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[theinevitable]

As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home: when it is necessary to meet in council, they name deputies and stay at home. By reason of idleness and money, they end by having soldiers to enslave their country and representatives to sell it.

It is through the hustle of commerce and the arts, through the greedy self-interest of profit, and through softness and love of luxuries that personal services are replaced by money payments. Men surrender a part of their profits in order to have time to increase them at leisure. Make gifts of money, and you will not be long without chains. The word finance is a slave's word, unknown to citizens. In a country that is truly free, the citizens do everything with their own arms and nothing by means of money; so far from paying to be exempted from their duties, they would even pay for the privilege of fulfilling them themselves. I am far from taking the common view: I hold enforced labour to be less opposed to liberty than taxes.

The better the constitution of a State is, the more do public affairs encroach on private in the minds of the citizens. Private affairs are even of much less importance, because the aggregate of the common happiness furnishes a greater proportion of that of each individual, so that there is less for him to seek in particular cares. In a well-ordered city every man flies to the assemblies: under a bad government no one cares to stir a step to get to them, because no one is interested in what happens there, because it is foreseen that the general will will not prevail, and lastly because domestic cares are all-absorbing. Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse. As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "Why should I care?" the State is dead.

Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, cannot be represented; it lies essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation: it is either the same, or other; there is no intermediate possibility. The deputies of the people, therefore, are not and cannot be its representatives: they are merely its stewards, and can carry through no definitive acts. Every law the people has not ratified in person is null and void — is, in fact, not a law. The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing. The use it makes of the short moments of liberty it enjoys shows indeed that it deserves to lose them.

The idea of representation is modern; it comes to us from feudal government, from that iniquitous and absurd system which degrades humanity and dishonours the name of man. In ancient republics and even in monarchies, the people never had representatives; the word itself was unknown. It is very singular that in Rome, where the tribunes were so sacrosanct, it was never even imagined that they could usurp the functions of the people, and that in the midst of so great a multitude they never attempted to pass on their own authority a single plebiscitum. We can, however, form an idea of the difficulties caused sometimes by the people being so numerous, from what happened in the time of the Gracchi, when some of the citizens had to cast their votes from the roofs of buildings.

I am resisting just quoting whole chapters, here. Rousseau, where have you been all my life.

[Doc]

LFM-style post coming up:

To be fair, in some cases there are legitimate alternative theories.

See the thing is 'alternative theories' in a scientific environment are what they sound like: Theories, not fact. Where scientists and the general public seem to get their wires crossed is that when a scientist reports their findings they expect other scientists to tear strips out of it and demand that other experiments be done to prove that these results mean what you are saying they mean (we call this process 'peer review' and it's ever so much fun) but whenever you read a mainstream news article about a published paper they act like this is the final word on the subject and no more investigation needs to be done.
The reason that scientists would never be so cavalier is that every real scientist lies awake some nights in terror that tomorrow they are going to do the one test that tosses their whole pet theory out the window and that will be that. The whole system of peer-review in scientific journals is based on the idea that scientists are people who can get things wrong and not account for all the variables, and since getting into peer reviewed journals is basically how a scientist manages to have a career they do not generally say 'X causes Y, that is the end of it and I will accept no other answer'.
Anyway my longwinded point is this: there are alternative theories, but there is only one fact of reality. A scientist is not employed to come up with theories, they are employed to find the truth. People talking about science get caught up waving these theories at each other like holy writ while real scientists are getting down to business trying to determine which theory better explains observed results. At the end of the day a scientist might have one pet theory but they'd never try to hold it up in the face of good experimental evidence that says otherwise.
Because theories are theories and fact is fact.
This is why 90% of science journalism is complete BS by the way, but that's another long, long rant.

Edit: that is a bitching quote inev. I should get some more culture into me so I could break out that kind of shit on a whim.

Double Edit: It should be noted that I'm a young RA, fresh out of honours so my world-view might be tinchy little bit more idealistic than someone who has actually been a working scientist for say, about as long as I've been able to talk.

[theinevitable]

oh, see, I am writing a paper about this guy right now. He is so good. Except for some places, where he just makes really weird assumptions that i don't like.

I completely understand the theories thing. I'm just saying that in some cases, there are multiple explanations of the data, and it is not clear which one better conforms yet.
All of the examples I can think of are from the social sciences, so, I will just refrain. That's just a whole 'nother can of worms. I really want to take the Philosophy of Science class that one of my professors teaches eventually. he is so cool. He has a PhD in philosophy, and then some kind of graduate degree in neuroscience. He alternates rapidly between "What is a Person? What is the self?" and talking about such as the way cellular mechanisms in neurons create (blah blah blah). So basically he is either being really out-there and confusing, or really nitty-gritty and confusing. And then, you know, there's the moment where he whips out some perfect metaphor, and I go "aha" and understand it. Or at least, mostly understand.

I think there was, at some point in my education, a point where I started finding the idea that there are theories which can be proven to be a lot more appealing. I am not sure when this happened.
I have become so much less of a lit person. I am still not good at being skeptical, though. I am so credulous, it is a thing among my friends to make fun of me for it. On the other hand, they're so skeptical of everything that we can't even have fruitful conversations.

[Doc]

I'm not even sure what I was really trying to say there anymore. But don't be down on yourself because you think you're credulous, the only real difference between saying 'That's so awesome, show me how it works.' and 'That's bullshit, prove it.' is that the credulous guy is happier.

I completely understand the theories thing. I'm just saying that in some cases, there are multiple explanations of the data, and it is not clear which one better conforms yet.

