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DavidOdden reacted to Jon Letendre in About the Russian aggression of Ukraine
Correct, contracting for mutual profit. And that is what Niger is now doing with Russian companies. No more being raped by their French colonial overlords who were taking whatever they wanted, by force.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from Jon Letendre in About the Russian aggression of Ukraine
So then this ideological accusation of “resource rape” is nothing more than standard socialist whining about companies making a profit. The only thing special about African countries – and not unique to them – is the idea that the wealth of a nation belong to “the people”, to be administered for the greatest common good by the benevolent government. Which leads to such obscenities as the idea that “our jobs” are being exported to nations that do not have the obscene pro-labor anti-capital laws that you find in the US and Europe.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from tadmjones in Some details on physical force.
I don’t agree, because you haven’t argued for your claim. It’s not obviously wrong, nor is it obviously right, so I reject the claim pending necessary support – therefore I disagree. [Fill in the argument as necessary]. I would agree that the refusal to comply with the court order is a wrongful act, I reject the position that such refusal retroactively changes the nature of the initial act, especially when this conclusion is derived automatically from the fact that the final court has rendered a particular judgment, and does not consider the court’s rationale for rendering that judgment. As we know from the substantial number of cases where SCOTUS has overruled itself, the notion of a “final” ruling itself has a dubious pedigree. The concept of “initiation of force” requires a firm objective definition and should not be operationally defines as “an event where an accused is found by a court to be at fault”. The act of a court ruling that a person is liable for an act does not convert that initial act into “initiation of force”, nor does refusal / failure to comply with a court-ordered remedy convert an accident into initiation of force.
I do understand the interest in converting all instances of legal enforcement into responses to “initiation of force”. In my opinion, the correct path of reasoning centers around the concept of “right”. If a person interferes (in a suitably-defined manner) in another’s right to his life, then in justice it is proper that he be required to compensate the other. In some situations, the interference is sufficiently evil and knowable in advance that we properly classify the act as initiation of force, analyzing the act as a crime deserving of punishment and not merely compensation. I recognize the desire to simplify the concept of “right” to “non-initiation of force”, but attempts to reduce all rights-violations to “initiation of force” renders the notion of initiation of force incomprehensible. Instead, we have rights, which can be infringed by evil means (therefore punished) or by innocent means (therefore compensated). Compensation for infringement of rights remains enforceable by the court, since the duty of the courts is to protect rights, not just punish for initiation of force.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from EC in Reblogged:A Step Closer to Organ Sales?
The act of maintaining the function of the organ. Organs do not remain healthy and properly functioning on their own, they do so only in response to the proper choices of the person who has those organs. Similarly, a person must properly train their mind in order to function as a doctor, and it is right that a person who has so trained be compensated for the value that he has created – a right that society should protect. Rather than compelling the person to receive less than proper compensation for his actions, or prohibiting a person from engaging in the actions.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from EC in Reblogged:A Step Closer to Organ Sales?
A kidney is very different from a lump of dirt, yet there is no controversy over the propriety of exchanging dirt for money (unless you also disapprove of selling dirt). A kidney requires a life-long effort to maintain proper function qua vital organ, though less effort to maintain as something fit for dinner. That enters into the question of how much a person may be willing to pay for a kidney (for example “OMG you are on the verge of complete kidney failure, why would I pay you anything for that useless pile of meat?”). In choosing to live and therefore doing those things necessary to exist in the most primitive sense, one has earned the right to dispose of one’s life as one sees fit, according to your values. You are rejecting the value of the myriad choices one must make in order to continue existing, rejecting the positive consequences of those choices as “unearned”. I am baffled by your concept of “earned”. How exactly does one “earn” a right, in your philosophy? Is selling dirt monetizing the unearned, is this an application of the Obama principle that “You didn’t make that”?
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DavidOdden got a reaction from EC in Reblogged:A Step Closer to Organ Sales?
