"Philosophers, he posited, would be better off if they stopped trying to prove things like scientists, an impulse he believed led thinkers to overlook how philosophy might stimulate the ‘mind’s excitement and sensuality’. Rather, they ought to limit themselves to explaining how a system of thought is possible."
Can someone explain what this last sentence means?
In simplest terms that don't depend too heavily on philosophical references or terminology, I believe he means the philosophical task shouldn't be to prove a thing is or isn't, but that a thing could be—that a set of plausible explanations exist or could exist to provide enough convincing power that a given system of thought or a different state of affairs is not impossible to conceive of or consider capable of existing.
It sounds like Foucault's concept of a "discursive formation", basically a Kuhn-style paradigm. Foucault was interested in the social conditions and context that enable certain statements to be uttered, and interpreted as meaningful.
More broadly, Nozick's focus shifted away from logical proof as a form of argument, the hallmark of Anglo-American Analytic philosophy. It seems to shift to a more Continental (European) style, in which philosophers point to patterns, aiming to evoke insights (e.g. Foucault and more recently Žižek).
It's pretty much meaningless without more context than the article gives. It's similar to phrases that've been used in connection with historical philosophers like Kant, the purest analytic philosophers like Carnap, and many others of different schools.
I am not sure about the legality here, but I will say that I see this arrangement as good for both the driver and the passenger.
As a passenger I can know exactly what I'm paying ahead of time, and don't have to worry about my driver intentionally increasing the time/distance of a trip to charge me more.
As a driver, you are compensated on a time/distance basis, which means you don't have to worry as much about special requests/traffic/other issues messing with what you earn.
Uber is the one accepting the risk here, which the chance that the payout to the driver exceeds the flat rate the passenger paid because of an extra long trip.
Even if it is read charitably, as you have done, that really damages Uber' claim that it's a effectively just a middleman connecting independent contractors with customers. By doing this, Uber is much more than a mere ride arranging service and, instead, they're actively reducing risk and manipulating both sides – something a mere middleman wouldn't do.
Another thing: If Uber really wanted to charge their customers more, they could just raise their rates relative to distance (which would be identical to the user since they only see the final fare and not the components of it). I think they probably just pick a long route to be conservative in the time estimate they give to the user.
Just as a response to the first section, you can't say that Uber is subsidizing both customers and drivers like they are separate costs. There is some margin, which is the difference between what the customer pays and what the driver gets paid. Currently this margin is negative, which means that Uber is "subsidizing" the transaction by paying the difference themselves. For any given ride the customer subsidy and the driver subsidy are same thing, Uber doesn't pay twice.
One advantage of nuclear power relative to other renewable sources is that it that unlike wind/solar, it can provide consistent energy 24/7. Our energy storage solutions are simply not good enough to provide sufficient power in downtimes.
There is so much irrationality in this thread and in public opinion in general... it makes we wish I could personally bet on Uber's future success.
However, Uber is staying private, so they don't have to cater their long term plans to the whims of random people who have no idea what they are talking about. (I include myself in this category)
While it gives me hope that legislation is at least acknowledging that the suffering of animals is something we might care about, it still is sad to see the same arbitrary pet/livestock divide.
Of course extending such legislation to farm animals would be politically impossible, but it still hurts to read
> the animal's dignity must prevail over the profitability of the industrial activity
How would you handle the market that emerges between the two currencies? If Gresham Money is deemed less valuable, and some market exists between the two currencies, it seems that GD would just weaken relative to USD. I'm not sure how you could stop merchants from then just inflating GD prices, neutralizing the viral effect.
I fully expect (and hope for) such a market to emerge.
One key thing, which I mentioned in another comment, is that GD "matures" into USD after a certain period of time (e.g. 30 days). But some people might not want to wait for their GD to mature, so they'd be willing to sell their GD at a discount of face value. But the price gets too low, people will prefer more to keep their GD.
Our merchant partners are required to set prices equally in both USD and GD, but there's nothing preventing other users from dealing in USD/GD in this way. And by participating in this market ourselves, we can help build our USD reserves.
I don't see how someone can credibly argue that raising income tax rates discourages innovation. As if Zuck or Gates wouldn't have started their companies if they only would have made $25 billion instead of $50 billion.
