The Master does his job and then stops. He understands that the universe is forever out of control, and that trying to dominate events goes against the current of the Tao. Because he believes in himself, he doesn't try to convince others. Because he is content with himself, he doesn't need others' approval. Because he accepts himself, the whole world accepts him.
— Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation (http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=30&a=Stephen+Mitchell) reply
(1) Does anyone know why the preformatted sections (<pre>) are limited to a width smaller than the width of the post? At all widths, it's roughly 75% of the comment's width. For mobile, this is especially bad, but I'm not sure why it's there on normal screens resolutions either.
(2) You could test different widths. Right click the preformatted section and choose "inspect element". You should have the <code> block highlighted. Move to the parent element, the <pre>. On the right, you should see a max-width with some pixel value. Try setting that to "100%" (without quotes) rather than some pixel amount. Does that work fine for you? Would you like that change? It would be great if someone could somehow test this on mobile as well, but on desktop (if I resize the browser) it seems to work well.
I'm given to understand changes may be in the offing, though whether or not this specifically is addressed, I'm not sure.
On desktop browsers with extension support, you can use Stylus to fix this specific annoyance by setting "pre-wrap: word".
And yes, blockquote support would be hugely appreciated.
FYI: https://lobste.rs offers full Markdown for comments.
Iirc they didn't want to publish details of the ranking algorithm at some point, to prevent "hacking" of submissions.
Maybe they stopped publishing the code since then.
they would only need to add this to the CSS, yes? then you get the same four-spaces code block, but it doesn't cause horizontal scrollbars any more.
HN admins, could you please add this?
If a blockquote format is desired, that's great, but don't change the code formatting to make it a slightly-less bad (but still horrible, because of monospacing) way of presenting blockquotes.
You know, like how there is "topcolor" already; just a bit more of the same.
And on copy/paste, the linebreaks in the original are preserved, which obviates the code objection answering you below.
Front end is not back end, etc.
This is one of the key passages. Whenever we name something, it's opposite is created too. This problem lies at the heart of categorization and knowledge. Try to avoid that.
For those interested [1] has many translations of the Tao Te Ching to compare.
> the whole world accepts him
These lines seem a simplified stretch or an incorrect observation, particularly in the current context.
Some people, e.g. minorities, accept themselves, yet they seem repeatedly rejected by others. This is a very common occurrence online.
That's different from other translations: http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Daodejing&no=30
If Mitchell branched into more classics, that'd be very valuable to the cause.
"Whoever relies on the Tao in governing men doesn't try to force issues or defeat enemies by force of arms. For every force there is a counterforce. Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself."
What this is saying (again IMHO ;-) ) is that in the conversation, you can't control both sides: only your side. You can't control how someone receives your words, or how they interpret them. If you try to press your case, you will cause things to occur which you may not anticipate and for which you have no control.
Therefore, if you are trying to assert some idea, rather than to clarify your own understanding, then you may actually create the antagonistic forces which you were originally trying subdue (cut off one head of the hydra and be rewarded with 2 growing).
This is one of the core principles in the tao te ching. The word tall has no meaning unless you compare it with short. If I draw a box and ask you if the box is tall, you can't really say. However, if I draw another box of a different size next to it, it is easy to distinguish which one is tall and which one is short. Similarly, if I draw a single box and call it "tall", you can get an idea of what "short" means -- definitely shorter than the box I drew.
In than way, declaration of one thing "creates" its opposite. If you make a declaration on the internet, it can create its own opposition. People who would never have thought about the issue, may come to defend the opposite point of view. The more you push your point, the more vigorous the defense. Had you done nothing, then nothing would have been the result.
In taoist literature, the middle point between 2 extremes is called the "pivot" point. There is a point between being "tall" and being "short". If I grow my short box, it will eventually cease to be short and start becoming tall (and in comparison, the other box will become short). That point is the "pivot" point.
