.
These are standard techniques that possibly engender a style that is stale and stiff. The more you cater to your reader, the more entertaining it'll be, because you'll speak her or his vernacular.
Having said all that, I have only published my poetry in very small publications. Nobody is interested in my short stories or essays (outside of academia), and I am by no stretch of the imagination a blogger who others read assiduously.
I am read by a very small circle of writer friends.
We have a joke.
We're good at things that don't have much value in modern culture.
It's a big joke.
And we're the punch line.
I thought this was bizarre, because I just happened to have read reviews of it on literary and nonliterary sites giving it extremely poor reviews.
I clicked on "See all # customer reviews" on the Amazon page and the average rating on top immediately went down to 2 stars.
I thought this was a glitch, so I tried to access the product/book page a different way. The same thing happened to all of them.
There were always the same amount of reviews, as well.
About 6 months later I looked up the book again, and the "mistake" was gone. But I had taken a screenshot of it the first time, and there was only two more reviews. The 4-star average appeared on every page.
I look for it now, and it is back at 2 stars like it always was. The book in question is Actors Anonymous.
I will play "devil's advocate".
The first thing I thought about when the researchers explained this:
Norenzayan thinks this connection between moralizing deities and “prosocial” behavior—curbing self-interest for the good of others—could help explain how religion evolved. In small-scale societies, prosocial behavior does not depend on religion. The Hadza, a group of African hunter-gatherers, do not believe in an afterlife, for example, and their gods of the sun and moon are indifferent to the paltry actions of people. Yet the Hadza are very cooperative when it comes to hunting and daily life. They don't need a supernatural force to encourage this, because everyone knows everyone else in their small bands. If you steal or lie, everyone will find out—and they might not want to cooperate with you anymore, Norenzayan says. The danger of a damaged reputation keeps people living up to the community's standards.
[...]
Norenzayan points out, however, that the complexity of most of the cultures analyzed is limited—they are small-scale chiefdoms, not large agricultural societies.
was tribalism. This seems like they're trying to put a different spin on it. Before political systems were formed, this is how tribe members developed trust within their societies. This is on a low-scale population or society.
The article continues with this:
As societies grow larger, such intensive social monitoring becomes impossible. So there's nothing stopping you from taking advantage of the work and goodwill of others and giving nothing in return. Reneging on a payment or shirking a shared responsibility have no consequences if you'll never see the injured party again and state institutions like police forces haven't been invented yet. But if everyone did that, nascent large-scale societies would collapse. Economists call this paradox the free rider problem. How did the earliest large-scale societies overcome it?
Isn't this exactly what happened? Or to what "large-scale societies" are they referring? I studied Latin American and Spanish history the most, so I'll stick to the best example I know of.
In an infamous story of Spanish colonisation in modern day Cajamarca, Peru, and what would precipitate the Battle of Caxamarca and initiate a 2000-people massacre and the destruction of the Incan empire, Friar Vicente de Valverde y Alvarez de Toledo in a deceitfully kind manner asked Emperor Atahualpa to essentially convert to Catholicism. This was after Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro wanted a friendship pact that Atahualpa had already heard rumours was a trap. So, Atahualpa refused. Later Friar Vicente gives Atahualpa the Bible, which he knows indigenous peoples do not know what one is since they had not even discovered writing, much less books, at that time. Atahualpa naturally throws the book and this is taken to be an "attack" on the Spanish Empire.
The Spanish armada guns down 2000 natives, erects a church at the Incan capital of Cuzco, and proselytises the entire kingdom. Don't read the garbage Wikipedia article on it. Instead read Spanish Friar Bartolme de las Casas' A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.
Then juntas were formed. The Spanish empire was spread thin. Dutch Revolt. The Napoleonic Wars? British West Indian labour unrest?
These researchers should look up the word PROSELYTISM. They seem to have ignored the beginnings of the Christinisation of a large part of the world. It was tainted with killings, political deceit and motivation and to control societies, as was the case with Constantine
The article says:
In some societies, belief in a watchful, punishing god or gods could have been the key, Norenzayan believes. As he wrote in Big Gods, “Watched people are nice people.” Belief in karma—which Norenzayan calls “supernatural punishment in action”—could have had a similar psychological effect in the absence of actual gods, a proposition his colleagues are investigating in Asia.
The researchers conflate obedience with some type of moral "niceness". For example, Japanese society has been constructed to publicly humiliate you if you step out of order. And humiliation and losing face is the worst social burden for them. There is no way to scientifically define what is "nice" without involving at least some type of philosophical underpinning; e.g., utilitarianism, consquentialism, deontologism. And even then, the only thing that may be proven is good ethics, not necessarily morality.
