Thursday, February 16, 2006
Written four years ago
| Sitting here watching curling, these guys are playing marbles on ice with a manic ferocity, scrubbing the ice frenetically with a thing that looks like a broom. Is there no lengths that human beings will go to, in the search of a dopamine hit. The number of different sports there are is quite astonishing really. People base their entire lives around it, like people used to base their entire lives around religion. It makes sense really from an evolutionary perspective. Once the prevailing paradigm changed from God to genetics, the competive spirit went for a literal fitness instead of a religious fitness. The sports coaches replacing the priests in being the ones who know what is good for us. This is all well and good when young that body beautiful is the idol that western culture worships at. Better something than nothing I suppose. I find it rather odd though, that physical prowess seems to achieve a higher popularity than mental prowess. I suppose the folk wisdom has it, that people who have mental prowess, can use that ability to make money and therefore do not need popularity. The reason I find this odd is that when the human species is compared to other species we are not that well endowed speed wise, strength wise etc Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 18:43:34 -0000 Reply-To: Peter Turland peter@PTURLAND.FSNET.CO.UK Sender: Philosophy in Europe PHILOS-L@LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK From: Peter Turland peter@PTURLAND.FSNET.CO.UK Subject: Cooking philosophy Recipe for creating a philosopher Take a particle of particularity and a specialisation of generalisation. Stir well. Add a chicken and an egg. When the flavour of the chicken and egg have marinated the mix, remove them. Bung in lots of sorts, flavour with verbs, leave for a few thousand years then slowly with great care, add some ism's. When baking the cake one must consider wether to bake from the inside out, or the outside in. If you think you can not bake the cake from the inside out, I came across some thing the other day, on a website, that was rather intriguing, apparently if you microwave a block of margarine it heats up from the middle outwards. I have a problem with the metaphor here, I can't imagine the philosophical equivalent of margarine. I must also confess I have taken liberties with the idea wether one tackles the problem, from the inside out, or the outside in, normal computer parlance has it, either bottom up, or top down. Interesting resonances, If you write a program from the bottom up you have less of an idea what the final result will be, it is a much more messy route, but I used to write tighter routines that way. Basically for those who have never tackled byte mining, a program is a collection of routines, sort of, check input, do sums, update display, that kind of thing. All the routines are called from a giant loop. Top down is where you write the giant loop first, then write the routines. When you read the programming books you are advised to adopt the top down approach, there is an inherent danger with this method, you end up only writing the giant loop and using other peoples routines, to the point where ones abilities to write a routine atrophies. So if one of the routines is buggie, which it often is, the dreaded blue death occurs and all your hard work is lost. Written to Kuro5hin on Sunday the 24th march 2002 Things cost work not money, THUD. Work is the expenditure of energy, to the benefit of others, that cannot be achieved by machinery and automation, THUD. One man with a tractor and plough can plough approx. thirty times the acreage in a day, that one man with a horse and plough can , THUD. A things value is inversely proportional to its scarcity, THUD. Design it, build it, then deliver it, the rest is information.THUD As the process of copying information gets cheaper, the information gets cheaper, THUD. Some people make a living, by getting between producer and consumer and controlling supply, THUD. Economics has become the science of increasing demand, whilst at the same time, trying to get two men to do three mens work, THUD. Investing in public utilities, carries about as much risk, as wrestling with a dead sheep, THUD. A train costs virtualy the same amount to run full, as empty, THUD. Public utilities have fixed costs, therefore the concept of profit is meaningless, unless slavery is advocated,THUD. The internet should be a global public utility funded by subscription, the Tobin tax would be a good mechanism and give Mr Tobin a nice epitaph. The BBC works very nice without spam, THUD. Economics is about resource management, not profit, THUD. Economics graduates learn their economics at UNI, from other economics graduates, academic incest, THUD. I learned my economics behind the wheel of a truck, THUD. THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD CRAAASSSSHH ......I think one of my wheels has fallen off. |