He even argues in earlier writing that most of the innovation comes from genuine passion for solving a problem, rather than profit motive.
People who have worked a lot to increase their wealth understandably don't want a portion of it taken away, even if it probably won't make them less happy, or motivate people less in the future.
The issue seems to be that she could of hid something in her personal emails by not turning everything over. But couldn't any official have just used their gov email for "official business" and use their personal email for stuff they want to hide? Doesn't every politician actually do this?
The fact that Clinton is letting personal correspondence mix with government correspondence indicates to me she has less to hide, not more.
The only issue that has the possibility of being legitimate in is the Benghazi stuff. Technically, it could have been a deliberate move to make emails related to Benghazi un-searchable during the investigation. Of course, this only actually matters if those emails contain anything significant/damning, and they probably don't.
The accusation is she deliberately used only a private account so that her emails wouldn't have to be produced upon committee requests:
"The State Department had not searched the email account of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton because she had maintained a private account, which shielded it from such searches, department officials acknowledged on Tuesday."
How about the release of proprietary and sensitive data into an unverified third-party system? Potentially traversing the Internet unencrypted in the process.
I've seen people dismissed from companies for that. Shouldn't Government be even more rigorous?
Well yes, if we are discussing why it's illegal to use personal email for this kind of communication, you can't make the assumption that it's legal to use the personal email for hiding stuff and arrive at the conclusion there is no scandal.
This "it could have been worse" is weird. The point of requirements to use official channels is two-fold:
1. It maintains an archive that can be used for accountability.
2. Anyone communicating with not-that-account can potentially flip to the watchdogs, making it harder to use unofficial communications.
I'm not so naive to think that those unofficial communications don't happen. I expect that most campaigns have used them for dirty laundry. It doesn't mean we get rid of the channels we can see.
Classified information security, for one thing. Exposing highly sensitive information via an infrastructure run by unknown persons, presumably without clearances, or acting against the conditions of their clearances if they have them.
One specific law about document retention is mentioned in connection with this case, but this is also a big security issue, with laws and regulations that apply, as well.
There are probably other ethics, regulatory, and legal issues once you get into who she was corresponding with on what topics and how those people used the information they obtained.
Refusing to use the email server that is under your employer's control is a giant red flag. Document retention, document deletion, FOIA requests, a zillion other compliance requirements: those all need to be handled by a dedicated compliance officer, not a Clinton aide.
"The only issue that has the possibility of being legitimate in is the Benghazi stuff. Technically, it could have been a deliberate move to make emails related to Benghazi un-searchable during the investigation. Of course, this only actually matters if those emails contain anything significant/damning, and they probably don't."
Are you saying that she setup a non-gov email so she could make benghazi emails un-searchable before benghazi even happend? CT much?
They want to keep Benghazi on the radar in case of a potential presidential run, and they're still mad about how easy it was to shatter Palin as a VP candidate, a mistake that is widely believed to have cost them the presidency and locked the U.S. in for 8 years of centrist non-ideologue successes that just happened to be accomplished by a half-black man with an informed global view.
Payback? So this issue is made up? Shouldn't all presidential hopefuls and public officials be subject to the same scrutiny? As far as Palin, there's no Republican that I know that cares one bit about Palin anymore. She's a pundit but she's hardly a front-runner for Republican thought leadership. She's all but irrelevant.
As far as Benghazi, it's a legitimate issue for a Presidential candidate. They claimed a video sparked the attack. That was the official word despite evidence that Hillary knew almost immediately that a video had nothing to do with it. That false narrative whose water was carried by Susan Rice resulted in Rice getting promoted to UN Ambassador. All of this stuff is far more relevant than those stupid stories about Mitt Romney and his family dog.
Look! A squirrel. If Benghazi is a non issue, what was the need for the obfuscation of the truth? Why did the admin insist that YouTube caused the attack? Why not just play it straight? It isn't Benghazi that's the issue; it's the culture of corruption and deceit that voters don't seem to care about.
As a politically motivated Hillary Clinton specific scandal, I agree that it's pretty thin, but it's definitely making me think more than I previously have about how much of officials' correspondence should be subject to freedom of information requests.
Maybe, maybe not. The point is we should audit this. And if they do governmental jobs over a private email they should be punished for it, so others don't do the same in the future.
Can someone explain what this last sentence means?