The greatest scientific minds of your generation have determined that you will probably love "Hitch" starring Will Smith. Submit to the inevitability of getting Hitched.
I don't know, I find these the least appealing of any kinds of test for intelligence. On the fly problem solving? Adaptation to new situations? To me, ravens using simple tools to pick up shiny things seem more intelligent than the kind of machine displayed on Jeopardy or at chess matches.
Does it seem odd to anyone else to position Jobs as an Objectivist in line with Rand's ethics when he was avowedly a Buddhist? Not everyone who makes stuff and cares about quality control is an "ethical egoist," or whatever you call it.
> Not everyone who makes stuff and cares about quality control is an "ethical egoist," or whatever you call it.
I agree. But, Steve Jobs was indeed an ethical egoist in words and in actions. I think this statement alone, supported by his entire life's work, testifies to his having been an "ethical egoist":
“Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” -Steve Jobs (2005 Stanford Commencement Address)
or this:
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle." -Steve Jobs, Stanford Address
I think that Craig Biddle's conclusions are correct - whether or not Jobs himself ever said he was or wasn't an Objectivist.
FYI, have you seen this interview with Woz:
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/74391682/#ooid=8xMWJyMjoT9XMT...
Around 9:00:
"STEVE WOZNIAK: …And he did want to have a successful company, and he had a lot of ideas. He must’ve read some books that really were his guide in life, you know, and I think… Well, Atlas Shrugged might’ve been one of them that he mentioned back then. But they were his guides in life as to how you make a difference in the world. And it starts with a company. You build products and you gotta make your profit, and that allows you to invest the profit and then make better products that make more profit. I would say, how good a company is, it’s fair to measure it by its profitability."
I won't even begin to quote the Think Different(tm) commercial or Jobs' line of reasoning for why Apple did that entire campaign.
It does seem odd, especially since objectivists are about as second-handed as it gets. "Objectivism" is not a philosophy; it's a support group in New York for emotionally broken rich people.
Most "objectivists" are intellectually unoriginal. They've taken Ayn Rand's philosophy literally because it sounds good to an adolescent mind and is illustrated with reasonably well-crafted stories, not on any actual merits.
One of the most obvious failings of objectivism is that it doesn't even make sense on its own terms. Ayn Rand's "productive elite" had a mix of artists, intellectuals, scientists, and business people in it. Yet objectivism as usually deployed is nothing more than apologism for the existing, status quo, corporate elite: one that houses few intellectuals and no artists. Ayn Rand conflates economic and intellectual excellence despite loads of evidence (in the society we actually have) to the contrary.
I would actually prefer socialism to corporate capitalism driven by private-sector social-climbing and bureaucracy. Socialism may tax the most productive in order to feed mediocrities. Ok, fine. Guilty as charged. But the status quo in America is to have mediocrities in positions of incredible power and influence and that's worse.
>Most "objectivists" are intellectually unoriginal. They've taken Ayn Rand's philosophy literally because it sounds good to an adolescent mind and is illustrated with reasonably well-crafted stories, not on any actual merits.
Do you realize that some of the leading Objectivist philosophers have studied all other schools of philosophy, can speak about it freely, and understand it deeply? Would you posit that said Objectivist philosophers have adolescent minds?
Are you familiar with Mr. John Allison IV? He is an Objectivist and former CEO of BB&T (BB&T Corporation (Branch Banking & Trust) (NYSE: BBT) is an American bank with assets of $157 billion (March 2011)).
"Reasonably well crafted stories, with no actual merits"?
>Yet objectivism as usually deployed is nothing more than apologism for the existing, status quo, corporate elite: one that houses few intellectuals and no artists
You are absolutely wrong and have said nothing factual. No true Objectivist apologizes for the corporate elite - especially if said corporate elite earned its elite status through pandering to government and the status quo.
As for artists, are you familiar with, for example: http://www.cordair.com/? Would you not call that art?
>I would actually prefer socialism to corporate capitalism driven by private-sector social-climbing and bureaucracy. Socialism may tax the most productive in order to feed mediocrities.
I would prefer neither - because neither system protects the individual. Both systems eventually fail - one being far more nefarious in its crony and duplicitous ways. At least the Socialists didn't hide what they were after.
