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blimixAmong the first instructions for installing my father's new wireless card was, "Disable Wireless Zero Configuration." A half hour of frustration later, I found that enabling Wireless Zero Configuration caused the card to start working. I really should not have read the frickin' manual.
I've expanded my interests list a bit. Not that anyone should care. Finding a threshold for relevance, level of interest and (especially) specificity for things to include is an imprecise exercise.
"Games" doesn't tell you that I like "Settlers of Catan". "Science Fiction" doesn't tell you that I like Neal Stephenson. "Music" doesn't tell you that I like Little River Band. "Comics" doesn't tell you that I like Alan Moore. (Okay, maybe that one's a given.)
But listing everything I like would destroy the signal-to-noise ratio, and make the list not worth reading.
Speaking of which, ever since I developed a respect* for the signal-to-noise ratio, and hence for concise writing, I've wanted to entirely rewrite my web site (aside from the puzzles). But I doubt that I will feel up to such a project in the near (or even foreseeable) future.
* It is a respect that lj-cut tags leave me blissfully free to ignore. Demonstration below.
Louis Sachar, Holes is a compelling and entertaining "children's book". It's a small time investment: I finished it in an otherwise very busy day.
I find it interesting that commitments to others are generally given a greater moral weight than commitments to one's self. This appears, on the surface, to defy my anti-altruistic notion that actions taken to further one's own good will tend to produce more benefit than actions taken to further another's good. (One has greater knowledge of, and control over, one's own circumstances; hence one's own benefit can be more efficiently achieved.)
For those who don't know, I'll reiterate that I circumvent this bias by considering others' benefit to benefit me, simply by virtue of caring about them, and by improving the world in which I happen to live. So, helping others is of course a great and happily selfish thing to do. I'm just saying that, if all other considerations are equal (which they rarely are), making your own lunch is better than making someone else's lunch, because maybe they don't share your taste for head cheese and lutefisk.
The moral weight attached to commitments to others is easily explained in at least three ways:
1. The value of commitments to one's self may be explained without reference to morals, depending only upon the self-interest by which any evolved being will act. Use of Occam's razor (by one whose definition of "moral" is narrow enough to permit it) would lead one to place only commitments to others within the purview of moral action.
2. One is fully aware (as much as one can be) of the consequences of betraying a commitment to one's self. We may trust that the decision to do so is justified by being sufficiently informed. The decision to betray a commitment to another cannot be as informed, nor therefore as justified. Hence, the commitment itself is seen as carrying more weight because one cannot so lightly back out of it.
3. Explicit commitments, such as promises, invoke a socially established "practice" that automatically attaches weight to them, for the purpose of enabling trust between people who might not otherwise be inclined to take others at their word. (This enables commerce and banking, and also less tangible social contracts.)
There's no mystery here. It just struck me as odd, to consider these two valid but seemingly opposite views on the good of others versus the good of the self.
I've expanded my interests list a bit. Not that anyone should care. Finding a threshold for relevance, level of interest and (especially) specificity for things to include is an imprecise exercise.
"Games" doesn't tell you that I like "Settlers of Catan". "Science Fiction" doesn't tell you that I like Neal Stephenson. "Music" doesn't tell you that I like Little River Band. "Comics" doesn't tell you that I like Alan Moore. (Okay, maybe that one's a given.)
But listing everything I like would destroy the signal-to-noise ratio, and make the list not worth reading.
Speaking of which, ever since I developed a respect* for the signal-to-noise ratio, and hence for concise writing, I've wanted to entirely rewrite my web site (aside from the puzzles). But I doubt that I will feel up to such a project in the near (or even foreseeable) future.
* It is a respect that lj-cut tags leave me blissfully free to ignore. Demonstration below.
Louis Sachar, Holes is a compelling and entertaining "children's book". It's a small time investment: I finished it in an otherwise very busy day.
I find it interesting that commitments to others are generally given a greater moral weight than commitments to one's self. This appears, on the surface, to defy my anti-altruistic notion that actions taken to further one's own good will tend to produce more benefit than actions taken to further another's good. (One has greater knowledge of, and control over, one's own circumstances; hence one's own benefit can be more efficiently achieved.)
For those who don't know, I'll reiterate that I circumvent this bias by considering others' benefit to benefit me, simply by virtue of caring about them, and by improving the world in which I happen to live. So, helping others is of course a great and happily selfish thing to do. I'm just saying that, if all other considerations are equal (which they rarely are), making your own lunch is better than making someone else's lunch, because maybe they don't share your taste for head cheese and lutefisk.
The moral weight attached to commitments to others is easily explained in at least three ways:
1. The value of commitments to one's self may be explained without reference to morals, depending only upon the self-interest by which any evolved being will act. Use of Occam's razor (by one whose definition of "moral" is narrow enough to permit it) would lead one to place only commitments to others within the purview of moral action.
2. One is fully aware (as much as one can be) of the consequences of betraying a commitment to one's self. We may trust that the decision to do so is justified by being sufficiently informed. The decision to betray a commitment to another cannot be as informed, nor therefore as justified. Hence, the commitment itself is seen as carrying more weight because one cannot so lightly back out of it.
3. Explicit commitments, such as promises, invoke a socially established "practice" that automatically attaches weight to them, for the purpose of enabling trust between people who might not otherwise be inclined to take others at their word. (This enables commerce and banking, and also less tangible social contracts.)
There's no mystery here. It just struck me as odd, to consider these two valid but seemingly opposite views on the good of others versus the good of the self.
