Homestuck’s Alternia probably qualifies as a sexual weirdtopia (as well as a regular dystopia in pretty much every other way). See here for a cursory overview.
taelor
This has been my experience as well.
I spent the majority of a semester arguing with a philosophy professor over epistemology; I undoubtedly came out of that as her favorite student of the year, but likely only out of appreciation that I was the only one in the course who actually understood the material well enough to actually have an opinion.
TVTropes has its own page on the subject.
Interestingly, just yesterday, I got back the results of a math test and an English paper. I was convinced I was firmly in the B+ range on the test, and ended up with a C-; I was also convinced that I was in the C+ range on the paper, and got a solid A. I’ve noticed that my expectations are often inaccurate, but they’re accurate enough that I’m hesitant to simply negate them.
I’ve always felt that both “selfishness” and “altruism” were results of the Fundamental Attribution Error. Some actions are deemed “selfish” according to society’s mean value set, others are deemed “altruistic” or “selfless”. Personally, I’m more interested in the chain of events that ultimately lead up to an action being performed and in the chain of events that occurred as a result of it than I am in applying labels of dubious and limited utility to things.
It is perfectly selfish to love what you love, and hate what you hate. To care about what you care about. Why should I limit my concerns to what lies in a 1 inch bubble around myself? It’s not what concerns you that makes you an egoist, it’s whether you bow to an ideological compulsion to serve an alien concern over your own.
Note that Stirner believed that it is impossible to serve an alien concern over your own. That fact that you are concerned with something makes it your concern. Stirner called people who claim to serve an alien concern above their own “involuntary egoists”, and found the entire state of affairs to be laughably absurd.
I personally found the original Haruhi Suzumiya novels and stories to be superior to the anime.
At least on the types, INTP probably refers to a real phenotype (which is common on LW)
Myers-Briggs ultimately derives from the psychodynamic theories of Carl Jung, who was himself an INTP. Thus, it makes sense that INTP roughly corresponds to an actual personality type; Jung simply described himself, and then turned to his existing theories to explain away why he was the way he was.
The Scarlet Letter would have been improved greatly had about a fourth to a third been cut out.
Well, there’s the obvious (though obvious != effective, of course) solution of making it even harder to get hired by a company that does work or the government after leaving a government job, and imposing stricter hiring rules on regulators. This is the idea behind rhetoric about “getting rid of the revolving door.”
Such a policy would require regulators to enforce, who would themselves be subject to regulatory capture.
PS. If the Love Shield does exist in MoR, do you suppose Bellatrix could cast it?
If Love Shields really do work the way Randaly describes, then I think the odds of one being used to protect a Dark Wizard are at least as high as one being to protect someone from him. Scenario: Dark Wizard and Obsessed Minion (e.g. Voldemort and Bella) are cornered by Aurors, who explicitly state that anyone who surrenders will be taken alive, only for the Minion to willfully choose to take a lethal curse for her master.
[Superfluous comment. Ignore this.]
Back when I was a teenager, I distinctly remember wondering about how one would go about calculating the distance traveled by a constantly accelerating object during a given period of time. Of course, life—as it is want to do—quickly distracted me, and I didn’t think about the problem again until years later when I learnt about integration and thought to myself “Oh, so that’s how you’d do it!” Now, I don’t think I would be able to regenerate interal calculus all on my own,but I know I’m at least observant enough to notice that something was missing—or at least I was when I was 15 -- and I think that that’s an important first step; the answers that we find are strictly limited by the questions that we ask As a side note, my cousin was, at the age of 6, able to derive multiplication from addition all on his own. He is made of win.
Toyota strictly dominates US cars and is more popular
This may be true, but is there a popularity effect in place with regards to Toyota versus other car manufacturers? I ask because I honestly know next to nothing about cars. The only thing I can think of is that it might be easier to get a more popular car repaired, though I have no idea how true this is. Can someone more knowledgeable about the subject than I am weigh in?
The main problem with using the Socratic Method as a didactic tool is that it really wasn’t intended for that purpose; Socrates was a man who claimed to know nothing, and the “Socratic method” is simply a collection of techniques he developed to demonstrate that other people didn’t know anything either. 90% of his so-called Method (as demonstrated in the early dialogues like Euthyphro or Charmides—which have the highest probability of actually being representative of things he actually said, and not just mouthpiecing from Plato) consists of Socrates demanding that people define their terms, refusing to continue the argument until they did so, and then pointing out that the definitions they supply are either self-contradictory or inconsistent with what they’re actually arguing. When used correctly, the Socratic method is great at exposing logical inconsistency and self- contradiction, but extremely inefficient when it comes to guiding people to truth—its purpose is to destroy; it does not create.
Why would any individual lose track of their purposes in a swordfight? If someone else had taught them to fight, if they had not generated the entire art from within themselves, they might not understand the reason for parrying at one moment, or springing at another moment; they might not realize when the rules had exceptions, fail to see the times when the usual method won’t cut through.
On August 26, 1346, a smaller contingent of English soldiers met a numerically superior French force outside of the Norman village of Crecy. The outnumbered English focused primarily on defense, using mainly dismounted spear- and longbowmen, whereas the French employed a highly mobile, offensive strategy utilizing mainly armored horsemen; the result was a decisive victory for the English, and a complete rout for the French. 10 years later, English and French forces would meet again at Poitiers; the French still had the numerical advantage, but their strategies were reversed: thistime, the French fielded dismount archers, while English charged in on horseback. The English still won, and even managed to capture the French king, forcing him to sign over a sizable chunk of his kingdom as ransom. What the French commanders failed to understand was that Cracy was a flat plain, where attacking the enemy was easy as looking around till you saw him, and then attacking in that direction, but where strong defensive positions where at a premium; thus the side that was best at defense would win. All thefrench saw was that the English won at Crecy, and so they tried to copy the english’s winning tactics, without ever understanding why those tactics would be inappropriate to the hillier, more rugged territory around Poitiers.
It’s tempting to give in to the Whig Theory of History and concede that the “good guys” always win eventually, because this does seem (at least superficially) to be the case; the Nazis and Soviets both lost out, slavery got abolished, feminism and the civil rights movement happened. The question is, though, did the good guys win out because they were “good”, or are they seen as good because they won?
Interestingly, I independently came to a similar conclusion regarding drug legalization a few days ago, which I expressed during a class discussion on the topic. Out of about forty people in the class, one person other than me seemed to respond positively to this, everyone else (including people who were in favor of legalization) seemed to ignore it.