I suppose that “all well and good” means “Oops, yes, my kidney is my property, I may rightfully do what I want with it, as long as I do not initiate force against another”. Given that much, it is unnecessary to translate anything into a market dynamic, that is just fancy econ talk. Now, just to correct a small error, you own your kidney, and I cannot make sense of the idea of “owning the value of my kidney”. I value my kidney, my kidney is a value. I guess what you mean is “I own the thing that is a value”, and you are treating “the thing” and “the value of a thing” as the same.
Given that you understand that you and I have the right to engage in this transaction, then I suppose what puzzles you is how the transaction could be a value to me and to you. Since you interject “other individuals” as though that is an impediment, I guess that you are assuming that a trade always involves exactly two people. But that is plainly false. You cannot buy my house without the consent of both me and my wife, since it is joint property. I cannot contract with a surgeon to repair my brain without the surgeon involving others such as an anesthesiologist, or the owner of the operating theater. In the surgical case (my brain or your kidney), the immediate transaction is between me and you, however someone may have to sub-contract with others in order to fulfill your part of the bargain.
There is no single precise description of the nature of an organ sale, just as there is no single precise description of the nature of a real estate sale, or sale of chattel (such as cattle). Perhaps I offer a kidney for $50,000 with the exchange to take place next week, perhaps the exchange takes place contingent on some other transaction (my receiving a cornea) or event (I die). The transaction is that each party transfers their right to specific property, under the provision that the other party transfer their right to some other specific property. I would be happy to elaborate on how third parties enter into the matter if you think it is necessary, however it should be obvious that if I contract with you to supply a kidney in exchange for $50,000, it is metaphysically self-evident, Chev Chelios movies notwithstanding, that I should secure the services of a surgeon to perform the organ transfer. You presumably have an similar interest in involving a competent surgeon. Unless you are Hannibal Lector and you interest extends to a meal with fava beans and chianti.
The “transaction” is a contingent exchange of property: I transfer right A to you if and only if you transfer right B to me.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from EC in Reblogged:A Step Closer to Organ Sales?
Let me just give you a few quotes from Rand which should enable you to figure this out.
The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.
(VOS p. 94)
Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property—by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort.
(CUI p. 122)
Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality—to think, to work and to keep the results—which means: the right of property.
(Galt’s Speech)
It is true that Rand did not directly say whether one owns one or both of one’s kidneys, that specific conclusion follows from applying logic to the general principles which she identified.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from EC in Universals and Measurement
This discussion squarely relates to the career quandry of @HowardRoarkSpaceDetective, and the problem of technical arcana in philosophy. Without a shred of supporting evidence for this belief, I assume that there is such a thing as “realism”, and that it is distinct from something else – something relevant. So not “different from ‘horse’” (completely wrong ballpark), but perhaps “different from solipsism”. In the Objectivist epistemology, we seek to identify defining criteria that distinguish concepts which are partially similar, thus we would first define what makes realism and solipsism similar (and distinct from horse), then we sub-classify realism and solipsism in terms of what makes them different. Next we recursively sub-sub-classify kinds of realism – I guess there are sub-brands of metaphysical, naïve, indirect, immanent and scientific realism (no doubt other terms exist). By condoning the idea that certain concepts are a sort of immanent realism, that first implies that said concepts are not metaphysical, naïve, indirect or scientific, and that there is still the possibility of measurement omission within the realm of immanent realism.
Now, I know just enough about epistemology that I know that one cannot characterize Objectivist epistemology especially the concept of perception using the idea that there is a miniature humanoid in the brain who views the world and thus explains human vision. However, I have no idea whatsoever about the various sub-types of realism. I do know that in order to correctly identify an existent as being of subtype A versus subtype B within an over-arching class Σ, there must be crisp defining features, and the concepts must have been correctly applied to the existents in question. Which brings us to the problem of faith-based acceptance. First, I have to assume that there are accepted defining criteria that distinguish sub-types of realism (just as there are accepted defining criteria that distinguish tables from chairs or beds). Then of course I have to assume that discussants understand the relevant existents (concepts, such as the various types of realism, also “tropes” and “modes”), and correctly apply those definitions in their sub-classification.
