Which is clearly false: the meaning of words being readily looked up, for example, or common multiplications.
Probably he meant "I never make effort to ...".
Which IMO is foolish - for most people - but probably reflects more that he easily memorised facts without effort (something I was fortunate to experience in my youth and which is now sorely missed).
He made that comment in reference to not knowing the speed of sound off hand, and it is not remotely foolish. It is a very bad student that wastes his time memorizing endless reams of facts, rather than trying to understand the deeper meaning of what they are reading.
>Education Is Not the Learning of Facts, But the Training of the Mind To Think
-Also Einstein
Information is only useful insofar as it furthers understanding. It has no value outside that beyond parlor tricks or game shows, especially in the modern internet age.
If you work on subject matter you commit it to memory simply through familiarity, this is a great boon as it simplifies many analyses to recall facts.
What good knowing how to think without having the standard inputs; this enables focus on the wider problem rather than interrupting to feed in necessary facts.
E=hf ... but hang on, does that make sense, the trained mind can analyse it. Sure you can look up energies, and Planck and frequencies but having any of those to hand makes your work more efficient. It doesn't just have to make theoretical sense except for v. v. few ... and I say that as an erstwhile theoretician.
Don't get me wrong. Learning facts as a goal is inherently misdirected. But facts are the atoms on which the trained mind works.
Moreover axioms are facts that can't be intuited or derived, they must be learnt of existing systems or defined of new ones.
I think the position espoused in those quotes is hyperbolic.
Try keeping a sketch pad for quick illustrations or perhaps a notebook for poems. The world is filled with inspiration! Not only will you be more present, but you'll be turning your seemingly humdrum life into a work of art!
I love that interpretation of jotting down information as creating a mindfulness work of art. What a thought! I used to do the cliche "note to self" with a voice recorder, that I've recently been desiring again. My cell phone is too slow to respond to my inspirations having to log in past the keycode, launch the app, dump mental information. Stepping through those hoops seems to decay my inspiration. You make me think about reverting back to old technology like the pen and paper. Come to think of it I get the sense that the mental decay from fishing for those materials in my pocket is less than futzing with a cell phone.
I just installed Microsoft OneNote to my Android phone and it added a quick launch app to my lockscreen much like how the camera can be launched while the phone is locked. I'll see how much mileage I get with this solution.
I actually carry a cheap USB wacom tablet around with my laptop for such purposes... I swear by it, it gives you almost the full freedom of paper without the restrictions of manual media (undo, scaling, duplication, restyling, etc.)
Writing on it is very natural/paper feeling, there's no erasing or anything. With the more expensive models, it can sync the notes to a computer/cloud service.
The way the screen works, it can only erase the whole screen in one go. I think with the cloud-connected ones, you can save the page off before erasing it and then view them later.
Being that we're hairless apes who rely on clothing, fire to break down our food, and a host of other technologies just for basic survival, I'd say our natural biology is pretty damned unimportant when it comes to such high level behavior such as preferred profession in the Western world.
Your culture and your language are by far much more responsible for your desires and actions. Just look how easily mankind is swayed by mere words to go to war!
I have thought about this a lot, and yet when you observe little kids, little boys want to play with trucks and cars, and little girls like playing with dolls. Nobody has to tell boys to play with cars or toy guns. They just like them. Obviously everybody's an individual. But by and large I think there are trends at such a young age it's apparent that the gender differences in occupational choices aren't just due to culture.
"In experiments, male adolescent monkeys also prefer to play with wheeled vehicles while the females prefer dolls — and their societies say nothing on the matter."
Isn't that the point? Monkeys don't have language and culture, but males and females still prefer different types of things, giving evidence to the argument that it is not simply culture influencing children's toy preferences
I think that boys just plain will prefer the cars over the doll if you give them the choice, regardless of culture. The story of David Reimer is instructive. The boy at 22 months had a botched circumcision. So the doctors just chopped off his balls and made a vagina for him. He had a horrible time becoming a "girl" and as soon as he was told he was a boy as a teen immediately reverted and lived the rest of his life as a boy as much as he could. The reason his parents told him anyways was because he threatened to take his own life, hating to see the therapist who was trying to make him act like a girl.
Little boys and girls also don't want to eat their vegetables or pick up their toys.
What do babies have to do with socialized adult behavior?
I'm not saying that biology has no impact on behavior, I'm saying that it barely has any impact when compared to the influence of language and culture.
Actually, you've shown nothing. No-one's denying these differences exist. The question's whether they're mutable. And gender expression is clearly mutable, you just need to visit an old art gallery to see that.
