Being able to be lead by a sheep is one measure of intellect.

To All

As regards the raging mass debate on the merits of “education” I would say no education is ever wasted, IMHO the…

I'm interested in what sort of pose would be struck?

I like that notion

You could even argue for affirmative action targetting rather than universal cover if you're making a class equity argument.

Just to add a name to your list of Kiwi "public intellectuals", I'd respectfully submit the name lRoy Parsons — though I'm not sure if you'd count trade. :)

One out of three ain't bad.

Unversities function pretty much like the rest…

If there is a book that makes a better case for why we shouldn't think in terms of humanism vs the sciences than The Periodic Table, I have yet to encounter it.

Nah, we’ll all be singing ‘Immanuel Kant was an real pissant’ before the night is out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtgKkifJ0Pw

Philosophy. Leveling the playing field since ages…

Thanks Giovanni. Anything by…

Yes and yes. At the time I first got into usenet, say 89 or so, it was still heavily dominated by the university student/staff demographic which I think set the…

If said list was interested in a new member...

The last guy in my office before me (or at least with…

He also invented reggae (true story).

Wak feels like it should be an acronym for something, in this context.

But yes, the original title of the thread is starting to feel a tad self-referential.

You would be surprised! Saying "Contemporary Leader X is totally like Hitler" was pretty clearly out of bounds, as was "You say you admire Policy Y therefore you are obviously a Nazi lover and a fascist". On the other hand,…

I wouldn't blame him for not turning up again. This thread is wak now.

He's alive, although he retired a decade ago. A friend of mine did his postdoc in Turin and they put him in Regge's vacated office, which meant he had to spend a lot of time fielding his…

Two more arts grads — American Studies, Philosophy — doing flipping awesome stuff with it. (Has Danyl conceded the point yet? Viz.: that the "gestalt consensus" about the value of the humanities isn't just a freaky PAS thing, but a fairly standard every-major-modern-nation-on-the-planet thing?)

Will put this on my list for when I am next on the bus. Going purely by his science, Regge is (or was?) a very smart guy.…

Long-time lurker, some-time poster

#creepy "I like to read..."

1993/4 – started off with uoc.talk with Jane Gregg and Dave Frame arguing. rec.sport.cricket and s.c.n-z, and nz.general. That plus a.t.…

Oddly enough, one of my dinner companions this evening mentioned that he had met Von Braun when he (the fellow diner, not Von Braun) was an undergraduate. For old Usenet…

damn you :)

I read Feynman's Six Not So Easy Pieces on the bus. (Well, okay, the train.) That is not to say I understood them however.

Incidentally, and speaking of humanism, science, physics, one of the most wonderful books ever…

?

"Once rockets go up / Who cares where they come down?
That's not my department" / says Werner von Braun
-Tom Lehrer

We're on a road to nuance...

I've always said that the hardest part of rocket science was making sure the orbiting humans didn't kill each other (but I'll happily defer to richard).

Actually, maybe we agree. There is a difference between simple as in easy, and simple as in uncomplicated. The latter…

Fair enough, yes.

Depends on your perspective, I guess. The photoelectric effect and the perihelion precession of Mercury were much easier to understand after Einstein got through with them :-)

Einstein certainly made things a great deal harder than they were before. That's hardly an argument against!

(Indeed, he's said to have said once that "things should be as simple as possible…

I agree, and the parallel you draw between “difficult philosophy” vs “difficult science” is a good one as far…

Platonism v. empiricism. I read it on the bus. [Not!]

In fairness to Feynman, he is appreciated within the field for his ability to make things easier than they were…

Indeed. That happened about the time of the 1995 RWC. A group uf us departed and set up our own little list, which continues to…

I wonder if it comes down the old discovery vs. invention conundrum (I'm sure it has a name, at least…

Well, any definition of philosophy would be limiting, because philosophy fairly frequently involves questioning limitations of all sorts, including its own. (Crikey this is getting meta!) I was putting forward a counterpoint to Danyl’s perception that philosophy made something of a virtue of obscuritanism, which…

Yeah, that's what scares me. : )

Indeed. Not sure who's playing the Hindenburg in this particular production, though.

(Nice avatar, by the way. Are those torpedoes of truth?)

I think it's entirely defensible — for me, to the…

I wondered this too.

