Asking somebody not to be mean seems reasonable but he only gets mean after he has already "lost it". He then unfailingly perceives the other guy as the mean one and himself as the victim. If he had the self-awareness necessary to monitor his emotional state then he would not become mean in the first place.
Combine this with the fact that most people come to news sites for validation rather than enlightenment and one can expect mean comments to grow in proportion to the popularity of the site
Yes! I have enjoyed many novels. But people (including me) are learning English from communicating on the web. And children are learning English from playing videogames i.e. as a byproduct of something they actually enjoy (I witness it happening!)
John Holt: “I suspect that many children would learn arithmetic, and learn it better, if it were illegal.”
>She isn't saying that people should stay off adderall
Indeed.
>And saying that "all people who abuse drugs do so because of personality problems" is obviously quite ignorant
Nah. The truth in this whole drugs business is far from obvious. Check out Gabor Maté on youtube, he has some interesting things to say. Apart from that, perhaps when we have a theory of consciousness we will be able to re-frame mental disorders as disorders of consciousness.
Meanwhile 'addiction' and 'abuse' are problems -- are you saying they're not to do with personality? Some people do talk about genes in this context, but they have no explanatory theory connecting genes to specific mental traits, so I think they're mistaken. And, if they did, those genes would then be part of the personality
>You seem to think that being addicted is a simple choice
No, I think addictions are a form of unconscious behaviour, so not a matter of choice, although the cure might entail making a choice
This is true. However, a lot of people will take away the message 'stay off adderall' whereas
(1) some people apparently benefit from it,
(2) some people whom doctors wouldn't prescribe to may benefit (e.g. the mathematician Paul Erdös took ritalin, a similar drug),
(3) all people who abuse drugs do so because of personality problems -- thus if she hadn't taken adderall then she may well have gotten into some other drug or obsession leading to some other addiction or disorder
An enormous and sophisticated 'tool chain'. Surely it could never be implemented in a one-day-to-be-invented universal fabricator? One is reminded of those 19th C ppl who thought recorded music was impossible since any player would have to contain miniature versions of all the orchestral instruments (or things that resembled them: "humanity's choir") together with a horrendously large paper roll punched full of holes
That sounds to me like a great idea and an effective way of managing risk. I notice that online speed dating services are available also, which might work as a way of reducing risk further
This suggests to me that a sensible business model would be for the man to pay to have his profile pitched to a given woman. This would reflect the IRL risk of asking for a date.
I don't think people appreciate how intractable a problem bullying is. For instance, bullying is qualitatively indistinguishable from teasing, which is regarded by most as part of normal, healthy socialisation. Hence low-level bullying goes unperceived. OTOH intense bullying is an embarrassment to the school statistics and hence frequently denied or covered up.
We live in a society where people still put a tremendous amount of effort into being normal and liked, and as a corollary we tend to persecute those who don't do this. Bullies are our unappointed henchmen.
I agree that people usually misinterpret their experiences where psychedelics and religion are concerned. However it's worth noting that in striving to create and discover interesting things one becomes vulnerable to all manner of possible obsessions and addictions -- most call it going 'crazy' (e.g. Beethoven, van Gogh, Tesla, Michelangelo, Schumann, John Nash and presumably many who ceased to function altogether in their pursuits)
It seems that psychedelic drugs have helped some people historically in locating an internal pointer or state which, if remembered, prevents this from happening. One wonders, for example, if the Beatles or Steve Jobs, notwithstanding their hard work, could ever have become what they did if they hadn't also taken LSD at some point.
I'm no economist but I wonder if the Nordic model is sustainable without external innovation and cheap labour (going on in countries like the USA and China respectively -- who perhaps pay a price in terms of 'social ills').
Indeed. Everyone who owned a particular model of computer had the same BASIC and could swap programs/listings.
Also, it was immediately available from when the computer was switched on (which took seconds).
Nowadays I think all sorts of packages have to be installed and it's too complicated for beginners. People who write instructions are usually hampered by the curse of knowledge.
Part of the problem is that we mostly don't know how good managers do what they do (and they don't either).
Their knowledge is tacit. And we have to make a tacit judgement when hiring -- which means that memes about gender necessarily exert an unquantifiable influence.
Combine driverless cars with electric motors. Add a few driver-free high speed tunnels which connect to the existing road network (I assume tunnelling will eventually be cheaper than building new roads). Then we'll have a growing, backwards-compatible high speed freight distribution system which delivers to the doorstep. And as cars get quieter and pollution free (locally) our cities will suddenly become civilised places to walk around in, breathing freely. Maybe we'll hang out like philosophers in the market squares of Athens or Florence :-)
There's a kind of emotional economy that nerds don't tune into. To those who aren't strong enough to resist participating in this collective exchange, it seems like the nerd is cheating. And he's perpetually anxious, so he must be in the wrong, right?
>everyone - including the teacher - had laughed
Yes. 'Socialization' --a purportedly legitimate function of schooling-- exists on the same continuum as teasing and bullying.
Goals don't work because the process of achieving or creating anything valuable is unpredictable. It's a discovery. And its importance may not be immediately apparent. That's why you don't get a Nobel Prize until 10 or 20 years later.
Btw, "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise" now has a citation:
http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2013/02/circadian-clock-obesity/