Posts by BenWilson
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My take on this: The question of the existence of independent anything is not resolved, nor could it ever be. The choice of position itself will never be made on purely logical grounds.
We can't prove we exist at all. We can't prove the universe exists. We can't prove anything about the world, and that especially include values existing in this universe, or out of it, or in whatever this "objective space" is.
I can't prove this point either. I can only say that we've had a damned good go at it, and it still remains unresolved. Perhaps some simple proof, or some horribly complicated one, lies just around the corner. Perhaps I'm wrong, and it has been proved, and I just can't handle the proof.
The problem with this position is that it isn't a position. It makes no stand. It is not 'progressive', just cautious. It's actually the people who do take stands that move these debates forward. They may drive forward against all reason, but at least they're trying to understand things. I applaud this, and generally try to do so myself. But it can fail too, like all processes, particularly when the debate stagnates, stops being constructive and creative, stops allowing alternate perspective, obstructs new entrants from allowing their POV to develop any sophistication. Then the debate is 'degenerating'.
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3410 I overtrump your old-fashions. IIRC Aristotle expresses a view on this. He was of the mind that ethics IS politics. Where disagreement on norms happens, whether they be aesthetic or ethical, the only resolution is a political process. Can't remember (my Aristotle is weak, I blame an extremely boring lecturer for killing my interest in the man) if he had a favored process, or if he simply pointed out advantages and disadvantages of the various systems that he had come across, obviously including democracy and various kinds of oligarchy. Maybe he was just being careful, didn't want Philip of Macedon to cut his head off for saying that monarchy is shitty, and didn't want to get his school shut down by demagogues if he said democracy was crap, too.
I see this as ultimately solipsistic. Not something that can be proved or disproved, but something that I resist at an intellectual level for reasons that could in themselves mostly boil down to aesthetic choices. Something about 'consensus on beauty' gives me the shits.
But, and I think this is part of what Gio is saying, the process of discussing beauty/value/goodness is very important. It can help people to see it, and to understand each other. I guess if I have any reservations about that, it's about when those discussions start losing those good aspects and turn the other way. Once the camps have divided, and all the points have been made, and there is no resolution, I tend to see the whole thing as having stagnated and turned into something else, a cheerleading exercise trying to change people's minds through methods that aren't progressive - like boring them to death, or getting enough hot babes to dance for your cause. That is why I made my rather disparaging "desperate bitching" comment. It was probably the wrong thing to do, perhaps some new points were coming up, rather than just new ways of making the old points. And perhaps even new ways of making the old points are worth hearing. Furthermore, there are people who might have simply entered the debate fresh, who are entitled to partake of it every bit as much as we're allowed to have this discussion, even though it is probably the 500 billionth time it has been had in human history.
In my defense, I think that pointing out that debate has stagnated to cheerleading is also worth doing sometimes. Perhaps people hadn't noticed.
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Blearggh!!!
Aw, cmon. One of the better kids films. Some pretty heavy duty concepts for...what was I? 7?
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Was it a red balloon
It was. A most benign one.
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Tempted as I am to write an epic post, saving my point up for the 17th minute and my less-than-100-posts-n00b character assassination for 2/3 in, just to span the entire 17th page and hog the glory, work calls.
Instead, some nicer news. While we were all pondering the imponderables, Zane, my second-born followed a little narrative arc of his own. A balloon that had been taunting him just out of reach inspired him to take to his knees and with mighty surges of sheer will he commando crawled after it, pinning it finally against the window. His look of joy at the praise of his mother was caught digitally, and would take preference over any movie made outside of my house, in the space capsule. Citizen Zane, I shall call it.
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and then there's this
Strangely captivating. I found myself wondering how often I'd done these things. Again, one can't judge a blog by its title.
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Here's why ...
That scene still makes me giggle.
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I wonder how many spend this much energy trying to decide whether movie A is "better than" Movie B?
We're doing it now, so that when the end of the world comes, we'll know which DVD to grab. It is possible that may come sooner than the end of the debate, though. But hey, at least the decision will be partially informed.
Was anyone else amused in The Day After Tomorrow when they had an agonizing discussion about whether they should burn Nietzsche to keep warm? Until someone else pointed out there were entire shelves of tax law they could safely warm up on first.
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Professional games developers I know suggest they must at least know some assembly, just to really tweak up the inner loops. No other way gives you that power. But they're writing Playstation games, the hardware is fixed.
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No, it's how they felt when they ran, and the message they conveyed. Also, the originality of the running is very important. We need to see running in a different way. It's not just about speed, but also about the narrative arc, the way the runners interacted and developed through the race.
Anyone can be a champion runner. You just have to train heaps and be naturally gifted. That side of it really doesn't come into things, indeed excessive training devalues the runner, makes their efforts mechanical and formulaic.
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