stimulant

A comment of mine on a fantastic post over at The Wry Observer:

I’m pretty excited about these ideas. It is worth noting at least two ways in which past theories have implicitly accommodated learning: -The characterization of comparative advantage (in all domains, not just goods and services) as a consequence of differences in information -The unstated conflation of learning and problem solving often leads people to sloppily interchange perseverance (and therefore, effort — originating in desire) for education. This is most clearly seen in cultural currency the ideas behind characters like Horatio Alger. Correct me if I’m misreading you, but I think it’s more accurate to couch learning as an unaddressed pillar of empowerment (where I see choices, resources, goods, services, desires, and so on pointing). Question: you separate the economic and social theory (in talking about originary concerns, at least). Why? How? Typically, I see people doing this implicitly by mechanism (e.g. behaviors deriving from communication are social, those deriving from property exchange economic). This is an increasingly blurry distinction. The thinking that I’ve been doing lately around education (and in particular, the political and economic roles of education) has been focused on my kinda-silly experiment attempting to derive my moral, ethical, and pedagogical system from assuming the primacy of free-will (yet to be defined). In attempting to define [free-will], I’ve discovered the need to dispense with the focus on choice, for many of the same reasons you have. In a lot of ways, it’s getting to the point that free-will and empowerment are interchangeable, for me. _SO_ much more to write up. Will do so in another comment/blog post, sometime. Thanks! Interested and waiting, a.