http://www.criticalrationalism.net/2010/02/28/critical-preferences/

Follow up: http://curi.us/1489-critical-preferences-and-strong-arguments

http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Hume/hmMPL2.html#Part%20I,%20Essay%20II,%20OF%20THE%20LIBERTY%20OF%20THE%20PRESS

It will be found, if I mistake not, a true observation in politics, that the two extremes in government, liberty and slavery, commonly approach nearest to each other

Why does anyone respect Hume?

In my course I have known and, according to my measure, have co-operated with great men; and I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

Reflections on the revolution in France By Edmund Burke

In other words, criticism of parental ideas by children will frequently be successful.

Time is required to produce that union of minds which alone can produce all the good we aim at.

Reflections on the revolution in France By Edmund Burke

In other words, gradual persuasion is the source of progress. Without creating agreement between people ("union of minds"), no good will come. Therefore parents should focus on coming to agree about ideas with their children.

Both of these quotes are strikingly similar in thinking to William Godwin.

I posted about Force and Charity:

http://www.criticalrationalism.net/2010/02/20/force-and-charity/

In Quicktime Player 7, under Snow Leopard with Perian, if you open the A/V controls (cmd-K), it has a playback speed slider which you can set from 0.5 to 3.

I like playing videos faster to save time. I noticed that if you play the same video on double speed in Quicktime 7 and in VLC, the audio sounds faster and harder to follow in VLC. At first I thought Quicktime was doing a better job speeding up the sound.

But then I timed it with the stopwatch on my iPod touch.

VLC and the new Quicktime Player (version 10.0 in the about window) both play one minute of video in 30 seconds on my stopwatch. They correctly play at double speed.

But with quicktime 7:

When the slider is set to 1.5 playback speed, it goes at 1.25 speed.

When the slider is set to 2 playback speed, it goes at 1.5 speed.

When the slider is set to 2.5 playback speed, it goes at 2 speed.

When the slider is set to 3 playback speed, it goes at the full 3 speed.

At .5, .75, and 1 speed on the slider, it plays at the correct speed.

Isn't that bizarre? And disturbing. It lied to me! And the slider doesn't even have a linear effect on playback speed.

There is a new critical rationalism blog. I wrote a post for it about liberalism.

I updated Fallible Ideas to work well on iPhone and iPod Touch.

EDIT: I am not associated with the CR blog because the owner misquoted me and refused to change it.

I have written a new philosophy website:

Fallible Ideas

It's like the stuff here, except better. Go read it!

This blog post was made in Keynote. You can view it in your web browser, just click here:

Philosophy: What For?

To advance, you can click the right arrow or the image itself.