Now, what could you possibly mean here by "indoctrination"?
The simple (and simplistic), pervasive and perverse anti-Americanism you evidence consistently, ersi. I assume your bizarre insults are a juvenile defense mechanism...
"a capable organiser of well-appreciated knowledge-sharing sessions to refresh and train skills that I have identified as necessary for the tasks at hand"?! An employer who would tolerate let alone accept such logorrhea obviously has money to burn! It might as well go in some substantial part to the likes of you.
For example this post by Oakdale is a classic. He said, "Surely you know the difference between news programs and punditry" as if making an instructive point, while actually just uttering a statement he had heard some of his fav pundit make. The subtext and context clearly revealed that Oakdale had no clue about what he was saying. School as a social institution has the responsibility to help people like him catch up before it's too late. Yeah, too late for him; I mean other people like him who are still teachable.
Your posts are alway instructive in some way. And this snippet was a useful reminder that intelligence is no armor against indoctrination: You'll remain obtuse, come what may.
However, you do occasionally slip and show yourself: Whatever did you mean when you said "for the average joe the dumb-looking didactic methods may be more effective"? Have you just opted for a word the meaning of which you don't know?
Imagine an arithematic text that attempts to substitute for rote and rules many of the tricks and shortcuts clever kids (and even most dull adults!) use.. Less than a decade ago I was faced with just such an abomination. It was prepared for 3rd and 4th graders — and I know at least one whose current distaste of mathematics likely stems from his experience with that program. In more ways than one, teachers' college is a misbegotten idea: Fads fester in their well-fertalized soil!
Regarding the current transgender attitudes, I'd agree with Paglia, who [said] that she is "highly skeptical about the current transgender wave" which she thinks has been produced by "far more complicated psychological and sociological factors than current gender discourse allows". She [has written] that "In a democracy, everyone, no matter how nonconformist or eccentric, should be free from harassment and abuse. But at the same time, no one deserves special rights, protections, or privileges on the basis of their eccentricity."
Far better had Gorsuch insisted that it was the job of Congress to do the right thing, for the right reasons, rather than force a new interpretation on an old law. By trying to be "fair and tolerant" (as is his wont) he's offered encouragement to forces inimical to our civil society. Please note: The majority of actors in The Movement seem utterly opposed to civility!
I mean the concepts. Why else teach vocabulary than to elucidate concepts?
Of course! Some think vocabulary drills are at best social plumage and at least, aids to learning spelling rules... But a conscribed vocabulary conduces to mute appreciation of the human condition.
What possible political purpose would the distinction serve?
Similar to the way the acronym DEI was named: An unwanted (i.e., not useful) connotation had to be precluded: The logical order of the terms should make it Diversity, Inclusion, Equity... But -unlike the days of MAD- we live in a politicized world, where even a sense of humor is only permitted within the bounds proscribed by the current ideologies.
Is the distinction being eroded? Or are primary and secondary school teachers averse to teaching beyond their credentialling institutions' preoccupations, such as DEI and social justice? Of course, the so-called critical studies all stem from relativism... Ye olde Cultural Marxism marches on!
California is not the only state where such tedious niceties are forgone. And certainly not all students at elite institutions are so ill-educated. (My daughter is a Berkley graduate. I doubt she'd ever make such a clueless mistake.) But the trend is toward treating language as a merely utilitarian medium of political action.
Would you only suggest dead languages? (Chinese never really caught on: "Only the pessimists are still learning Russian. The realists are learning —" the old joke used to be.) I'm afraid your Utopian dreams are bound to be unrealized... For the most part, the world is what it is.
Pelosi rejected two appointments (of a total of five or six) by McCarthy for the reason that the appointed persons were among prime candidates to get subpoenaed. Upon that, McCarthy withdrew all of his appointments. So it was not that Pelosi rejected Republican members just because they were Republican. It was House minority (Republican) leader who refused to cooperate with the committee when some of his troll appointments were called out.
Pelosi rejected the minority leader's appointments because they were likely to call her (as the person most responsible for the security of the House) as a witness. (For the same reason, Trump's impeachment trial called no witnesses...) But this is ancient history now. ————————————————— Recent First Amendment cases are non-serious. (Although the participants may feel otherwise.) More consequential was the recent refusal to grant cert:
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April 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday refused to let West Virginia enforce a state law banning transgender athletes from female sports teams at public schools, one of many Republican-backed measures across the country targeting LGBTQ rights.
