I wasnt aware that they had rabbis before Rome expelled the Jews. i thought that was a development designed to help cope with the Diaspora.
My answer to that assignment is that i have no idea how that would work or how i could figure out how it would. Did i guess the password? if not then is it swordfish? Just give me a gold star!
Hello fellow Less Wrongians,
My name is Josh and I'm a 16-year-old junior in high school. I live in a Jewish family at the Jersey Shore. I found the site by way of TV Tropes after a friend told me about the Methods of Rationality. Before i started reading Eliezer's posts, i made the mistake of believing I was smart. My goal here is mainly to just be the best that I can be and maybe learn to lead a better life. And by that I mean that I want to be better than everyone else I meet. That includes being a more rational person better able to understand complex issues. I think i have a fair grip on the basic points of rationality as well as philosophy, but i am sorely lacking in terms of math and science (which can't be MY fault obviously, so I'll just go ahead and blame the public school system). I never knew what exactly an logarithm WAS before a few days ago, sadly enough (I knew the term of course, but was never taught what it meant or bothered enough to look it up. I have absolutely no idea what i want to do with my life other than amassing knowledge of whatever i find to be interesting.
I was raised in a conservative household, believing in God but still trying to look at the world rationally. My father never tried to defend the beliefs he taught me with anything but logic. I suppose I'm technically atheist, but i prefer to consider myself agnostic. Believe it or not, I actually became a rationalist after my dad got me to read Atlas Shrugged. While i wasnt taken in very much by the appeal to my sense of superiority, however correct it may be, i did take special notice of a particular statement in which Rand maintains that man is a reasoning animal and that the only evil thought is to not think as to do so is to reject the only tool that mankind has used to survive and instead embrace death. This and her rejection of emotion as a substitute for rationality impressed me more than anything i had read up to that point. i soon became familiar with Aristotle and from then on studied both philosophy and rationality. Of course i hadnt really seen anything before I started reading Eliezer's writing!
Overall, Im just happy to be here and have enjoyed everything i have seen of the site so far. Im still young and relatively ignorant to many of the topics discussed here, but if you will just bare with me, as i know you will, i might, in time, actually learn to add something to the site. Thanks for reading my story, i look forward to devoting many more hours to the site!
Government Weirdtopia: all nations operate as divisions of a single organization. these subdivisions are further divided into even smaller divisions which are also divided in turn. This pattern continues until it reaches the point of bands approximately the size of hunter-gatherer bands so as to allow full optimization of social relations. each band exerts major control over issues of concern, as well as weaker influence over matters concerning other bands, thus allowing any band to be overruled if it strays too far from what its neighbors consider rational. Bands exert more influence over other communities in nearby locations than those in distant lands. the exception to this is that a community will hold more influence over several communities a random distance anywhere above 2000 miles away than over communities in its immediate vicinity. citizens of one community will be encouraged to simultaneously view neighboring communities as both separate nations and neighboring towns. Any citizen can change the world with a good enough idea that spreads far enough, however more weight shall be given to the opinions of those deemed more trustworthy through carefully administered and highly organized tests designed to test wisdom and competence. Groups of representatives meet to decide issues concerning larger areas, however these representatives must first be proved highly trustworthy and the positions are low paying and temporary, so as to eliminate corruption and ensure that only competent citizens who are truly concerned over the state of the world can hold any real power of much difference from their neighbors.
in this way all states will have complete authority and the power to act swiftly only while making rational decisions, while at the same time being completely restricted when making decisions that can be construed as foolish or malicious. and i DARE someone here to think further outside the box on this issue.