Re: "best we've got." We don't know, because we haven't devoted much effort to bottom-up tech. But there have been attempts at doing this, even with AI and robotics. The results have been widely successful in some respects, and lacking in others.peter wrote:Reductionism may indeed be a poor tool in dealing with something as complex as the brain/mind relationship....but it may be the best we have got. It is difficult to see how else to approach the problem [and in fairness it has by and large serves science pretty well to date].
Both approaches might be the key.
However, we've seen progress in philosophy by loosening our grip on reductionism. If it can solve metaphysical puzzles, perhaps it can solve physical ones, too.
Man, we can teach delayed gratification to dogs. I'm sure we can teach it to kids. And I'm sure they will benefit, even if it feels like it's "against their nature." It's against all our natures. We all have this natural inertia. For instance, we might all like to sit on the couch and eat ice cream all the time (or drink homebrew, or eat BBQ ... those are just my weaknessesPeter wrote:I was interested in Z.'s comment about drilling into all students the relationship between delayed gratification and likely future sucess. Would this still work? Is this just not an indicator of, rather than a tecnique for increasing sucess chances. If the ability to spot the bennefits of the delayed gratification approach were not already intrinsic to the individual is it likely that their sucess chances would be effected by adoption of it in the same way [which of course is not to discount the simple bennefits that will naturally follow from such a policy. But then perhaps the simple bennefits ARE the increased sucess chances. Hmmm...]
). But if we delayed our gratification so that we didn't indulge all the time, we'd all see demonstrable results, even those of us for whom such behavior didn't come "naturally." Everyone could benefit.
Do you mean a small bottle because they're strong? Or am I missing something?
]. Funnily enough, I had my first glass of IPA for what, 30 years the other day, just because the shop had a delivery of promotional stock selling at about one third normal price [£1 a bottle]. I'd forgotten just how good it is!