Inequality is particularly interesting in light of our discussions of pragmatism, functionalism, and legal realism. By pragmatism I simply mean that ideas are tools…just like hammers, say, or sickles.

Zero Marginal Cost

Which is itself interesting when you consider Moglen’s statement that he lives in a world of zero-marginal cost, where money has been replaced with information flows…that could mean a lot of things, but that’s one possible thing.

Non-zero marginal cost

There are scarcities that matter greatly, and which create zero sum games…

Synthesis: tools, or capital, or power. combine, break down, play with, and rearrange them to build other, better tools. The relationships between ideas make them that much more powerful…

(I think) what Moglen is trying to do is trying to get us to collaboratively synthesize ideas...if we start the process now, then maybe at some point we would have enough ideas that we wouldn’t have to play the game “the establishment” incentivizes us to play…

Ideas can be copied and synthesized cheaply…free hammers for everyone! I can give you my ideas for cheap...positive sum gains...

Ownership class…do they also own the ideas? I would love to hear Eben talk about intellectual property...

We’re essentially living in abundance, with free money everywhere, but there’s too much information and too many ideas…the average person is drowning in unorganized data, but “data is dirt and knowledge is gold”…too much of the information available doesn’t improve anything, so it’s useless…

By Occam's razor, most ideas are stupid. So it makes more sense to listen to the ideas of the guy with the PhD? than the homeless guy on the street...you HAVE to play the game in order to be taken seriously, because success is the final arbiter of truth...

The rate at which scientific knowledge is being generated is astounding…and if knowledge entails adaptation, then things should be changing pretty quickly…

Just because rationalization within the law gives a false sense of certainty (when what you really have is internal coherence... “analytic truths” are themselves just tools)

Education

This is a good candidate for one of those areas where the adults simply have no fucking idea what’s going on.

The brain and our bodies are far too complex to be “educated” through “brute force” or coercion…

And if we’re trying to reduce inequality, we can’t not talk about education: Moglen mentioned John Dewey and growth…

Gates foundation. Geoffrey Canada, TFA, a whole bunch of other organizations…

Learning through doing: how often do kids in school get a chance to think creatively in a way that matters?

What are all the disgustingly important things that we don’t teach/give kids in public school?

If one of the points of education is to keep people from having to reinvent the goddamn wheel, then isn’t leaving all of those disgustingly important things to “freedom”/ the private sector incredibly inefficient? (I'm interested in people's conceptions of "freedom")

What is the relationship between the separation of church and state and what we can and can’t teach in schools?

If we have kids sit down for 7 hours a day, should we be surprised when we end up with a sedentary society?

If you think of religion as “way of life” instead of a “belief system” (William James would say that a belief is just a habit of action) is there really a separation of church and state? Or is that simply another legal fiction that keeps the peace, but is false in practice?

Grades and organic growth...we need to "evaluate" kids, right? So how do we get kids to stop comparing themselves to others...

Complex, adaptive systems

You can’t really control someone who feel they have nothing to lose…

Educational system has to be far more adaptive…Hochman said he went through the system and felt like he knew nothing…on the one hand, that’s excellent, because in the grand scheme of things we’re all basically ants…

With all our talk of formal systems, you can never design a perfect educational system...it would break down at some point. Which is why we shouldn’t be aiming for perfect but consistently better. The most beautiful and effective systems have some sort of adaptive/self-corrective mechanism/failsafe... scientific experiments (often, I know this is simplistic) have to be repeatable and peer reviewed…the change has to be built into the system, because once it is in place, it becomes institutionalized, rigid, and formal…but all formal systems fail, because they can’t capture all of the available information…If the system can’t adapt itself prospectively, the system will be forced to adapt/break down through “exogenous” circumstances…

Federalism is to a large extent, not serving its purpose…large complex systems are unstable…the way you govern an empire is to divide and conquer, so disturbances can be contained in their respective regions…

The problems of today/tomorrow require systems engineers…not legislators who prefer to work within the current system

There are simply too many ideas and too many improvements that can be made…the educational system itself should be better today than it was yesterday, and so forth…yet it will be largely the same tomorrow…

There’s no reason for it not to be…you have to wonder whether the current system serves more of a crippling function in order to maintain an orderly society in which people are dependent upon capitalism…

I, for one, won’t chalk up to “evilness” what can also be credited to just enormous stupidity.

Capitalism

I’d like to make an analogy between Hayek’s argument against centrally planned economies, and the current educational system. Again, maybe the educational system is failing for the same reason communism failed: a “central planner” can’t adapt quickly enough to new information.

Pain creates needs...

If your needs aren't being fulfilled with what they should be, you'll try to replace sleep with food, for example...that's not good for anyone...

Don’t pawn your license

Reasons to play the game (devil’s advocate)

(1) For many people success is the final arbiter of truth, so it makes sense to pursue traditional power, even if you want to change the game: no one cares about your ideas if you’re a loser. For example, if Eben was a homeless person we passed by on the way to class instead of a law professor, we would be less inclined to take his ideas seriously, no matter how good they were.

(2) Assuming that we’re too stupid to change the game, playing the game is probably our best option

(3) Going along with institutional forces guiding our decisions is like floating with the stream and not against it, stupidly. We have our own problems to deal with…

(4) Even if we end up going into meaningless jobs instead of changing the world…hey, lots of people don’t change the world and yet can still be very happy...and they find meaning in spending time with family and friends and whatnot instead of in the maniacal pursuit of non-traditional power...

