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Will_Newsome comments on I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions - Less Wrong Discussion

26 Post author: Multiheaded 25 January 2012 05:43PM

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Comment author: Will_Newsome 25 January 2012 11:42:47PM *  3 points [-]

Eastern philosophy has a lot of emphasis on things that don't needlessly grind against other things. For example, Taoism shares many themes in common with mechanism design and institutional microeconomics generally. In some ways a frictionless mind frictionlessly engaging its environment might be described as "passive", but though the Buddha might've been "passive" in that sense he sure ended up doing a lot of stuff and arguing with a lot of people. Contrast with Nietzsche's mirror men.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 25 January 2012 11:46:02PM 1 point [-]

Compare with Nietzsche's mirror men.

Do you mean this? I see some connection, but the emphasis and background assumptions seem extremely different from Taoism.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 25 January 2012 11:49:26PM 2 points [-]

Perhaps I should have said "contrast with Nietzsche's mirror men".

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 25 January 2012 11:55:39PM *  3 points [-]

That makes more sense.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 26 January 2012 12:00:32AM 7 points [-]

Sorry. It's the result of my junior year AP History class. The teacher said "'compare and contrast' is redundant, as comparing implies contrasting". Which while true in a sense doesn't change the fact that 'compare' is often taken to mean 'find similarities'.

Comment author: kpreid 03 February 2012 04:29:52PM 4 points [-]

My impression is that outside of the contexts where "compare and contrast" is said, the word "compare" always means "examine the differences of these two same-kind-of-thing things" — e.g. comparison shopping, or comparing values in programming — and the "find similarities" meaning is dead. Am I wrong/unobservant/in a niche?