Was gonna say- it's taken damn near 40 years but Lee Atwater's dragon's teeth are germinating...

Fantastic. I was just thinking about this earlier... When I lost a long comment I was writing because I had to leave my office.

Hooray for long form support!

Accessing them from Uber’s protected computers requires a unique security key that is not intended to be available to anyone other than certain Uber employees, and no one outside of Uber is authorized to access the files.

"authorized" is a funny word choice here. I don't work for Uber, so AFAIK authorization doesn't apply.

I can't believe what I just read.

There are no moral facts.

That doesn't mean that some opinions are more well-founded than others, or that some opinions are near universal, but widespread belief and/or agreement does not make something a fact.

Unknown facts are a different matter. These are things that can be demonstrated to be true, but are not yet known.

Me: “I believe that George Washington was the first president. Is that a fact or an opinion?”

Him: “It’s a fact.”

Me: “But I believe it, and you said that what someone believes is an opinion.”

Him: “Yeah, but it’s true.”

Me: “So it’s both a fact and an opinion?”

The blank stare on his face said it all.

Yes. It is. There's nothing strange there. The caveat is that whether or not George Washington was the first president is not dependent upon his opinion on the matter.

Opinions can be very important. They can be more important than facts. But, they are not provable.

EDIT: I'd add that facts are what lead to opinions. Opinions may be well-founded or not. Also facts can be wrong, or given inappropriate significance for a number of reasons.

I actually read that book, because I was stuck somewhere one night with not a whole lot else to do. I learned a couple of things, but overall the book rubbed me the wrong way. It was superficial and focused on the least interesting parts of the assassination. And making a goddamn series of "investigative journalism" about the deaths of US presidents is crass. I am not surprised that the details aren't entirely consistent.

I don't know if anyone else on hubski really bothered to read it, so I'd figured I'd share my experience.

lil that's a super cool combinatorial design!

Exactly, the author of the article is retarded.

Sigh, I had posted this to Hubski hoping for a debate a cut above what was going on at Reddit. There is nothing "retarded" about the view that educators should not simply define away the whole question of moral realism versus antirealism. How ethical discourse and debate works is very much a live and open question, just as much as the ethical questions themselves. Whatever our ultimate stance on ethical realism versus antirealism (or all of the more subtle position that this crude dichotomy of options obscures) it is by no means obvious which is right.

It is not dispiriting to see people taking a the view that "there are no moral facts". But it is dispiriting to see people treating this as obvious and anyone who disagrees as "retarded". This has been a live philosophical debate for as long as we have records of such things (excepting those times and places where people were too afraid to speak the questions aloud). I'm not aware of any great recent discovery that suddenly makes the answer obvious beyond debate. And yet quite a few people seem to think moral realism is just obviously wrong. To plenty of intelligent people it's not obvious.

To me that just confirms that something has gone awry in our culture - people are not merely siding with moral antirealism and relativism (which could be fine), but they're not even aware that there's a debate to be had about this and if anyone proposes a debate they get written off as an idiot.

And I don't know what you mean by "Plus those are the actual definitions" of fact and opinion. Whose definitions? Who's the authority on this? Maybe they're accepted definitions in US educational institutions, but the point of the article is to question them.

On the opinion vs. fact debate I totally disagree with the school's definitions. I've always held that a statement of fact is one that necessitates a judgement about its truth. That is, the statement is true or untrue in an objective sense. Whereas opinions are statements of the kind that could not be judged to be true or false in an objective sense.

Statements of morality could be judged to be true or false (and thus statements of fact) if they meet a very high standard. That is, if everyone agrees that a particular act is immoral, then we can say that that it is a matter of fact (functionally) that the act in question is immoral. I suppose the problem is that there is a lot of grey area, and that grey are seems counter intuitive when discussing 'facts'.

I understand that simplifying is necessary when talking to elementary school kids, but simplifying implies incomplete information, not incorrect information. Saying that things you believe are matters of opinion is very much incorrect.

• Smoking cessation

I skipped the last check-in because I smoked the night before and if I didn't check-in then it never happened, right? I find myself in a similar situation with this check-in. As I'm sure all smokers can attest, the devil is the pleasure of a cigarette after a drink. My previous success with smoking cessation was because of the structure and environment I was in, and now that that's gone, I find myself giving in to the temptation more often. But also, because it's way, way less of an occurrence (I went from a pack a night to now just a few cigarettes and only when I go out) there's way less of a gut-level concern for my health. And that concern was what overwhelmingly served as motivation for quitting. So does this mean that I will now not smoke? Sober me thinks it's a really good idea to quit, and can't even fathom the appeal, but even-one-drink me wants one and thinks a cigarette won't kill him. I think though that since I'm gearing up for a similar change in structure and environment, this issue will resolve itself.

• Regular exercise

I'm very happy with my follow through on this one. I have found that it is much easier to be motivated to exercise if you have a more specific goal than just fitness: that goal being to compete on American Ninja Warrior. Also -- and can I be self-indulgent? I know it's bad manners but I feel it's sort of appropriate on this thread -- I have really started to like checking myself out in the mirror. I know deep-down that it's bad that I enjoy it so much, for the fact that I don't want my esteem to be based on something as superficial as my abs, but I'm elated with what I see because my girl be 'miring.

• Keep track of expenses with You Need A Budget (YNAB)

My financial situation is out of whack, not because I'm poor (although I am), but because I'm transitioning from volunteering full-time and living off some savings to working and making money again (yay!). For some reason, this is my excuse for not tracking my spending. Which, I have learned, is one of the most important steps to financial security, if not the most fundamental. I hope to amend this within the fortnight.

• Keep a track of daily habits (Read. Write. Exercise. Brush. Floss.)

This goal has stalled somewhat. I used to keep track of everything with an app that was essentially like a daily checklist and a calendar to show your streaks of progress. But then the app maker completely switched priorities and is now marketing it is as a coaching app, rebranding and even renaming it. So now I have to find another app that let's me do that sort of thing. The good thing is that one google search in the midst of making this post reveals a ton of similar apps, so this should be a success story next check-in.

This is just an argument against Common Core cloaked as righteous philosophy. The funny thing is that I was taught these things long before Common Core was implemented.