Needless to say, my head is spinning at this point. I see the assertion that
It is clear that we do not have a well-constructed dichotomy here, we have two orthogonal propositions. A trope is a literary figure of speech, no aspect of Objectivism is a “trope”, and that cannot be seriously in question by anyone with a smattering of familiarity with Objectivism. Of course, the original claim made here was that Objectivists do not think of properties as tropes. This leaves us with two questions to address: how does Objectivism think of properties, and is there a reasonable relation between tropes and universals such that one either believes in tropes or one believes in “immanent realism”, and there is no third path? The Objectivist concept of “property” is rather simple. A property of a thing is a fact about its physical composition that determines what it does. We refer “property” to the broader concept “fact”, if there is unclarity as to what “property” means in Objectivism, I claim that this must stem from not grasping the nature of the concept “fact”.
As an article of philological faith, I will assume that a mode is unquestionally and universally defined by all true philosophers as a “particularized property whose identity depends on the entities that it is a modes of”, although I accept that with tongue firmly planted in cheek (philosophers do not agree what “logic” is, why in the world should they agree what a “mode” is?). However, I cannot identify an existent which is a “particularized property” (what is the distinction between a “particularized” property and a “non-particularized” property? What even would count as one versus the other?). What does it even mean for an identity to “depend on” an entity? I suspect that this definition of “mode” is not really a definition, it is a literary trope whose true meaning must be discovered. That is, the fundamental reality in this way of looking at the universe is the terminology that we use, and “mode” and “trope” are core realities (I guess the universe speaks English though it used to speak Greek), and we must somehow discover the nature of tropes and modes – “trope” and “mode” are not man-made graspings of existence, they are fundamental universals.
Alternatively, maybe I just don’t understand that philosophical people “really” mean when they use terms such as “trope” and “immanent realism”. This is simply a matter of terminological arcana, a matter of concern for Howard. There is a bit of jargon in contract law, that of “consideration”, which historically arose from the requirement to judge “What led this party to a contract to consider making that promise?” – i.e. the promise to receive something of value such as money, goods or labor. It seems to me that the level of historical conceptual arcana in law is trivial, compared to the mountain range of arcana that defines philosophy. I don’t see how philosophers ever reach the nirvana state of “certainty” or even “probability” regarding the classification of ideas in philosophy.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from EC in About the Russian aggression of Ukraine
As they say, YMMV. I was a member for two years. Officially speaking, YAF was unquestionably opposed to the draft and supported an all-volunteer army. There might be some deviant statist running a local chapter, but the organization was substantially pro freedom and individual rights. Their main problem in the 60's was (a) opposition to abortion rights and (b) the fact they had no philosophical grounding for their admiration of individual rights, other than “God-given” and “the American tradition”. Insofar as they are enablers and advocates of the religious right they are not allies of Objectivism, but it’s important to not mis-state their positions (at least historical positions, it’s difficult to identify any current positions – economic issues used to be prominent in their activism, not on the current radar it seems).
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DavidOdden reacted to Jon Letendre in Elon Musk
No such thing as the freedom to defraud millions of investors by conspiring with fellow marxists to suddenly change your “economic decisions” to silence political opponents. SEC giving a pass to that and DEI and all the rest means all bets are off. As Musk said, he “tried being nice for two years. Now it’s war.”
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DavidOdden reacted to Jon Letendre in Reblogged:A Oddly Necessary Defense of Lincoln
The Democrats went truly insane when Trump won in 2016, comparable to 1860. Not immediate secession if the country’s first Republican merely wins election insane, but treason nonetheless — attempting to frame him with “Russian collusion” and a hundred similar actions against the will of the people since.
Nothing since the first Republican took their slaves away has upset them as much as Trump.
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DavidOdden reacted to Jon Letendre in Reblogged:Vance: A Failure of Identity Politics?
