The Intelligent People's Thread

Vompatti wrote: Since this topic came up, does any of you intelligent people have good ideas for fellow intelligent people like me who are intelligent enough not to want a job, but who, nevertheless, want to make as much money as possible? I've already thought of becoming a bad writer or a bad musician. I can't paint badly, so that's out of the question. Oh, and I'm pretty bad at gambling. Any other ideas?

The New Rules of Figure Skating

The basic fault in the rules of figure skating is that they treat figure skating as a sport. There are certain arbitrary rules defining what the skaters are supposed to do and how. These rules are designed - and this is the only purpose they serve - to tell the good skaters (those who can follow the rules) from bad skaters (those who cannot follow the rules). This is clearly wrong.

Figure skating is art. Either it should have no rules at all, or the rules - if they're considered necessary - should work as a boundary between what's figure skating and what's not. For example, dancing without skates is not figure skating, so it's not something that one should do while figure skating. However, "You should not dance without skates while figure skating" is not a rule concerning figure skating. If it's a rule at all, it's a rule about practising art in general. For if you're figure skating, it's not possible for you to dance without skates. If you were to start dancing without skates, the act of figure skating would end there. This is why "You should not dance without skates while figure skating" is a rule of which it is logically impossible not to follow if dancing without skates is taken as something that doesn't belong to the field of figure skating.

So, does the fact that we don't need rules such as "You should not dance without skates while figure skating" imply that we don't need rules at all? In a way, yes; We do not need rules to tell a figure skater what she should or should not do. However, we do need a way to tell figure skating from other areas of art, like dancing. It is crucial for the figure skater to know when she is figure skating and when she is doing something else. But the difference between what's figure skating and what's not can be seen from the definition of 'figure skating' which would be something like "To figure skate is to wear skates and move in such and such ways." However, this is the definition of 'figure skating', it's not a rule about figure skating. It's not a rule at all, unless it's taken to mean "You should use the term 'figure skating' to refer to an act of wearing skates and moving in such and such ways." But this is not a rule about figure skating, it's a rule about the correct use of language.

So, what kind of rules do we need for figure skating? Of course the figure skater can think: "I'm going to do a performance of figure skating. During this performance I must do what is defined as 'figure skating.'" If she thinks like this, she's following a rule that says "To do something is to do what it is." Is this what the figure skater is thinking? Surely not! However, it would seem that the figure skater has to know the definition of 'figure skating' to know if she's figure skating or not. She probably even has an intuition about what's figure skating and what's not, so that when she's figure skating she doesn't need to think what she should do in order to be figure skating.

Still, whether she's thinking about the definition or not, it seems to me obvious that she has to be doing something that fits the right definition of 'figure skating.' If she's mistaken about the definition so that she thinks she can take off her skates and start to dance and still be figure skating, we wouldn't say that she's figure skating even if she believed she was figure skating. Perhaps we could give her the right definition and she would see that she wasn't in fact figure skating when she was dancing without skates.

The same works the other way around too. Imagine someone who's only seen figure skaters with white skates and thinks the definition of 'figure skating' is "wearing white skates and moving in such and such ways." He might point at a figure skater who's wearing blue skates and say "She's not figure skating." Then we could tell him that the colour of the skates doesn't matter, and he would admit that he was wrong and that she was, in fact, figure skating.

I'm not going to go into the problems of following a rule. To be able to focus on figure skating and perhaps even say something meaningful about it I'm going to assume that there is or at least we can decide on a right definition for 'figure skating' and that this definition determines certain acts as figure skating and all other acts as something other than figure skating. Without this assumption any attempt to define 'figure skating' would turn out fruitless.

So what is the right definition of figure skating? Do the current rules of figure skating give a definition for 'figure skating?' If they do, they certainly do a lot more than that: They tell what the figure skater should do to be a "good" figure skater. For example, if a figure skater falls down we say "She made a mistake (in figure skating)." We do not say: "At that moment when she fell she wasn't figure skating." She was figure skating, but still she did something she shouldn't have done while figure skating! So the current rules of figure skating are much more than just rules to what you should do to be figure skating; they are rules to what you should do while figure skating. These are the kind of rules that limit the possibilities of the figure skater and should thus be adandoned.

If we abandon all the rules that tell what a figure skater should do to be a "good" figure skater, what are we left with? Just the definition of 'figure skating' and nothing more. But what is the definition of 'figure skating?' Certainly it involves wearing skates and moving in certain ways, but now that we've abandoned all the rules for the "right" moves of figure skating, what tells us how a figure skater should move? In fact, do we have to assume that a figure skater has to move? Remember, figure skating is art, not sport. If the figure skater can express what she intends to express by standing still on the ice wearing skates, should we say that she's not figure skating? That she's standing on the ice, wearing skates, doing some kind of a performance, but not figure skating?

What if a figure skating number included a section where the figure skater stops, stands still for a couple of seconds and continues moving? Would we say that during those couple of seconds she was not figure skating? Would we say that she did two numbers with a short intermission between them? No! We would say that the figure skating number included a section where the figure skater stood still. Now, what if the figure skater stood still for the whole performance? Why would we say that she wasn't figure skating? It seems to me there is no reason to say that she was not figure skating.

So, if the figure skater doesn't need to move to be figure skating, should any act that involves wearing skates be called 'figure skating?' Obviously not. Ice hockey is not figure skating. Speed skating is not figure skating. They are sports, but figure skating is art. Now what if a figure skater started skating fast around the arena just like a speed skater? Would we say that she's not figure skating anymore, that now she's speed skating? No. We would say she's representing the act of speed skating, that the act of speed skating is a part of her figure skating performance.

This takes us to the conclusion: Figure skating is any artistic act where the performer wears skates. This is not a "rule" of figure skating, it's simply a definition. A "good" figure skater is someone who succeeds in expressing what she intended to express, not someone whose performance concists of certain predefined moves.

kibble_alex wrote: i tell you what, i now have a creationist theory that makes mathematical sense. as far as i see it, christians could be right about God, hear me out: first things first, where did god come from? the question has been asked many times and it drives people nuts. how can something be created out of nothing? it is regarded as impossible. everything must have a beginning. however there is a loophole: we live in a 4D world, 1D = forwards and backwards, 2D = left and right, 3D = up and down, 4D = the direction of time. hence for something to have a beginning and an end of its existance, then it has to be a property of the 4th dimension. so what if the creator of all life and being was not a property of the 4th dimenion, but lived outside of time itself? that would mean it created time for us to live in, and therefore does not need a beginning or an end, being a 1D-3D God. this way, all of our creationist questions are answered, and it is all perfectly logical. it's a tricky concept to get your head around (being proggers you're all used to getting your heads round concepts anyway ), but it all makes sense in the end.

I agree with your idea, but this guy thought of it before you did.

Intelligent People's Thread?  I am far too smart to engage in that.

The other day I was at the university library reading William Blake, when suddenly I felt really intelligent. Then I went home to eat.

I'm less intelligent today than I thought I was yesterday. 

Once again, I'm hungry. I believe this is because of my unusually high intelligence: my brains work so hard that they consume hamburgers faster than I can afford to eat. Just like the Greeks said, or was it the Israelites: "He who thinketh a lot, eateth a lot of hamburgers." Being an intellectual sure is a tough job!

Yeah well I'm so intelligent I don't even HAVE muscles. HA!

You have a nice sig too. 

Slartibartfast wrote: Intelligent People's Thread?  I am far too smart to engage in that.

 Between you & me , that makes three