Listening to A Certain Person on this thead (at times) has been like listening to OMcS or ES hold forth about climate change (or pretty much…

Don't forget that posting such a speech is often a great way of finding out exactly what's wrong with it. ;)

Me. I don't know about argument but it's certainly where I learnt my culture of conversation. Surprisingly the main Usenet group for UK football was a home for surreal geniuses…

I started on alt.religion.wicca and alt.magick* in the late 90's-it was my first introduction to talking to other people on the Internet. That's where I learned about things like Godwin's…

Isn't it a little limiting? I'm pretty sure Nietzsche's aim wasn't to get people to agree with one another. I'm rather partial to one of the standard dictionary definitions. "Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on…

The newsgroups (rec.games.frp and some of it's descendants) I used to lurk in had a similar culture to here, but had a small group of regular posters.

I bowled on…

I am one of those. That's where I learnt that if you suggest that Deckard might have been a replicant in Blade Runner, you die.

That is a plausible gloss on Philosophy; one of the members of my Department likes to give talks about how hard it is to pithily define what it is that philosophers do (it is, after all, a subject that ranges from debates about what Art is…

I lurk, and make up speeches in my head which are models of persuasive argument which I never post…

I beg your pardon?

Just to go off on a slight tangent on this topic (being the proud owner of a BA in Philosophy): you know who calls out philosophers who…

You mean Oh the humanities?

No, the negative utility statement came first. The single summer school…

Do it. Now. Online course would work too with iPhone App with the requisite 'Don't Panic' screen which changed to 'Panic' during exam times.

It did some years ago, briefly. I wasn't impressed with the course as it was presented, which is not to say I don't think it might be worthwhile to study Tolkien per se. (ETA: in fact…

Well, Danyl's 33% correct, which must be some comfort.

So, wait: 2 x BA (at 1980s prices) = 66% of the money made…

The last time I had an argument for fun was over here (Lynn Prentice, Dick Rule). In general I don't argue for kicks, and I vastly prefer non-combative discussion, where everyone is…

Cheers, although I'd feel much more flattered if you could go through my thought experiment, and anyone else who has felt the same way as I did, even if not to the same extent.…

Yes. It was made by someone who never went to university, and I…

Yes...and yes. One cheap shot the popular press aims at Media Studies (more so in the UK than here) is that it is a Mickey Mouse subject. My usual retort is of course it is for any teacher worth…

Metaphorically speaking, I'm doing something similar. Anyone got a Navigating Bureaucratic Dictum for Dummies book?

collective wisdom

Mostly the quantity. How could so much coherence be manifest in such a short space of time?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm finding work a little challenging today (trying to grok Javascript which I didn't write – compared to that, heated intellectual discussions on PAS…

Mostly the quantity. How could so much coherence be manifest in such a short space of time? Decided yesterday not to continue the debate about universities, so all I've got is cheerleading clackers on the sidelines.

Yeah, nah, which is to say, thank you, no. I…

what aspects?

I want it for Foxton. Like, now.

Always wanted that for Auckland and other local places. Love how their site's About>History page is "Under construction".

Also known as Wil Wheaton's rule, with the rider "but it's OK to play one on television".

True. And you aren't going to learn the skills and background material for that…

In what way is an LLB,…

I meant to note that merely because you can't quantify the benefit in some sort of bean-counting fashion, that doesn't mean it isn't there.

I consider my Eng Lit degree to have enormous public utility, given the number of things that I was better at when I finished it than…

You can teach people analytic thinking and reasoning skills without exposing them to subject matter that is trivial

Well, but that 'trivial' matter being introduced to universities is actually a sign of greater democratisation, which is actually something you've been angling for as a good thing, yes? The fact that…

That was kind…

As I said upthread, if you were arguing in good faith,…

It comes to this, again and again on the internet, I…

(PS. would you please get around to noting that the only easily testable…

The way I see it is that I can have a raging argument with Craig or Gio without losing sight of…

That is valuable, and it's something guys like me can occasionally lose sight of. But if someone logs onto Kiwiblog and disagrees with DPF about something…

But even if it didn't, it's just incorrect (and quite possibly dishonest) to claim that what a university course on Rowling would achieve…

nebulous ways

Oh yeah. I meant to note that merely because you can't quantify the benefit in some sort of bean-counting fashion, that doesn't mean it isn't there.

Danyl’s point may be that such a system is not inherently ineffective, but it is inefficient (in that students won’t know in advance whether a particular course will lead them to the mental-training benefits eventually realised…

What joke?

But seriously, as recently as 3 months ago the people here seemed largely cool, and entirely scary. Then I met a bunch of you and you seem entirely cool, and not really that scary at all.…

Nah. Because you're all bitchy and cliquish and that sort of turns me on.

Oops. I just made myself lol.

You get a better environment when you pay attention to the women.

Because we're so inherently caring and nurturing, of course.

(I'm surprised I managed to get that joke out without hurling slightly.)

