jgallag8

Thanks for posting this, it was fascinating! I had to implement a hex grid recently, so when I started reading through this page and seeing some of the same things I had thought about, I thought I wouldn't find much that was new. I couldn't have been more wrong!

I think its fairly common for people to believe both that the US is the greatest, and it isn't what it used to be. There's obviously some tension between those ideas, noted humorously by Stephen Colbert's book entitled 'America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't'.

Hoogle could help with the searching problem: https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/

What does it mean for something to be 'a higher form of truth'? More valuable, according to some appropriate standard? More useful, according to some appropriate standard?

Even if something is effective at promoting a good cause, it isn't necessarily an unqualified good, even if one takes a utilitarian view of things.

I don't disagree with the use of social pressure in general. Many people have mentioned the idea of refusing to allow children without vaccinations to attend public schools, which might be reasonable, and might be effective. That is social pressure, and I am not in principle opposed to it. However, I am opposed to the idea of stigmatizing anyone who disagrees with one's point of view, even if they are wrong, and even if it will promote a good cause. The problem with public shaming is that it works equally well for both good and bad arguments. A lot of sarcasm just implies that the object has already been established as absurd, the writer doesn't actually have to do anything to establish the fact. Since he doesn't have to make any argument that the object is absurd, it works just as well against any object at all. It can be very distorting, and emotionally twisting, and can be easily used to hide the truth in any discussion.

This is what I mean by 'emotivism', the idea that rationality is useless, and therefore the best way to establish one's moral beliefs is by use of assertion and emotional manipulation. Even if it is effective, and even if it can never be fully avoided, I don't feel comfortable using it, because as soon as it becomes an acceptable weapon in any sort of public debate, any hope of rationality is destroyed. And ultimately, that is more important even than the very serious issue of vaccinations.

For what it's worth, I don't think the blog post in question falls squarely into this description. He was making an argument by analogy rather than using sarcasm to imply that an argument already exists. This was just by way of response to the sentiment that social shaming is a tool that ought to be used.

I would prefer to live in a world where, as much as possible, rationality guides decisions instead of emotivist social pressure.

At my university everyone in ROTC had full tuition as well as room and board paid for for all 4 years. And they received the stipend on top of that. They did have to commit after the end of the first year though.

Rust uses LLVM, I believe, and LLVM does as good a job optimizing as just about anything else out there.

Didn't know you could just use '!g'. Very cool!

I use duckduckgo mainly, because I like what they are doing. From time to time I will get search results that aren't very relevant. In these cases, I just prepend '!google' to my search.

The reason there is no hope for those in Dante's hell is because they are in death as they were in life. They are not so much being punished as they are simply extending the less than ideal life they lived before. In this sense, there suffering is not so much inflicted upon them as it is self-inflicted. This is the reason that there is no hope for them; they are their by their own will. (I guess it is assumed that their character becomes fixed in death.)

As to Dante not having subtly, I have to disagree. For example, the contrapasso associated with each circle of hell at first seems to have nothing to do with that circle's particular sin. It takes, at least for me, quite a bit of thought to be able to begin to see the subtle connection. These connections, though, often reveal something quite profound about human nature.

I am likely quite biased in my opinion, since I believe the Comedy is perhaps the greatest work of literature ever written. I think it is a pity that the Inferno tends to get the bulk of the attention. Even though it's great, the Purgatorio and Paradiso are even more fascinating.

Edit: There is no denying that Dante had strong political opinions though: about Florence, about the role of the Church in politics (that it shouldn't have any), about the Holy Roman Empire, etc.

Just like to point out that this has been debated much over many, many years, and that this view is not the consensus (there being no consensus). See the following for a good summary of a slightly stronger version of the claim (omniscience implies that there is no free will for anyone), as well as various objections: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/

The author seems to be saying that the main reason physicists should pay attention to philosophers is that philosophy can be useful in the study of physics.

I think he could have made his point better by noting that pretty much any thinking about why we study physics leads directly to philosophy. What is the point of doing science? What is knowledge, and why should we be interested in it? These are just the sort of questions philosophy as a discipline is intended to answer.

Any physicist who is interested in any 'meta' questions about his/her work is necessarily interested in philosophy. One can disagree with the particular methodologies of modern academic philosophy, but it is hard to see how any intellectually curious person can dismiss the field entirely.

It seems to me that this is a stronger argument for the relevance of philosophy to science.