The New Republic contends that Trump is racist. So let’s repeat that vicious and counterfactual smear over and over and try to make it stick. Objectivism!!!
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DavidOdden reacted to Gus Van Horn blog in Reblogged:Vance: A Failure of Identity Politics?
An article at The New Republic contends that Donald Trump chose J.D. Vance as his running mate on the same basis for which he ridiculed Joe Biden's selection of Kamala Harris:It immoral and impractical to make hiring decisions on the basis of race, which is why I oppose "affirmative action" hiring quotas just as much as I oppose Jim Crow laws politically -- and it angers me to see pandering like this (including Joe Biden's past selection of Kamala Harris) on the part of aspiring office holders whom one would ideally see opposing such measures.
This is especially true when I see someone like Trump (or any number of other modern Republicans) who holds himself out as the opposite of the left, while emulating it -- except for which group is the target of the pandering.
Nobody can speak for the aggregate preferences of any particular demographic group, but it is possible to make an educated guess. Trump's pick of this walking electoral liability makes it all the easier, because my guess is that Vance represents a doubling-down on many things that surfaced during and after Trump's term that could alienate someone who is receptive to a decent alternative to the Democrats.
Vance is a religious nut -- whose views come across as weird because they're alien to most Americans. He's an anti-abortion fanatic, unlike the solid majority of Americans who want it legalized at least up to a point. And his Ivy league background understandably both puts off less educated voters (who've been primed by Trump's own indiscriminate attacks against "the elites") and fails to convince more educated voters (who won't be bullied by it as Trump apparently hopes they will).
One would hope in this day and age that it wouldn't be necessary to tell an adult that just because two people might look alike doesn't mean they think alike, but I guess that proposition entails a level of mental development that many people never achieve.
-- CAVLink to Original
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DavidOdden reacted to Jon Letendre in Reblogged: Both Sides Claim Victory in Venezuela
Oh, is that not so believable?
I will keep that in mind a few months from now.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from EC in Objectivism is contrary to human nature
We can’t nail jelly to a tree, you need to make a concrete claim, support it with evidence, then we can tell you what Objectivism has to say about the claim. Apparently DNA difference was a red herring, so was the supposed “aggressive” trait of mammals being inherited. Now we move to an assertion about crows and rights. Point me to an author who is a crow, or an engineer who is a crow. Plainly, you cannot. Your argument reduces to the illogical claim that since a crow has more advanced cognition than a tardigrade, crows have the same “rights” as humans. You fail to understand the unique nature of human cognition. Yes, we are speciesist, blame the crows for failing to evolve adequately. Name-calling is not a valid argument. Try to make a concrete claim that has a relationship to Objectivism: spell out your logic, don’t just blurt out your conclusion.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from EC in Objectivism is contrary to human nature
That “percentage similarity” figure is highly misleading, a better statement is that there are 35 million differences. Darwin had absolutely nothing to say about DNA, he only spoke vaguely of gemmules, particles of inheritance, which in fact was a theory developed by the Greeks millennia earlier. Philosophically-speaking, the specific mechanism is irrelevant, what matters is that traits are inherited from parents. From which it follows that two beings with the faculty of reason will by nature have an offspring with the same trait. It is equally self-evident that there is some mechanism of change of traits: Darwin set forth a scientific basis for understanding how that happens. His was a scientific theory of history (one not correct in all details) whereas Objectivism is a philosophical theory of the nature of man. For which reason (different subject matter) Rand would not have addressed your implication. As I explained above and as is well known in evolutionary science, there are massive substantive differences between humans and apes especially in cognition.
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DavidOdden reacted to Jon Letendre in Reblogged:Dems: Please Stick Finger in Wind
Have we been here before?
Why do I feel déjà vu?