The havoc wreaked by the recent Supreme Court's Bostock decision in the Title VII case, re-interpreting transgender and homosexual to mean sex will continue apace. (Gender identity and sexual orientation do not alter sex! Yet it becomes ever more clear that the activists will insist -pace Gorsuch- that they do...[1]) Title IX seems doomed.
1 Yes, I know that that's not quite what he said and likely not what he meant. But such misunderstandings are both to be expected and to be used by the agenda-driven LGBD activists.↵
It is now early morning of a dreary day, still overcast and threatening rain, as I peruse a selection of sites. About my room flits a mosquito hawk, a fearsome creature (Ask my niece...) many times the size of a mosquito and much louder.. I pay it little mind: Not only does it not bite but it eats mosquitos. ersi, do you likely mean further erode its usefulness? In case not: Yes, we can be less tolerant of ungrammatical construction and malaprops. But more to the point the article's author makes: Education if being replaced by mechanical means of understanding.
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Students and faculty are under increasing pressure to read as ‘poachers’ (to distort slightly Michel de Certeau’s phrase), approaching the works of their peers as hives of information to be harvested piecemeal and on demand. I’ve listened to too many faculty complain in recent years that they – or their colleagues – ‘just don’t read anymore’. And few graduate students seem to read entire books. Who has the time? You can cover a lot more ground by poaching – and publish a lot more, too.
This change in reading practice doesn’t only accelerate the drive to make the humanities and qualitative social sciences focus on the production of ‘useful’ information, rather than on the cultivation of critical thought and perception. It also makes them less fulfilling, as the (admittedly difficult) experience of reading books like Capital or Orientalism is replaced by reading them in snippets or through summaries written by others – now including, as a number of my students’ recent essays seem to suggest, by AI. Some people will always find the idea of reading such books exhausting, perhaps superfluous. But it isn’t hard to see how the experience of reading an entire book is very different from ingesting its arguments piecemeal or second-hand.
The poachings are apt to be like mosquitos. A book is more like the mosquito hawk.
I remember some years ago when philosophers (students and professors) began talking about zombies, and some few legal scholars... But (if I may presume) isn't a zombie a being derived from a human being by subtraction? A single motivating need, gaining sustenance, from a single source: us! Certainly a frightening conception; but not-to my way of thinking- a very interesting one. The OP wondered whether a machine could be or become creative... Not too long ago, a specialized AI did produce a new proof of a Euclidean theorem — but it showed no joy in doing so, nor recognition of its accomplishment: It was merely a program operating according to the provisions given by its programmers. It was the programmers that were surprised, and gladdened. The confusion seems to be between new and unexpected... In what sense could an AI have expectations?
The idea[1] that mind is an emergent property of certain kinds of matter's complexity is no better established than the Behaviorism of B. F. Skinner. We know so little true psychology that Freudian Analysis is making a comeback. (But I suppose it should have been expected: There are still believing Scientologists! Their scientific underpinnings are the same...) At least, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy knows its place.
Have you considered the phenomenon of hypnotism? Surely (and by definition) your Philosophical Zombie couldn't be hypnotized; and I defy anyone to cogently posit an AI that could...
Regardless of the status of AI, its usage is not really controversial — only mostly mis-understood. It consists of tools for sorting queries to data sets. That's it. They're nothing more.
One can blame the fallacious Turing Test for much of the mischievous talk circulating in our commons: It in essence posits the "if it can fool us" criterion for detecting sentience. Would we apply a similar test to, say, our financial dealings? Madoff presumed so...
To ersi's point about Truth above, I'd mention the Pragmatist philosophers of two centuries ago, only to deride their positions — for much the same reason as he gives: Incoherency rears its ugly head in any serious application of their program. Of course, that's what naturally comes of trying to elevate a maxim to a principle.
The difficulty and the problem of defining Truth is that it necessarily involves values... And, to date, we only have one example of creatures capable of acknowledging values, and acting upon them. When we talk about truth (uncapitalized), we have to refer to particular domains (e.g., mathematical truth) for which the criteria can be specified. For Truth, with a capital T, we enter the realm of metaphysics — which persists despite our dependence on empiricism[1]. (The most bizarre and amusing philosophical system I've read is contained in A. N. Whitehead's "Process and Reality".)
