pushmedia1
Best footnote I've read today
At the bottom of page 52 in
Searle's Construction of Social Reality, where he's discussing the seemingly self-referentiality of the definition of things like money i.e. money is money because people believe it is money, there is a footnote...
*In the Random House Dictionary, one of the definitions given for "tool" is : "anything that can be used as tool." As a definition, that seems pretty dumb, but it is not quite as dumb as it looks. You could not define "screwdriver" as "anything that can be used as a screwdriver," because lots of things can be used as screwdrivers that are not screwdrivers, for instance, coins. But since "tool," unlike "screwdriver," names a very large class of agentive functions, anything that can be used as a tool is, roughly speaking, a tool.
Self-referentiality is fun. Talking about self-referentiality is funner... My head will explode if Searle starts to talk about talking about self-referentiality. The problem is that this is a real possibility because he's written most extensively on "speech acts."
EQSQ
Language Log pointed me to this
test... Apparently, I'm a barely functioning autistic.
Here are your EQ SQ results:
EQ: 23
SQ: 94
The important factor to consider is not your absolute score, but the difference between the two.
This indicates whether you have more natural ability as an Empathizer or a Systemizer. If your
scores are about the same for your EQ and SQ, then you have well balanced empathizing-systemizing
capabilities.
Left vs. Right
Some, whenever they see any good to be done, or evil to be remedied, would willingly instigate the government to undertake the business; while others prefer to bear almost any amount of social evil, rather than add one to the departments of human interests amenable to governmental control. And men range themselves on one or the other side in any particular case, according to this general direction of their sentiments... The interference of government is, with about equal frequency, improperly invoked and improperly condemned.
-- J.S. Mill, On Liberty
Failure
Success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have concealed from observation.
-- J. S. Mill, On Liberty
They like me! They really like me!
So after a hiccup with macro, I've passed the prelim exams and I'm offically a second year grad.
Now, what fields will I take?
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