Essays I'm not writing today

[dougo]

I almost wrote a couple of essays today: one about the scientific method and one about the social contract. Oh, and yesterday I almost wrote an essay about incompressibility. But I decided that right now I'd rather implement Pylon for Volity in Python, because (1) I don't know Python, and Python knowledge might be a good thing to have on my resume and (2) it will probably be quicker to write a game using zarf's Python Volity framework than to finish up the Swindle Volity framework I've been writing from scratch. Anyway, I thought I should at least write about not writing the essays; maybe it will encourage me to (or guilt me into) writing them some day soon, or at least maybe it will pique someone's interest enough to read about those topics elsewhere.

Comments

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I think about the social contract a lot. I never actually read Leviathan, because my philosophy mentors said that Hobbes wasn't a very good writer, but I refer to the social contract when people suggest that because I'm an atheist I must not have any morals. I also think about the social contract when people smoke upwind from my bus stop.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Hm, that sounds more like the Golden Rule to me. I was thinking more in terms of the implicit agreement to be subject to the law. Or, as Wikipedia summarizes Plato, "members within a society implicitly agree to the terms of the social contract by their choice to stay within the society".

[devjoe.livejournal.com]

Do learn Python; you will find no end of uses for it. I've been using Python for all kinds of odd tasks for over 10 years, and I, too, learned it for a game, though it has since come to be used in my work.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Scheme is still my language of choice, specifically Swindle, a CLOS-like extension. So far I haven't seen anything in Python that would make me want to switch.

thank you

[(Anonymous)]

thats for sure, bro