The article:
All you need, he argues, is a sufficiently affluent society in which people can afford to prioritize long-term goals (like the afterlife) over short-term needs. Studying Eurasian societies between 500 B.C.E. and 300 B.C.E., Baumard recently found that moralizing religions were much more likely to emerge in societies where people had access to more than 20,000 kilocalories in total energy resources each day, from food, fuel, and draft animals, for example.
This is partly right. Add syncretism to the mix and you see that religion is far more than a "cognitive byproduct", but not because it helps our modern societies maintain order. Anthropologically, we understand that tribes and early civilisations used superstition, fables, and parables to explain morality and ethics. In my opinion, modern societies's idea of "right" and "wrong" is too complex to analyse as a whole. Advancements in philosophy, science, neuroscience, and a more connected world have probably all contributed to our idea of what is right or wrong. Some of these happened to be aligned with Christianity's or religion's view of what is right and wrong. Remember that the Bible was written by many men who philosophised about the nature of what is right and wrong and that the most advanced moral philosophy stops at the 18th century, with Immanuel Kant. After that it's just philosophy of science.
My significant other and I are a lot alike. We've happily accepted what it takes to live with another person, as two people who were used to doing stuff on their own and living alone. She doesn't speak English well, and learning her language has been fascinating!
Thankfully, we are the happiest we've ever been. I think knowing someone who is from a totally different culture from you puts things in perspective and the dynamic is totally different from being with someone from your own culture.
We often read things in Western publications, and laugh and say, "Wow, this is so American/Canadian/Western". It's funny how everything we read in English totally never even considers that there might be another "normal". Even in scientific publications.
With regard to those standards applying to everyone, sorry, I'm not Christian and don't believe we should love everyone and give everyone our undivided attention. This, of course, is an ideological difference. My time is important. However, if I do choose to give you my undivided attention, I will listen to you very carefully.
Hope you're doing well.
However, this is a topic I'm very interested in because my fiancee is the first person I've ever met that does not reply back soon to a text message and hardly picks up her phone.
When we first started dating, this was a little strange. She would sometimes reply back within minutes. Other times she would take up to two hours. I couldn't gauge her interest in me.
It turns out due to her age and culture (non-Western), she just simply does not use her phone that much. So she isn't looking at it a lot.
We've argued that there must be a middle ground, though, and this is where it gets interesting.
This isn't really a technology problem. It is a philosophical one.
When we deal with people everyday, there is an unwritten and unspoken social contract we agree on. The case for not replying immediately to a stranger or an acquaintance is easily accepted, I believe. As the article says, you may be driving, you may be in another phone call, busy reading or studying. A stranger or acquaintance takes a longer time to sit higher up in your priority list. This is a basic socialization rule. I accept these things easily, and what's more, I act according to this concept. I basically categorise people's importance in my world. Even if I've read the text message, seen the missed phone call, or read the email. These categories are key, I believe.
However, when a loved one, your significant other, spouse, fiancee or fiance, messages you or phones you or emails you, it is a totally different ball game, in my view. Emergency purposes, communicating your whereabouts sooner makes cohabitation much easier, especially when planning your day, unexpected plans, people know your schedule/routine and any changes may cause grief to your loved ones, etc.
I do feel like family whom you do not live with is considered a step down in the priority list, but those you live with, specifically a partner, is different. And feeling insulted when they don't respond within 30 minutes at most generally, is pretty natural.
That was funny considering I'm now living in LA. I was thinking, "You don't know traffic, buddy".
I do admit that the downtown core gets bottlenecked at certain times of the day. But it's better than traffic all the time at most hours of the day, like in LA.
They just started implementing them on some freeways, like I-10 (maybe 2 years ago?). They eliminated the (free) carpool lane and put this in place.
I know city workers who brag about getting their transponders subsidised and get to ride in the cool fast lane.
EDIT: The FasTrak lanes/"ExpressLanes" are actually combined with the free carpool lanes. Sorry for the confusion.
EDIT 2: This is how it works: https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/about/howit.shtml
The transponder and opening an accuont (both required) still costs money.
Further info: http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/expresslanes/images/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTrak
It seems to represent everything else in the state of California: you get what you pay for. It creates a classist, elitist society.
I just half-smile or say "I don't know", instead of explaining how provincial their "typical Canadian accent" sounds to Vancouverites.
It says:
Expii is a collection of free, interactive, explanations written by people from around the world
Interesting!