What is a philosophy? What makes Objectivists second handers? You are pointing fingers and spouting hyperbole, without an iota of a substantive argument.
I run a small record label, one that I'd like to think acknowledges all the realities of trying to make and sell music in the post-Napster age.
My problem with something like this is, I suppose, my problem with Talent Shows, or "Vote For Your Favorite Artist!" contests on MTV, or American Idol: the wisdom of the crowds when applied to aesthetics produces inane garbage.
The purpose of art is to expand the human experience. Good bands shock and surprise you, give you new sensations in new ways. The best musicians produce intensely personal expressions of their own emotional reality, to which people with similar internal clockwork respond.
Bring everyone together to see which music they can agree on, and what they will end up picking is the average of all their emotional experiences, the music which relates only the most accessible and universal of concerns. Sorry, but even impeccably-crafted boring music is still boring.
To bring this down to Earth a bit: the future of music is disintegration, not centralization. It makes no sense for me to compete for eyeballs in a crowded marketplace when I can set up my own download site overnight and start getting in touch with blogs that directly address people who like the music I play.
Music will continue to niche down and atomize until there are taste-makers, distribution channels, and a healthy community of artists for every possible genre and sub-genre. My "conversion rate," so to speak, will be much higher on sites like these than it would be in giant competitive marketplaces like the one linked above.
OurLabel is not trying to be a online Talent Show, or even a "Vote for your Favorite Artist" contest. Instead it is a platform for artists to crowd-source the funding and promotion of their recording projects as well as a service that artists can use to gain support in the production, marketing, publishing, and distribution of their project. To put it in terms of things that already exists, its MySpace + Kickstarter + various support services + CDBaby.
Its not about bringing people together to see music they can agree on. Its about showcasing music of all types and letting people who are interested in, and/or fans of that music support it from start/finish.
I think you hit the nail right on the head with this statement: "the future of music is disintegration, not centralization"
Rather than making another "vote for your favorite," sites like OurLabel give a voice to the fans of niche genres. They can "take ownership" of music they like and be taste-makers, and then be rewarded for its success (even if it's just within a small niche and not a huge pop hit).
That is so true. There is a record label, my major company, built around this idea. While they produce great success and enjoyable music. when you listen to it it's like there is a lack of identity. Often times it's like I could have crafted those songs if I had sampled the best part of every pop record of the last twenty years
I'm always really curious about people who deny human causation of global warming, which is what it seems like you're doing. I mean this as a legitimate question: How do you justify this belief?
The overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe in human-caused global warming. I'm assuming that you don't have specific training in these issues, or data that no one else possesses, so under what criteria do you choose to follow your own reasoning, or gut instinct, over such a mountain of educated opinion?
A corollary, for me, could be drawn to atoms. I have never seen an atom, nor have I ever really dug deep into the data that people say proves atoms exist. I have no more first-hand knowledge of atoms than I have of God. Yet, I simply choose to believe in atoms because people who are supposed to know about these things say atoms exist, and I'm told that if I really wanted to prove it to myself, I could go back to college or to a laboratory and do so.
We have to do this for all kinds of things, every day. We're surrounded by things that operate on principles that no single person will ever have the time or energy to investigate and validate by themselves. We have to delegate authority over most technical matters to specialists, simply because we don't have any other choice.
Why draw the line at global warming? Do you believe in internal combustion? Do you believe in black holes? Do you believe in evolution?
Really, I do not mean this to sound like an attack. I want to know.
Being skeptical of political crusades and trendy beliefs is very different from being a "denier". We can scarcely predict the weather one day in advance. Being skeptical of global climate predictions spanning decades is hardly on the same level as denying the internal combustion engine. And even if you accept the premise of global warming, as I do, it's a big stretch to make lifestyle recommendations based on that, and an even bigger stretch to start regulating personal eating habits.
> We can scarcely predict the weather one day in advance. Being skeptical of global climate predictions spanning decades is hardly on the same level as denying the internal combustion engine.
Your analogy disregards the difference in degrees of wrongness involved here. We cannot predict the temperature of the air above your house at 3:28pm tomorrow. We can predict within N degrees the average temperature for the next 30 days, for some N.
We can definitely predict the average temperature for next summer -- we can't say with any certainty how hot it will be on August 8, 2012. However, this failure doesn't negate our ability to identify trends and patterns on a macro-scale.
