The Off Topic Topic

[garbon]

There are a lot of things my mother couldn't teach me. I definitely suffered for not having my dad around.

I'm struggling to think up things that only my father taught me that have been relevant in my adult life.

[Admiral Yi]

So they should be asking a question people have asked for decades?

What he means by that is they should be trying to think of answers.

[fhdz]

My father taught me by negative example.

Much like when George Costanza begins doing the opposite of what he would normally do, I came to realize that if I did the opposite of what my dad did I'd turn out to be at minimum a pretty decent dad.

[garbon]

So they should be asking a question people have asked for decades?

What he means by that is they should be trying to think of answers.

Which again is nothing new. Hell we were learning about what possible avenues back when I was still in school.

[Admiral Yi]

Which again is nothing new. Hell we were learning about what possible avenues back when I was still in school.

I missed the part of the article where the dude said we should do this because it's completely new and no one has done it before.

[Tamas]

what is he arguing then?

As Louis CK puts it so succinctly: "Everything is amazing and no one is happy."

It isn't whining; it is pointing out an actual paradox. If you study what a paradox is, you will notice that it does not mean that he is ignoring the good aspects of choice. Quite the contrary, in fact.

You see it as whining because you are predisposed ideologically to value choice above all else - you are exactly what he is talking about in the very beginning of his lecture.

I am not more predisposed to disagree with the guy than you are to agree with him I think. It is called a worldview and an opinion.

It is not an actual universal paradox I think. Making the statement that there is an optimum amount of choices, below "max possible" , is not something you can credibly make while also stating that choice is good. If you want to limit the number of choices, you want to limit.. guess what, choices. You are not letting people choose freely.
It is perfectly valid to say that people should not choose freely. I mean, I certainly disagree with it, but it is something that is advocated by many people accross the world. This guy wants to play both halves, and that's not possible.

Plus, in my humble uneducated Hungarian beet farmer opinion (funny how my nationality comes into play EVERY FUCKIN TIME I get to disagree with one of you fine specimens), the number of choices, as such, be it career, education, lifestyle, clothing, products, services, partners, homes, hairstyles, etc. has been on the constant grow since I am not sure when, probably from around the start of the industrial revolution.
Coming out and saying that NOW we have too much, so much that we can't handle it doesn't make any sense to me. The choices we had in the, say, early 60s must had been just totally staggering to somebody in the 1800s, yet it appears positively backwards compared to the myriad of tiny and big choices we face in our lives today. What should make us say, "we had enough, we are not capable of handling any more"? That some people who think that are too old to keep up?

[garbon]

Which again is nothing new. Hell we were learning about what possible avenues back when I was still in school.

I missed the part of the article where the dude said we should do this because it's completely new and no one has done it before.

Not sure why it was noteworthy then - or more specifically why Phil grabbed out that portion of the article for us.

[Eddie Teach]

I'll have to test that out. If I fail to have an attack of acute Neuroses when eating at Subway, I'll  have to hand in my Elders of Zion card. 

[Acute nausea is a given.  ]

You can't handle food with vegetables in it?

[CountDeMoney]

And trust me, I KNOW what analysis paralysis is, how it looks like, and how annoying it can be. I play boardgames F2F.

[Admiral Yi]

Not sure why it was noteworthy then - or more specifically why Phil grabbed out that portion of the article for us.

It's noteworthy because in Democratic orthodoxy single motherhood is a beautiful thing, or at the very best an object of indifference.

[garbon]

Not sure why it was noteworthy then - or more specifically why Phil grabbed out that portion of the article for us.

It's noteworthy because in Democratic orthodoxy single motherhood is a beautiful thing, or at the very best an object of indifference.

Perhaps if that was a true statement. I can't think of anyone though who has said single motherhood is ideal in comparison to children having two parents.

[Admiral Yi]

Perhaps if that was a true statement. I can't think of anyone though who has said single motherhood is ideal in comparison to children having two parents.

It is a true statement.  Name a single policy, actual or proposed, that promotes two parent families.

[garbon]

I don't keep track of such policies though of course, I do know about how a person can get more benefits as a single mother raising kids. I think that if single motherhood is encouraged by that, it is a perverse effect, not an intent that children should be raised solely by their mother.

[Admiral Yi]

I don't keep track of such policies though of course, I do know about how a person can get more benefits as a single mother raising kids. I think that if single motherhood is encouraged by that, it is a perverse effect, not an intent that children should be raised solely by their mother.

Name a single Democrat who has said "even though child care credits are overall a good idea, it's too bad that it promotes single motherhood."

I can't think of anyone since Daniel Moynihan myself.

[fhdz]

It is not an actual universal paradox I think.

Ok

Rest of your post contains more of you missing the point; I don't see value in continuing the line of discussion.