Re: broken schools

On Mon, 17 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

You learn a lot of odd stuff of usenet and mailinglists! ;)

>
Indeed.  I often recommend it to people who study a foreign language.
Writing it each day is a very efficient way to get the language into
your memory.  With the tools we have now, it's even pure joy.  But, you
know, so far, I've never seen *anybody* following my advice in this
matter.  (I've been making this recommendation for some two decades.)

It's a good point! I never thought of it like that, but now that you mention it,
the fact that a big part of my working life has always been english written
text, I am certain it has helped improve my english.

order to increase the number of consumers, and the government happily
agreed in order to be able to tax the other half of the population!

>
I wouldn't quite say the rich *created* feminism.  But, surely, like
every agent would do, when they see something (that they didn't create)
can help them in their quest, they use it.  Obviously.  Rulers often
look into philosophy, say, as an accomplice.

This is the truth!

What is your USENET client or text editors?  Look above---your client or
text editor almost does what's called ``embarrassing line wrap''.  It's
quite it because it doesn't mess up quote attribution, but it doesn't
know how to fill the paragraph properly.  Perhaps your client could
invoke the GNU EMACS so that you can handle this with the GNU EMACS (or
vim).  But your client must leave the message alone after you're done.

For short messages it is pine. For long messages it's vim.

I think you use alpine, right?  Can it do a better job?
>
(I often fix your quotes, but I won't fix it this time to let you see it
clearly.)

Hmm, I never thought about it. For me, all quotes look alright. Could you send
me an exact copy and mark where the error is? Maybe I've gotten so used to it I
don't notice it?

Could very well be. The problem with the privacy of the mind, type of arguments
is that it is difficult to prove anything.

>
Proving anything is quite useless for regular people.  Proving is useful
in math, less in science and that's just about it, I think.  (By the
way, when I see people saying things like ``scientifically proven'',
they have no idea what they're talking about.)

Well, let's make the distinction of proof (math) and evidence (science). Maybe
that makes it more clear?
As for scientifically proven, it is one of my internal jokes. ;)

Of course you're right.  But I also think we've historically a problem
there, which I'm calling a ``war'' here.  And the reason I consider it
pretty bad it's because it's an inner war.  When men and women don't get
along, that's because they're not getting along with themselves.

>
Interesting. Could you give an example?

>
Can we begin with women in some Arab cultures?  Some don't even let them
drive.  Doesn't this suggest a certain battle between the sexes?

Battle for me is something intentional, and intentional conflict between two
groups. Even though it is not good, I don't know if I would categorize it as a
"battle" between the sexes. Just a backwards, retarded culture and religion,
that will hopefully go away in a generation or two. =/

But let's look at our own culture.  Here's a true story.  I have a
friend who is considered very sweet and polite by everyone who meets
him.  He tells me about all of his dates and girlfriends and whatever.
I never told him because I don't even think he would understand it, but
he objectifies women quite clearly (to me).  For instance, he was
chatting with a girl on an app some time ago and they were talking about
meeting up.  The girl was a bit unstable with the commitment to meeting
in person and he was losing a bit of patience; another girl came up and
agreed to meet him.  As he was telling me the story, he made remarks
such to the effect of---whatever; I get the problem solved.
>
In other words, he is looking for services; if one company doesn't
satisfy him; he goes with another and that's it.  What looks like
someone's impatience with people's complications might actually be
hiding a certain outlook on life, which I call materialism.  He can't
see that he's getting involved with people.  His outlook is not that of
someone who sees oneself intertwined with everybody else.  He seems
himself quite separate from everybody else.

Well, from one point of view, he is. He is an individual, and I would say that
as long as he is open with only looking for certain services, and a woman is
looking to provide services, that's good!
If he is not open with it, then it can be seen as lying and potentially
exploitation. That is very bad. =(

While people often remark how polite and sweet he is---and I like him
too---, I actually say that he has a health problem that makes him quite
insensitive.  Who is suffering the most?  Himself.  His insensibility,
for example, blinds him even to his own nutrition.  He's losing his
health slowly year after year.

That is sad. =(

What about women?  Same thing.  People are very insensitive because
their sensors are all turned off or broken.  (And the mystery goes away
when watch them closely: nearly everyone is drugging themselves daily
with coffee, processed foods, medicine and all the rest of it.)
>
And that's the case with the most of the world.
>
Oh, here's an example from today.  Today I woke up with my neighbor
having a little party in his house early morning---that means it
probably started a night out.  He lives in his house with his wife.  His
wife was not in this party.  It was actually a two-couple party.
Believe it or not, my bedroom faces his pool directly.  (Not much
privacy for sure.)  I got up, saw what was going on and did not even
open my window to give him a bit of privacy in his little party.
Chatting went on for a while and then suddenly silence.  So I looked and
then his friend was likely inside the house and he was having sex in the
pool.

