You contrast Rand's heroes with those of Vonnegut as if they are all CEO-types, but they also include sculptors, architects, engineers, composers, and philosophy professors. IMO, Rand and Vonnegut are much more similar than their fans would like to admit.

Attempting to compare Vonnegut and Rand without acknowledging that Rand fundamentally believed poor people should suffer for their poorness is comparing a scathing comedian and a clown: you have to accept one has a point, and the other is a clown.

On the contrary, requiring the addition of a disclaimer containing an overall evaluation of an author before correcting someone's misleading caricature of their work would be an extremely tedious community norm.

Let's be brief and accurate instead.

Not only that, but most philosophers who specialize in the philosophy of mathematics are Platonists: https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=Target+facul.... IME, this is also true of working mathematicians, but much less true of physicists.

What does being Platonist mean in this case; I wonder. The definition I've been given once is just that mathematical objects exist, but philosophers take it to mean that one believes in Plato's Theory of Ideas. The Theory of Ideas is a major development by Plato, but it has fatal flaws as set out in Plato's Parmenides. If so, I wonder how these Platonists have chosen to resolve it.

> philosophers take it to mean that one believes in Plato's Theory of Ideas.

This is not accurate. Platonism, in a contemporary context, is the view that abstract objects exist. And so in particular to be platonist about mathematics is to believe in the existence of mathematical entities.

Thanks for correcting me.

What’s the difference between theory of ideas and the belief that abstract ideas exist?

The Theory of Ideas (aka Theory of Forms) is a specific conception of the true nature of the universe. Wikipedia seems to have a quite adequate introduction to it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms

It should be noted that the veracity of that quote is contested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman#Drug_war_quote

Good point. The same thing definitely happens in physics too. For example, people attributed important advances in mathematical physics (such as the mean speed theorem) to Galileo despite them having been already developed extensively in the middle ages.

How do you know whether people you've "had to deal with" were homeschooled or not? Might that method result in selection effects?

I doubt anyone I work with or meet knows I was homeschooled unless I specifically tell them, and it’s a pretty touchy subject because of the stereotypes people like the parent commenter have. Sounds like textbook survivorship bias, since the only homeschoolers you notice are the ones who are maladjusted. I know many people who were homeschooled and the range of outcomes varies, just like it does for public or private schools.

Some public school experiences can be great. Some homeschooling experiences can be great. Likewise each can be awful. We need more data.

Agreed. I made my point badly. Data is needed, not anecdotes.

True. They had to tell me. Your points stand: they could very well have been a minor subset of the overall population. But also by the same argument, they could have been 100pct of the population. It's why I mentioned it's all anecdotal. Data is needed.

IMO, this entire essay is misguided. There isn't anyone going around practicing Stoicism as it was practiced in Ancient Rome. Instead they take their psychological techniques (some of which are shared by Buddhism, Christianity, and cognitive behavioral therapy) such as the dichotomy of control and negative visualization and reject some of the other parts of the overall philosophy (mostly the metaphysics and similar).

Either those techniques works or they don't. If they don't work, then they should be abandoned for that reason. If they do work, the fact that Seneca had a disciple that turned bad as an adult or that Aurelius wasn't an abolitionist doesn't do anything to change that.

This is just the genetic fallacy in essay form.

On the other hand, unemployment is consistently higher in Europe than in the US (and wages are lower), so pick your poison.

I think it's an easy pick, to be honest.

The US.

In Europe you have guaranteed minimum wage, can't be fired without good reason, healthcare, all sorts of other help if you lose your job, public transport/cheap means of getting around. It's not even close for the typical worker.

Its difficult to compare because the cultures and industries are completely different. Im not even sure what a typical worker means anymore - what category are you talking about?

More risk in US but also more opportunities.

The hardware exercises expect you to use a simple HDL, you write an assembler in your language of choice (I used Ruby, but others have used Python or JavaScript), and you write programs for the computer you "built" in earlier chapters using Jack (a language with Java-like syntax).

I wrote mine in awk :)

The obvious thing you are missing is that many Europeans refer to the collection of EU treaties as a whole as a "constitution" and that most EU member states themselves have written constitutions, so there are many ways in which a proposed EU-level law could properly be said to be "unconstitutional".

> The obvious thing you are missing is that many Europeans refer to the collection of EU treaties as a whole as a "constitution"

I have never heard anyone use that term to refer to European laws or directives.

There was a proposed constitution, but it was rejected by referenda in both The Netherlands and France. As the constitution was not ratified, talking about constitutional makes very little sense.

What EU country are you from where someone would be confused by another saying a proposed EU law is "unconstitutional" in the native language?

Per the first line from the "Treaties of the European Union" wikipedia article:

  The Treaties of the European Union are a set of international treaties between the European Union (EU) member states which sets out the EU's constitutional basis.

This phrasing sounds totally normal to me in English and its Portuguese equivalent.

Yes, the term "[un]constitutional" can be used in this way. You don't have to have a written constitution to be able to discuss constitutionality. The UK has no written constitution but we have experts in constitutional law.

The problem with the title is that it is heavily editorialised. Not only does the article not use the term "unconstitutional", it doesn't even firmly conclude that the proposed law is contrary to the EU treaties. It outlines an argument to that effect and ends by stating further steps needed to make a strong case.

The article itself has a perfectly good title: "Does monitoring your phone affect the essence of privacy?"

To be fair though, the Lisbon treaty contains the vast majority of what would have been the constitution, just in a much less nice form.

In a very real sense, one of the requirements for being a country is for an entity to actually claim or declare that it is one, so that it can be recognised as one.

So by acceding to "The Treaty of Lisbon" rather than "The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe", the member states were legally disclaiming the right for the EU to be considered a federation or confederation.

(However, the Treaty of Lisbon did introduce a distinct legal personhood for the EU, which is arguably another necessary condition for a declaration of statehood).