You're the same type of wimp the GP was referring to: lacking skill in internal-state management.
If you believe you need to "slow down," you will think it's the only way to manage your state. If you see someone else espousing "you can go as fast as you like, deglove your entire body, and still feel alright" you'll learn that it's possible to live another way.
The human nervous system has a wealth of tools at its disposal, and your suggestion that people eschew them in favor of simply avoiding the circumstances required that call for these very same tools is meek and unvirtuous.
> At the moment, I'm pretty pleased with Project: SRO though it's small and I don't know how to get traction with it.
Peddle the idea.
If you have the political chops: city planning meetings. There are usually developers going to these meetings.
If you can find a way to monetize these buildings (e.g perhaps establish a homeless-to-work program with the city, that provides subsistence jobs to homeless people, that they can then turn around and be funneled into these SRO properties, and make these commercial real estate developers bank), then you can talk your way into being a consultant.
There's a more humanitarian way to phrase this (and assuredly, a more humanitarian way to organize and build this type of venture), but I frankly do not have the emotional bandwidth.
> They aren't actually about things like agency, quality of life etc for women and children.
The same is true for CPS, homeless/poverty welfare, and any other group that is "down."
The real trick is that the whole thing is an emotional problem. Legislation is there to soothe bystanders' emotions a la "something must be done!"
Child's father is beating the shit out of her? Golly gee, I cannot let this stand! I must call CPS. Wheel her away to another family! What happens next is none of my concern; only my present emotions are of pertinence -- and they must be soothed!
Homeless person on the street? Throw some money at him, give him a sandwich, and get back to my day! Oh, you need a place to stay? How about a homeless shelter? Go stay there, if you really need to rest!
Etc. ad nauseam. Legislation can only provide material changes to people's circumstances -- but material changes are not needed, and will never "solve" a person's circumstances, much less give them any help (I'm sure you're aware of how simple it is to fulfill one's shelter, food, sleep, and water needs -- but how difficult the emotional needs are to fulfill, and these are the most important ones to get someone "out of their hole" and let them blossom into better circumstances, by their own hands).
The real kicker is that nothing can be done. No one is going to genuinely emotionally connect with those "down and out" unless they're naive or a Saint. That's a parent's job, and if your parents don't do that job, well you're fucked. Time to smoke cigarettes and self-soothe other ways, ya unlucky bum.
> I don't know how to solve that. I've worked on it a lot of years and things are less crazy making than they used to be, but I haven't found any slam dunk wins substantially moving the needle on my bottom line.
You have two ways:
- Give up on your idealism, and conform to playing at men's weiner-weakness
- Give up on your soul, and become a ruthless, cut-throat bitch that's sacrificed her humanity for money
The second option is a lot easier for men, and less disastrous. You would do great in sales with either approach, really.
But, if you have humanitarian, upper-class bleeding-heart ambitions, I recommend marrying into wealth (or better yet, hope and pray to be reincarnated as a rich girl born to a good family!). Otherwise, there really is no way to make your dreams come true. Women lack the ability to filter and focus their consciousness, and get that "tunnel vision" that is essentially voluntary insanity -- if it doesn't produce results.
Without this androgenized, "masculine" focus/faculty, you will always be at the whim and mercy of whatever environment you find yourself in.
If for some reason you're the hard-headed, unreasonable, "I don't believe in submission" sort: may I suggest steroids? Anavar is very popular with women, and they do turn into these "robots" that can get whatever it needs to be done done, and not feel the suffering of the world in their heart and nerves.
Sex work is never going to be resolved. So long as the world is imperfect, imperfect circumstances will happen, and people will do what they feel they must.
Good men are crushed; strong men are evil.
Good women are crushed; strong women are evil.
Be evil, or die knowing you lived life true to yourself.
Who knows what the right choice is? It's all subjective.
Human as its own word, not as a derivative for others---and in its own, separate, unmodified context---has a specific, insipid connotation, compared to humanitarian, "human touch," etc.
