YouTube link here. Seem familiar?
Part 2 of 2. We discuss a surprising amount about “prestigious” magazine, The Atlantic, and how it’s the reason society is falling apart. Then Tony just gets really, really mad at friend of the show, Beth. Hi, Beth! Enjoy!
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Mocktail recipe:
Ingredients:
Rosemary Syrup – equal parts sugar and water, rosemary, black peppercorns & black pepper. (I put in lots of rosemary and pepper–probably a couple teaspoons of each, and at least 8 or 9 sprigs of rosemary. Season according to what you like.) Simmer for 15 minutes and strain.
Pear Nectar
Ginger Beer (Maine Root is my fav)
Lemon Juice
Equal parts pear nectar and ginger beer, and then about 1/2 of the amount that you used for nectar and ginger beer of lemon juice and rosemary syrup. That is, if you used 1/2 cup pear nectar, use 1/4 cup lemon juice and 1/4 cup rosemary syrup.
I think addiction discussions, like discussions of weapons & violence, would benefit from talking about instrumental versus principal causes.
Instrumental causes need something to act on them in order to have an effect. Principal causes can instigate the cause/effect without outside influence. Basically in the case of both addictions and violence, people are principal causes. For addictions the instrumental cause would be the thing the person is addicted to. And for violence, the kind of weapon would be the instrumental cause.
First, I would argue that instrumental causes do have an impact on effects. I can make all the plans for world domination that I want, but without sufficient instrumental cause, it all just remains in the planning stage….for now…
For addictions, I would argue that yes, certain things are more addictive generally. There’s a reason they put nicotine in cigarettes. And for causing violent death, yes, there is a difference between bare hands, machine guns, and nuclear bombs as far as instrumental causes.
Then I would make these general points:
1. Society in general tends to turn to regulation of instrumental causes first, and not to principal causes (the people involved).
2. One reason for this (among many others), is that we think of people as uncaused–that is with free will. The instrument does not have free will and so can be controlled or regulated, but the person’s intentions are imagined as completely controlled by the free individual. However, I think a person’s will is shaped by many things (family, personal history, social/cultural forces). What shapes us as people can be addressed then (probably not best through regulation but through connection to others–education, story-telling, economics, etc.) A better way of thinking of intention, I believe, is that we each have intention (that is an ability to will something to happen). Our will is not being controlled in the sense that we are programmed by things outside of ourselves. But the things outside of us continually interact with us–we change them and they change us. So we are not “free” but connected and continually shaping and being shaped by the world around us.
3. Regulation of instrumental causes does seem to work in some cases and not in others. Is it the case that when regulation of instrumental causes does work, it is because there is more of a buy-in from the population at large? That is, for example, when alcohol was prohibited, it didn’t seem to work because the population did not buy into the prohibition? Whereas in some states that have passed strong gun-regulation (like Massachusetts), it does seem to have worked because the population supports it? Does that mean that really what needs to be addressed is principal causes (human culture/beliefs/values), or some combination of both?
4. Even though I began by separating out person and tool–do we in fact need to think of ourselves, in a way, as always being cyborg combinations of intention and instrumentation? Would this help us think about how to address problematic effects which are caused by combinations of human user and object used or consumed?
Ugh, you two.
Yes, you’re right, William doesn’t drink, perhaps his classmates would have had a drink in William’s proximity.
I thought when William described his trip that he said the hotel had a whole bunch of interesting things to do there but he didn’t get into it, which is why I was asking.
It’s the BILTmore, like the Vanderbilt family’s home, not BALTImore.
I sat in a pool chair and worked on my dissertation on a Tuesday morning. There were like 3 people in the pool and I wasn’t really looking at them. You can be at a pool/beach reading a book or enjoying being pool adjacent without having plans to be in the pool or be a creep.
I can’t get effect vs affect straight. I always think it should be effect and all mnemonics toward remembering which is which have been futile. Fewer is used for things that can be specifically counted (people, books, etc). Less is used when it’s for something that cannot be counted, possibly a group of something that cannot be counted. For example, I gave you 5 cookies, so I have fewer cookies than when I started. I spilled some sugar, so there is now less sugar on my spoon. If you want to count the granules of sugar, there are fewer sugar granules after the spill.
I’ve been enjoying lime shake-ups as of late. 6oz simple syrup, 2 juiced limes, ice. Shake and enjoy
Okay, that’s fair. You did say “Did you enjoy a Tequila Sunrise,” and that does, I suppose, encompass enjoying the sight of it as someone near you drinks one. 😛
The really quick and dirty rule you can use is if it’s being used as a verb, use “affect,” but as a noun, use “effect.” That doesn’t quite work every single time, but it works for most of them.
Oh, crap! I should make that for Trish! Two of her favorite things are lemon shakeups, and limes!