Posts by BenWilson
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I'm also completely unconvinced that a culture of watching violent sports and movies leads to a violent culture. I'm not even convinced they are correlated, but even if they were, it wouldn't be immediately obvious which caused which. Perhaps when a culture is already violent it enjoys watching violence. We love rugby - nobody forces us to watch it. Or perhaps violence is just something a large subsection of humans will like to see, whether they are violent or not. It's built into us, like sex and hunger.
I'm not saying there's no solutions, but that particular one, censorship of violent depictions and voluntary violent sports, seems the most wrong one of all. Violence is a very complicated problem. There is no simple solution, except on an individual basis. There the solution is obvious. Don't be violent, or condone it in others. As for the group solution, I don't know.
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Whoever said artists had to be nice people?
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Surely, you can not be saying that.
I personally am not, but others might, and there is no truth of the matter. Most people would prefer Michaelangelo to McDonalds, but if popularity is your only criterion, Stephen King is probably the greatest artist in print ever, and Hollywood makes the best movies.
As I said, it's how it's done that I consider the artfulness, the level of care, beauty and originality. But that is just my taste.
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David, I agree. Not everything you do is art. It just can be. It's in how you do it. In a lot of programmer you're not even allowed to be artful. I think that's the lamest most unsatisfying kind, reserved for junior programmers or hacks.
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Yup, it's poorly defined, or should I say controversially defined. Hence my preference for a very wide definition including such things as the way my son plays with his blocks or my cat jumps up a fence. And Andrew's refusal to accept anything that doesn't invoke strong emotions in a large audience. It's a definitional debate, the worst kind. There's no truth, just taste.
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She was 47, not skinny and not blonde. Just cool.
IC. The bio I read said 'statuesque blonde' which sounds hot, if not necessarily skinny, to me.
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Nothing like a well-timed romantic utterance from a hot young blonde. Is it art? I like to think so.
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You, I suspect, are confusing kitsch with catharsis.
I can't work out if that's a diss. Certainly a lot of catharsis is kitch. Particularly loving Goethe. My diss >-)
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Yup, I thought I kind of said that with "then you can believe whatever, there are no bounds. You could be delusional and believe it".
The philosophy/logic stuff is just word games on Russell's original question. Like I said, there are no 'always wrong' people - that would be a superpower, and they would be an incredibly valuable resource. Such delusionality is only a thought experiment.
Delusional in psychology has a clearer meaning, and I wouldn't want to make too much fun of people who suffered from it. And there's nothing illogical about such people knowing they have the condition. It must suck, although I have to say that there are a great many people who are borderline delusional and yet still highly functional. No-one knows all the truth, after all - maybe we're really all delusional.
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Code can be dull & derivative, or beautiful / exciting / sheer genius, but creativity is a facet that I don't think programmers are necessarily trying to achieve.
**That* is exactly what is wrong with most programming today. When you make humans into machines, you tend to find they are very bad at it. The only reason to use a human for a job is because they have that insight talent, and taking it away from them is madness if you want productivity.
Coding to spec can be like solving a puzzle, which definitely is not always a mechanical chore. Surely your side projects have unlimited scope for creativity though? If not, why not? Do you like to live in a box?
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