Matt Briggs has been arguing against this sort of foolishness, on various fronts, for quite some time!
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Beware the Deadly Sin of Reification!, sayeth the Philosopher. Reification is the Snake of Science. It lurks. It sneaks. It insinuates. The Snake tells the scientist his thoughts are good, that they are better, even, than the scientist thought. Flattered, the scientist comes to believe his model not only describes his uncertainty in Reality, but that his model is Reality.
We’ve seen this sin, you and I dear reader, hundreds of times over the years. Yet the funniest instance is before us now, with Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Yuval Noah Harari, and even ex-presidential candidate Andrew Yang, signing a document declaring WE ARE FRIGHTENED UNTO DEATH OF THE COMPUTERS WE PROGRAMMED AND WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO STOP PROGRAMMING THEM. Or some such name.
It’s true. The lurid fantasies of those who believe AI is not only not artificial but ackshually intelligence, say that AI is gonna get us, and that it will soon surpass we puny brained men and think greater thoughts than can now be thunk (you heard me). The Nervous are sure these wondrous cogitations must include the thought that man has outlived his usefulness, and that, sad as it might be, he is too stupid to let live.
Well, there is much truth in that notion as any glance at the “news” confirms. The obviousness of the solution is surely a driving concern of the Nervous. But it isn’t the ultimate cause of it. That comes from believing a model, and concluding that model is Reality.
You're serious underestimating their ability to facilitate diplomacy.
Hm. Are there any indications of an inclination to "facilitate diplomacy" from the CCP?
Good ole Google provides this:
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When did China get veto power in UNSC? China turned abstention into an "art form", abstaining on 30% of Security Council Resolutions between 1971 and 1976. Since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, China has joined Russia in many double vetoes. China has not cast a lone veto since 1999.
I'd really prefer this particular phenomenon to be reserved exclusively for USA rather.
My heart goes out to you, ersi! Remind me: How long ago was it. that I suggested you read C. Northcote Parkinson? (But -of course- what interest would British Naval History have, for an Estonian savant?)
Bureaucracies become "beings" in the Darwinian sense... Their primary purpose is to "live long and prosper"...
Special committees are comprised of members selected by their party's leadership: House Speaker Pelosi rejected the Republican members proposed by Leader McCarthy....and went on to "construct" a purely partisan panel. For that -as far as I can tell- there's no precedent. And what, pray tell, is the legislative purpose of said committee?[1]
1 It's political purpose is straightforward: Prevent Donald J. Trump from running in '24! How is that a legitimate aim of a House committee?↵
I throw this in here because I'm sort-a drunk; I remember what we'd talked about recently-, and -you might wanna learn something- here's an opinion Putin won't likely find elsewhere... https://thedavebowmanshow.com/2022/06/11/tsv-the-next-thing/
So well propagandized you are! (Says Yoda... Mortality -since it became philosophical- is, for intellectuals, a "ball of confusion"! But the ole standby -Them vs Us- suits most people. (Which is to say, means little or nothing — except in times of crisis; then some will want to take a step back and look at what-all is going on, to see if thee's a more reasonable way of dealing with conflicts, conflicting aims, zero-sum thinking about same...[1] Communism always had (totalitarian) domination as its goal. American capitalism had — a good idea that it could promulgate...
I'm sorry for all the havoc and inconsiderate non-kow-towing we've engendered.... But, hey, life goes on! We can't all be plebes. (You-all can get your Telly free from our insidious influence easily enough, if your gub'ment will permit ya to![2])
Reagan's Star Wars was not for defence or protection, obviously, duh. It was for military supremacy - when USA already had military supremacy. USA always had military supremacy.
As usual, you ignore whatever is unfamiliar... Was not the Soviet Union's stated (and practiced) goal to subvert the world -specially the West, and the Americas, in particular- to Communism? (There was a little kerfuffle about Party membership, here; in the '50's, the overthrow of our government by subversion was a no-no! My, how times have changed!:) Why -you seem to ask- would any nation seek obvious military supremacy, over an adversary who intends that nation's demise? Gee: Let me think... When Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire, he wasn't just reading the lines of some speechwriter... He spoke clearly about what "diplomats" dare not mention: Reality trumps ideology, and politics becomes meaningless when war is a real consideration... The US had no (stated) aims of acquisition or subjugation of the territories of other sovereigns. The Comintern was a different animal, no?
