今年在加州的大城，疫情肆虐，在數據在關閉的店鋪在遠方的屍體，無聲地狂飆。前幾天第一次實體見到同事，隔著口罩與六呎距離，陽光暖和。各家門前，取代千篇一律草皮的，是艷麗招展的沙漠與地中海植物。這裡不下雪。山火在不遠處蔓延。
今年與去年的萬聖節，恍如隔世。
2020-11-01
Día de los Muertos / 萬聖節
今年在加州的大城，疫情肆虐，在數據在關閉的店鋪在遠方的屍體，無聲地狂飆。前幾天第一次實體見到同事，隔著口罩與六呎距離，陽光暖和。各家門前，取代千篇一律草皮的，是艷麗招展的沙漠與地中海植物。這裡不下雪。山火在不遠處蔓延。
今年與去年的萬聖節，恍如隔世。
2020-05-14
From Lacan to Darwin, by Dylan Evans
When finishing An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (Chinese translation: 拉岡精神分析詞彙), Dylan Evans was about halfway through the transition from Lacanian Psychoanalysis to Evolutionary Psychology. The process of writing the dictionary revealed to him the "internal contradictions and lack of external confirmation" in Lacanian theory, and the obfuscatory language of Lacan "did not hide a deeper meaning, but was in fact a direct manifestation of the confusion inherent in Lacan's own thought." In an article, From Lacan to Darwin, he laid out the story of his intellectual journey and explained why he rejected Lacanian theory.
2019-06-03
Ravenswood
因為報名了企業研究課程，最近必需讀完海量的資料，其中就包括這本書：Ravenswood: The Steelworkers' Victory and the Revival of American Labor (導論連結)
這本書是關於 1990-1992 年間，美國西維吉尼亞州的一個鋁礦加工廠 Ravenswood Aluminum Company (RAC) 的工會，如何在遭到資方惡意鎖廠 (lockout)、引進工賊之後，透過漫長而複雜的鬥爭反擊成功的故事。除了傳統工運抗爭必需的工人團結與組織動員之外 (撐了兩年)，這故事的重點是 "綜合戰" 與 "敵情研究"。
這本書是關於 1990-1992 年間，美國西維吉尼亞州的一個鋁礦加工廠 Ravenswood Aluminum Company (RAC) 的工會，如何在遭到資方惡意鎖廠 (lockout)、引進工賊之後，透過漫長而複雜的鬥爭反擊成功的故事。除了傳統工運抗爭必需的工人團結與組織動員之外 (撐了兩年)，這故事的重點是 "綜合戰" 與 "敵情研究"。
2018-11-14
Reading Notes 2018.11.14
# Rob Reich on "Is philanthropy bad for democracy?", from Rationally Speaking
--Many philanthropists donate to fancy schools that really don't need extra money. Maybe public policy should be: tax-deductible donations to support public schools should be conditioned on whether or not the school that you're supporting with your donation has a certain percentage of kids who are on free or induced lunch.
--It's true that the philanthropists could have had put the money into business or politics rather than philanthropy. But when an individual creates a company, as you were describing, or say gets elected to government and then has an opportunity to direct public resources, there are forms of accountability that are kind of internal to the marketplace and internal to the operation of government, that hold that power in check in a certain way. Philanthropic power by contrast is almost wholly unaccountable. >>這一點也是台灣的財團喜歡用財團法人控制企業的原因吧。台灣就連企業都沒有完整的監督與制衡，更別提慈善或公益事業的權力問題了。
# Christopher Chabris on "Collective intelligence & the ethics of A/B tests", from Rationally Speaking
--People who have good social and emotional skills enhance group intelligence more than experts of specific, technical fields.
--Women enhance group intelligence, but there may be a selection bias that the women got selected into the sample tend to be more intelligent than average women.
--Many philanthropists donate to fancy schools that really don't need extra money. Maybe public policy should be: tax-deductible donations to support public schools should be conditioned on whether or not the school that you're supporting with your donation has a certain percentage of kids who are on free or induced lunch.
--It's true that the philanthropists could have had put the money into business or politics rather than philanthropy. But when an individual creates a company, as you were describing, or say gets elected to government and then has an opportunity to direct public resources, there are forms of accountability that are kind of internal to the marketplace and internal to the operation of government, that hold that power in check in a certain way. Philanthropic power by contrast is almost wholly unaccountable. >>這一點也是台灣的財團喜歡用財團法人控制企業的原因吧。台灣就連企業都沒有完整的監督與制衡，更別提慈善或公益事業的權力問題了。
# Christopher Chabris on "Collective intelligence & the ethics of A/B tests", from Rationally Speaking
--People who have good social and emotional skills enhance group intelligence more than experts of specific, technical fields.
