WasatchMan

My question is whether homework is fundamentally not beneficial, not whether homework could potentially be a waste of time. I completely accept that a lot of homework in the modern system is likely a waste of time. The system in which homework is implemented could be optional or could be part of your measure of "success" in the class, but it is still homework. This sounds like "unschooling" to me. Learning takes hard work, especially the subjects like physics. It takes alone time away from funner/less friction activities, IMO. It takes delaying of gratification. These are things kids are not very good at because they lack the experience yet to grasp the long range importance, or the joy that is derived from grasping a subject after lots of hard work. They also don't know enough about physics, or education and life in general, to even make the claim that they have the capacity to choose what parts of it they should learn. They need to learn the fundamentals before they can even possibly have the choice of what they want to master. I have heard enough "unschoolers" calling into FDR that just released their kid to choose whatever they wanted to learn (which ended up being Xbox or something similar) to know that teaching isn't a matter of letting kids learn at their discretion. I would say that the proper, or even ethical, way to get a kid to do homework would be to negotiate with them, but not trying to influence a child with your wisdom on the importance of learning, especially the hard subjects they may not see the value of learning enough to not play another round of Call of Duty, is not doing that child any favors. Here is one place I found it but he said it multiple times (http://youtu.be/Y2GyogfTqkQ?t=1h9m44s) : -------- Again, I am talking about whether homework is beneficial as such. Not whether homework is beneficial in a bad system. I feel like most of these arguments are against the current schooling paradigm, which I agree is terrible. It also seems like "homework" is a loaded word with a lot of emotional baggage, so in the interest of keeping this thread focused on what I intended, I would be willing to toss out the word "homework" and ask the question: Do you believe self study on your own is beneficial to learning?

I gotta disagree with that implication. Like I said, I was able to obtain general guiding principles of ideas from lectures, but it takes some time going through the idea with my own mind to fundamentally understand it. For me, to master a subject I need to go through the proof. The answer is great, but learning requires understand the "why", you have to understand the proof. You have to see how the proof unravels from multiple perspectives in order to visualize its shape. That takes "homework" and it cannot be transmuted through only a classroom environment. It takes alone time. Edit: Furthermore, especially in University, I could definitely tell the difference in how well I was able to learn a subject by how well the Prof. was able to shape the homework around the lecture material. To me this shows that there is a spectrum to the efficacy of homework, proving that there is a potential area for benefit.

I am having trouble accepting that homework provides no benefit, something I have heard Stef say that studies show multiple times now. My experience with learning things is homework is an essential part of the process. When I was in school, I would go to the lectures and get the principles of the subject down, however it always required me going home and going through it myself, usually from multiple angles, via homework to actually have a decent understanding of the materials. Is there something I am missing about what Stef is saying? It just seems like such an obviously false claim that I am willing to think I am misunderstanding something. If it is not true, then saying it is is pretty damaging, because homework, like learning to read, takes delay of gratification and if you have the idea that there is no benefit then it will just be that much harder to be motivated. I understand that the school system is fundamentally ineffective at this point in time, so my question is: Is homework really not beneficial to learning, fundamentally?

I think an enlightening question to ask her is what she plans to teach her children about god and the meaning of having a Jewish identity. I don't know if it is conscious or not, but I have known a lot of women that are not religious in their early 20s and go immediately back to their religion when they start having kids (to feed them their brains).

Recently the ACLU, specifically Anthony Romero (executive director), came out and said that he thinks Obama should pardon people responsible for the torture policy under Bush (including Bush and Cheney). His argument is basically that if you are not going to do anything else, you might as well pardon them and label them as criminals and to avoid repeating it. To me this logic is rather insane. For one, they still would not be convicted of a crime, so it would still all be alleged and they wouldn't even technically be criminals. Furthermore, there are multiple interpretations of what a pardon could mean. One possible interpretation would be that the torture was justified because of war, and therefore the extreme nature of this situation was why Obama gave the pardons. To think that history will remember this by the ACLU's interpretation of what the pardon actually meant is nuts, IMO. What do you think? Here is a video of Anthony Romero discussing it with Rachel Maddow: http://youtu.be/WPEJl_qOtsw

I think the Santa Clause myth fundamentally shapes someones metaphysics towards superstitions and away from the law of identity if they are told it as truth. Any way to destroy this tradition of lieing to children is great.

It would not be immoral to retaliate against the government and to use violence in an attempt to free yourself and others from evil. It is a logical extension of self-defense. However, it is just not a very practical way of achieving freedom, since you will likely get a lot less of it if you were to try to use force against the government.

I think a more accurate statement to make is: nobody has a positive obligation to keep someone in a coma alive, except in some case where they put the person in the coma it would be a way to not have murdered them. To say "they have no rights" doesn't really mean anything, and society has no justification to automatically inherit people who are in comas.

So this is what a Hipster White Knight parade would look like.

