>that techno-optimism has aged very badly, after all
There is no way that the kind of progress that happened in the last 60 years doesn't make it into the history books for centuries, very probably millenia.
I'm just utterly lost as to how someone can actually say this, I could bring up numbers on hunger, or child mortality, or the enormous, mind-boggling in degree, improvements in the quality of life of the average person, or how absolutely crazy the concept of taking progress for granted is.
>Our culture is so steeped in Snow’s worldview at this point that it doesn’t quite make sense that things have intrinsic “being” and “ends” to which they are objectively and irrevocably oriented. It’s ultimately all raw material to be fashioned to purpose.
But it's not? Technology has progressed, sure, and with that material reality changes. It enables stuff, doesn't dictate the use it gets.
I can absolutely understand a defense of the humanities based on human appreciation, life, subjective beauty, whatever you want to call it. Life is more than an optimization game.
...But then it should adhere itself to that. This simply is not the case, under this pretense, the social sciences are an exhaustive argument in favor of Snow's position.
It is no coincidence that in academia there's problems in one side that are much less prevalent in the other. Nor that it was the humanities who started taking the name of science for credibility.
English is my second language, with that in mind, I felt it may be interesting or amusing to some the parts which were "hard" for me to understand.
>Michaelmas term lately over
I had no idea that "Michaelmas" was even a thing. Nor do I think I have ever encountered the formulation of "term lately over"
>As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth
This puzzled me, as I'd imagine, if there's no water, there surely would be no mud. Apparently a reference to the great flood which makes it make sense.
>and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus
This one was funny since I properly understood (I think?) that it's meant to give a feeling of the savage, untamed, natural feel of the elements taking over London. But then I thought a reference to a Megalosaurus couldn't possibly be that. And it seems it is?
The rest was way easier, although I had to make sure what "Dogs, undistinguishable in mire" meant.
It's not presently on scihub (also, $25 for access? fuck off...), but the whole study stinks of "dickens scholar checks modern reading comp, vastly overestimates familiarity with victorian england and dickens' prose.".... .... here's the bio of the first author of the paper
> SUSAN CARLSON is a professor of English at Pittsburg State University, where she teaches courses on nineteenth-century British literature,
If the process is the product, then anyone who is not involved with the process has no right to say anything about the product.
Not to mention, there's a lot of stuff beyond an "aesthetic experience". Videogames have historical value, and they have relevancy at the very least as a testament of the state of the industry at any given point.
Legend of Dragoon, for example, integrated QTE-like controls in its attacks, even as a turn-based game. FFVIII, released the same year, implemented interaction in a somewhat similar way. These two are very early predecessors to mechanics Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 much more recently used. That has value.
If anyone wants to establish random conditions as to why they consider a work to be worthy or not, they may have those. But then they should keep them to themselves, rather than pretending people shouldn't care about something because of the way it was done. It's like the classic situation of someone complaining about how some open source project doesn't do something exactly in the way they like. I have nothing but contempt and despise for that sort of people, and it's a whole order of magnitude worse here, where the "problem" stems from their political stance, which nobody with a pulse should give a crap about.
>Or is it only when the people doing it eat more rice than us that it is bad?
It's definitely different when the player doesn't even have to play by the market. Comparing US companies and Chinese companies is not apples to apples.
In the west, billionaires are often able to get extremely favorable treatment by the law as an expression of the power money gives. This is not the case in China, in which the party stands at the top.
In practice that's just a difference of incentives that I'm not sure at all is beneficial for anything but an authoritarian regime.
It doesn't matter if they get it, because they wouldn't care either way. They would just pivot to "but more are destroyed this way" or "but these have value or they wouldn't buy them" or some variant of it.
There is no logical train of thought. It's not about logic.
The degree to which his works have been dragged through the mud by a bunch of people who insist on calling everything they don't like "capitalism" can't be overstated. The majority of people complaining about capitalism don't even have a coherent definition of it, it's a disgrace.
Definitely. I don't know what was the umbrella term, but I did participate in a student exchange program in the early 2000s, as a teeanger myself.
I doubt I'd have gotten to visit Poland without the EU so far (I'm not a frequent traveler...).
And Poland has, even when they had a government being at odds with the EU, never acted in some openly destructive way inside the EU. They always made clear what they want to be a part of, and what they don't want, and then, honestly followed through.
Not having the Euro or being more conservative is completely fine, as long as basic human rights aren't violated in a comparatively excessive way, and my impression of Poland and Polish people has always been a very friendly one.
I was in Łódź at the time, and there was a well thought-out program to connect the students, who were quite disconnected in the early 2000s, and had wildly different living situations + language barriers between each pair of students were also very diverse.
Credit to the EU for funding such a program is very much appropriate.
There is no way that the kind of progress that happened in the last 60 years doesn't make it into the history books for centuries, very probably millenia.
I'm just utterly lost as to how someone can actually say this, I could bring up numbers on hunger, or child mortality, or the enormous, mind-boggling in degree, improvements in the quality of life of the average person, or how absolutely crazy the concept of taking progress for granted is.
It'd be easier to convince me that grass is blue.
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