Global warming is a macro-scale event. It's always possible that black swans will upturn our knowledge and ruin our predictions. Climate change deniers essentially appeal to this aspect of human nature -- that we cannot plan for random events with very large consequences.
But we don't plan for the black swans, we plan for our predictions and, with a healthy dose of skepticism, we remember that the map is not the territory.
And by the way, deniers bet it all that the black swan will be a leveling off or even drop in temperatures. That earthmoving event could also be that temperature increase is actually exponential, not linear as it seems now.
> Climate change deniers essentially appeal to this aspect of human nature -- that we cannot plan for random events with very large consequences.
It's one thing to plan for a random event. It's another thing to propose trillions of dollars in taxes (both monetary and regulatory), wealth that could be used to further the human race by pursuing causes such as education, poverty, hunger, disease, standards of living, and advancing technology.
I think for skeptics of anthropogenic warming, the main problem is that proponents appear to be interested in politics as much as or more than in science. This just isn't the case for internal combustion, black holes, or even evolution.
Also, it's easy to fully agree that warming has been happening (over hundreds of years, at least), and still be skeptical that humans are driving the change, what with the Medieval Warm, the Little Ice Age, etc.
How would you prove to yourself that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming exists to the same degree of certainty that you could have that atoms exist? I'd like to know so that I can independently run the same experiment.
Also, the history of environmental scientists making false apocalyptic predictions is lamentable. It should take some extraordinary evidence for a rational person to believe a fresh one.
It's all down to climate science being more akin to religion that science.
Science is based on building a hypothesis, building a supporting model that produces a reliable theory, then wrinse and repeat.
Climate science is based on building a hypothesis, marketing it, claiming that a theory is going to kill us all, fucking up the numbers when asked to prove it and then sticking your fingers in your ears and ridiculing your peers when a competing hypothesis appears.
There are models for the weather systems on this planet. They simply don't work. We can't predict the weather very well and never have been able to. That is the same for just about everything that climate science has come up with. Back in the 70s and 80s we were facing an ice age. Now it's back to global warming.
We just don't understand why the planet works like it does. We like to pretend we do and make a big kerfaffle about how advanced we are as a species and how we can control our fate, yet it's a thing much larger than the lifespan of the entire human race and it has no respect for us.
I don't believe in god - why would I? It's not observable. Atoms, internal combusion engines and evolution are all observable and we have models which are recreatable.
I'm a history teacher, with Master's degrees in both History and Education, and what McCullough says here deeply resonates with me.
History, though, is only part of what you are concerned with, as a high school teacher, and increasingly it is not the most important.
Take, for example, my student teaching experience. When I asked a supervisor whether I should focus on Industrialization or Urbanization, or whether I would have enough time to take a detour to discuss the "robber barons," I was told that it didn't matter what I taught them. It didn't matter if I never got to the Cold War, as was written in the curriculum map, and it didn't matter if we covered Vanderbilt but not Edison, or if I spent a week on the First World War but only a day on the Civil War.
"The only thing that matters is that you teach them how to write," she said.
You see, our school was being examined by the state (Connecticut), and our standardized test scores were low. History teachers were openly referred to as "secondary english teachers," and our purpose was to teach children to write essays with thesis sentences. Every week, we were to devote class time to writing lessons, go over things such as topic sentences, conclusion paragraphs, editing, grammar, etc. Never mind that the kids have nothing to write about, nothing to say, because they haven't actually engaged with the world in any meaningful way. They could have been writing VCR instruction manuals.
History isn't tested on standardized tests. It isn't tested because no one cares. Writing is important because it gets you a job. History never gets anyone a higher salary (with the possible exception of history teachers), and so who gives a shit?
You have no idea how demoralizing it was to see the subject I love, that I passionately believe in, degraded in this way. Who cares what you teach? It's all a bunch of useless bullshit anyway, right?
Our problem with history is a symptom of our problem with education, which is that we don't know what it's for. We don't know, or can't decide, why we still adhere to the classical, liberal form of education. When little Joan or Sam or Miguel looks up at us and asks why he has to learn about Thomas Edison, the administrators of our school systems have no idea what to tell them. They don't say that the world is more interesting, more vivid, more meaningful, when you understand how it works. They don't say that we only understand ourselves when we understand where we come from. They don't say that much of popular culture has roots in historical precedents, and that understanding historical references opens up a whole new level of cultural understanding. They don't say that all Americans have a civic duty to understand their own past, and they don't say that understanding the past is the only way to avoid repeating our worst atrocities.
