The executives are not the company; that Borders executives are still employed somewhere does not mean you can walk into a Borders store and buy some books. To run with the execution metaphor, what you describe is like your heart and kidney being transplanted after you die (in some cases despite the fact that you died of heart and kidney failure).
So, the executives are some kind of microorganism that lives on after the host dies?
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Socialism is a reaction to some of the problems of liberalism. In theory, in a liberal political society, individuals amass political power by persuading others that a political position is the correct one. A legislature, ideally, is a locus wherein a multitude of political viewpoints can be expressed, with the most persuasively sensible policy winning out. In practice, things can be different.
But the speaker is arguing from an ideal liberal position. In theory, debate and discussion among political equals leads to the best decisions, and political structures that deliberately depart from this ideal are illiberal.
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But according to the decision regarding Hobby Lobby, they are.
Either the beliefs and practices of the executives are the company, or they arenât. If they are, then a company can be killed off but the beliefs and practices go on to infect/inform another company. Itâs as if the âorganâ being transplanted is the entire being, not just a kidney or heart.
Basically, companies want all the rights of being a human being but none of the responsibilities, and since they actually arenât a living being it is easy to transport the entire essence of the company into another company vessel, which humans cannot do.
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Iâd say you nail the problem right here. Itâs made worse by the conservative majority being very protective of the rights of fictional persons while not caring overmuch about the rights of actual persons.
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And when they switch jobs itâs like a fecal transplantâŚ
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Preach it!
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Iâm am amenable to use of clear language (even though I waffle a bit), especially when complicated topics are being discussed for the benefit of the general public. I would never make the argument that overly complicated bloviating should occupy a central place in such discussion and I donât mean to. Sometimes, though, making use of a term which summarises a chunk of information within its definition is expected, especially if that subject has been touched on previously.
And we seem, so far, to be dealing with a criticism only of the summary of the talk. Something which summarises would be expected to⌠make information compact. No?
I specifically asked if the criticism extended to the talk when novium pointed out that they had criticised only the summary. If it does, then Cory has pointed out that there is some use of jargon and we should expect it. If we are only talking about post-modern bloviation, then like I said, it is what it is and I would concur that a culture of overusing such language is not good.
At any rate, perhaps my propensity for using and pleasure in learning such kinds of concentrating phraseology has coloured my interpretation of the accessibility of the phrases chosen for criticism.
I saw what seemed to me to amount to a dismissal of the subject matter and was confused by said dismissal, specifically when the terms chosen to represent the criticism were readily understandable. If it is the usage of any such terms whatsoever that is being criticised, then perhaps such a criticism is overly broad in the context of ideas borne of academia. If the terms are supposed only to serve as indicators of an underlying culture of obfuscation and the criticism is directed only towards that culture, then sure, I can get behind that.
Just as much as any other individual. Which is how I think it should be, except political parties legitimize ganging up to claim and exert power.
Iâm also a historian, and I agree. There is less jargon, but there seems to be every effort to catch up. I sometimes suspect that they increased pressure to publish has something to do with it - I mean, academics today publish many, many more books and articles than our predecessors did, and jargon is a way of - well, itâs the modern day equivalent of purple prose. It allows you to restate the obvious in pseudo-profound language without ever having to worry about committing to an opinion.
I recently found a book published just last month- by an oxford PhD, no less- that on paper was exactly the book Iâd been needing. It was very disappointing to realize that most chapters boiled down to academic listicles. No arguments about Plutarch and political morality, just a list of times Plutarch talks about morality and politics.
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Iâve gotten to listen to it, at times, I feel she is a bit academic in her discussion, but nothing a relatively intelligent person couldnât parse.
I think thatâs true for many of us. We get situated in our comfort zone and forget that not everyone is into the same things⌠we likely all do it from time to time.
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Thatâs trueâŚ
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Emphasizing consensual trust between individuals or between individuals or a governing coalition seems correct. The legitimacy of a social contract, policy or individual agreement is derived from an intelligent and informed (compassionate?) consent. Political power exercised without a trusting relationship risks losing its legitimacy.
Corporations in their current legal incarnation are not trustworthy (like Ash or Hal) and necessarily illegitimate.
An intriguing ideaâŚ
Of course, youâd be born broke and would need to somehow raise money to pay for your education and upkeep until you could provide for yourself. That means venture capital and ultimately an IPO; mind the term sheets, kiddies!
And once you have shareholders, theyâll get a say in how the corporation is run, compelling you to work in the most lucrative positions you can wrangle, regardless of job satisfaction, work-life balance etc.
A high personal stock price will give you access to credit and markets not available otherwise, and also make it easier to fend off hostile takeovers. But if it goes too high, youâll never be able to buy it all back and regain control of the board. After all, life doesnât really start until you own a controlling interest in your own stock.
