It seemed like you were trusting Epstein now?
Like when I originally wrote my comment? When I wrote this?:
Mmm. Yeah, I said agreed with him on the whole impact framework stuff. Afaik heās the one who told me that the environmental debate is based around this impact framework. Hmm. Yeah idk to trust him on that. Especially when I say I think heās right on the whole impact framework stuff. I donāt even know what the environmental case is from someone besides Alex.
I do think my other comments were more generic in nature. Like the comment about possible intellectual laziness, that was more so said in the framework of me thinking environmentalists (and other intellectuals Iāve been told are bad) are wrong, but that wasnāt just framed by Alex. A bunch of stuff Iāve read made me think environmentalists are bad.
Two one paragraph essays:
Is oil good?
Is oil good? I donāt know. Some benefits of oil that I know of are that itās āportableā form of energy. You can take it with you to places in things like oil tankers or whatever to places that have no oil. It stores well I think. So thatās a benefit of oil. You donāt have to worry about using it immediately and it will be there when you need it. Also oil seems to be relatively cheap and affordable. Oil also seems quite abundant and we seem to be finding enough oil to keep us going. Hmm. I think oil is good.
What is law?
The law is a set of rules that are enforced on everyone in society. They differ from regular rules because they: apply to everyone in society (versus rules are usually limited to a home or a business) and they enforced by the government of that society. Laws also come with certain repercussions when broken. If you steal something you may get a fine imposed by the government or jail time. The goal of laws is usually to deter bad behavior that we donāt want in society. Other times the goal of laws is to achieve some view of justice. Laws are also absolute. Your boss may excuse a rule you broke at work unknowingly. The law does not excuse breaking a law you didnāt know about.
You did fine.
Another goal is preventing crime and protecting people. Being in jail prevents people from committing most crimes. Another goal may to provide revenge. Another goal is to prevent vigilante justice and other forms of revenge that arenāt done by the police and courts.
~yeah, thatās what I meant by
though thats not clear. then again are you talking about revenge like āretributive(?) justice) or something else.
What is Philosophy?
Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of existence and of knowledge. Philosophy can be broken down into five branches: metaphysics, epistemology, morality/ethics, politics, and esthetics. Metaphysics refers to the study of the nature of existence, such as whether reality is real (or if its a construct created by our mind) for example. Epistemology is the field of philosophy related to knowledge. It deals with the validity of our knowledge, logic, and how we learn things. Those two fields make up a sort of foundation for philosophy. From there philosophy branches out into other fields. Morality/ethics talks about what one should do given how reality is and given their knowledge of the world. Politics deals with how men should interact with each other/organize society. Finally, the last branch of philosophy is esthetics. Esthetics is the branch of philosophy that deals with art.
How to deal with each other seems can be very heavily overlapped with morality. I think itās useful to think about politics also being about how to deal with conflicts that come from living with other people in society, but still get the benefits of collaboration.
That way about thinking about politics I got from: Liberalism: Reason, Peace and Property Ā· Elliot Temple
Living in society (around many other people) has two main benefits ā trade and sharing ideas ā and one main risk ā violence.
I like this framing.
revenge is different than justice
Good writing. Clear. Organized. Understandable.
I donāt see morality as a secondary field after epistemology and metaphysics. If something is rational, should you do it? Thatās a moral issue. People wouldnāt get anywhere intellectually/philosophically without some moral ideas about how to live and act.
I thought more about this and this doesnāt actually differentiate politics from morality much. You deal with conflicts with other people in morality too.
I think the difference is that morality is about personal choice and politics is about society wide ideas, institutions and organization. Sometimes a personal decision can have society wide affects, so that decision might be both moral and political. Morality and politics are close and have many implications for each other.
Saying that politics is about how to organize society might sound like it implies top-down planning, but free markets or even anarchism counts as ways to organize society.
So I came back to your original sentence being better:
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~sure, but then is there any modern (or past) law that you think is based on revenge rather than lets say something like retributive justice?
one thing comes to mind is using the legal system to create laws to get revenge on people. iām sure that kind of thing happens all the time with all the pull peddling going on in congress. is that what youāre talking about?
I know you responded with something else later but I still want to respond to this.
I think dealing with conflicts while still getting the benefits kinda related to how men should interact with each other.
Also, I think Iāve asked this before and I forgot your response, but have you read much Rand? My understanding of philosophy comes from her and she frames morality as how you live your life and then as kind of branch of that how to live your life with others.
I like how Elliot puts it too.
uhh so I said
Ok, so yeah branching out does make it sound secondary and in my head its kinda ātechnicallyā secondary.
