> > Essentially "I am rational therefore I am right".
> Sounds like basically the entirety of philosophy
That's the opposite of the experience I've observed.
The starting point for a lot of philosophy students is learning the teachings of Plato and Socrates, among which the most famous is likely "I know that I know nothing"
The spirit of searching interrogation is there, along with Socrates' daemon who, Socrates said, prevented him from saying anything untrue (I'm hamming it up here).
The philosophical prototype of Socrates also gives license to be a gad-fly, piss people off for a good cause, etc. Instead of offering to pay a modest fine when he was found guilty of corrupting the youth, Socrates was so certain of his rectitude he told the court he should instead be awarded free meals for life like the Olympic champions. Now there's someone with chutzpah.
The legal restrictions on where you can build a new home are more of a problem in California than in rural Arkansas so your response doesn't address OP's point.
sure, but hes asking for remote work as well, for those staying in Moscow.
I think its very funny, him speaking about 2hours a day, like his in grave danger. He didnt mention anything about being presecuted.
I happen to know people stuck in Ukraine fearing for their life so please excuse me that I find it hard to emphatize with him. I would feel bad if he dint overstate how bad his situation is.
People who look for remote work need it to stay somewhere _outside_ of Russia and work remotely from there. Relocation is no easy feat, at least to do it quickly. Especially with half of the flights out of Russia being shut down.
This person is fleeing their home of decades, their family and friends, for the unknown with barely anything to start from the ground somewhere. Did you expect them to single-handedly take Putin down themselves? If they didn't vote for Putin, they have my utmost sympathy and I wish I could help. Anti-Putin Russians are also lesser victims in this war on Ukraine. Remember, protesting Putin and the war can now lead to 15 years in a Russian gulag.
> You cannot calculate the EV of a random variable X by taking the mean of random samples drawn from the distribution of X
My understanding of statistics is rudimentary so forgive me but doesn't the sample mean of a normally distributed variable tend towards the expected value for the population?
The sample mean of a Normal RV does tend towards the population expected value, sure.
The GP comment is talking about a Cauchy RV, which has heavy tails. So it has enough probability mass at large values that the expected value is infinite. Discarding constant scale factors, in this case:
E[X] = Int{0..infty} x * p(x) dx
= Int{0..infty} x * (1/x^2) dx
= Int{0..infty} (1/x) dx
= +infty
So, the sample mean of Cauchy random variates will not converge to any real number.
I completely disagree with the author's contention that "the industrial revolution could not have happened without slavery".
I think the author doesn't even mean it and instead just wishes to convey a general sense that British economic success is inextricably linked to injustice.
By making this argument instead that the industrial revolution "would not have happened without" slavery allows the reader to infer that slavery was therefore justifiable on the basis that we wouldn't have modern medicine or modern food production techniques without it.
There are three authors here: Eric Williams, who wrote the book; Donna Ferguson, the author of the linked-to piece; and Kehinde Andrews, who is one of several people quoted in the story.
I point this out because you quoted Andrews, and it took a re-reading me to realize you weren't quoting the first two authors.
Ferguson describes it as "It was all this wealth created by slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries that powered the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, Williams argued."
> The present study is an attempt to place in historical perspective the relationship between early capitalism as exemplified bv Great Britain, and the Negro slave trade, Negro slavery and the general colonial trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Every age rewrites history, but particularly ours, which has been forced by events to re-evaluate our conceptions of history and economic and political development. The progress of the Industrial Revolution has been treated more or less adequately in many books both learned and popular, and its lessons are fairly well established in the consciousness of the educated class in general and of those people in particular who are responsible for the creation and guidance of informed opinion. On the other hand, while material has been accumulated and books have been written about the period which preceded the Industrial Revolution, the world-wide and interrelated nature of the commerce of that period, its direct effect upon the development of the Industrial Revolution, and the heritage which it has left even upon the civilization of today have not anywhere been placed in compact and yet comprehensive perspective. This study is an attempt to do so, without, however, failing to give indications of the economic origin of well-known social, political, and even intellectual currents.
> The book, however, is not an essay in ideas or interpretation. It is strictly an economic study of the role of Negro slavery and the slave trade in providing the capital which financed the Industrial Revolution in England and of mature industrial capitalism in destroying the slave system. It is therefore first a study in English economic history and second in West Indian and Negro history. It is not a study of the institution of slavery but of the contribution of slavery to the development of British capitalism.
However, pointing out that a Dr. Pangloss can argue that $BAD_THING in history was essential, at it helped shape modern life, and therefore helps justify $BAD_THING, is to ignore that perhaps we don't live in the best of all possible worlds.
To avoid this, I don't let my mind form words too early. Words can come to mind so effortlessly that I wonder if I'm saying what I really feel.
I refrain from describing what I want to say before I have a chance to search my brain for related concepts to convey or contrast my thoughts. Then I can decide if the thing I'm about to say matches how I feel about the subject.
If you feel like your language is determining your thoughts, then I recommend (aside from possibly bilingualism) just taking more time to choose your words. Supposedly, the "decision-making centers" in the brain tend to activate prior to the parts responsible for understanding and reasoning ... apparently implying that humans usually rationalize decisions we've already made rather than reasoning beforehand.
Then again, I'll digress because I also do that to compensate for my poor communication and multitasking skills, so others may not share my thinking style and limitations.