I totally get that, my angle is that people put too much importance on this theory or that theory. In the end only one of them will be right (or more likely, none of them will be completely right) so it seems more productive to focus on actually finding out what the truth is rather than being all rah rah behind a particular theory.

[Doc]

Also it really blows my mind when people are able to jump disciplines like that, it's cool that they can bring together fairly disparate types of thinking.

[theinevitable]

it isn't great, though, when I show people this cool article and they all laugh at me for thinking that it is serious. Granted, in at least a few of those times, I still think that they were just being dicks. In one case, I was informed that the article I had sent someone couldn't possibly be taken seriously, because it had a misspelled word. It was a summary of someone else's article, in bullet points, but god forbid something slip past the spell-checker. It's not like it was even saying anything radical-- I believe it was about the placebo effect as it relates to Acupuncture. He had said that he thought he'd read somewhere that there was evidence that there were other reasons that it worked, and I said "no, it's the placebo effect, check this article out." They spelled it Meridien instead of Meridian, and so obviously the whole article was a bunch of crock.

I enjoyed a lot, then, when our professor mentioned the site like 3 days later, as an example of a good site to check out for refutation of this dumb pseudo-science article that came out. (the one from a month or so ago, where some lame guy was saying that in 1000 years all men will have big dicks, all women will have big breasts, everyone will be "coffee-colored" and immune to AIDS, obesity, etc.)


yeah, this professor is going places in a major way. he is so rad. His book that just came out is nominated for some big award, I think. Also, he's going up to some town in Canada next semester to do research on this amnesic patient, possibly based on stuff we've discussed in our class? So cool. Is such cool guy.

I know I have mentioned this multiple times, but I basically have a crush on some level or another on every professor I have this semester. I am not looking forward to next semester, when several of the people I am supposed to have are not great. Damn you, major requirements.

[Doc]

Like I say man, people who are skeptical like that are just idiots with their default set to 'no' instead of 'yes'. Not that I am calling your friends idiots... much.

Was the article on badscience.net? If not you should check it out, that dude can write himself up a storm.

Also you should totally take that philosophy of science course. Biggest problem in science is communication so the more literary dudes like your good self we can rope into thinking about that stuff the better.

[theinevitable]

yes, that was the site.

I feel the need to say, I really like Rousseau when he says stuff like in that quote I posted... and I like him less when I write a paper about him where I end up saying that he would have liked the Fugitive Slave Law. He didn't like slavery, but was really into the idea that the Majority has to be obeyed, and that if you find yourself in the minority in a popular vote on a law, you have to realize that you are wrong. There is so much I like in here, and so much that I really really dislike.

All of these political theory guys, though, say that a vote is best for deciding things-- once the population is properly educated, so that they always make the right decision. Rousseau, though, also goes on a weird thing about how the majority is always right anyway, but sometimes later if they change their minds then they were wrong, but right at the time... and you have to teach them to see things in the right way, but they're right even if they don't see them in the right way, so you still have to obey the will of the majority... and then he says that if you force someone to conform to the laws of society, you are really only "forcing them to be free." Because if people only followed the laws they liked, we would go back to being exploited by the powerful? I have read this section a dozen times, and I still do not think that it makes sense. We talked about it in class, and I thought I understood it then, but...

[Doc]

I think I get the general idea but it does seem a tad wacky. There again I've always had a little trouble with the idea of absolute morality. I mean, there are things I'd never do and that are absolutely wrong to me but I've always felt that morality comes from within a person and so the idea of a majority saying 'you are wrong' to an individual is kind of odd.
Then again I'm not exactly against locking murderers up or anything but I'm generally for laws with a practical purpose rather than a moral one.

Having re-read your post I guess you're talking about right and wrong in a more specific sense than a moral one huh? Just ignore me, it's 10pm and I'm still at work, ain't nothing I say going to make sense tonight.

[theinevitable]

he, on some weird level, thinks that the Majority always makes the correct decision. The decision in the best interest of all, the decision which everyone should follow. That is my understanding, at least.

It's 6:20 AM, and I am at the point of doing calculations of... if I guess on every question on my Human Ev exam, I will get around a 65% in the class. This is, obviously, not acceptable, so I am now at the point of deciding to stay up all night studying, rather than going to sleep now for a few hours. I know he's going to end up curving it, and I know that I probably know more than I think. But right now I feel like I don't know any of it, and he's going to ask questions that are all

"I was discovered in the Koobi Fora formation in Kenya, and am an important specimen of Homo erectus"--
A. KNM-ER 1813       B. "Lucy"       C. KNM-ER 1470         D. KNM-ER 3733

What was the average cranial capacity of Homo erectus?
a. 950-1100 CC          b. 850-950 CC            C. 1000-1150 CC        d. specimens have been found in all of these ranges

The second one is kind of an exaggeration, but... kind of depressingly not. I am so bad at memorizing these things.

I figure, when I finish the exam, I will have been up for exactly 24 hours. That's not so bad, and I can sleep for as long as I want after that. Maybe I'll sleep for a few hours in a while.

[Doc]

I at least, after being stuck for twenty minutes in a hallway in which all doors require security cards (including the one leading out) and not having a security card have escaped to my home and am partaking of delicious pepsi cola.

I'd be more worried about that first one. Damn it's been a long time since I sat an exam.

[milhouse]

Wow. These threads are why I hang here. Or at least lurk here...

[Turbo Ninja]

Who's the asswipe who forgot to include a link to the strip in the first post of this thread?


Me.  Sorry.  I blame the mid-day update.