Anyway, I look forward to your blog pieces in fifteen weeks decrying the enemies of democracy who doubt that the biggest turd of all time really did receive the most votes for president in all American history.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from Boydstun in Objectivism and science
I’ve heard people say such things, but it is a thoroughly confused way of talking. Reality is “what exists”, nobody seriously claims that reality does not exist. There is another notion of “same reality”, the “multiverse” view that has become more popular recently where there are copies of the universe “out there” that we can’t see except if we are superheroes. Supposing that this is sorta true, that discovery would just tell us of a new aspect of existence that we did not know of before, some “phase” property where we ordinarily only interact with existents that are “in phase” with us. “We” live in this phase-universe, “they” live in another phase universe, all that Objectivism has to say about that is what all scientists have to say about that, namely “Where is your evidence?”.
Instead, what they mean when they talk of “same reality” is that it is impossible to directly know anything, instead every consciousness creates its own internal state specific to that consciousness, and there is no causal relationship between reality and that internal (subjective) mental state. Now, it is true that mental states are individual, that there is no such thing as a collective consciousness where you and I literally share the contents of a single mind. What the subjectivists seem to believe, which we reject, is that knowledge is uncaused. Nobody has come up with a coherent description of this “subjective reality” idea, so the best way to understand it is to understand what Objectivism says about existence and knowledge, then investigate what it would even mean to deny that position.
Objectivism says that we have anatomical devices which sense certain things about reality, such as sound, heat, color, and so on. We use these devices to perceive the universe. We cannot directly perceive x-rays or sounds above 60 KHz, and we even know these facts (and why they are true). We also have cognitive devices that allow us to retain and organize this sensory input. These devices operate in a physically-regular fashion, just as electromagnetic radiation operates in a physically-regular fashion. Humans are special no Earth in that we have some unique cognitive devices for retaining sensory information. In particular, we organize sensory information into general “concepts” based on common properties. We can reduce (primary) colors to frequencies, the wavelength of the light emitted, where “red” is about 430 THz and “blue” is about 750 THz. You simply have to learn the conventional boundaries for your culture, something that you do as a child (where there may not be a difference between “green” and “yellow”, just as English doesn’t have the Russian distinction sinij vs goluboj). The decision to organize sensory inputs one way vs. another is voluntary, in the sense that it is not immutably predetermined by the universe. Because we choose how to organize our knowledge, some people get the confused impression that this means that knowledge is random, chaotic and uncaused.
The concept of “proof” presupposes the Objectivist viewpoint. If you insist that knowledge is subjective and random, then the notion of “proof” or “true” is meaningless.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from EC in Objectivism and science
I’ve heard people say such things, but it is a thoroughly confused way of talking. Reality is “what exists”, nobody seriously claims that reality does not exist. There is another notion of “same reality”, the “multiverse” view that has become more popular recently where there are copies of the universe “out there” that we can’t see except if we are superheroes. Supposing that this is sorta true, that discovery would just tell us of a new aspect of existence that we did not know of before, some “phase” property where we ordinarily only interact with existents that are “in phase” with us. “We” live in this phase-universe, “they” live in another phase universe, all that Objectivism has to say about that is what all scientists have to say about that, namely “Where is your evidence?”.
Instead, what they mean when they talk of “same reality” is that it is impossible to directly know anything, instead every consciousness creates its own internal state specific to that consciousness, and there is no causal relationship between reality and that internal (subjective) mental state. Now, it is true that mental states are individual, that there is no such thing as a collective consciousness where you and I literally share the contents of a single mind. What the subjectivists seem to believe, which we reject, is that knowledge is uncaused. Nobody has come up with a coherent description of this “subjective reality” idea, so the best way to understand it is to understand what Objectivism says about existence and knowledge, then investigate what it would even mean to deny that position.
