"I would also really like to caution against the type of logic that "I don't think they understand the ... enough to make such suggestions." exemplifies. By saying that, one is evaluating the validity of a statement purely on the basis of who said it, and not on what was said.

The idea that people should be restricted only to comments within their own specialties, and leave the thinking to the "experts", is a very dangerous one. If that statement is accepted, the discussion might end right here, since it isn't clear that any of us 'understand enough'.

Discussion still continues though, because there is more to words than authority - there is reason."

Good Evening,

I believe many of you were at tonight's panel. I was particularly struck by Morris Chang's comments about the inevitable stalling of China's economy in the same manner as Taiwan, due to Cultural reasons. I agree with him. I have thought about that question and come to the same conclusion in the past.

It is my hope that we can raise some kind of coherent, rigorous conversation about cultural weaknesses amongst the Taiwanese at MIT. As Wei-Chuan has said, as of right now the organization seems to know only eat-eat-drink-drink, and does little else. There is no conversation and no common consciousness. I would like you to consider the desirability and possibility of change in this aspect.

I do not think that we are bad at having opinions. What's weak is the ability to develop those opinions. There is an excess of the tolerance for relativism, and on important issues disagreeing people seem to be unable to speak to each other. In the absence of meaningful disagreement, agreements are shallow and only joined by coincidence of name, as opposed to some deep generating principle.

There needs to be conversation about more fruitful ways in which to disagree. We need to make the strength and vigor which comes of public conversation available to us. This is something a technical education does not offer by itself - we'll have to work for this one. We must be aware of the dangers of philosophical bankruptcy, how we are wasting many opportunities by neglecting self-examination.

喬綸

"Why understand? What does it mean to understand?". Two posts ago, I talked about compact expression, and that is part of the answer. Today I try a different angle.

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Certain things "bear thinking about". Which things those are would depend on who you are. How funny/recursive though, to have thoughts about the utility of further thinking.

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The answer to a "where?" question is the name of a place, while "who?"s are answered by giving the names of people. I was thinking about "why" and "how" when this became apparent:

We manage our knowledge by classifying it under various levels of fundamentality/depth. Shallow statements are easily seen to be true or false, but are often quite specific and hence limited in applicability. Deep statements are abstract and cannot be applied directly, but can be used to construct various shallow statements. The construction process takes time and is often error-prone. The deep is induced from the shallow, and the shallow is deduced from the deep.

When we ask "why?", or "how?", what we expect is some elucidation of the connection between the shallow phenomena in the question with some deeper rules. For an answer to be satisfying, two conditions are required.

Firstly, the connection has to be logically sound. We are actually able to verify the correctness of the reasoning without an appeal to authority, i.e. it is possible for an answer to make no sense and hence be rejected. This works because verifying logic is easier than searching for logic.

Secondly, a link between different levels of depth must be made. Since the classification of depth is a priori, I have difficulty coming up with a simple example of this - the concept of inanity is very context dependent. A co-worker hypothesized the other day that cats slept so much because they needed to conserve energy, which in turn was due to them having high body temperature. That I consider an inane explanation because "sleep a lot" and "high body temperature" are at the same depth of truth and do not answer "why?". A potentially acceptable answer would have appealed to the desert origins of cats and evolutionary biology.

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It is important to take into account the conceptions of depth that one's audience has in order to provide satisfying answers and also ask many of the more important questions in life.

Topics that "bear thinking" are those which are anticipated to provide the most satisfying connections in answer - those which relate vastly different depths of reality.