Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"The takeaway is that it can be the honesty and trustworthiness of our sources, not their status, that allows them to act as authorities." - Equivocation over 'authority'; sometimes the people in authority don't have any authority.

"I cannot forebear having a curiousity to be acquainted with the principles of moral good and evil, the nature and foundation of government, and the cause of those several passions and inclinations, which attenuate and govern me," Me neither, should try another book on Hume :)

"Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy and Natural Religion, are in some sense measure dependent on the science of MAN' points to the escape route from Stroud's discussion of absolute necessity - it is created by definition, by how we choose to organise our knowledge.

"Hume has to explain how it is possible for a conscious to think about and refer to his thoughts, feelings and desires as his" I would invert this, the idea that develops is surely that on an external objective world outside of the self.

"We trust the recommendations of people whom we want to be like." A refinement of Aristotle's ethos, or not the whole story?

"Inevitably, that universal language will be concrete." Languages often organise the 'concrete' in different ways. Concrete/Abstract is contestable?

"...by converting abstract blobs on a map to a tangible landscape." Actually they gave it a name: nominalisation is usually a case of more abstraction not less.

"...by converting abstract blobs on a map to a tangible landscape." Actually they gave it a name: nominalisation is usually a case of more abstraction not less.

"Such reflections..." conflate necessity and causality.

"But it should not be surprising to find that having an idea of necessity and being able to countenance various unrealised possibilities go hand in hand." Well, actually, it is.

"Hume, after all, was a pre-Kantian...he wanted to answer the more fundamental questions of how people come have a conception of a world, or of themselves, and to think about it scientifically (or morally, or politically, or religiously or aesthetically) at all.

"Each goal was audacious and provocative, but not paralysing". Jobs really picked up on the 'pocket radio' idea. ☺

There is value in sequencing information...This method of communication resembles flirting more than lecturing."

"We need to shift our thinking from "What information do I need to convey?" to "What questions do I need my audience to ask?""

"And, given his conception of reason and his rather simple conception of man's virtually self-interested 'natural' condition. I think this appeal to reason does not succeed." There is an an equivocation here being the 'rationality' of economics and the rationality of philosophy. Hume is uninterested in the latter. No discussion of custom here.

That honestly is the best policy, may be a good general rule, but is liable to many exceptions; and he, it may perhaps be thought, conducts himself with most wisdom, who observes the general rule, and takes advantage of all the exceptions."

"When our brows go up, it widens our eyes and gives us a broader field of vision....when we're angry our eyes narrow."

"People are tempted to tell you everything, with perfect accuracy, right up front, when they should be giving you just enough info to be useful, then a little more, then a little more." Sounds frustrating to me.

"What we are remembering is simply a pointer to this information - we posting a little flag on the terrain of our memories." schema in cognitive psychology

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away". - Saint-Exupéry

"Tho' the rules of justice be artificial, they are not arbitrary. Nor is the expression improper to call them Laws of Nature:" The problem I have is with 'law'.

Simply to have something in one's hand or pocket is not necessarily to own it...Those goods are one's property, and for Hume, property is those goods, whose constant possession is established by...the laws of justice. Since laws of justice do not exist before men 'agree' to form themselves into a society, there is no such thing as property outside of society."

"It appears that there are indeed systematic ways to produce creative ideas". You really have to wonder what 'creative' means here

"The customs prevailing where a man live partly determine what qualities it is most beneficial for him to possess, but there is a long list of qualities that would seem to serve a man that would seem to serve a man well in whatever conditions he lives." Really? I'll have to apply that to Hungary sometime.

"There are, in fact, two ways to beat the Curse of Knowledge reliably. The first is not to learn anything..." I wonder if this curse is purely local, and reflects the fact that mass audience has done exactly that. Alternatively, Shelley on poetry?

"Is it simply because hijacked kidneys sell hijacked kidneys sell better than other topics? Or is it possible to make a true, worthwhile idea circulate as effectively as this false idea?"

"I remember stories. I connect the dots and out of that comes a story. And the dots that don't fit into the story just slide away, maybe."

"It makes jobs. It makes all the good jobs this town has."

"In the half century before 1914, no country had experienced the conflicts produced by uneven and combined development more violently than America."

"...for a country with some degree of international credibility, a free floating exchange rate offered not disaster but the possibility of a creative reinvention of economic liberalism."