Objectivism says that we have anatomical devices which sense certain things about reality, such as sound, heat, color, and so on. We use these devices to perceive the universe. We cannot directly perceive x-rays or sounds above 60 KHz, and we even know these facts (and why they are true). We also have cognitive devices that allow us to retain and organize this sensory input. These devices operate in a physically-regular fashion, just as electromagnetic radiation operates in a physically-regular fashion. Humans are special no Earth in that we have some unique cognitive devices for retaining sensory information. In particular, we organize sensory information into general “concepts” based on common properties. We can reduce (primary) colors to frequencies, the wavelength of the light emitted, where “red” is about 430 THz and “blue” is about 750 THz. You simply have to learn the conventional boundaries for your culture, something that you do as a child (where there may not be a difference between “green” and “yellow”, just as English doesn’t have the Russian distinction sinij vs goluboj). The decision to organize sensory inputs one way vs. another is voluntary, in the sense that it is not immutably predetermined by the universe. Because we choose how to organize our knowledge, some people get the confused impression that this means that knowledge is random, chaotic and uncaused.
The concept of “proof” presupposes the Objectivist viewpoint. If you insist that knowledge is subjective and random, then the notion of “proof” or “true” is meaningless.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from Repairman in What if the US public schools simply dropped the study of US history entirely, as a requirement for graduation?
My understand of what was taught in high school history is over a half century old, so I really have little idea what they teach these days. But not no idea. Given what I have learned about the contemporary situation, I would take seriously a proposal to drop history and all social sciences from the curriculum, but also probably all literature, so now please spell out what the basic curriculum of high school would be, bearing in mind the staggering incompetence that most students have in math and science.
Instead, I suggest that there should be a re-consideration of the purpose of education. There seem to be three main viewpoints on that topic. One is that there are certain data points that are so important that it is impossible to exist as a human without knowing them. I guess “Declaration of Independence was July 4, 1776” would be an example, at least if you are an American. I lived for many decades without knowing when Norwegian Grundlovsdagen is, unlike every Norwegian. So obviously, importance depends on context. As it stands, the best justification offered is the intuition that “that datum is intrinsically important for our culture”.
The second is that education serves as indoctrination for a social agenda, so if the agenda is “pride in American accomplishments” that leads to one curriculum, but if the agenda is “shame in American accomplishments” that leads to a different curriculum. The same holds for scientific subjects, that the agenda should be something like “eco-responsible farming”, “justice-based medicine”. This is the current dominant approach to curriculum development.
The final approach is based on developing skills of reasoning. I have no issue with that approach, the question is how can it possibly be implemented? The main problem with a focus on reason-based education is that ideological indoctrination has hijacked the concept, by replacing actual reason with progressive pseudo-axioms under the umbrella of “critical thinking”. That brand has already been corrupted, I suggest referring to it as “Critical Theory” and put it in opposition to something else like “Reason-Based Education”.
There are three agents for setting curriculum. The first and best-known are the governments, which get to dictate what “counts” in a curriculum (bear in mind that even though the government does not run all education, it does dictate content to some degree for any education that is “accredited”). You can run an after hours counter-culture school that will supplement the government curriculum, that is what Sunday school is about, but it doesn’t “count”. Legislatures are notoriously bad (evil, not inefficient) at figuring out what should be in the curriculum. The second agent is the school bureaucracy, such as the school board or the curriculum committee. This is the weakest link in the chain, since they must follow orders from above but have variable control over the actual agents of education (teachers). Their greatest power is course-material selection, the H-bomb of education. The final agent is the college of education, which teaches future teachers, therefore teaches what and how to teach. This is the most direct and effective way to change the actual curriculum, because it is the teacher that directly imparts something to the student, so to the extent that teachers have some freedom to choose how and what, that is where actual curriculum change is best implemented.
The obvious follow-up question is, what can be done (by whoever) to bring about a change in what teachers do? Somebody has to devise and implement a curriculum for university education classes focusing on that which is most important, that means that somebody has to become a professor of education. Furthermore: there can’t just be a single such somebody, those professors of education have to be widespread in meta-education. The decay of education has been a slow process, largely encouraged by and not distinct from general cultural decay. It has not all been decay, there have been improvements especially a decrease in involuntary tribalism (discrimination based on the un-chosen).
