tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31432976.post115415888702717163..comments2023-08-10T07:41:11.827-07:00Comments on Bajillion: He Earned His Hormones Fair And SquareTommaso Sciortinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13682166317937996902noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31432976.post-1154245792748866732006-07-30T00:49:00.000-07:002006-07-30T00:49:00.000-07:00Yglesias always has all of my good ideas well befo...Yglesias always has all of my good ideas well before I do.Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13510253316398518908noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31432976.post-1154241346603109802006-07-29T23:35:00.000-07:002006-07-29T23:35:00.000-07:00This reminds me of a post Matt yglesias had where ...This reminds me of a post Matt yglesias had where he was agreeing with something from maxspeak. I've been looking for it all day but I can't find it.Tommaso Sciortinohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13682166317937996902noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31432976.post-1154196756094706922006-07-29T11:12:00.000-07:002006-07-29T11:12:00.000-07:00I didn't mean to skirt around the free will thing....I didn't mean to skirt around the free will thing. As an intellectual issue, I don't believe in it. What I meant by the "You can't choose to choose to be hard-working" comment was this:<BR/><BR/>Any time somebody says, "I chose to do X," you can respond by asking, "Why did you choose to do X?" The answer to that question, as best I can tell, has to either be something the person clearly cannot control (in which case the idea of free will wouldn't apply) or something they might feel like they can control (maybe they say, "Well, I chose to do X because my New Year Resolution was to lose weight.")<BR/><BR/>But even if they come up with something like the latter example, you can just ask again, "Well, why did you choose to make that your New Year Resolution?" And then you're in the same position and you can keep digging, but <I>eventually</I> you're going to hit bedrock, and you're going to find the physical/physiological/sociological facts that, together, caused this person to do X.<BR/><BR/>A choice is an event like any other - it is determined, entirely, by the state of events that immediately proceed it. (Either that, or it's random, which is hardly free will either.)Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13510253316398518908noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31432976.post-1154194423049811652006-07-29T10:33:00.000-07:002006-07-29T10:33:00.000-07:00Oh, but to address the idea of "deserving" anythin...Oh, but to address the idea of "deserving" anything. You skirted around the issue of free will, which you have a better academic understanding of than I do. You implied that brain chemistry and environment in tandem dictate everyone's decisions and abilities, which I'm inclined to agree with for the most part. You could abandon the ideas of desert and fairness in favor of asking, per my previous comment, Will rewarding this person elicit the desired effect for me? But as a society it's not best to only reward those who already have what we want. Making efforts to "even the playing field" (e.g., universal free education, holistic university admissions criteria, ROPs), I would argue, improves society, which benefits everyone. I'm not disagreeing with your argument, by the way. Just fleshing it out a little more. I'm also more comfortable with "earning" than "deserving;" I don't think they're the same thing.Rebecca C. Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04266179966692604794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31432976.post-1154193386231270052006-07-29T10:16:00.000-07:002006-07-29T10:16:00.000-07:00This could also be analogized to affirmative actio...This could also be analogized to affirmative action. Who "deserves" to go to a good university? Well, whoever will make that university better, that's who. The complication there, though, is that having parents with lots of money don't inherently make you a better student (whereas being good at tests does), but parents' income and test scores tend to directly correlate. Then, of course, you can argue about what actually makes a university <I>better</I>.Rebecca C. Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04266179966692604794noreply@blogger.com