--Women enhance group intelligence, but there may be a selection bias that the women got selected into the sample tend to be more intelligent than average women.
2018-10-20
Reading Notes 2018.10.20
Claude Lévi-Strauss today, by Dan Sperber
--People who have good social and emotional skills enhance group intelligence more than experts of specific, technical fields.
--Women enhance group intelligence, but there may be a selection bias that the women got selected into the sample tend to be more intelligent than average women.
[p.72] Faithful to the terminology of Saussure, he [Levi-Strauss] tends to refer to symbolic phenomena as "signifiers," and one might assume that the investigation is into an underlying code which pairs these signifiers with their "signified." Yet, if readers begin looking for the signifieds, they soon realize that the underlying code relates signifiers to other signifiers: there are no signifieds. Everything is meaningful, nothing is meant.# Christopher Chabris on "Collective intelligence & the ethics of A/B tests", from Rationally Speaking
[p.74] If the question asked were: "Why should a given social group consider itself to stand in a special relationship to, say, eagles?," only unsatisfactory answers could be given: "Because they are mistaken about ancestry," or "because they think they resemble eagles and assume this implies a relationship." Explaining strange behavior by even stranger intellectual errors is no explanation at all.
Levi-Strauss points out that the human-animal relationship can be understood in a third, even more systemic way: neither as a set of dyadic relationships between individual items, nor as a dyadic relationship between sets of individual items, but as a second-degree dyadic relationship between two sets of first-degree relationship:On the one hand there are animals which differ from each other (in that they belong to distinct species, each of which has its own physical appearance and mode of life), and on the other hand there are men...who also differ from each other (in that they are distributed among different segments of the society, each occupying a particular position in the social structure.). The resemblance presupposed by so-called totemic representations is between these two systems of differences (Levi-Strauss 1963b: 77).Seen in this light, the resource to animal species provides a unique system of differences. Species do not overlap, they look different, they live differently, they offer an endless choice of opposed features that can be used to contrast human groups......If, for instance, a tribe were divided into three clans named after the eagle, the bear, and the turtle, this might suggest that we concentrate on the natural element of each of these species, and further contrast the three clans as associated with sky, earth, and water.
--People who have good social and emotional skills enhance group intelligence more than experts of specific, technical fields.
--Women enhance group intelligence, but there may be a selection bias that the women got selected into the sample tend to be more intelligent than average women.
2018-01-16
約瑟和他的兄弟們 by 曾慶豹
比起其他高遠的神學研究，此書讀來異常親切，讓我重新理解一些人與事。由此回望，我經驗中的那些「好」顯得無比卑微、天真與脆弱，而那些「壞」原來還有千百個理由可以更壞。我該慶幸自己不曾真正經驗過那核心裡的惡嗎？
[p.2] 有一次在一位老牧師的書架上翻看到一本書《共黨能和宗教和平共存嗎》......令我感到興趣的莫過於是牧師在扉頁註記了一段話：
反共不是政治「反共不是政治」絕不是一句簡單的話，他基本上反應了兩種情況：一方面是暗示著基督教最好不要涉入政治，堅持政教分離的原則，另一方面則是把反共產黨、反無神論提高到比政治更高的層次，即它的宗教性或基督徒口中所說的「屬靈戰爭」。
2017-10-21
Reading Notes 2017.10.21
# An unlikely triumph by David Labaree.
美國許多 college 設在偏僻小鎮，因為原本就是為了炒新開發區地皮而設。大學部學費是主要收入來源，所以課程不能太難，要讓學生開心，與社區民眾及校友維繫感情，經營球隊是方法之一， populism。
# From BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
很久沒讀這種論述性質的東西了。我關心的問題：階級與種族兩線上的運動為何分裂，又如何可能聯合，作者也關心，但只是輕描淡寫地穿插提及。一來，本書的主題固不在此吧，二來，作者始終停留在論述層次，不在意將論述轉譯成經驗命題 (例如，哪些白人工人有強烈的種族主義傾向？為甚麼？)，也不試圖從經驗分析中尋求支持。
美國許多 college 設在偏僻小鎮，因為原本就是為了炒新開發區地皮而設。大學部學費是主要收入來源，所以課程不能太難，要讓學生開心，與社區民眾及校友維繫感情，經營球隊是方法之一， populism。
# From BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
很久沒讀這種論述性質的東西了。我關心的問題：階級與種族兩線上的運動為何分裂，又如何可能聯合，作者也關心，但只是輕描淡寫地穿插提及。一來，本書的主題固不在此吧，二來，作者始終停留在論述層次，不在意將論述轉譯成經驗命題 (例如，哪些白人工人有強烈的種族主義傾向？為甚麼？)，也不試圖從經驗分析中尋求支持。
2017-05-31
Reading Notes 2017.05.31
Contemporary Approaches to the Social Contract, by D'Agostino, Gaus, and Thrasher (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
1. 古典的社會契約論重視 consent-obligation。當代契約論重視 the problem of justification: what social arrangements we can all accept as “free persons who have no authority over one another” (Rawls 1958, 33).
