clyp.it/vwouaif3 1:35
Script:
“What? The final aim of science should be to give man as much pleasure and as little displeasure as possible? But what if pleasure and displeasure are so intertwined that whoever wants as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other — that whoever wants to learn to ‘jubilate up to the heavens’ must also be prepared for ‘grief unto death’? And that may well be the way things are! […] Even today you still have the choice: either as little displeasure as possible, in short, lack of pain — and socialists and politicians of all parties fundamentally have no right to promise any more than that — or as much displeasure as possible as the price for the growth of a bounty of refined pleasures and joys that hitherto have seldom been tasted. Should you decide on the former, i.e. if you want to decrease and diminish people’s susceptibility to pain, you also have to decrease and diminish their capacity for joy. With scienceone can actually promote either of these goals! So far it may still be better known for its power to deprive man of his joys and make him colder, more statue-like, more stoic. But it might yet be found to be the great giver of pain! — And then its counterforce might at the same time be found: its immense capacity for letting new galaxies of joy flare up!”
It's one of the most(if not the most) moving documentaries I've ever seen, making you feel some kind of hollowness. Even though I've watched this film a few times, I still don't have anything to say about it. Actually, it's needless to say anything.
How about you? What's your take on it and which group do you belong to? How do you carry out voice language exchange sessions(in terms of corrections)?
I do realize that I post it in wrong section, but having read Phil's recent discussion and comments there, I got convinced that it's better to place it here.
I'd like to get some comments about my mistakes and suggestions on how to get rid of them.
clyp.it/jlok14nz 1:12
Script:
"I often use the metaphor that <a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationality" style="text-align: justify;">rationality</a> is the <a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationality_as_martial_art" style="text-align: justify;">martial art of mind</a>. You don't need huge, bulging muscles to learn martial arts - there's a tendency toward more athletic people being more likely to learn martial arts, but that may be a matter of enjoyment as much as anything else. Some human beings are faster or stronger than others; but a martial art does not train the variance between humans. A martial art just trains your muscles - if you have the <a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Human_universal" style="text-align: justify;">human-universal complex machinery</a> of a hand, with tendons and muscles in the appropriate places, then you can learn to make a fist.
How can you train a variance? What does it mean to train +2 standard deviations of muscle? It's equally unclear what it would mean to train an IQ of 132.
But if you have a brain, with cortical and subcortical areas in the appropriate places, you might be able to learn to use it properly. If you're a fast learner, you might learn faster - but the art of rationality isn't about that; it's about training brain machinery we all have in common."
These are my top-3 favorite sung verses:
https://youtu.be/tNSsTUNO724 (Joseph Brodsky - Bosnia Tune )
https://youtu.be/BgxztMzJcC4 (Sergei Yesenin - Какая ночь, я не могу...)
https://youtu.be/Yd7EwAMhm-U (Sergei Yesenin - Да! Теперь - решено без возврата...)
Do you have such favorite songs?(based on verses)
Recently I came across an article by Russian man who says that, despite of his 20 years experience of reading in English(in some of which he'd been reading predominantly in English rather than in Russian), his speed of reading in English is significantly lower than in Russian.
So, I wonder whether there's anybody who started reading in foreign language in their late adolescence/early adulthood and eventually reached the native-like reading speed in that. Or might this issue(mentioned in the title) be specific to, in particular, native Russian speakers learning English?