Frankly, my experience has been that men are the real moves and shakers (and women impelling them to move, shake, and writhe around). It takes a certain amount of ego, and internal and emotional drive to "shake" and "move" (which I must assume you consider to be "good" aspects of humanity) the world -- one that most women do not have, and the ones that do require external resources to maintain that "drive" (mostly food).
I don't understand why you would rally around for this point. Being someone of substance is a worthless affair, compared to being someone of culture. The first comes easily to men, and arduously for women. The last comes easily to women, and arduously for men. It's an atrocity to eschew woman's gifts, to pursue men's. That's how you destroy a nation's culture, tradition, its children, and thereby its society. There must be a duality, with a strict boundary, else you get muddied people that don't know a single thing about what it means to be human. (in this context, it fit just right)
I use man in this way. I don't care what anyone---justifying their schooling and existence---has to say about it. Progress without purpose is wasted breath. Conforming for its own sake is death. Anything Western Intellectuals have written in the past 70 years I believe to be without merit.
...
Yet, I'll admit Hofstadter got a chuckle out of me with that riddle: I thought the surgeon was the male spouse of the deceased father! I yield.
I agree with your take, after it's been shoved in my face, and forced me to self-reflect. However, I'll still use "man" as a more archaic synonym of "human," albeit with a more apt note this time.
You got me. Take your upvote, and let me live in my crotchety, curmudgeon fantasy-land.
The greatest irony is they're just another throwback to Platonic thinking, and completely---I mean truly---worthless in practical application (i.e real life, vs. academic theory).
People organize themselves in "capitalistic," "socialistic," and even "anarchistic" manners depending on the context, and level of scale (informal, local, global, etc.); many times even pushing one way, then the other; and finally ending with a mix that would be foolish to arbitrarily try and separate, much less "categorize" (what has that ever achieved, but some wishy-washy "more accurate communication?").
Politics is basically the human drama over power, in its rawest form. Everything else is a derivative of this drama.
An interesting aside: the "every programmer thinks every problem can be solved with more tech" extends to other areas, viz. economics, "political science"/geopolitics, etc.
All problems are people problems; and most people problems are power problems (which themselves are super-ordinate to ego problems).
Entire generations of people, forcibly made less literate, and unable to find out their culture's past.
With this detachment from their history, their tradition has been rewritten completely. There's now no real reference point to illustrate how things were; how they've changed.
It's no similar to hoe American school-children are taught a watered-down "unbiased" (only the facts) versions of history. This ends with a failure to understand what the American culture really is, and its tradition is lost on the masses.
What's left is a public that can only comprehend the surface-level meanings, much less understand or create new words and concepts to rebel against their authorities.
Are you on amphetamines, or do you just have so much time and inclination to sit down and write all you do? Frankly, I am in awe at the quality of your posts.
Teach me your ways. Please. What tricks to living a good, dignified, and alive life have you found?
What do you do to stave away the soul-killingness of the world? How do you keep your morale up so high?
Dear god, man where do you get the mental energy? Are you akin to Kant's 40 cups of coffee a day eccentricity?
There's an irony here. It's almost as if the code is a parody of the unwritten one we have in the U.S, albeit more on the nose.
> So a weak elected legeslative body and a strong indirectly elected executive with very few checks on their power.
Weak elected legislative body (Congress) and a strong indirectly elected executive with very few checks on their power (the president).
> Under the Code, living and working in the Mars Colony is a privilege, not a right. All those who come to the Mars Colony will be permitted to stay under a license. That license is revocable. Similarly, all real property is held by the Mars Colony and leased to individuals or companies working in the Colony. Misbehavior results in losing the right to remain within the Colony.
It's a very roundabout way of saying: you can live in the U.S, but we can send you to jail and remove your rights as we wish. Similarly, your assets are tied up as collateral, that will be collected and liquidated if we decide to revoke your rights. Misbehavior is a "Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go" ticket.
