Soup.GroundPlane.org

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The sort of thing boosterism doesn't account for; increased Balkanization of individuals:

increasing access now has the sole effect of giving agents more potential partners to select from. Since agents prefer similar partners, increasing access allows them to find more and more partners of the same type to form connections to. Thus, the number of affiliations per agent will decrease and Balkanization increases. For our particular society, with universal access, all agents connect only to those of the same type, so the Index of Balkanized Affiliation reaches a maximum of one."

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"[T]o flourish, humans need to develop virtues of independent thought and acknowledged social dependence"

In "Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues" under "the conditions for human flourishing", Alasdair MacIntyre notes that, "The virtues of rational agency need for their adequate exercise to be accompanied by what I shall call thethe virtues of acknowledged dependency" including, as Carol Taylor points out in her "Health and Human Flourishing", includes "the attentive and affectionate regard for others".

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“ Disputatio: (Scholastic) Out of the quaestiones disputatae developed gradually a rigid form of scholastic disputation. The defensor theseos proposed his thesis and explained or proved it in syllogistic form. The opponentes argued against the thesis and its demonstration by repeating first the proposition and the syllogism proving it, then either by denying the validity of one or the other premises (nego maiorem, minorem) or by making distinctions restricting the proposition (distinguo maiorem, minorem). In the disputations of students under the direction of a magister the latter used to summarize the disputation and to "determine the question". --Rudolf Allers ”

“ 7:37AM 1MAR2010 @timoreilly tweeted: "Apps for the Army is live! http://bit.ly/cOjSkn Many thanks to @ArmyCIOG6 and @corbett3000 for carrying this idea forward #gov20 #apps4army" ”

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Archon Fung begins his "Creating Deliberative Publics: Governance After Devolution and Democratic Centralism" with the following: "In the Public and Its Problems, John Dewey lamented the stagnancy of democratic political forms in the face of a rapidly changing economy and society."

I can depict my long-historied pre-occupation with a variation of that: in the face of a rapidly changing society and economy I lament the ineffectiveness of democratic political forums!

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“ Deliberative democratic theory continues to “come of age.” In this contribution to its development, we assume that deliberation should clarify conflict as well as help participants to discover and forge common interests.
Although we want to stress the importance of seeking a genuinely common good, we argue that deliberation can and should in certain conditions include both self-interest and the negotiation of conflicting interests. Convergence, incompletely theorized agreements, integrative negotiation, and fully cooperative negotiations are compatible with deliberative ideals. They are forms of deliberative negotiation.
Voting and the negotiation of cooperative antagonists are not themselves deliberative acts but, when they are justified through deliberative procedures and preceded in practice by such procedures, can be accepted by deliberative theorists as legitimate components of democracy complementary to and in some cases integrated with deliberation. ”

“ Cohen's first line in this book:

"A lucky man lives in many communities."

What came to my mind when I read this was, "Who knows only his side of an argument knows little of that" ... Hume?
But what does this mean these days? We are, typically, historically, closed-minded and biased, at least partial if not prejudiced. How to communicate notions of eclecticism and pluralism to people who are increasingly scattered and superficial? ”

“ Our mission is to provide non-partisan information for voters in the Presidential election, so that votes can be based on issues rather than on personalities and popularity. We get our information daily from newspapers, speeches, press releases, and the Internet ”

“ Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions. ”