2. Contractarian (Hobbesian/reductionist/why be moral) 與 Contratualist (Kantian/non-reductionist/what sorts of moral or political principles meet certain basic moral demands) 兩類理論。
3. 如果 agents 的異質性太高，可能出現 indeterminacy/equilibrium selection 問題。
4. Hobbes 以野蠻狀態對照社會契約。當代理論家的另一種論法是社會契約 vs 現狀，或將契約分為兩階段，constitutional 與 post-constitutional。
5. 共識之形成機制: bargaining; aggregation; EGT equilibrium.
---順帶一提，如這段分析指出，Kant's categorical imperative 只是 symmetric game 的結果，難擴展至 asymmetric 情況。包括 Rawls 在內的一些社會契約論者似也有相同問題。
---從社會契約論的現實功能或用途反觀，是否能找出一些新方向？
陳博志：前瞻4200億軌道建設一定要緩下來！
1. 古典的社會契約論重視 consent-obligation。當代契約論重視 the problem of justification: what social arrangements we can all accept as “free persons who have no authority over one another” (Rawls 1958, 33).
2. Contractarian (Hobbesian/reductionist/why be moral) 與 Contratualist (Kantian/non-reductionist/what sorts of moral or political principles meet certain basic moral demands) 兩類理論。
3. 如果 agents 的異質性太高，可能出現 indeterminacy/equilibrium selection 問題。
4. Hobbes 以野蠻狀態對照社會契約。當代理論家的另一種論法是社會契約 vs 現狀，或將契約分為兩階段，constitutional 與 post-constitutional。
5. 共識之形成機制: bargaining; aggregation; EGT equilibrium.
---順帶一提，如這段分析指出，Kant's categorical imperative 只是 symmetric game 的結果，難擴展至 asymmetric 情況。包括 Rawls 在內的一些社會契約論者似也有相同問題。
---從社會契約論的現實功能或用途反觀，是否能找出一些新方向？
陳博志：前瞻4200億軌道建設一定要緩下來！
2017-05-14
Reading Notes 2017.05.14
---逝世八十年后，葛兰西如何帮我们理解当代政治 by 张跃然 骆斯航
此文前半段似乎混淆了政府與國家。批判Trump的自由派拒絕這個政府，但他們的批判表明他們強烈認同美國且積極維護它。
---意外讀到一篇特別的書評：“Original Sin”? Revising the Revisionist Critique of the 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore by Kumar Ramakrishna, Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2015, vii + 167 pp. by Michael D. Barr
不論如何宣告意識型態終結，這些東西還是離我們這麼近。
此文前半段似乎混淆了政府與國家。批判Trump的自由派拒絕這個政府，但他們的批判表明他們強烈認同美國且積極維護它。
---意外讀到一篇特別的書評：“Original Sin”? Revising the Revisionist Critique of the 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore by Kumar Ramakrishna, Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2015, vii + 167 pp. by Michael D. Barr
不論如何宣告意識型態終結，這些東西還是離我們這麼近。
2017-04-22
Comments on Postone's Time, Labor, and Social Domination
Dear A,
Thanks for introducing me the book by Moishe Postone. I had read the third part of the book, Toward a reconstruction of the Marxian critique: capital. Since I am more interested in his own understandings and implications of his own analyses, I skip the first two parts. Overall it is a good book. But I can’t say that I love it. Most arguments of Postone are familiar to me in one way or the other, and I have been skeptical about them. I do like his argument for the possibility against actuality. But unfortunately he does not clarify the conditions or obstacles for it very much. Below I will outline his three major arguments, and then spell out my critiques or thoughts related to them.
Thanks for introducing me the book by Moishe Postone. I had read the third part of the book, Toward a reconstruction of the Marxian critique: capital. Since I am more interested in his own understandings and implications of his own analyses, I skip the first two parts. Overall it is a good book. But I can’t say that I love it. Most arguments of Postone are familiar to me in one way or the other, and I have been skeptical about them. I do like his argument for the possibility against actuality. But unfortunately he does not clarify the conditions or obstacles for it very much. Below I will outline his three major arguments, and then spell out my critiques or thoughts related to them.
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