[Thatâs all shamelessly cribbed from a SF book I read a few years ago called The Unincorporated Man. I donât remember much about it except that for much of the book I couldnât tell if the authors thought they were writing gritty dystopian SF or fantastic utopian wish-fulfillment. I wouldnât necessarily recommend it as a great book, but it was a fun and interesting read.]
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Philosophy doesnât âprogressâ in the sense of giving you one right answer. Have you considered the possibility that many questions donât have one right answer in the first place, and that this is thus an unfair criticism of philosophy?
The domain of questions science is actually capable of answering is heavily constrained by what mathematical models are computationally tractable.
Edit: I should add! This is assuming the mathematical models are reliable. While most science fans will just throw falsifiability at me as the answer to this problem, Kuhn and Feyerabend among others have made great arguments about why itâs just not that simple. I should probably shut up now because internet arguments about the limits of science never go very well.
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What about a set of right answers with their associated conditions? One size rarely fits all, but you can have a range.
Whatâs its point, then? Except of being a time sink with woefully low return on investment?
The constraints were quite tighter yesterday, and even more the day before. Tomorrow, with better computers and better math, the constraints will be even more relaxed.
Thatâs why they have to be checked experimentally.
Yes, there are limitations. No, thatâs not making scientific approaches any less superior to philosophical babbling, especially when experiment-backed.
So youâre saying you want:
âGiven X, Y, and Z, the correct answer is A.â
That is what philosophy is, and what it is for. You want to conceive of science as something distinct from philosophy, but really itâs a subset of philosophy which takes X, Y, and Z as axioms instead of analyzing them.
That is, science is philosophy with some special assumptions. These are obviously fruitful assumptions, but that does not imply that analyzing the more general cases is fruitless. In fact, that seems to be the way most mathematicians would approach a similar situation â obtain an interesting result, and then try to generalize each parameter of the problem.
If there is no âone right answerâ to a question, what would be the point of looking for âone right answerâ in the first place?
Iâm not sure I understand this question, though. Youâre saying that thereâs no point to asking any question that doesnât have exactly one right answer?
I recently bought a house. âShould I buy a house?â doesnât have exactly one right answer. Youâre saying there was no point for me to consider buying a house?
Even without any a priori limits on our ability to improve computation, there are still a priori limits on our ability to mathematically model physical phenomena.
Ever try to analyze a three-body problem without assuming one mass to be negligible?
Modeling a human brain in silico would probably require more transistors than there are atoms in the visible universe.
Itâs the âsuperiorâ I take issue with. As I said above, science is a subset of philosophy that takes certain premises as axioms and proceeds. Itâs âproductiveâ by its own private definition of "productive, implicit in those axioms. Science is not, itself, capable of questioning those axioms â only a more general philosophical analysis can do that. Science also cannot help us to use the findings of science since it cannot tell us what is desirable. Again, we need philosophy for that.
So I see science and philosophy are really the same thing. Or, if you insist on making the distinction, then they are complementary.
What I donât understand is the internet atheist science fansâ obsession with pitting the two against each other and insisting that science is âwinningâ. It strikes me as a rather childish way to approach questions about the universe.
Your use of the term âbabblingâ seems like a sort of posturing pejorative cheap shot. That is, it smuggles in your assumptions about the uselessness of philosophy when that is the very thing being debated. It is a rhetorical trick to beg the question. It suggests youâre not being fair-minded about this discussion â that you already have your conclusion and youâre not willing to consider the point of view I am offering.
If Copernicanism was held to the standards of Popperian falsifiability back when Galileo argued for it, we would still be talking about epicycles. Weâve been talking about a highly idealized notion of science that bears little resemblance to how it seems to work on the real world. Falfisiability is not a good model for that. History of science and philosophy of science are useful for determining stuff like this â science itself isnât so good for it.
Iâll recommend again that we agree to disagree. I used to be internet atheist science fan like you, so I know where youâre coming from and youâre pretty unlikely to convince me that philosophy and science are distinct entities competing with each other and science is winning handily. I used to believe that too before I actually read some of the philosophy I was dismissing. I donât suspect Iâll be able to convince you of anything either. I predict only acrimony can come from discussing this further.
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Without the âspecial assumptionsâ and some constraints you are liable to end up in a quagmire of words.
You also need a feedback mechanism to weed off BS.
I can illustrate with a possibly apocryphal but telling complaint of a head of a university.
âYou physicists and your expensive instruments. Look at the mathematicians, all they need is a pencil, paper, and waste paper basket. Or look over there at the philosophers, they need just a pencil and paper.â
Get the set of the answers. Which in a way can count as the one right answer.
You donât need a philosophy here.
Thatâs what multiscale modeling is for.
Thatâs what numerical simulation is for. When analytical approach is unfeasible, simulate. It may take a while, but a todayâs desktop machine has a power similar to yesterdayâs supercomputers. Tomorrow the same will repeat.
Says who? Some philosopher? Why should it be so? Thereâs a finite and fairly low number of both neurons, support cells, and interconnections. You donât need an electron-precise simulation, these things work on statistical averaging anyway. You may have to simulate neurons as made of parts instead of as atomic units, but so be it; the parts will be WAY WAY WAY bigger than atoms.
