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There were no signs of your cold on the audio podcast version of the interview :) One issue I’ve had with Greek philosophy is that although I know there’s inte
by mjgs 6y ago
There were no signs of your cold on the audio podcast version of the interview :)
One issue I’ve had with Greek philosophy is that although I know there’s interesting content within the stories, it all feels very distant, I can’t pronounce many of the names, a lot of the stories don’t feel super relevant, so there isn’t much that ‘sticks’ in my head.
It’s a bit like reading Shakespear, I rarely get into it, spending all my thought decrypting low level meaning/semantics, and I just never get to the interesting higher level story arcs, or when I do, my flow is too easily broken by some weird old English saying that I am unacquainted with. I guess it’s like any language, lots of practice necessary.
I’ll have to take another look at the Socratic method in more detail. If it’s a technique you are using, based on your interviews that I’ve listened to, then it’s clearly beneficial.
- brailsafe 6y agoSounds like there's a market for a derived work that uses contemporary rhetoric.
- mjgs 6y agoYeah I think there might be. One which I really enjoyed was: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycl... I don’t know of many others like it. I’d really like to ‘get into’ the classics, but it’s like I need to onboard by reading a bunch of contemporary motorcycle style versions first, so I have some familiarity with the concepts.
- BrendanEich 6y agoI read ZatAoMM as undergrad, it made a big impression. Forgot to get to it with Lex (his pre-show questions included "your top books").
- brailsafe 6y agoI'm a little ways in so far, and I think—maybe unless you're a certain type of person—it's a book that you hopefully get lucky with in terms of when in your life you read it. It's a slow read, but the first few chapters have been nice so far, while some others I know have just not clicked with it.
- mjgs 6y agoThat’s an interesting book to have on a computer science undergrad course. I guess many of the themes are very relevant, repairing, problem solving, the knowledge that different people approach technology in different ways, etc. Plus I can see it being a cool book to read at the same time as a other folks studying computers.
- brailsafe 6y agoI think he was referencing just happening to have read it while simultaneously being an undergrad, not that he was assigned it required reading. Could be wrong though.
- mjgs 6y agoYou’re right I might totally have misread that. It got me thinking though, about the value of having some philosophy in comp sci courses. Back when I was doing my masters (2002-2003) it was a different era for the web, there wasn’t much thought to ethics or philosophy, but I think it could be very relevant these days. It strikes me that it could be a particularly good time to read the ZAMM book. I don’t know much about comp sci courses these days, maybe they do have such modules included.
- brailsafe 6y agoYa, that seems like a good idea. As of the last few years, philosophy courses at my school were not required, but you'd do them as part of your electives. I don't know how you'd actually formulate a comp sci specific ethics course, but it's an interesting thought experiment
- brailsafe 6y agoI've been reading it slowly for a little while, and quite like it. I think it's a book that really is not for everyone, or at least only for a certain time, but it's worthwhile.