Some parents may remove their children from a particularly offensive school system to protect their child, but the wisest parent leaves their child in school, exposing them to the harsh reality of what life will be like for them, and then supplements the child’s education at home.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from Boydstun in What if the US public schools simply dropped the study of US history entirely, as a requirement for graduation?
My understand of what was taught in high school history is over a half century old, so I really have little idea what they teach these days. But not no idea. Given what I have learned about the contemporary situation, I would take seriously a proposal to drop history and all social sciences from the curriculum, but also probably all literature, so now please spell out what the basic curriculum of high school would be, bearing in mind the staggering incompetence that most students have in math and science.
Instead, I suggest that there should be a re-consideration of the purpose of education. There seem to be three main viewpoints on that topic. One is that there are certain data points that are so important that it is impossible to exist as a human without knowing them. I guess “Declaration of Independence was July 4, 1776” would be an example, at least if you are an American. I lived for many decades without knowing when Norwegian Grundlovsdagen is, unlike every Norwegian. So obviously, importance depends on context. As it stands, the best justification offered is the intuition that “that datum is intrinsically important for our culture”.
The second is that education serves as indoctrination for a social agenda, so if the agenda is “pride in American accomplishments” that leads to one curriculum, but if the agenda is “shame in American accomplishments” that leads to a different curriculum. The same holds for scientific subjects, that the agenda should be something like “eco-responsible farming”, “justice-based medicine”. This is the current dominant approach to curriculum development.
The final approach is based on developing skills of reasoning. I have no issue with that approach, the question is how can it possibly be implemented? The main problem with a focus on reason-based education is that ideological indoctrination has hijacked the concept, by replacing actual reason with progressive pseudo-axioms under the umbrella of “critical thinking”. That brand has already been corrupted, I suggest referring to it as “Critical Theory” and put it in opposition to something else like “Reason-Based Education”.
There are three agents for setting curriculum. The first and best-known are the governments, which get to dictate what “counts” in a curriculum (bear in mind that even though the government does not run all education, it does dictate content to some degree for any education that is “accredited”). You can run an after hours counter-culture school that will supplement the government curriculum, that is what Sunday school is about, but it doesn’t “count”. Legislatures are notoriously bad (evil, not inefficient) at figuring out what should be in the curriculum. The second agent is the school bureaucracy, such as the school board or the curriculum committee. This is the weakest link in the chain, since they must follow orders from above but have variable control over the actual agents of education (teachers). Their greatest power is course-material selection, the H-bomb of education. The final agent is the college of education, which teaches future teachers, therefore teaches what and how to teach. This is the most direct and effective way to change the actual curriculum, because it is the teacher that directly imparts something to the student, so to the extent that teachers have some freedom to choose how and what, that is where actual curriculum change is best implemented.
The obvious follow-up question is, what can be done (by whoever) to bring about a change in what teachers do? Somebody has to devise and implement a curriculum for university education classes focusing on that which is most important, that means that somebody has to become a professor of education. Furthermore: there can’t just be a single such somebody, those professors of education have to be widespread in meta-education. The decay of education has been a slow process, largely encouraged by and not distinct from general cultural decay. It has not all been decay, there have been improvements especially a decrease in involuntary tribalism (discrimination based on the un-chosen).
Some parents may remove their children from a particularly offensive school system to protect their child, but the wisest parent leaves their child in school, exposing them to the harsh reality of what life will be like for them, and then supplements the child’s education at home.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from Jon Letendre in Reblogged:Three on the Vance Selection
For those who are not familiar with Trump’s VP pick, he signals the end of free market economics in the Republican Party (here and here). He rejects the traditional Republican opposition to antitrust laws and the view that Lina Khan, Biden’s Commissioner of the FTC and chief government aggressor against business success is indeed engaged in some sort of fundamental evil thing and has aggressively pursued an anti-innovation, anti-tech, anti-big business anti-consumer agenda.
