Scott David Gray 🌸

Alumnus of and staff member at the Sudbury Valley School. IT, artist, home cook, TTRPG author.

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

The 1958 novel by Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon, on which Charlie was based, was a fuller expression of the problem. And books don't get dated quite so quickly as films.

I'm still pressing B. It seems to me a conceit of fiction and the well-off to make the claim that 'some people can't handle intelligence.'

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

@davidharsanyi @joekent16jan19 Here's a thought.

Any American who wants gets to decidce whether or not to spend $11 on gifts to Benjamin Netanyahu, or more, or less, or none.

And we all agree to stop uising the US tax system to force other people to pay for our own priorities.

You know . . . Freedom!

[Jeremiah “Jasper” Thompson @jjfThompson]

Isn’t it interesting that Lincoln is always forgivien for his words and credited with “evolving” in his views, yet men like Alexander Stephens, Jefferson Davis, and Bedford Forrest, are not allowed the same grace?

Lincoln freed slaves for political reasons and never stopped looking for ways to send them away. The three men I mentioned actually attempted to convince Americans to accept the freedmen and help them gain their footing as citizens.

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

@Granger4NH @japan_nobunaga Yes, but Massachusetts bureaucrats take New Hampshire more personally, and New Hampshire has real cause to despise Massachusetts.

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

There is such a thing as manners. Manners dictate that you don't substitute one's own comfort for someone else's comfort.

Even those who call for society to allow it agree that it is a matter of comfort.

To enter a room marked for one sex, if one has the characteristics of the other sex, is to substitute one's own comfort for the stranger's comfort. And that is wrong.

Bringing a very young child, not fully potty trained, into a bathroom, is a matter of need. Not comfort.

Where I'm from the tradition is for the mother to bring the son into the ladies' room, but the culture on how to deal with need in such instances may differ from place to place.

If one makes the effort to be polite, and when extenuating circumstances call for an exception to follow whatever the traditions/expectations are for making that exception (to the extent that one knows them) is the right thing to do.

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

@Luke_Ruiter @No5mallf3at I’ve always been a Nozick man, myself.

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

One can reasonably be expected to justify one’s actions, when others are affected by them. But the heart wants what the heart wants, as they say.

There is no rational reason that I want to paint our house yellow, while my wife prefers red.

There is no rational reason to prefer a society with less crime but harsher penalties, or a society with more crime but no penalties; but people want the society that they want.

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

I've read 16 of those 20 pictured, and about 2/3 of the books in the Bible, and can confirm that this is a great list.

But it isn't a good list to mandate. There probably is no good list to mandate. These are works that if approached at the wrong time, or in a sprit of test prep, lose their value.

It's especially ironic to see compulsion, seduction, and force used to make kids read Animal Farm, and Fahrenheit 451. How can a teacher keep a straight face talking to a captive audience about those books?

[Jeremy Kauffman 🦔🌲🌕 @jeremykauffman]

A test of whether you understand how money works:

When this rapper throws $100k in the ocean, is he destroying something of value or making everyone else wealthier?

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

In no particular order:
Columbo, Mash, The Muppet Show, All in the Family, Sanford and Son, MASH, The Bob Newhart Show, Saturday Night Live, Little House on the Prairie, Dukes of Hazard, Barney Miller, Taxi, Quincy M E

That’s more than ten. As it should be! It was a great decade for TV!

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

@jeremykauffman Much of modern ethics rests on the idea that "intelligent, reasonable people will agree, if they all know all of the facts."

The fact that this is demonstrably not true -- that different people very clearly want different things -- how not shaken this faith.

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

So even if you believe that there is no free well in theory, it is still better to behave as though there is free will in practice.

3/3

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

“There’s no such thing as free will.”

Even if the universe is, as some believe, a hugely complicated piece of clockwork, it is a complicated piece of clockwork.

1/3

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

It is complicated enough that when those “subsystems” that we call ‘people live as though they DO have a choice, their lives and the lives of those around them tend to be improved by their own measure.

2/3

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

If you want a trillionaire to complain about, complain about the Federal government.

It steals 7.5 trillion EVERY YEAR from the people who actually make real things, and then prints more currency so that only those who hold equity (generally, only the wealthier) can retain value, while those living by straight income are left in the cold.

End the Fed, end Congress, and the United States war machine, and people who actually work (from the small town janitor to the person building reusable rockets) will prosper.

[Sudbury Valley School @Sudbury_Valley]

@ImColbyLyons @ToddTruitt76508 Americans love equal opportunity. Most believe that people are born with a "blank slate."

Most want school as a mechanism for "getting all to the same starting gate," so it offers the same curricula.

School ends up serving as what Vonnegut called the Handicapper General.

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

If what you say is true, then the real villain is the US government stealing 7.5 trillion every year from regular working folks ($23000 each year from every man, woman, and child), and then using it to pay off the folks that you decided to give it to.

You can't have it both ways. If Elon's wealth is the fault of government, the answer is to destroy government.

Let;s start with officers of government; like you, Ed.

[Maria Popova @themarginalian]

Tolkien on fairy tales, language, the psychology of fantasy, and why there is no such thing as writing "for children" https://t.co/MmhpWpn2Xh

[Scott David Gray 🌸 @ScottDavidGray]

@LibertarianMama @Sir_LongStride Cheap easy programable nanotech would put a big dent in scarcity.

In large swaths of the world there is close to zero hunger now. And less every decade.

[Libertarian Mama 🔔 @LibertarianMama]

I don’t care that someone is wealthier than I am.

I do care that my wealth is being stolen through taxation and inflation.