dan posts a nice point about radio stations giving gifts on 9/11. namely that if WTC was a symbol of capitalism, we shouldn't give stuff away in its memory.

UPDATE: Gil commented on Dan's blog that giving stuff away is promotion and *makes money* or they wouldn't be doing it. He's right.

"Formal education is so flawed a blind man picking scrabble pieces in the dark could write a true argument against it." -- curi

What is sarah on?

"The way to create new knowledge is to resolve the disagreement by finding a proposal that each person prefers ' a common preference." (source)

CPs are for not hurting each other. they aren't the method by which we create knowledge. (new knowledge? wtf does that mean?) we create knowledge via conjectures and refutations. as written, it sounds like "we create new knowledge by agreeing on stuff". (finding a proposal each person prefers = finding a single proposal about what everyone does that everyone agrees-on/consents-to)

one thing about questions is: if the person has all this knowledge you don't (ie what you're trying to ask about) they're prolly good at figuring out the point of questions even if the questions are badly flawed

this applies to like generally wise people, who are smart at lozza stuff, not one-sphere-wonders.

if you screw a palestinian, you risk the screw killing a jew as shrapnel later

There is less agreement about what uncommon words mean than about common ones. This is part of why pretty, arcane-word-riddled writing tends to be more confusing. Also note this effect: words sometimes become less common because people don't agree on their use.

so i was watching Dr Phil (*puke*), and he said something like "i've been doing this 30 years, and i've never run into a kid where finding the right lever to control his behavior didn't work". and what's worse is I believe him. *shudder* (lever as in something child cares about to use to blackmail/manipulate with punishment and/or reward)

thought: Doesn't wanting to live forever violate the notion that we should be concerned with what theories and values triumph rather than who triumphs? I mean, we think our values and theories are the right ones, fine, but we also know they aren't perfect, and will have to be changed in the future. And who's to say we'll be the best ones to adapt to the values of the future? Even today all of us find entrenched theories we aren't sure how to fix. And the more time passes, the more the world will change, and the more we will find that not just the denotation of our worldview needs changing, but even the constraints and meta-knowledge in it must also be changed. As a striking example of the difficulty of doing that, just look at how much control we have over our emotions.

counter: As the world improves this much, well why the fuck can't we stick around? It's not like there isn't gonna be plenty of housing, food, stuff. Even if we were basically totally useless, we could subsist on negligible charity (in reality, creative people, even with hangups, aren't useless). And also, the above is kinda revolutionary. As if we should just get rid of imperfect worldviews and replace them with more-perfect new ones. (even replace here implies we have to make room for the new ones, ie limited space, which isn't right). but it isn't going to be like that, with an old generation of useless people and a new generation of useful people. the distinctions will be much more blurred. ok, now i concede there will be people who feel they can't keep up, and want to die. fine. but the people who do have the conviction that they want to live forever ... well in wanting to live forever they aren't giving up, rather they press on and try every day. and that itself is enough.