So from Philosophy: Who Needs It (though I found this on the AynRandLexicon):
In philosophy, the fundamentals are metaphysics and epistemology. On the basis of a knowable universe and of a rational facultyās competence to grasp it, you can define manās proper ethics, politics and esthetics.
ethics rests on a foundation of metaphysics and epistemology if iām understand Rand correctly here.
though I donāt know if by that she then means ethics is secondary. In the first(?) objectivism course that Peikoff did that Miss Rand endorsed/was there for, he did start it off with talking about ethics briefly before jumping into metaphysics and epistemology.
What is accounting?
Accounting is keeping track of the finances of a company/entity for a certain need. Accounting can be broken down into two different fields: managerial accounting and financial accounting. Financial accounting is external accounting. Theyāre goal is to provide information to third parties. They do this by creating fundamental financial statements such as the income statement, balance sheet, statement of cash flows, and statement of stockholders equities. These financial statements provide information to creditors and investors about the company. Managerial accounting is focused on giving information to internal parties. Accounting information is gathered to help make internal decisions.
Is it expected I do these mini-essays from memory/my own knowledge? Without looking anything up? Because thatās how Iāve been currently doing them.
Also I think Iām stuck in my head of doing definition(?) kind of essays but the topic can be really anything right? How a microwave works, to how to make a bagel, to how to clean a til, to why i like hollow knight, etc. All these are valid topics for an essay no? I think so.
All of her major work. Iām reading The Eearly Ayn Rand now. I think her letters and the newsletter collections are the only things Iām missing.
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Yeah anything. Youāre doing fine. You can do 2-3 paragraphs now if you want, but donāt make it much longer yet in terms of word count, and also maybe just keep doing more 1 paragraph ones is better because āif itās not broken, donāt fix itā but Iām giving you more flexibility.
No, you can look up whatever you want. Or not. Either way is fine.
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The death penalty and life in prison for non-violent offenses are examples Gemini gave. Iām sure there are many others that are more limited in time period, location, number of people affected, etc. Also from Gemini:
5. Ancient Precedents: Lex Talionis
Historically, the Code of Hammurabi is the purest form of the law-as-revenge model. While it introduced the idea of a ālimitā (you can only take one eye for an eye), it was still strictly based on mirroring the harm done.
- If a builder built a house that collapsed and killed the ownerās son, the builderās son was put to death. This is pure retaliatory revenge, as it punishes an innocent third party to satisfy the ādebtā of pain.
Also part of what I meant is that legal consequences satisfy some of peopleās desire for revenge. However fair or deterrence-oriented the legal system may be, it reduces the amount of vigilante revenge.
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What kind of games do I like?
Iāve enjoyed a variety of games over the years, but I wonder what specific kind/genre of game I like the most. I donāt like platformers. Iāve tried Mario (2D and 3D) and never really enjoyed them too much. I do enjoy FPS games. Iāve played a lot of CS:GO and Payday 2 (I think those two combined have more hours in them than the rest of my steam games combined). Some games Iāve really liked are Payday 2, Hollow Knight, Dark Souls III, Clair Obscur (though Iām still working on finishing that), and Pokemon Platinum. Hmm. One thing about this list is that some games like Hollow Knight I donāt enjoy as much anymore because of how bad I am after a while and I donāt enjoy trying to get my skill back after the long break. Related to that: I enjoy puzzle games because I can come back to them as I want and even after a long break I donāt mind thinking about the game again. Iām fine with learning how to think again for a puzzle game but re-learning mechanics is not as fun.
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Something I wanted to share:
Did some judging for LD debate today (hmm maybe I should revisit that forum topic) and one thing I found surprising was how many people struggled with time management this far into the year.
I say this far into the year because around this time is when the āofficialā regional/state/national competition stuff begins. Today I helped out with regional debate stuff and I was surprised by how many people couldnāt keep track of the time of their arguments. Even the kids that I was told were the best this season did poorly. They failed to fit their arguments in the time-frame and kept missing their initial opportunity to address arguments. I donāt think LD is great for truth-seeking and all that but as a competition thing I feel like at this point most kids should be used to the time constraints. I donāt think I was a particularly strong debater but I always made sure to structure my case and arguments in a way where I would have time to address it. Idk just found it odd.
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Mario is one type of platformer. Itās not representative of all types. E.g. Celeste, Ori, N or Meatboy are significantly different than 2d Mario.
I like Hollow Knight a lot. If youāre rusty, you can play Silksong. Itās new and different but will also derust you pretty well.
If you derust multiple times, it gets faster and easier.
Derusting is a skill you can work on and be interested in, instead of seeing as a chore. Speedrunners derust runs. Even if they never stop playing a game, they will usually do different runs of the same game, then go back to a run and have to derust.
For derusting HK, you can also do different goals, like a challenge run, a speedrun, playing through the regular game again, playing a mod, something other than just playing pantheon and hall of the gods which are hard to jump directly back into after a long break.
Also, I know a lot about HK so if you post about it I can comment better than for most games.
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