They say that it will all help them get a good job.
Well, I guess you were taught to bullshit well too. If the kids at the time don't know why they are learning something, they find out when they grow up.
If you are teaching them English writing, then perhaps that is a fault with you, your school, or something else.
Regardless, you still do teach them about what you said so your rant really makes little sense to me.
You make some good points, but..."some dispute over bus seating?" I assume you're talking about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, widely considered to be the first major victory of the Civil Rights Movement? The one where a young 25-year-old preacher named Martin Luther King first rose to national prominence? The one where the non-violent protest tactics of groups like the SCLC, which would go on to dominate the struggle for civil rights until the 1970s, were given their first serious test on the national stage?
The problem with the approach you suggest is that students do not, and will not, care about or engage with material devoid of meaning and context. How will you get kids to memorize the "dates of key events" without getting them to care about "what they mean?" I can barely get my history classes to sit down.
History is all about meaning and context. Dates are inherently meaningless; it's the stories that history tells us about ourselves that give it worth. We need dates, and we need chronology; it just seems like your approach would lead directly to me (a history teacher) getting beaten up.
Instead of following the historical figures that you know best, such as King, it follows the students who were the ground troops in the civil rights movement. What Halberstam makes abundantly clear is how dangerous what they were doing was. Simply, they could have been killed. Some of them very nearly were. And there were people killed, but they obviously weren't around for Halberstam to interview. The corollary to that is he drives home how naked some of the violence against the protestors was.
Something I took away is how sanitized the teaching of the civil rights movement has become. By doing that, we diminish what those young people actually did, and we conveniently forget how cruel humans can be.
Personally, I think history is best taught when it has a narrative. Hence, textbooks are not good at teaching history. Books with a focused topic - which hopefully implies a focused narrative - are much more compelling. I recognize that's probably not helpful to a high school teacher. I started reading history books, on my own, in college.
Personally, I think history is best taught when it has a narrative. Hence, textbooks are not good at teaching history
I disagree. Teaching history as a narrative is the most dangerous thing you can do with history, because there's always the temptation to shoehorn it into a narrative. Good guys vs bad guys. Heroes and villains. Plucky underdogs vs arrogant empires. The human mind is stupid, and there's only a certain number of narratives which "feel" right to us, and the moment you start reducing reality in its vast complexity so it sounds like a good story, you've lost most of what was going on.
For example, what you just said:
What Halberstam makes abundantly clear is how dangerous what they were doing was. Simply, they could have been killed. Some of them very nearly were. And there were people killed, but they obviously weren't around for Halberstam to interview. The corollary to that is he drives home how naked some of the violence against the protestors was.
What about the violence committed by the protestors? Were there no evil acts committed by folks on the "good" side of this conflict? I assume there were (there always are) but these get left behind in the search of the simplified one-liner version of the "Civil Rights struggle" narrative.
History as narrative is more entertaining than real history, but it's also a lot less accurate. You might as well just watch Star Wars.
The civil rights movement was rare in that the protestors did not commit violent acts - at least not the ones that were followed. These were people who were committed to non-violence as a principle. Why this is true is an interesting discussion unto itself; they spent months studying non-violent protest and had to mentally and physically prepare themselves to be attacked and not retaliate. While I did not agree with their reasons all the time, I have to conclude that in this instance, the tactic of non-violence was extremely effective. However, I think it's only possible when there is already an existing culture of the rule of law - or, at least, lip service to it.
He does, however, give rather complete biographies of many of the people involved, and they were not saints. Several suffered from depression, one's behavior with women earned him scorn, and another's naked political ambitions were distasteful to many others. (That "one" was Marion Barry.)
Reading one narrative is potentially dangerous. But when you read many books on a single subject, it allows you to compare and contrast what different authors say about the same thing.
Anyway, history textbooks are distilled from the kinds of books I'm talking about, so I find your complaint rather odd.
It's 2.99 on Kindle, but send me an email and I'll send you a free pdf copy. dan@enemieslist.net is my email.
It sucks, but it gets better.