Wow! Brazil, here I come! ;) Hmm, I never think I ever experienced anything like
it in the far, far north. People are way too reserved for anything like that to
happen, at least where I have been living, oh, and of course there's never been
any swimming pools close by as well. ;)

And that's the second time I spot something.  The first was months ago
in a similar situation.  Night out followed by coming home with some new
friends.  This time the girl was actually cute and perhaps didn't sleep
with him, but he seemed to enjoy kissing her.
>
I figure he thinks he's enjoying life, but I actually think he doesn't
like his wife at all.  So why are they together?  There are no paradoxes

If all are in on it, who am I to judge? Our dear lord teaches us to "judge
not...". On the other hand, if his wife is not in on it, it is very sad and
immoral.

in this world.  There's some business going on; there is a contract
there.  His wife must be getting something from the deal and he's
getting something else.
>
That's not affection.

Difficult to say without knowing them better. But it certainly does sound
unorthodox to me.

Where does this come from?  I don't know the beginning of it all, but
surely this goes back to thousands of years.  Recently, I learned that
archaeologists discovered human civilizations in the tropical forests
150,000 years ago.  Was men and women at war back then?  I don't know,
but I would easily guess so.  I think the problem goes way back.

I think lumping society into two groups, and thinking abotu conflict in terms of
those two groups, risks obscuring the real issues. I am certain there are many
harmonious couples out there. I try to judge based on individual situations and
behaviours, instead of making blanket statements.

I don't really separate men and women.  I think of them as two sides of
the same coin.

>
I think of them as individuals.

>
I know.  But we are not individuals.  Even evolutionary biologists are
getting there already [1].

How come we are not individuals? If not individuals, what then?

The logical end point of "woke" when they realise that all groups
eventually boil down to unique individuals. Welcome to libertarianism!
=D

>
You lost me there.

Woke is about finding or creating ever smaller groups, and competing to see who
is most hurt, and who gets the most privilege. In the left, this woke movement
has created more and more sub-groups, and they are all competing for a limited
resource (political power) and the more groups there are, the more fighting will
go on between them, and eventually all common ground is lost and it will
disintegrate.
The only logical way out of this dilemma, is to continue to shrink the groups
until they consist of groups with one member, the individual, and then they can
reach the conclusion that we are all individuals, and the only way to
sustainably create a society is if all individuals are respected.

Today I read for the first time the essay called ``Politics and the
English Language''.  I thought I was reading a blog post from last year
or something.  At the end of the essay, I saw the author's name and the
date of 1946.  I was so amazed! :) I felt so current, so relevant.  That
author was George Orwell.

Oh yes... democracy is losing ground, and the world is becoming more
authoritarian. I think it moves in cycles. The only goal must be to make the
authoritarian cycles smaller each revolution.

True. This is a common culprit. When I say happy, I tend to mean long
term contentment. When most people hear me, they tend to hear
hedonism.

>
When you say that happiness is long term contentment, I wonder what long
term contentment is. :) (But surely you don't have to answer that.)

Sadly no. This is something each individual has to work out for himself. This
question can, however, be informed by the field of positive psychology which
studies happiness. So some factors which tend to be more common around happy
people are:
* Belonging to a community. * Good diet, sleep and exercise. * Having a reason for existence (such as a doctor who lives for saving lives). * Having a good and loving family. * Being thankful for what you have. * Engaging in some kind of spirituality. * Regularly spending time in nature. * Living in a nice climate (not too cold or too hot).
Those are some of the things which correlate with perceived happiness. Note that
it is of course correlation and not causation, but if you are not happy, an easy
self-experiment is to go through the list above, and see if you can implement
some of it, and then track your subjective happiness over 6 to 9 months, to see
if your happiness improves.

Complicate? How come? To me it is one of the most liberating realizations of my
life. =) For me it is I guess an honest life, a life where you think through
your values and goals, and then strive to realize them and maximize the amount
of long term happiness you can get.

>
An expert could likely complicate your life by trying to show that it's
either false or meaningless.  (Don't ask me to do it---I'm just the
student.)  They could attack ``reason for one's existence'' as
meaningless and they could certainly attack ``subjective'' by claiming
that the vast majority of the world is quite objective.

Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking, that there is
no reason. But since for me, it is moved into the subjective realm, it is safe
from any attack from "experts" since science, being descriptive, is not able to
"crack" the subjective level.