The Association of Prescriptive English Supports should be round up and shot.
Forcing an entire peoples to bend to some arbitrary semantics system is social engineering of the worst sort. Who knows what kind of ugliness has been unleashed onto the world- well, we already know. China is a perfect example of an entire culture completely obliterated once its language system was seized, and rewritten to suit the new regime's ends.
Angela Duckworth is but one evangelist, among many others. It's its own phenomenon: academicans (see: people whose self-worth is predicated on the popularity of their ideas) preaching their new gospel -- itself just a spin-off of some old, not-that-enlightening observations. But! If you sell it with enough passion and vigor and conviction, it sure does rile the masses into believing.
> “My lab has found that this measure beats the pants off I.Q., SAT scores, physical fitness and a bazillion other measures to help us know in advance which individuals will be successful in some situations,”
Need more be said? Science is itself a self-perpetuating industry. Statistics and findings can be massaged into whatever you want to see -- that's simply abusing our propensity to recognize patterns, to its utmost extreme.
More new, novel, monkey-go-ape patterns to fuss about. More books to sell. More speeches to give. More money to make.
Here's a hot-take, that won't drive unneeded publicity and revenue towards another idea salesman: the more you persevere -- i.e the more grit you have -- the more chances you get to succeed.
Please please, there's no need to write a PhD dissertation a la "A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature."[0]
Absolutely absurd.
[0] Credé, M., Tynan, M.C., & Harms, P.D. Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113, 492-511 (2017).
I feel a take that takes apart a whole comprehensive notion, one that is sure to have many rough edges, is nitpicky and worth little. So, I will try to address your points (for my own benefit), and then---perhaps---lead into a more worthwhile discussion.
> The formal definition of rational actor is not nearly 150 years old. It's heyday was probably in the time of Becker, in the 70's. The study of equilibrium refinement concepts practically died before the 90's, as did General Equilibrium theory (actually before that). The straw man has seen better days.
I believe you missed the point. Arthur was discussing the phenomena's overall history, not its formal comeaboutance. I.e, "economic theory has viewed agents in the economy (firms, consumers, investors) as perfectly rational decision makers facing well-defined problems and arriving at optimal behavior consistent with — in equilibrium with — the outcome caused by this behaviour." not "economic theory has specifically labeled its views that agents in the economy (firms, consumers, investors) as perfectly rational decision makers facing well-defined problems and arriving at optimal behavior consistent with — in equilibrium with — the outcome caused by this behaviour."
> Is it fair to converse with academic literature that is 40 or more years old - as the author does when referring to the "standard model of financial markets"? Perhaps more relevant: Is is useful?
Nay, I say. Literature (even more specifically scientific and technical) starts to become unintelligible nonsense after the 1950s. This is true for economics, as it is for any other discipline that was long-standing before this time. We are starting to see a reversal -- and some sense is coming back to academia -- but it's simply the beginning of the rise, and not worth mentioning.
Frankly, I have lost the will to continue (it is a Friday night, after all). But, do you see merit in the two points I've made so far?
It reminds me of how useless reference texts have become.
Wikipedia is decent for a quick overview of a certain topic; but "boy oh boy," is it useless for anything of substance and depth.
All of these technologies, merely glossed over. Many, perhaps, even complete bunk with no realistic applications or time-frames for usable prototypes, all mixed in together!
I thank you for your take; yet I refuse to yield to your sensibilities.
I think where we differ is in our approach to language. I see it as a medium of art -- like a song or a painting. "Man" is but a certain, evocative hue of brown that I believe fits best into the feelings I'm trying to elicit; and "human" is a lesser, albeit passable substitute.
I think this scientificization, making it more rigorous and "comprehensible," has done the opposite. Words have connotations, denotations, and all sorts of deeper meanings behind them. "Human" is such a sterilized, unnevocative word; and I refuse to use it.