"The power to rearrange the combinations of natural elements is the only creative power man possesses. It is an enormous and glorious power—and it is the only meaning of the concept “creative.” “Creation” does not (and metaphysically cannot) mean the power to bring something into existence out of nothing. “Creation” means the power to bring into existence an arrangement (or combination or integration) of natural elements that had not existed before. (This is true of any human product, scientific or esthetic: man’s imagination is nothing more than the ability to rearrange the things he has observed in reality.)" - Ayn Rand

I think another thing this case demonstrates is the validity of the "against me argument". With Tf00t running around giggling & sighing about how silly it is to say someone wants you shot for disagreeing with them on a law, we have a real life case of someone being killed because of a CIGARETTE TAX.

I am confused why debating the naming of something on a philosophy forum would receive so much push back, to the point of what I perceive as evasion. While I can see why debating a title would regularly be considered nitpicking, when it comes to philosophy I find proper naming and identification extremely important. If we can't even properly identify things, how can we be expected to discuss anything deeper? "Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.." Ayn Rand Just some food for thought...

UPB, by definition, only applies to the behavior entities with the ability to abstract universally preferable behavior.

I think it is a fair point. If FDR could make that much off YouTube commercials (that are advertising through YouTube and not Stef as their fundamental product), and through having an Amazon affiliate, I would have no aesthetical issue with this decision. If I remember correctly, FDR has had an Amazon affiliate in the past (maybe still does?). However, I do completely agree with Stef's decision not to monetize FDR through selling ad time through him. I would find this a huge distraction from what, I see, FDR is trying to do here.

vi·o·lence noun \ˈvī-lən(t)s, ˈvī-ə-\ : the use of physical force to harm someone, to damage property, etc.

Logic is always the preferable methodology of reasoning, by definition. It is our understanding of the variables/inputs/systems/etc that can result in what seems to be a logical construct that eventually is discovered to be false.

I agree with Prolix. If someone's bigotry is the only thing between them giving you money or not, I wouldn't be too hard on yourself for not throwing yourself under the bigots wheels. Taking the money and doing something good with it is the best option I see.

With the holidays around the corner, I am sure you will be hearing some condemnations of "American Consumerism". While I am rather agnostic on the actual magnitude of how bad consumerism is, I do know one thing, It is NOT "American" consumerism it is American women consumerism that is the issue, if there even is one. I am not trying to pick on women, however if we want to be fair, men are responsible for only a small part of the potential consumerism problem. The above numbers would somewhat normalize due to shared expenses, however shared expenses are typically necessities and not considered consumerism. Normalization would also go both ways leaving women still holding (or wearing) a significant majority of the consumerism. Furthermore, if women "control the purse strings" (household spending) then they are ultimately responsible for any consumerism issues. Maybe we would still have the issue if men controlled spending, but they don't, and therefore this one is not on men. Whenever men are primarily responsible for social and/or political issues, they are blamed for it (how many times have we been told that men are responsible for war?). However, when there is an social issue in which women are primarily responsible for, it all of a sudden becomes an gender neutral problem and pinned on society in general. Well I think it is time for men to step away from this issue, and whenever we hear people prattling about "American Consumerism", we politely call it what it is: American Women Consumerism.

Not an argument.

Are you not concerned that actual communication/ideas can be included in "funny", and that it is usually a passive aggressive tactic because someone couldn't have gotten away with it in normal communication but they know people will shame others for not having a sense of humor if they disagree?

Good analogy. I have heard the accusation that libertarians are for lower taxes only because they hope to one day be rich quite a lot. Always thought it was a pretty telling and ridiculous projection of pragmatists. They don't think in principles because their ideology would collapse if they did, so they project it on everything else.

prolix, I know given some of our previous exchanges on here you may not want or care to hear from me on this topic, but I would tell you that your use of words in the PM are a little problematic. Whether dsayers does like to "throw around accusations" or not (I have not experienced this), you do have to understand that your question is in the form of an accusation itself. If I received this message, I would view it as an emotionally charged passive aggressive dig, not genuine curiosity. I am not saying that was your actual intent, because, giving you the benefit of the doubt, I know in the heat of the moment I have worded things in ways that I later see as problematic, or emotionally slanted. In the future, if you are genuinely curious about interactions with people, I would frame the question as what you have personally experienced during the interaction (RTR), instead of coming out of the gate telling someone they "throw around accusation". This was not fair to dsayers because he has no way to respond except defensively. In this case, it could have been something like "During our exchange in XXXX, I have personally felt that you have accused me of things that I don't find fair. I am not sure if this was your intent, but this is the way I experienced it. One example of where this happened is XXXX. If you don't mind, could you please clarify what you meant by this or why it was directed at me, because I am genuinely curious and would like to better my experience on the forum moving forward."

ummm... When did happiness become the operative term in this discussion? I sure don't use it as the standards for ethical principles.

Its sounds like you are talking about pragmatic cost-benefit calculations people will make when trying to rationalize their decisions. I am saying that the act of initiating force against another human is not ethical human behavior. It is not arbitrary because we are talking about universal human behavior (ethics). I would be interested in hearing how you think you could create a universal ethical system for human behavior that does not claim that the initiation of force against other (humans) is unethical. I am really not interested in subjectivism or moral relativism, especially in the context of a philosophy forum.

How is the human on human violence arbitrary? Humans are the only animal capable of having their behavior subject to the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction would factual support that a human cannot claim the right not to be subjected to the initiation of violence at the same time as claiming the right to initiate force against others.