jennyzilliac

jennyzilliac, 7 months ago

@jonny

Seems like Ford thinks workers should be rooting for the company over themselves and their families.

Makes me think of monarchs and how they were able to fool the farm laborers for so long. God would have it this way.

It's anti-democratic thinking.

I'm realizing that about a third of people are anti-democratic thinkers. The rest of us need to bring it!

jennyzilliac, 7 months ago

@jeffowski

Philosophy

I loved learning about philosophy in college. It helped me learn how to think. I'm no longer very interested in what the early philosophers thought. I'm interested in where people have taken it and how we can better understand humanity today.

We are the philosophers of today.

jennyzilliac, 7 months ago

@jeffowski

The Value of Science

Science is a product of human beings. I expect that if we plotted the output of scientists over time on the basis of quality, accuracy, and value, we would get something close to a Bell curve. A tiny percentage of the output is worse than useless, a tiny percentage rocks the world, and most falls somewhere in between. My view: Science is critical to our understanding of the world. At the same time, it's not always going to live up to our expectations.

Does it Matter if we have Free Will?

This is how I think about it. What we (people like you and me) want is to "civilize" our fellow human Earthlings such that we all get along and support each other and foster happiness. (Lemme know if you don't agree with this.) How do we best civilize people?

If people have free will, punishment might seem like a morally reasonable way to try to civilize people. But what if we don't have free will? Is it moral to punish people? I say no!

[more]

jennyzilliac, 7 months ago

@jeffowski

I don't think I said that ancient philosophy is irrelevant today. I didn't mean to. I see it as a starting point.

Think about the discovery of electricity. It's still relevant today, but we have come so much further. We're not going to get very far in today's world if we call ourselves electricians but we're still talking about the discovery of electricity. Do I respect the folks who were studying electricity shortly after discovery? Absolutely! Big time!

Think about the ancient philosophers. Let's say a group of them was alive today and still thinking about philosophy. Would they still be having the same conversations? I hope not!

jennyzilliac, 7 months ago

@jeffowski

Shoot! I would like to better understand what you are saying. I always enjoy your memes. But I've never been a sci-fi fan. So a goal of Star Trek doesn't resonate with me.

My goal is Sesame Street. Seriously. But without the Muppets. No Muppets. I want somebody up the street who will fix my toaster. And people hanging out on porch steps. Neighbors talking together. And people invested in learning, every moment of every day.

jennyzilliac, 7 months ago

@jeffowski

I confess that I don't do alt-text.

When I started on Mastodon, I tried pretty hard to be good about it, but I realized that I started choosing not to post rather than come up with alt-text.

Am I a bad person for ignoring the needs of a small percentage (maybe 0% in my case given that I have an extremely limited reach) of readers? I hope not. I do the best I can out in the world. The judgements about what we fail to do ultimately does not improve society. I'm going to keep doing the best I can with the brain I have and call it good enough. Hopefully better solutions to accessibility problems will rise above the shaming.

jennyzilliac, 7 months ago

@jeffowski

This is interesting! I've started reading, but was interrupted by a couple of thoughts that I want to share.

First, I watched a lot of Star Trek growing up because my older brothers watched it. I liked it, but I didn't love it.

That said, one episode in particular comes to mind every so often. There was a female figure who could heal others by taking on the pain herself. Usually she healed quickly, but at the end of the episode, the wounds were too deep for her. She couldn't recover.

I've always related to her, and I see that scenario play out with women.

Maybe I would have enjoyed Star Trek more if my own programming had been further along while the Star Trek programming was in my immediate environment!

jennyzilliac, 7 months ago

@jeffowski

In another thread I am conversing about free will.

Daily I'm trying to figure out what it means to hold contempt for ideas if we are simply programmed by our environments with no free will. Are people willfully feigning ignorance? I'm feeling less and less sure.

I still think I'm right! But I'm trying to find new ways of understanding how other people are wrong.

jennyzilliac, 7 months ago

@jeffowski

I'm very interested in neuroscience, and I've been paying attention to the subject of free will and neuroscience.

This Atlantic article ends with this:

“Given the issue is so fundamentally important to our view of who we are, a claim that our free will is illusory should be based on fairly direct evidence,” he wrote in a 2004 book. “Such evidence is not available.”

My interest in the subject began some years back with a podcast (might have been Freakinomics) about free will and neuroscience that started with the mirror image of the above claim: If free will exists, there should be direct evidence of it in the brain, and there is not.

jennyzilliac, 7 months ago

@skykiss

Tell it to the school children. They're still listening.

jennyzilliac, 9 months ago

@thomasfuchs

Thanks! Will do!

jennyzilliac, 9 months ago

@thomasfuchs

Hmmm. Just tried to schedule a booster through Kaiser and received this message:

""""
The FDA has authorized updated COVID-19 vaccines and has deauthorized the current bivalent booster. For that reason, we're no longer giving the COVID-19 bivalent booster. We'll begin administering the updated vaccines after the CDC issues clinical guidance and supply becomes available (early October).
""""

jennyzilliac, 9 months ago

@thomasfuchs

Okay, thanks!

jennyzilliac, 9 months ago

@Adorable_Sergal @TheBierFrau

We'll disagree on this point.