Oh, this might get complicated. Lived life, as in my subjective experience, I
would argue, can never become objectively analyzed, since it is impossible for
descriptive science to "get" what it's like to be the subjective me.

>
To your content perhaps, but people can infer what's in you by looking
from the outside.  The inner /is/ the outer.  You're a human being.
Everybody else knows what's like to be a human being.
>
You can deny it all 'til the end of times.

You can infer based on behaviour, but you can never "know". My subjectivity and
how I experience things, are "locked" into the processing of my brain, as my
cosciousness collides with reality.
So yes, you are right, we can infer, but that is not certain knowledge, and in
some cases, such as quantum physics, not even knowledge.

Life, descriptive, external, life, as understood by science, can definitely be
categorized and analyzed. In terms of happiness, you can go so far as positive
psychology and statistically analyze "happy" people and draw conclusions about
what life factors tend to contribute to their happiness.

>
Freud observed himself and made conclusions that apply to everyone else.
Like everyone else, he perhaps made mistakes in the fine details of
things, but he also made huge contributions---from a unitary sample
space.

True, but freud these days is disproven. As you say, he did lay a good
foundation for psychology however, and it has progress from him.

As you said above... our definitions probably differ, which would lead us to
talking in circles. What are your values and goals in life? Why don't you strive
for happiness? Tell me! =)

>
In my notebook, if you ``strive'', you've already lost a bit of your
health---meaning you're not happy.
>
Happiness is what I value the most because health is what I value the
most.  My happiness has increased considerably because (over the years)
I've recovered a lot of health I had been losing year after year.  I've
spent countless nights awake having ``fun'', for example.

Good to hear! =)

In my notebook, I have no values and no goals, which is all very
liberating.  I've had lots of them.  They were no good.

If you have no goals, how do you determine your actions? Surely they are not
just random acts?

What I do each day is the right thing.  What's to do the right thing?
Impossible to tell because I don't have a method to say what it is.  I
know only what the right thing is when the moment of doing it arrives
and I see only a single possible thing to do---the adequate one.

Well, it seems you do have a goal! Maybe you apply the via negativa? Do not do
the wrong thing, and then pursue, at random or based on preference, the actions
that remain after the obviously wrong ones (based on your values) are
eliminated?

People often ask me---what would you do in that situation?  The answer
is always---I don't know.  I might know *then*, but certainly not now.
``Oh, come on; please answer it.''  I could give you an answer, even a
serious one; but the fact is that I really only know what I'm going to
really do at the moment I'm doing.  (Humorously, if you want to play
around with fiction, I can come up with lots of answers for you.)

It seems, like me, you are not always comfortable with counterfactuals. I can
understand that, and to a certain extent, I agree with you here.

This is also very liberating.  I make no choices anymore.  I only need
to wait, but the wait is not a passive sitting around; the wait is work,
but it's a work with no striving; it's a work in attention, which is not
concentration.  This way I have never been happier.

That's good! =)

And why is the natural good? Isn't that a value statement that we
cannot answer by science?

>
Oh, I think that's easy.  The natural is good because bad, by
definition, is anything that lost equilibrium.  Why does sugar taste
good?  Because it is actually good.  You developed your taste through
zillions of years: it was made to feel good when the thing is good for
you.  If you have too much of it, it will feel bad and the bad feeling
will push you to come back to equilibrium.
>
Nature is the current stability of things.  Interfere with that
stability and you're off of the natural course of things.  If the
interference is small, things naturally come back to their equilibrium
(as the system is ``designed'' [if I may] to do that---you can remove
the word ``designed'' but it is a fact that the behavior is to come back
to the equilibrium); if the interference is big and the equilibrium
isn't restored quickly enough, things break.
>
So the smart thing is to look closely and see what is the equilibrium so
that you can let it be restored when you lose it.
>
Watch yourself at work: you'll get tired and you're tired you then work
a little more---losing the equilibrium.  It's a little bit, so it's
quite unnoticeable until decades later.  (And you do this little bit of
this sin against nature precisely because you're already a bit sick.
Your sickness makes you more sick.  A natural thing is all quite
balanced: tired, rest; rested, move.)
>

I remember when I was young,

>
You're still young. :)

>
Really? ;)

>
Really. :)  That's what I meant with the Linus Torvalds story above.

>
Ahh... got it!

>
And you can get younger.  Physiological age goes both ways---forward and
backward.
>
(*) Footnotes
>
[1] A Radical New Proposal For How Mind Emerges From Matter
https://www.noemamag.com/a-radical-new-proposal-for-how-mind-emerges-from-matter/
>