Scott's problem is that his forum for discussion is social media.
No one can speak meaningfully and reasonably about anything on social media, let alone the politics of racism.
The medium makes the message almost completely devoid of meaning.
Seriously, there is no problem with the operating definition of racism outside of social media.
Every idiot screaming about the alt-right (or their phantasmagorical counter-part, the social justice warrior) is just someone who spends too much time on Twitter.
Might as well be complaining about what policies the Orc players in WoW use to justify who they vote for.
The OP is a post (by Scott) on his own blog on his own domain. If that constitutes social media in your mind, then what parts of the web do you consider not social media? If the answer is, none of it, then why didn't your comment talk (or complain) about "the web" instead of about "social media"?
He is active on a variety of social media and uses discussions on Twitter as evidence in the article in question.
His views on contemporary American political discourse are mainly shaped by these interactions on social media.
Unfortunately, the rest of the media is also on social media, so you can't really find a journalist or blogger who is in touch with reality.
Just to clarify, Twitter is as close to reality as World of Warcraft. At least with an MMORPG the players realize it is a game. Funny enough, more people are dying from playing video games like WoW than from alt-right/SJW altercations.
Just like the "legitimate demand" for heroin or cigarettes!
While we're at it can we get rid of the FDA so we can go back to a world filled with the "legitimate demand" for laudnum sold as a miracle cure for consumption, hysterics and gout?
Neoliberalism, by mixing ethical relativism with social Darwinism, allows for some rent seeking asshat to sleep well at night because they authorised a marketing campaign featuring a black woman.
Good job, Team Progress! All we need are just a few more empty words and a few more empty products... We're almost there!
Yeah, no. Heroin and tobacco are products, and I am in agreement that products with crappy value propositions and high margins are unethical. But I don't know why you chose those extremes. They paint a false dichotomy of the danger inherent to liberty of consumption.
If we have to use extreme analogies, I would rather use prostitution, because it is a service. Just like Dollar Shave Club, I think there is legitimate customer demand and it shouldn't be illegal. I also am not going to judge someone for partaking of it even though there exist easier or cheaper options for getting the product - sex. So that just brings us full circle to my original point, which appears to still stand.
Yes, please, FDA isn't doing anyone any favors right now. Throw it out and build something more reasonable like they have in basically every other nation on earth.
I have gout, which is well controlled by not eating too much meat at a sitting and occasional "doses" of tart cherry juice. FDA would prefer I spend hundreds of dollars a year on drugs. I'm not sure what to recommend for your hysterics, however.
> FDA would prefer I spend hundreds of dollars a year on drugs.
Would you elaborate on this? It leads me to think that the FDA is either recommending against you handling your gout as you see fit through diet, or strongly encouraging you to use the medication you'd rather not spend money on. The FDA may approve drugs for specific treatments, but that doesn't mean you have to use them, does it?
"More than a quarter of the Food and Drug Administration employees who approved cancer and hematology drugs from 2001 through 2010 left the agency and now work or consult for pharmaceutical companies..." [0]
Of course some naive person might demand some sort of smoking-gun admission of collusion or whatever...
There have never been any barriers for creators. Folk art has always been a part of human societies.
There were barriers for mass dissemination of artistic works, but not the process of creation.
Mass media put the local artists out of business. Before the advent of radio and recorded music there were many more musicians and bands. Now everyone has to compete on a global level.
I would argue that in this new global digital attention economy that there is even more competition and even less room for local and alternative voices.
Live music profits are at an all time high but it is all concentrated at the top. The long tail is a fallacy.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a lot of people who started startups would have started bands instead. The music scene was where creativity happened. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg would have started a band.
Starting in the mid/late 1990s, creativity's frontier shifted to the Internet as it grew exponentially, and the music industry started changing as a result of massive free distribution. I think many bands were never started because the people who would have formed them were making web pages and startups instead.
>Before the advent of radio and recorded music there were many more musicians and bands.
That's just incorrect due to the sheer exponential increase of humans alive, not to mention the many cultural factors you are ignoring. Thousands of bands were started because kids heard old blues music over the radio and became inspired.
I'd wager there's more bands and venues than ever now and if anything, I'm seeing more and more people make a living off their music thanks to the network effects of social media combined with touring. I've watched two of my friend's bands - pretty weirdo stoner pop music - go on national tours supporting major acts (Of Montreal was one) and it most likely would've never happened if not for the exposure and channels of the internet.
In the 19th century there was a much higher percentage of people who could play rudimentary musical forms.
