John L. Taylor @johnnylogic@qoto.org

A bit of [local news](https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3745350-oregon-governor-pardons-simple-marijuana-possession-convictions/ ):

"Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) announced on Monday that she is pardoning prior offenses for simple marijuana possession, removing more than 47,000 convictions from individual records.

This move will affect up to 45,000 individuals in Oregon and forgive $14 million in fines and fees, according to a statement from Brown."

Good, but like Biden's move to pardon, later than it should have been.

#Marijuana, #Oregon, #PrisonIndustrialComplex, #TheWarOnDrugs

@DrYohanJohn FWIW, I feel about integrated information theory (IIT) much the way you do about the free energy principle.

@DrYohanJohn Understandable! Friston tends to the grandiose, which has made me wonder how much is puffery (hanging mostly on a high-level similarity between non-equilibrium thermodynamics and learning) and how much is genuinely helpful. There are a few bits I have gleaned from active inference that seem useful in my context, such as the significance of precision-adjusted errors in feedback, but none of it hinges on his grand approach.

@DrYohanJohn Ha! It is pretty opaque. Friston and co have tried to boil it down into an intuitive and easily digestible form, but the details are pretty convoluted. This makes me want to give it a try.

A classic paper on giving and happiness:

[Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness](https://sci-hub.se/10.1126/science.1150952)
Elizabeth W. Dunn, Lara B. Aknin, Michael I. Norton

Although much research has examined the effect of income on happiness, we suggest that how people spend their money may be at least as important as how much money they earn... [P]articipants who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money on themselves.

#Generosity, #Giving, #Happiness, #Money, #Psychology

#263. Someone needled a jokester: "I had your wife, without paying a dime." He replied: "It's my duty as a husband to couple with such a monstrosity. What made you do it?'

#107. There was another man, just like the last one - a big talker, but in fact impoverished. By chance he got sick, and his girlfriend, coming into his place without warning, found him lying on a humble mat made of reeds. Turning over, he claimed that the doctors were responsible: "The best and most famous doctors in the city ordered me to sleep on a mat like this."

#43. When an intellectual was told by someone, "Your beard is now coming in," he went to the rear-entrance and waited for it. Another intellectual asked what he was doing. Once he heard the whole story, he said: "I'm not surprised that people say we lack common sense. How do you know that it's not coming in by the other gate?"

I recently stumbled upon the world's oldest preserved joke book, _[Philogelos](https://web.archive.org/web/20190402114641/http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/quinn_jokes.shtml)_ ("Love of Laughter"). It dates back to fourth century Greece and contains 265 jokes categorized into subjects. Some of these subjects are readily recognizable tropes in humor-- eggheads, fools, tricksters, etc. Some of it could pass on stage today, and much of it is quite raunchy.

#Books, #History, #Humor, #Jokes, #Greece

@DrYohanJohn I also took a gander at [the PowerPoint](https://www.uibk.ac.at/psychologie/humanethologie/einfuehrung-in-die-humanethologie/dateien/theoryhumansci.ppt) the image originates from out of curiosity. It seems to originate from the work of an anthropologist named Gerhard Medicus, specifically from his book _Being Human: Bridging the Gap between the Sciences of Body and Mind_, but is a reproduction from Rupert Riedl (_On the biology of causal thinking: an evolutionist, system-theoretical attempt_), an Austrian zoologist. Interesting!

@DrYohanJohn I'm fond of (and yet very skeptical of) grand unifying schemes, myself. This appears to take the usual multilevel characterization of science and label envelopes of consideration for interdisciplinary disciplines which connect multiple levels, and then incorporate the Aristotelian notions of cause into the picture. Interesting! Lots to think about here on some fraught subjects within philosophy of science: reduction, causation, unification, emergence, explanation, methodology, etc.

@Chamisa22 Click on the three dots under the post you want to edit and select 'Delete & re-draft'. The contents of the post will be made editable and you can repost once you are done. It will delete associated information though, so it is best to do it earlier than later. Good luck, and welcome!