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posted by martyb on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the No-Way! dept.

What was it that one learned through a great books curriculum? Certainly not "conservatism" in any contemporary American sense of the term. We were not taught to become American patriots, or religious pietists, or to worship what Rudyard Kipling called "the Gods of the Market Place." We were not instructed in the evils of Marxism, or the glories of capitalism, or even the superiority of Western civilization.

As I think about it, I'm not sure we were taught anything at all. What we did was read books that raised serious questions about the human condition, and which invited us to attempt to ask serious questions of our own. Education, in this sense, wasn't a "teaching" with any fixed lesson. It was an exercise in interrogation.

To listen and understand; to question and disagree; to treat no proposition as sacred and no objection as impious; to be willing to entertain unpopular ideas and cultivate the habits of an open mind — this is what I was encouraged to do by my teachers at the University of Chicago.

It's what used to be called a liberal education.

The University of Chicago showed us something else: that every great idea is really just a spectacular disagreement with some other great idea.

Bret Stephens's speech warrants a full read. It makes valuable points that we all need to hear, even on SN.


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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday September 27 2017, @05:47PM (1 child)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday September 27 2017, @05:47PM (#573914) Journal

    At this point all he could really do is make a massive freaking blacklist that had pretty much every pattern of the banned terms in it, with some wildcards and some things to filter out spaces. Might make it more efficient by scanning for strings of 4-7 characters that look like "dick" (for example l33tsp34k |)!c|), checking the next word to see if it matches everyone's favorite racial slur, etc etc.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 27 2017, @06:49PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 27 2017, @06:49PM (#573954) Journal

    a massive freaking blacklist

    Agreed. There are some tricks to keep it sorta maintainable, but it's gonna be massive.
    And, to keep it fast enough, I'd look for scanner generators, like ragel [wikipedia.org] - at least the automata could get compi... hang on, rehash is still PERL, ain't it? Forget it then.

    (you know what's this: c? Sorta looks like an E but is a <s>c</s>; resulting in something like niggcrs during regex-ing. I bet I can come with a new daily D/N leaking out of the lameness filter for months)

    that look like "dick" (for example l33tsp34k |)!c|)

    And then... what?
    You reckon the "Cunt Whitetrash" sisterhood is not capable of replacing the "Dι̊cΚ nι̊gg૯rs" spam?
    Tell ye, the moment you allow UNICODE, you show yourself as a brave soul, trusting the community against the spam - 'cause coding cannot.

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