Re: Which book sounds most compelling?

On Apr 23, 9:51 am, cryptoguy <treifam...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 22, 4:19 pm, nobody <n...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





David Friedman <d...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <la2jg0jmrc38$.1kus84vxl31z1....@xxxxxxxxxx>,
Ric Locke <warrick.lo...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I will add that I am also thoroughly egalitarian but not egalist -- that
is, I believe everyone should have equal chances, but that the results
will never be equal, and that the existence of unequal results does
/not/ necessarily mean that the opportunities were not equivalent.

I agree with the former. "Everyone should have equal chances" sounds
good, but I'm not sure it really makes sense.

Everybody should have an equal chance to bust his ass trying, is how
I've always looked at it.  That's the only meaning of "equal
opportunity" that makes sense to me.  Sometimes it seems that what
people really want is an "equal guarantee of success".  

Given a world of limited
resources and diverse wants, wouldn't it make more sense to have a
society in which the path to being a basketball star easier for the
people who have a reasonable chance of succeeding in that career path,
and other paths easier for other people with other tastes, talents, and
the like? One reason you (I'm an even more extreme case) are unlikely to
end up as a basketball star is inability to do the job. But another is
that nobody is likely to give us a serious chance to try to do it unless
we push awfully hard. Is that really a bad thing?

I'm thinking specifically in the context of "social pressure," "societal
expectations," and the like. Would you rather live in a society in
which, when you were growing up, nobody around you expressed any clear
opinion about what life paths were likely to work for you, leaving you
to decide entirely on your own, or a society where there were
expectations--expectations you could choose to act against, but that
exerted some pressure on you--and those expectations were on the whole
sensible?

All of which has, I think, some writing related implications; one could
imagine contrasting societies of both sorts.

And in a magical world where you are told you can be anything you
want, and you really can as far as how your limits stack up against
the next guy's, how do you even start to choose?

...

Establishing NewSpeak is much harder than it looks. I am old enough to
recall when "queer" was put forward as a /neutral/ term to refer to
homosexuals. Society as a whole -- not just the coarser elements --
continues to have a negative view of overt homosexual behavior, and, as
a result, over roughly a half-century "queer" has taken on all the
negative connotations the formerly-used terms had, and "gay" is well on
its way to the same fate.

That's a particularly odd case. I've noticed lately, mostly on World of
Warcraft where I see a lot of chatter by people much younger than I am,
that "gay" is now being used as a negative term having little or no
connection to homosexuality. "That's really gay" means, roughly, "that
really shouldn't be that way."

I think we're in a world of hurt here on Earth.  The first time my
kids used that one around me I was all, "Huh?"  It was explained as
meaning lame or stupid.  It seems like kids are trying their damndest
to work language back to a system of grunts and whistles.

'Gay' used to mean 'blithe, 'happy', 'carefree', etc. For several
decades recently it carried the 'homosexual' conotation as well.
Now its moving on to something different.

On what basis is it's use in youthspeak for 'lame' any less valid
than the homosexual use?

'Gay' was also used for "sexually active" during the Nineteenth
Century.

--
Will in New Haven
.

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