(5) The system may suck, but if everyone just does what they're supposed to do,

Reasons not to play the game

(1) Immoral to clean up the vomit of capitalism

(2) Potentially unsatisfying

(3) Moglen’s career could offer more variety, whereas most careers require specialization for the sake of “efficiency”…our brains are highly adaptive generalists

(4) It’s possible that we’ve been given “enough”

Collaboration/Associational thinking

Associational thinking... On the one hand, the wiki format is supposed to be inherently associational/collaborative...

But language is awfully "linear"...

Miscellaneous

Politics shouldn’t be this fish oil/candy game…if something is difficult and it stays difficult, that probably means you’re doing it wrong.

I’m also interested in Eben’s dismissive attitude toward right wing populism…if class warfare is your game, then these people seem like natural allies… it’s one thing to be dismissive of right wing ideas, but the emotional injustices these people feel are real, and I know he knows that...but on an emotional level, you can't tell people that their ideas don't matter in a "democracy."

Religion

Values and social change…what is the function of values?

I assume pragmatism, liberalism, and “metaphysical” atheism…in a (supposedly) representative democracy, one must appeal to reasons other people can see…which is why it’s so satisfying watching Obama pwn GOP idiots…

But I think there are fundamental human needs that the system simply chooses not to recognize…religion isn’t going anywhere…it is a fact of existence in America…

It is not a good habit to ignore what we know about human nature…

Several reasons for this: (1) there are some moral ideas that are more easily expressed through a non-materialistic standpoint…on a non-materialist level, why should I care about a person that is “functionally” useless?

If we suppose that religion fulfills some fundamental human needs, we could stop arguing either/or and start thinking “okay, but/and”

(11) Brains and health generally…education part 2

Neuroscience and computer science should also be taught in public schools…

It is a sad society in which philosophy is regarded as useless…the theory is that you can’t pass on “wisdom” because recognizing patterns in experience can’t come without experience…do things, but we can’t give people perspectives on living well…that would just cross some line

But skills, habits, ideas, character to live well, in the long run…

No control over internal states: therefore we ignore internal states: but what you think about and they way you think about them matter, greatly. Other-centeredness…

The fun theory…people will do things if there’s a story behind it…

Nature helps people's brains, immediate environment is important…

If health is a necessary condition for learning, then “educating” kids before making them healthy is absurdly inefficient…

Why don't we give kids access to more powerful ideas when they are younger and more plastic…otherwise, aren't we just wasting their time?

Brains are too complex to “educate” through force and coercion…

Embodied cognition…

Pranav Mistry http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

If you’re aiming to lose weight, that’s stupid…it’s just one indicator of how healthy you/your lifestyle are. Aiming at weight loss instead of health, worrying about the wrong thing, Kanye West :P

Kids who exercise have higher IQ’s (not that we should care at all about IQ as a measure of "intelligence")

http://www.physorg.com/news178978326.html

Walking grows brains…ORLY? You mean increasing blood and oxygen flow to our brains can make us smarter?! Oxygen, which we can’t live without for more than a few minutes, is good for our brains? You mean that all but eliminating the basic form of transportation we’ve had for millions of years could have a detrimental effect on a "representative democracy"?

No attention whatsoever to internal states or non-material needs…

The biological level and the political level: are kids smarter, happier, more self-aware at the end of every day? Or simply more “educated”?

Is the current educational system good only because it's better than watching TV all day?

"Signalling model" of education...peacocks versus organic growth models...you can't rush organic growth

Fear, risk, uncertainty...body language...ventromedial prefrontal cortex...what Moglen means by courage...

Emotionally healthy, caring, "other-centered" kids

Children being able to ask, freely, “what if?”

Abstraction, sense experience http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mixed-impressions

Deal with people differently than you deal with ideas...mentalizing versus systemizing...fun and achievement...warm friendliness and cold competence...

Some things are too important for the public realm to put its grubby hands upon?: the personal is too important for the public realm to handle…there is a certain element of privacy, a line that can’t be crossed…

But the point is that if you’re going to use 8 hours of someone’s time inefficiently every single day, it isn’t as though you aren’t encroaching on the private realm already…

We are taught in schools to ignore (1) the complexity of it all and (2) relevant features of human nature…

An unexamined life isn’t worth living, an unreflective educational system isn’t worth going through…

Of all the things you could be doing, thinking about what you could be doing is one of them…At least some of the time should be spent thinking about how to make whatever you’re doing, better.

If often becomes clear that there is no good reason for doing things a certain way other than that that is the way that they have been done…Granted, there are often good reasons to do things in some way that aren’t clear until you’ve done them yourself…but nonetheless, much of what people do on a daily basis is remarkable for its absurdity…

It’s amazing to me that we presume to teach children…as though we ourselves know what’s going on…I’d argue that philosophy should be taught in public schools, so at least people would question what they know and what they think they know, etc.

The way we educate kids today is insane…INSANE…

Inefficiencies in the way we pass on information…wisdom, supposedly can’t be passed on, because there’s something about recognizing patterns within experience, and kids don’t have much experience...so how can we impart wisdom without imparting our biases?

-- AjKhandaker - 04 Feb 2010