blog posts imported from PyBlosxomspwhittonhttps://spwhitton.name//tag/imported_PyBlosxom/spwhittonikiwiki2015-11-18T17:09:12ZA better ratio or a surplus of pleasure?https://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/ratiohedonism/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-10-17T18:54:00Z
<p>We’re reading Sidgwick’s <em>The Methods of Ethics</em> in a reading group this
semester. This is his statement of egoistic hedonism:</p>
<blockquote><p>According to this the rational agent regards quantity of consequent
pleasure and pain to himself as alone important in choosing between
alternatives of action; and seeks always <strong>the greatest attainable
surplus of pleasure over pain</strong>—which, without violation of usage,
we may designate as his ‘greatest happiness.’ (7th edition, book 1,
chapter 7, my emphasis)</p></blockquote>
<p>Now not many of us think that egoistic hedonism is true of anyone nor
should it be. But I thought about what happens when we do consider our
own pleasure, and I thought that the <em>surplus</em> of pleasure was much less
important than the <em>ratio</em> of pleasure over pain. For focussing on the
surplus means that a situation with lots and lots of pain but more
pleasure is better than a situation with roughly equal pleasure and pain
but both much lower.</p>
<p>Everyone else in the room disagreed.</p>
On burnouthttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/burnout/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-10-14T20:41:00Z
<blockquote><p>Burnout is a process that happens gradually over time. It creeps up on
a person through an accumulation of random minor negative thoughts,
sporadic lost hopes, and a series of small disappointments in oneself.
Burnout is a painful process that includes emotional exhaustion, a
loss of pleasure in interpersonal relationships, and a diminished
sense of self-worth. Burnout is the result of trying too hard for too
long in a situation where the odds are against meeting one’s
expectations. People who burn out are intelligent, dedicated people
who have high expectations for themselves. —Linda Curci, Caltech
Counseling Center</p></blockquote>
PQRST for philosophy grad schoolhttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/pqrst/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-10-11T03:04:00Z
<p>PQRST is a reading strategy. I’ve made a version for philosophy grad
school that I’ve been trying out to improve my reading efficiency. BREAK
The main problem with PQRST for philosophy is that thinking up questions
to be answered by reading the article is hard as there are almost always
just two questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>what are the claims of this paper?</li>
<li>how does it fit into the dialectic?</li>
</ul>
<p>So here’s my strategy:</p>
<ol>
<li>Preview: read title, abstract (or if absent the first paragraph);
look at subheadings; read last paragraph</li>
<li>if this generates a question to answer scribble it down, but doesn’t
matter if it doesn’t</li>
<li>read through once very fast, not allowing myself to stop on the
harder parts but making a mental note of them</li>
<li>at top of notes pages, space to make five bullet points answering
claims and how fits into dialectic</li>
<li>then go through and make careful notes on the structure. However,
keep two permanent questions and one question-for-this-text and
don’t make notes that don’t contribute to this purpose as far as you
can figure out (of course knowing whether something is relevant is
hard on e.g. the first piece of reading for a topic)</li>
<li>then come back at the end and fill in the box at the top after
looking over notes again.</li>
</ol>
Bernie Sanders rally here in Tucson last nighthttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/sandersrally/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-10-11T02:59:00Z
<p><a href="https://spwhitton.name//blog/img/sandersrally1.jpg"><img src="https://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/sandersrally/375x500-sandersrally1.jpg" width="375" height="500" class="img" /></a></p>
<p>I found the rally depressing because he says all the right things and so
he won’t gain power. He pointed out that it’s not utopian thinking to
think that there could be universal free/affordable healthcare in the
richest country on the planet.</p>
<p><em>Edit 11/x/2015:</em> About half way through he started referring to us all
as “brothers and sisters” and he talked about “our gay brothers and
sister” which was nice. Only one step away from “comrades”!</p>
Pretty solid review of effective altruismhttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/doinggoodbetter/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-10-11T02:42:00Z
<p><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n18/amia-srinivasan/stop-the-robot-apocalypse">Amia Srinivasan reviews “Doing Good Better” |
LRB</a></p>
Upstairs in the building in which I workhttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/healy404/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-10-08T21:30:00Z
<p><a href="http://kieranhealy.org/404/">A great 404 page</a></p>
Standard curl usagehttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/curlopts/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-10-08T21:27:00Z
<p>When <code>wget</code> is not installed, you want <code>curl -OL http://example.com/</code> to
replace <code>wget http://example.com/</code>.</p>
<p><code>-O</code><br />
output to a file, not stdout</p>
<p><code>-L</code><br />
follow 301/302 redirects</p>
More photos from around campushttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/ssb/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-10-03T22:53:00Z
<p><a href="https://spwhitton.name//blog/img/ssb1.jpg"><img src="https://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/ssb/500x500-ssb1.jpg" width="500" height="500" class="img" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/ssb/#more">continue reading this entry</a></p>
Hume might have had access to Buddhist ideashttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/humebuddhism/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-10-01T03:04:00Z
<p><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/how-david-hume-helped-me-solve-my-midlife-crisis/403195/">How an 18th-Century Philosopher Helped Solve My Midlife
Crisis</a></p>
""It'shttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/faultfinding/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-09-24T20:05:00Z
<p>Someone on reddit asks about meditation making it harder to quit
cannabis:</p>
<blockquote><p>So I am trying to quit smoking weed because I think it’s a waste of
money, makes me super lazy, and I don’t want to keep hanging around
sketchy people like drug dealers and such.</p>
<p>Today I was thinking about it all evening, and fighting myself not to
go pick up an eighth that I had my dealer prep for me earlier.
Eventually (just an hour ago actually) I decided I wasn’t going to go
pick it up, and that I was gonna break my pipe and delete my dealer’s
number.</p>
<p>…Then I meditated for about 20 minutes…</p>
<p>And felt amazing. So now I’m like fuck it, I’m gonna go pick that shit
up.</p></blockquote>
<p>A reply uncovers some facts about the connection between motivation to
change our lives and our day-to-day emotions, which I found very
insightful:</p>
<blockquote><p>When feeling shitty, usually the mind is also in a negative,
fault-finding state; bent on criticism: “This is a waste of money, it
makes me lazy, I don’t wanna hang with bad people, ugh, I have to
change this”</p>
<p>When feeling happy, the mind isn’t interested in finding faults, so
whatever behavior that was motivated by negativity, goes out the
window.</p>
<p>I’d say the problem is that the desire to change comes from
self-loathing. It’s basically impossible to loathe if you’re happy.</p>
<p>There are plenty of good reasons to quit weed, and it would be good
for you to do it, but what if you did it out of genuine compassion for
your own well-being instead?</p>
<p>Then you would feel good doing it, because it would be an act of
kindness towards yourself.</p></blockquote>
<p>(<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/3m0nqz/good_feelings_that_arise_during_meditation/">source</a>)</p>