The quality of music and choice available to consumers has increased steadily. People would rather hear the best musicians in the world than the best musicians in their household or neighborhood.
There is plenty of historical research on this topic beyond the common sense explanation I'm offering here.
Amendeum:
I assume you live in a media hub like NYC, SF or LA, where there is a concentration of mass media professionals.
If you drive out to a small town you will find a very low number of local musicians. Before mass media there would have been a number of local music groups. Today people living in small towns listen to what the mass media professionals are making for them.
These are the same kind of basic economic principles that lead to any kind of concentrated specialization, and on a global scale, comparative advantage.
Before the widespread adoption of radio, pianos were an essential part of any household that could afford one. Pianos were a common sight in pubs, village halls, workplace canteens and practically anywhere that people would gather. Nearly everyone participated in social singing to some extent. The streets were filled with buskers, most pubs had a pianist or accordionist, most families had at least one person who could play an instrument. Music was as omnipresent as it is today, but it was performed live by whoever happened to be around.
The decline in music-making over the past century has been astonishing, in small ways and large. Whistling used to be a common sound on the street, but is now almost extinct. Social singing is now a rarity and would be difficult to revive, because there is no longer a shared repertoire of song to draw from. A vast chasm has opened up between "musicians" and "non-musicians".
I'm very fortunate to live in a musical household and have a lot of musicians in my life. My wife and I both write and sing songs together. I've got a crew of people who get together to play covers and jam.
It is incredibly rewarding and gives me a very real sense of participating and contributing to my culture and community.
When I was a social media addict living my life through a screen while theoretically living in San Francisco I was frequently pulled down by bouts of depression.
Ever since I quit social media, got rid of my smartphone, discovered bluegrass and country music and moved to a place where these musical cultures are a fundamental part of society my life has gotten so much more rich and satisfying.
Small towns are where music happens. I live in Western, MA - I can see music every night. If I drive out to a small town in upstate New York, I guarantee you there will be a bar with live music. Even a run down shithole like Poughkeepsie or Catskill has plenty of local bands. Some huge names in music have come from small towns in Georgia or in Ohio or in Michigan. One of the biggest indie record labels is based out of Nebraska.
If "people would rather hear the best musicians in the world than the best musicians in their household or neighborhood" than why are local acts booming in places like Portland, ME? Why are small bands filling out the bottom portion of huge festivals or starting their own?
Your post reads to me like someone who doesn't seem very aware or involved in music and mostly gets their information from online source and so called historical research rather than first-hand live experience.
I'm a professional musician living in Austin, TX. We are very lucky here to be living in a city that actively subsidizes live music, but this place is exceptional.
At one time there was live music in every single pub in the country, if only just some drunk playing sing-a-longs on one of the ubiquitous pianos of the era. Nowadays the vast majority of restaurants, bars and private gatherings utilize recorded music instead of a live band.
I am most definitely in direct competition with DJs for wedding gigs, and they have less costs and a greater range of song materials to choose from.
Your posts read like someone who is convinced that technological "progress" never has any negative repercussions.
OP may be overestimating importance of "national tour" too. I know for a fact that some supporting bands not only do not get any money fro ticket sales. They pay the main acts just to share stage with them. Some people go on expensive vacation to XYZ island, other people tour as a band...
I went on an extended international tour in 2006, opening up for The Shins and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and it left me broke, homeless and unknown. I was living on couches, drink tickets and a $20 per diem.
It was a fantastic experience but it made me realize I didn't really like life on the road and that I needed a more secure source of income.
The DMCA has incentivized everything we see our current corporate-dictated web environment by making none of these businesses liable for any of their actions. The spread of misinformation is a kind of emergent phenomenon.
The democratic nature of physical reality hasn't led to every publication turning into the National Enquirer.
In this context you might mean the CDA, which provides a different set of immunities.
Edit: also note that misinformation isn't necessarily defamatory and so even if online intermediaries were liable for content, there wouldn't necessarily be a legal remedy to suppress most "misinformation". For example, there's probably no aggrieved party who can sue to stop a hoax or urban legend about nonexistent persons.
If Facebook or Google were to be held liable for the content on their platforms they would not have the same business model that incentivizes outrageous and inflammatory nonsense. They wouldn't have business models that didn't directly attribute personal ownership over authored works.
This isn't about people being liable for spreading misinformation, this is about a business model that thrives on misinformation.
"The more words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?" - Ecclesiastes 6:11
"Let's start from the premise that more information, more empowerment, is fundamentally the correct answer" - Eric Schmidt
One of these two quotes is not like the others...