14 JUL 2025 by ideonexus
Symbols as Abstractions and Zen
Men feel themselves to be victims or puppets of their experience because they separate "themselves" from their minds, thinking that the nature of the mind-body is something involuntarily thrust upon "them." They think that they did not ask to be born, did not ask to be "given" a sensitive organism to be frustrated by alternating pleasure and pain. But Zen asks us to find out "who" it is that '1las" this mind, and "who" it was that did not ask to be born before father and mother conceived us. ...Folksonomies: zen
Folksonomies: zen
14 JUL 2025 by ideonexus
Greed is Less Destructive Than Fanaticism
It was a basic Confucian principle that "it is man who makes truth great, not truth which makes man great." For this reason, "humanness" or ''human-heartedness" ( fen a ) was always felt to be superior to "righteousness" ( i b ), since man himself is greater than any idea which he may invent. There are times when men's passions are much more trustworthy than their principles. Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars of mutual annihil...Folksonomies: zen
Folksonomies: zen
14 JUL 2025 by ideonexus
Abstraction is a Necessity for Communication
The English words "man," "fish," "star," "Hower," ·run," "grow," all denote classes of objects or events which may be recognized as members of their class by very simple attributes, abstracted from the total complexity of the things themselves.
Abstraction is thus almost a necessity for communication, since it enables us to represent our experiences with simple and rapidly made "grasps" of the mind. When we say that we can think only of one thing at a time, this is like saying that the Paci...Folksonomies: zen
Folksonomies: zen
24 JUN 2022 by ideonexus
The Car Example for OOP
The `Car extends Vehicle` or `Duck extends Bird` type of tutorial
obscures more than it illuminates. In good OO programming, we don’t
make class hierarchies in order to satisfy our inner Linnaeus. We make
class hierarchies in order to simplify the code by allowing different
parts of it to be changed independently of each other, and to
eliminate duplication (which comes to the same thing). Without any
context as to what the code needs to accomplish, you can’t make a
judgment about whether...Folksonomies: education computer science
Folksonomies: education computer science
17 OCT 2021 by ideonexus
Belief Discovers No New Qualities
SINCE therefore belief implies a conception, and yet is something more; and since it adds no new idea to the conception; it follows, that it is a different MANNER of conceiving an object; something that is distinguishable to the feeling, and depends not upon our will, as all our ideas do. My mind runs by habit from the visible object of one ball moving towards another, to the usual effect of motion in the second ball. It not only conceives that motion, but feels something different in the con...Folksonomies: philosophy empiricism
Folksonomies: philosophy empiricism
22 NOV 2017 by ideonexus
Get Away from the Metaphorical Understanding of Meaning
Propositions are supposed to be idealizations, rather like numbers or vectors or some other abstract formulation. It looks at first very powerful, and for some purposes it’s very useful. But it takes you away from enlightenment because it gives you this false sense that you haven’t understood something really until you’ve figured out how to articulate, how to point to, how to identify the proposition that a particular meaningful event has. No. There are all kinds of meaningful events th...10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Gamification Racing/Grid Movement
Ms. Spooner, a long-time game player, realizes that the Racing/Grid Movement mechanic is the right choice for her students because it is particularly good at helping to assess highly granular pieces of content or skills. She envisions a game in which her students are divided into two- or threeperson teams. She wants these students to be able to identify and produce three different things: (1) the pitch of particular notes, (2) the sounds of distinct instruments, and (3) the work of particular...Folksonomies: education gamification
Folksonomies: education gamification
27 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
Teaching with Pokemon Go
Learning objectives that ask students to assemble and integrate data (like a language or math class) are well-suited to the capture and find aspects of Pokémon Go!. Imagine setting up a variety of PokéStops around your campus. Each one can be visited by students as they go about gathering the data they need to accomplish the learning objective you set. Perhaps after traveling about campus, they have to return to your classroom and use the data they’ve gathered like PokéBalls to solve mor...Folksonomies: gamification
Folksonomies: gamification