That's always been a keynote for me. You get a better environment when you pay attention to the women.

For the most part, that's true. I didn't solidify any…

OK, bait taken. I have a mere BSc in Physics, but I have frequently had cause to wish that I had not been so blindly science-focussed…

It’s also a nasty online culture – far more so than Kiwiblog, since it’s rather more sophisticated.

FWIW, PAS is a much "safer" place for women to post than Kiwiblog, and obviously that counts for something pretty significant in my book.

I must agree. I’ve enjoyed the actual discussion that Danyl provoked. It has…

No. I do think (a) it’s okay to insult people when they insult me and (b) this happens more often on the internet, because people…

$[X] toward your studies, NZ-style: interview with multi-dignitary panel, health certification, reference verifying that you are of sound moral character.

$[X] toward your studies, USA-style: they mail you a check.

I have said it before but I turn to places such as PA for the kind of conversations which don't happen often enough in the academic circles I move in. I teach Media Studies (courses such as World Cinema, Children and Media and…

When someone argues from an ideological position and claims it as self-evident fact, refuses to consider others’ experiences that run counter…

Your original comment was this, Danyl:

I think the social value of people going to university and studying literature, philosophy etc is currently a negative value, since the net result is generally a…

Danyl, and I would address this to others as well, do you really think it's okay to…

Is it really a big sekrit? Georgetti, right?

I was more scared of the GG and Chief Justice, myself.

It's not what we're arguing, it's how we're arguing. Danyl, you say "daring" when many people would read the manner in which your dissent is introduced as exactly those sorts of words you list. It's quite possible to disagree without behaving…

Danyl, you do realise you do this all the time here?

You make a provocative statement, behave as if the subsequent discussion is some sort of unusual response that only proves your point, then declare the debate over.

Which would be fine if you didn’t insist…

I'll blow an academic colleague's trumpet: University of Otago Legal Issues Centre blog

In the…

Oh, stop it, you; praise me…

That's the spirit!

Wonderful – we have a deal.

Including a guest…

It is – and I really don't know how else…

Have you seen "The Conversation"? Australian attempt at a sort of clearinghouse blog for research,…

Yeah, I was thinking that…

This is another area to which I think humanities-educated graduates could effectively contribute (what writing courses call science writing/science communicating) but it needs that interdisciplinarity and basic mutual literacy that has been touched on elsewhere in this…

I'd say there's almost no incentive. If I…

Kind of a soft McCarthyism in…

frustratingly so, yes

It's pretty fucked, and…

Best place for it, and you raise the point Danyl should have been making. That a cultivation of private intellectualism is much harder to prove to be in the public good, and I think it's also a lesser form, and does indeed ask…

but when has this not been the case? There's always disagreement bacause there's always a range of views. Even the most repressive of societies had dissidents.

I'm not sure that…

One thread doth not a public intellectual make, but I appreciate the kind words. Like Danyl, I’m a general staff member of a university (unless I’ve parsed wrongly his accounts elsewhere of what he does) and so, without…

"Wrong"?

Anyone have the requisite skill to make me a little logo of a jaunty fez suitable for a business card?

With a little logo of a fez?

I'm so printing that on a business card.

Or, putting on my geek hat, an ancestor of the seven segment display?

Thank you for reminding me that I wanted to give you a giant thumbs-up for that example:

I have a BA – a very common degree – in History of Art and History. I’m a kindergarten teacher – one would think…

I expect the main reason would be because they disagreed with it. And they most certainly did disagree with it. Rolling Back the State stood out for me as a powerful critique at the time, and I attended many Kelsey lectures, despite…

It doesn't seem that odd to me. He just refuses to adopt the manners of the culture because he wants to remain something of an outsider, possibly for the purposes of legitimacy of his own blog. I respect that, but I'm still…

I kind of like the good old-fashioned nong or blithering idiot

You'd hope some of them would, quite aside from the merit of the reforms (which, if nothing else, where extremely poorly supported by analytical thinking). Simply because you need plurality of points of view and the capacity to articulate dissent in your…

Which would be reason in itself to doubt his good faith. He appears to be a useful scientist, and his blog is often brilliant in ways that would be difficult to achieve without…

why would public intellectuals necessarily have opposed Rogernomics?

Well, you've have been nominated. How about making a film?

More neutrally, they…

quite – always worth remembering when any position is presented as so powerful it doesn't need arguing

It's telling

Of what? Danyl posited that humanities subjects were of limited economic (and by extension, social) utility. He framed the argument in those terms, so that's where it went.

Take that line and run, I'm curious to see how much you can milk out of it. Certainly it's an…

This…