However, certainly you've felt something from its usage -- even if that feeling was not the one I felt (compare it to: human -- which only the most scientifically-obsessed would have their hearts sing from its utterance).
What a vacuous article; even for one that actually takes a look at the history -- the "how did this come about?" It's as if it's been blanched, and the result taken as all there is to know---a skin-deep truth.
The U.S does not have "the best research universities," it simply has the most "prestigious ones," that continue to survive and thrive due to centuries of compounding network effects (and a little of help from the 19th century American middle class and a lot of help from the wholesale philanthropy of our robber barons).
Research had been considered a dilettante endeavor, meant only for the betters, until those lower down the ladder decided "I want that," and went off to try and "learn" their way into becoming cultured (see: gentlemen).
And not even a single mention of how the real "university revolution" (where being an academic is now a middle class job, instead of simply an upper class past-time), were spear-headed by Fred Taylor and Fred Gates. Both of these preachers-turned-family-office-managers were vital for the adoption and expansion of "scientific" and "medical" schools of thought (in order to fuel the industrial and allopathic medical industries -- to make more money and get more bodies).
I think deferring to reason is a nouveau fad among men of letters -- as if it's some truth machine; wherein one inputs one's observations and, by the grace of reason, out pops "what should be done." This ignores the very basest of truths that all men's* reason is self-centered, generating only courses of action that benefit him -- no matter how indirectly (ex. donating to a charity does help others, but it also helps the donator on some emotional (see: moral/spiritual/conditioned) level; otherwise, the donator wouldn't have done it).
Every man* has his own temperament, value system, -- and so on -- that reason alone begets wildly different what-should-be-dones. That is, unless the achievement of a narrow aim would benefit the many---and therefore all those different reason machines come together to collectively strive towards some end---then we have all sorts of different, many times conflicting, what-should-be-dones (politics is a prime example here).
Perhaps then an authority should be appointed?; someone or some group whose sole purpose is to reason all day and all night, until they come up with a what-should-be-done that benefits their constituency (of course, this assumes they didn't ascend by force, coercion, or some other deviousness).
But now, we get into this dreadful stalemate: the more constituents there are, the more the means and the ends have to be tailored to them, and the more the whole venture becomes watered down, in order to suit some muddied "average." Or perhaps the authority decides to "draw a line in the ground," to create some abstract "core" of acceptable means and ends (as well as people to enlist), and shun out the rest---in order to maintain some semblance of identity and individualism.
Yet, now we have two very inefficient differentiations. On one hand, we have the all-inclusive reasoning-body, that is so held back by trying to please all, that it pleases none. On the other hand, we have the some-exclusive reasoning-body, that -- fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on one's own reasoning -- shuts out the "others," and does nothing to support the advancement of their ends (many times, quite the opposite).
I think it is self-evident that both are inefficient towards the coordination of all humanity. So are there any alternatives?
Perhaps we could simply do away with collective coordination -- or atleast some less rigid approach?
What about some type of individualism?; where each man* decides his own fate. Therein, each member is responsible for his own fate, and therefore---collectively---the fate of all man? Each soul going in his own direction, serving his interests foremost, and pushing the fate of humanity, in his own image, little by little -- like some plant, slowly rooting itself into the most impenetrable places, and overcoming the, otherwise apparent, impossible odds.
On a local level, humanity is ever unsustainable, "booming-and-busting," but on the world level we have survived, and will continue until we lose our survival instincts (impossible, collectively). Each member of the human race will do what he must to survive and improve his own circumstances, even if it leaves others worse off; then, those worse-offs must now improve their circumstances further, and strive for a better life. In the end, each man guarantees the survival (but not thrival) of the human race, by the virtue of his selfishness.
*Are we still doing the "man" is not synonymous with "human" fad? It's more of a stylistic choice, rather than an "only men can use reason." I.e, it flows better than "hu-man."