Vance loves this: “I guess I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job”. He holds that we need to “build a competitive marketplace…that allows consumers to have the right choices and isn't just so obsessed on pricing power within the market”. Not, “we need to get government out of the way of business”, but to actively build a “competitive marketplace”. It will be interesting to see if Vance repudiates this position from a few months ago, or does he more clearly embrace government-run economy. It will be more interesting to see if Trump responds to the mounting criticism of this choice with anything more than a standard Trump “He is a beautiful choice” nonsense.
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DavidOdden got a reaction from EC in Reblogged:A Biden Exit Strategy
A lie is not the same as an error. A lie is knowing that a statement is false, yet making it. Your claim that Biden lied is false, therefore by your criteria, you lied. Moreover you even assume the “assertion while knowing it to be false” meaning of “lie”. Bush did not provably lie, not did Biden. I have no problem with asserting that Bush and Biden should not have made statements that they were not certain were true, but that is not the definition of a lie.
You can validly say that “the media” lied, although there is no such thing as “the media”. Some a-hole (or multiple holes) deliberately manipulated the presentation of Trump’s interview. A different a-hole accepted that manipulation as fact, believed it to be true, and responded accordingly. Moreover, a third-order a-hole restated Biden’s text to remove false statements (it is true that there were riots in Charlottesville and that there were white supremacists involved, as repeatedly re-tweeted on social media – that part is not a lie). Your lie, or error, lies in imputing to Biden certain knowledge, without a shred of evidence that Biden knew the statement was false. Had you checked your sources, you probably would have realized that your accusation of Biden lying was not warranted, just as Biden could and have checked his sources before making his accusation.
A question which I don’t think is checkable at this point is the details of creation of any of those hoaxes. Some jackass (i.e. a-hole) posts an unresearched emotional reaction on a public forum and it gets reposted by others. WTF with waiting 4 years for this Snopes report? The explanation is rather simply that emotional ideology overrides reasoning. You cannot immunize yourself from the accusation of lying by playing the “while knowing it to be false” card without granting Bush and Biden access to the same card. Perhaps you can get away with a moral argument that as a lowly peon as opposed to being President of the United States, you have no moral duty to determine what is true before making an accusation. You can blame the media for Biden’s failure and your own. You might also demand original sources, given that media including the million of morons who contribute to social media have a tendency to lie, in the sense of not bothering to do their research. So I am actually not surprised that you couldn’t connect the argument to the axiomatic, because it is pretty hard to do.
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DavidOdden reacted to tadmjones in Reblogged:A Biden Exit Strategy
It is not plausible, it stretches the concept of plausibility to its ultimate limit, to predicate Biden’s current assertions on a continuing erroneous impression of an event that occurred years ago.
Say Trump’s news conference happened at 2 pm on a particular Tuesday and Biden learned of the content of his remarks from a third party and assumed the information he became aware of was a true representation of Trump’s word and made statements based on that misrepresentation later that day or even early the next day, then sure your tortured description would ‘fit’. But that explanation does not account for him restating a falsehood today. See he lied, from that particular Thursday onwards , unless you assume he was never confronted with evidence of his innocent mistake.
Do you not remember how any public official making a public statement had to preface the statement , no matter the subject matter of the statement with a disparagement, disclaimer about violence and white supremacy lest they be badgered by the ‘press’ until they spoke the magic words?
It is conceivable that you do not pay that much attention to such things, but politicians do , that is pretty much all they do. It is inconceivable that Biden or anyone on his staff remained then or continues today to remain ignorant of the content and context of Trump’s remarks on that day, he/they are lying. It is a certainty.
It is not something that was ‘debunked’ years later , it was never bunked in the first place.
Perhaps you are making a category error in applying ‘certainty’ in this situation. I do get the impression that most of your arguments stem from a confusion about the difference between the symbolic nature of language and the epistemic implications that confusion results in on more ontological premises. As long as subject/ predicate schema is strictly followed truth results. To me it feels like casting spells ,lol.