In a letter to a student who pointed out that the chubby Midwesterners in his State Fair essay seemed “animal-like,” he answered, ashamedly, “It’s death if the biggest sense the reader gets from a critical essay is that the narrator’s a very critical person, or from a comic essay that the narrator’s cruel or snooty. Hence the importance of being just as critical about oneself as one is about the stuff/people one’s being critical of.”
What I'm getting at is that there were certainly times when DFW did say some pretty wise things, not because he was a wise sage, but because I think he sat and thought about certain aspects of life deeply. So, I'm not sure why you would have a one-sided impression of him as an asshole. Similarly, he certainly did write things that sounded like he was on the verge of wanting to go off on people, not because he was an asshole, but because he was clinically depressed. Anyway, I guess you've chosen only to remember one side of his personality, so it sounds a bit disingenuous. I don't expect people, especially in fiction, to have a flat-line, monotonous personality. A story, after all, needs to make things interesting and the mechanics of it require some tension.
We can sit and judge his personality when giving interviews, where most of the time he appeared pretty calm, maybe due to the fact that he was medicated--I'm not sure--but it would be a pretty useless exercise that kind of reduces everything to gossip.
His political opinions don't make him a worse or better writer. I mean, do semi-popular writers or artists have to always have a hard-lined opinion on something? He seems pretty liberal and, at the very least, not a right-wing conservative nutcase in the 2003 German interview on ZDF, if that helps any.
With Bill C-24, whether you were born in Canada or were naturalised, if you qualify for another citizenship or hold citizenship from another country, the government can take away your Canadian citizenship if it considers you to be a terrorist or threat to the country.
I'm against it.
I cut off all noodles/pastas and breads, and ate no pastries/sweets/chocolates. I went from lifting a few times a week for three months to once a week and my brain could not have a rational thought. I felt like my sugar levels were down all the time some how, so even after eating meats, eggs, vegetables, and dressings, my body would feel light and I couldn't get full. I couldn't work on my computer a lot and basically was on autopilot. It was kind of bizarre because I was eating 4-6 eggs a day and my body started feeling really weird. I think all the protein was messing with my body when it was trying to break it down.
This is kind of the wrong question to ask, if I may say so.
Once you realise that everything that is not science is philosophy, philosophy doesn't only become interesting, but essential to living a worthwhile life.
A Ph.D in the comments said s/he didn't like teaching college philosophy, and I think this is partly to blame for what Philosophy (with uppercase P) has become--people interpret philosophy as that subject you take in school with archaic, primitive ideas. Every major philosopher has probably only one good idea, yet they've wasted thousands of words trying to explain it or find a solution. This is what students spend most of the time studying, so it becomes tiresome.
Philosophy is really critical thinking and understanding the various modes of logic/reasoning our brain chooses when acting consciously or subconsciously. Our lives are not one of pure deductive reasoning. However, you'd be surprised how many people (even scientists) use deductive reasoning. Once we understand that a brain holds different modes of reasoning at the same time, we learn to talk more openly, consider another point's of view more carefully, and attack our differences less so readily. In turn, this creates a better society--one which is based on understanding why and how we do things. The only real enemy of contemporary philosophy is tradition. And there are certainly many of those still around. But listen to a theistic philosopher speak and observe how he acts. Then listen to a dogmatic cult preacher in his multi-millionaire dollar celebrity church or from a celebrity religion. Tell me which one you prefer.
Philosophy teaches us to be inquisitive but not naive. It softens our emotions when considering others' differences, because most of us hold views that neither science nor philosophy can explain. Yet, just like in science, pleasure does not come from knowing the answer, rather from searching for the enigma.
(Edited to clarify some ideas.)
My girlfriend is Japanese and doesn't speak a lot of English. We were thinking of moving there, but I'm worried about this. She is a ballet dancer, so I assume artists mostly everywhere (in the US--and Canada--I'm originally from Canada) are more welcoming. But I understand there are less minorities in Portland than where we are right now (Los Angeles).
The incident is likely to be remembered as a failure of Hollywood leadership. As the attack progressed, both studios and the industry’s Washington-based trade associations — the theater association and the Motion Picture Association of America — remained in a defensive posture, and ultimately found no way to save the film or to stem the flow of Sony’s private data, which has been released online by hackers in waves since Nov. 24.
How out of touch is NY Times with the times?
The Oscars are a joke and, come on, so is Hollywood. The latter is good at providing vacuous entertainment and the former is a self-congratulating organisation. It's an incestuous industry that only seeks out an opportunity where there are millions of dollars to be gained. Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. However, don't expect Hollywood to do the moral/ethical thing. With Sony getting sued, they saw this was no longer their big profit making movie they wanted it to be, so they pulled the plug.
Nothing to see here, folks. Low revenue = no movie. It takes a lot of money to make films these days and they don't want to risk losing (more) money.