My laptop disagrees. My power grid concurs. The rest of my technology cheers from the sidelines.
And no amount of questioning will stop it from working. Wasted time, Iâd reckon. Maybe better than watching soccer but not by that much.
If you want to find whatâs desirable, look at the methods used by e.g. neuromarketing. And neurobehavioral research in general.
Brain imaging technologies can and do tell us more about what people want than all the philosophers together.
Then the philosophers come, take what they evolved into wanting, and wrap it in a lot of rationalizations and pretty words.
Except that one works better than the other.
In science you have competing hypotheses. Vast majority of them die, donât pass the fitness tests.
In philosophy you end up with so many big names holding different opinions that whatever is your desire you can find somebody to back you.
Good observation, sir.
The epicycles were a creative trick that was de facto a Fourier expansion. Add more terms as the observations become more accurate. With enough terms, you can fit a polynom into any curve.
The competing hypothesis had initially lower accuracy but much simpler overall mechanism by using another reference frame.
I guess a mathematician using todayâs tricks could convert the first model to the second one.
Itâs messy. Itâs ugly. It works.
Thanks to falsifiability we donât have to bother with luminiferous aether anymore, inter alia.
Call me when philosophers will be able to propose ways to prove/disprove their claims and replicate each otherâs experiments. The other way leads to lots and lots of papers wasted on writings useful perhaps as a basis for generating more such writings.
And still, it works, warts and all, and it keeps improving with its built-in feedback mechanisms.
I wouldnât say âcompetingâ is the right word. Results-wise, philosophy is a distant also-run.
Some of the authors can write things that are self-coherent, yes. But you can make an arbitrary amount of self-coherent systems, and without a way to weed out the BS ones you end up with a heap of fertilizer. Scientific cemeteries are full of hypotheses that did not make the cut.
I can go with that. Popper or whatever for you, NodeMCU Lua API for me nowâŚ
Not very good at giving others the last word, huh?
This is an incredibly childish and short-sighted attitude. Youâve already closed your mind to any possibility of value in philosophy, and canât seem to admit you might be wrong about this conclusion of yours.
This is based on your observation that philosophy isnât as good at what science does as science. But it should be obvious that science is good at what it does because it was intended for that purpose, and that philosophy isnât because it wasnât intended for that purpose. Philosophy has some other purposes, which Iâve tried to describe to you. In every case, youâve epically missed the point, usually with some unnecessary snark and posturing involved.
You donât seem very confident in your conclusions, either â that snark and posturing usually underlie deep-rooted insecurities about oneâs worldview in my experience. The inability to consider other points of view in good faith is another sure sign of insecurity in oneâs beliefs. And the most insecure often argue the most vociferously.
Perhaps someday you will grow up and be willing to consider ideas outside of your current comfort zone. Until then, I wish you the best. Iâll try to avoid talking to you about science or philosophy in the future.
My car usually works, but itâs not because it was designed perfectly from the outset. The reality is that my car is a complicated system with some robust parts, and some more failure-prone. It only works because occasionally a human being opens it up and fixes some of the more failure-prone elements.
The fact that science has worked does not demonstrate that it was perfectly designed from the outset. It demonstrates that thinking, acting human beings have in the past intervened in the operation of science and kept it working.
Your conviction that it simply âworksâ is not evidence-based and you should be ashamed to espouse it if you consider yourself an evidence-based thinker.
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Not really.
I had some encounters with philosophy earlier in my life. I found the field to be rather dry, rather unappealing and rather useless - a good time-suck but thatâs about it. Especially if compared with engineering. Useful if you need to find a justification for anything, but engineers donât need justifications.
I tried others. This one is the best I have. Warts and cracks and all, itâs still more rock-solid than the other choices.
Well, you started defending the fieldâŚ
The problem is, my comfort zone is big enough for several dozen lifetimes, full of much tastier things to nom on, and with more applications. Better spend the time in a wiser way.
âŚwhich is why I am responding rather late, as I was playing with the laser cutter, trying to engrave compressed-sugar candy. (It works! Cutting works less well, the material melts and caramelizes, but works anyway. Try having this fun with e.g. Kant.)
âŚitâs hot here. Not much can be done but putzing on the Internet and some small-scale fooling with the equipment that does not require much thinkingâŚ
Thatâs pretty much exact description of how science works.
Exactly this. A continuous improvement, based on feedback and checking if things work, if claims fit the observations/experiments, and killing off what is unfit to survive. Itâs quite a merciless field.
Look at your cellphone. Every single part has a lot of engineering in it that stands on the foundations of a lot of science. The ruthenium dioxide resistors, the titanate MLCCs, the composite circuitboards, and then all the fascinating magic of lithography and semiconductors. Every cubic micrometer of that thing is a proof that it works and it works marvelously.
