101–103 of 103 posts
> ‘Even exercise doesn’t sound like a total escape for Tom Nicol: he is training to beat his dad’s personal best mile time.’
Oh wow, training to beat another runner's time. What pathos, what suffering! Give me a break.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Its crazy in this day and age its considered OK to call perfectly healthy people "maladapted" because they don't conform to societies view of a normal sleep schedule. "Maladapted" in this case literally means "poorly suited to functioning in typical jobs". Society's normal sleep schedule is exactly what makes night owls maladapted to most jobs. Of course, you're incorrectly reading some sort of moral judgment in th…
9-5 is an arbitrary restriction on a typical office job. The majority of us no longer perform shift work on the factory floor which was the original impetus for this societal norm. You are recounting society as it exists today which is abnormal in a historical context. I am speaking of a society that could exist. One where 1/5th the population is not needlessly forced through life exhausted and under performing. Not…
It doesn't matter if it's arbitrary, what matters is whether a person's habits can easily conform or adapt to its environment. Those that do not, or that cause other problems are maladaptive by definition.
> But it has to start with an appreciation that night owls are not "defective" or as you say, "maladapted".
Defective and maladaptive are not synonyms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Prophylactic” is no less bizarre.
> “Prophylactic” is no less bizarre. Isn't it (less bizarre)? My dictionary gives the medical meaning of prophylactic as "intended to prevent disease"; using it to refer to contraception just requires a more generous conception of 'disease'. By contrast, if 'préservatif' in French were translated to 'preservative' in English, it would mean, again according to my dictionary, "a substance used to preserve … against dec…
And while pregnancy may well be viewed as a disease or a cancer, after a fashion, at least condoms protect from a wider range of affliction.