The movie itself was most likely not going to bring some insight or analysis to North Korea or Asian history or political dynamics, so I don't understand why so many people are up in arms about it--no pun intended.
People are saying "terrorists won" and some Republicans are making a big stir on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339504803196928
https://twitter.com/hughhewitt/status/545346735510257664
America's low point in film history happened a long time ago, and yes, it was caused by Hollywood.
Also: "This Is Cyberwar, Not Tabloid Fodder", http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/12/17/this-is-cyberwa...
I'm doing some conjecturing here, but could hacking in the 21st century and cyber warfare be the new virtual/online 'rioting'?
For example, Sony aides the US army since it is affiliated with Rockwell Collins and Future Combat Systems, so it would make sense if 'socialists', leftists, progressives, and anarchists seek to destroy conglomerates where they get a large chunk of their profit, disabling any funding of the US army, since the majority government's ideology does not align with theirs. Whether these 'minorities' are citizens of the targeted country or not, this group of intelligent people seem to be growing increasingly disenchanted by how things are being played out in the world. We see it among hackers in North Korea and the Middle East. Increasingly, Japan's racist past has been brought up in the media lately, yet Kazuo Hirai allowed a racist movie for the sake of comedy to be funded. (For those not in the know, Japan is going through a period of negationism with its politics being controlled by ultra conservatives).
Post-Edward Snowden, it seems like there is very little hackers, developers, etc., can do that is not political or at least aiding or taking away from some socioeconomic issue. It's sad but it seems we are all somehow weakening the System or helping it. Sure, I'm not saying we should all worry about it. These are just the observations of an amateur.
Say you are in Lima and want to buy a plane ticket to Arequipa. If you have a South American ID ("DNI"), you pay a very cheap rate. If not, you pay the regular USD rate.
I recall a long time ago when I lived in Canada, I could sometimes buy cheap airfare if I used the American Travelocity site instead of the Canadian one. At one point, it stopped working because they "updated" the final price after I entered my credit card information, as that stated my residence/billing info was in Canada.
My current girlfriend, who is not active on FB at all (she's more of a lurker), is basically last, with only 1 assimilation point.
I only have a little over 100 friends, though.
Anyway, I wanted to comment on something related to your friends not ever mentioning Borges to you. Of course, if your friends tell you they've read Borges, I have no evidence to suggest they are telling the truth or not. And you should probably believe them.
However, there was a time (specifically in Argentina) when Borges was seen as the "in" thing to do. So, you'd get people saying, "Oh yeah, Borges is great, love his stuff". But Borges said most people never actually read his books, they were just a good Christmas gift.
Most people I've met who tell me that have read Borges have really only read a story or two, which is great. This is not a competition. Reading Borges at face value is fun and entertaining. But there is another side to Borges that is extremely complex because of the many hidden references he makes. He almost verges on James Joyce and TS Eliot style of hidden allusions, where every other line is a reference to some esoteric concept that he read in one single out-of-print book. So, yes, I understand why people don't read a lot of him. It's fine. He can be a very difficult writer to read and he requires an infinite amount of patience.
Some Latin American writers have stated that to read Borges, you really need an encylcopaedia by your side to fully appreciate what he is saying. While that might be true, you can still enjoy many of Borges's stories at face value.
The only cautionary note I make is be wary of his goucho/cowboys-and-indians motifs. His mother helped him develop some of these ideas, because it is what she liked and wanted him to write. And, depending on your worldview, Borges's mother is arguably the most important figure in his life (in my very humble opinion), apart from Estela Canto (to whom he dedicated The Aleph).
Have fun.
I never went to graduate school, but I continued writing what was going to be my thesis.
It's nowhere near finished but if I can make one book recommendation I would say read Ficciones.
There are different layers to Borges and many, many, many ways to read him, but if I can give you one single reason why this writer is one of the greatest figures of all time, it is because he traces how a concept or thought was developed or created with the help of different minds (writers, philosophers, historical figures, literary figures, etc.). He doesn't always explicitly indicate who, but, as the article says, everything he wrote (and sometimes said) was a clue to what he was thinking. He was trying to make sense of an entire history and an entire world by organising how a particular concept was handed down from author to author and how it was mutated.
Why is this of value to us? Because the act of developing a thought or a concept teaches us how to think critically and coherently, looking for how mistakes were done and seeing the bigger picture when linking two general thoughts together.
Or it could all have been in jest.
As many things in Latin America (and in non-US countries), it wasn't until the US praised him that he became popular back home.
English-speaking scholars actually loved Borges and wanted to get him published soon and help him out.