This is a concept of "utility". Normally for something to be "useful" you must transition between an extreme and the pivot point. If you have a cup that is always full of water, then it is not "useful" (in the ordinary sense of the use of a cup -- it might still be useful as a weight ;-) ). If the cup is always empty, then it is equally not useful. It only has utility when the cup transitions between being empty and full. The same is true of spokes on a bicycle wheel. Which is more important: the wires that provide tension on the outside of the wheel, or the spaces between the wires? Without the spaces, there would be no wires: only a disk. And then there would be no spokes. It's important to alternate between spoke and space.
So, to answer the parent's question: from (my interpretation of) a taoist point of view, you need to be careful not to press your case because you will create your own opposition. However, if you wish to have utility in your argument, it is important to move from the pivot point, to an extreme and back to the pivot point again (possibly over and over and over again). How you do that is beyond my ability to answer ;-)
That a Nobel laureate scientist and a redneck can share equal space on a subject is a real problem.
I’m not suggesting anybody be censored, merely that all opinions on a topic are not equal and shouldn’t be treated as such.
The BBC in Britain has adopted the policy you suggest for a few years. They try pretty hard to show 2 opposing views in interviews.
It falls apart when all the experts align on one side of an issue, which is unreasonably common in these days of brexit. Yet, equal airtime is given to someone who is not an expert, lacks knowledge of the system being discussed, but has an opinion.
There is little similar between what was suggested by the person you're replying to and any policy which simply throws both opinions out. What he was describing was engaging with the content of an argument, not its speaker. This is proper. This is how things should be decided. "Who gets on TV" is an antiquated limitation which generated the difficult situation where someone has to make that call, and the unrelated constraint of needing to break for commercial or move on to the next topic in order to keep the audience engaged or keep to a programming schedule exacerbates it. The way the medium is used makes it impossible for a positions justification to be explained, only the position with no justification can be presented. This simply should not be done, but is the sort of thing which due to technological limitation was done out of desperation for a time. Commercial interests, of course, still motivate this approach, but those commercial interests, I think we can both agree, are not intimately tied to the ability of the medium to assist the audience in coming to a nuanced understanding of available views.
There is a very big difference between the ideal situation, where in every instance you have infinite time and access to all possible relevant information, and the practical situation with limited time (not 'oh I can't pay attention to one argument for 45 minutes' but 'if we do not do something before Tuesday, hundreds could die') and resources. It is not incorrect to discuss the ideal situation, because it will always be present and always provide the limiting constraints on the practical case. While you can be in a position where you could argue 'we should trust the expert because we have exactly and only 2 choices and his authority is better even though he can not explain it', even in that situation it must be admitted that what you are doing is wrong. It is a wrong thing which is being forced by circumstance to be done. In the ideal case, you are guaranteed truth. In the practical case, you try to do the best you can. In the practical case, the redneck might have a point (farmers, for instance, had been talking about global dimming for years before scientists gathered the data and became concerned... we were able to reverse it, but not before the pollution from England caused the jetstream to shift and led to several years of intense drought and famine (remember Live Aid? That was global dimmings work) in Ethiopia. Then you have cases where a doctor says other doctors should wash their hands between doing autopsies and delivering babies. He was not right because he had authority. In fact, the argument against him was that he was not respected enough in his field and that it was insulting to suggest that the doctors killing women and children left and right were actually at fault. Those were the more respected members of the medical community. We were saddled with leaded gasoline for decades because the community of research chemists all agreed it was safe and did so for financial benefit and based on very 'common sense' arguments (lead is so heavy! It will fall to the ground and not travel far from the road, how would it get in the air?). When a toxicologist reported the danger, he was met with insult and told he was entreating on chemists territory. Because people trusted the authority of the professional research chemists, he got ignored. Because of them having their authority trusted, they could not afford to even investigate the truth. If they lost that authority, and the trust, they would be done. All unnecessary and a tragic bit of scientific history every researcher should know. Those authorities are just people. They can be just as selfish, mistake-prone, prideful, etc as anyone else. It is not reason to dismiss them. It is reason to expect them to present you with solid evidence, solid argument, and to NEVER ask you to 'just trust them'. The same applies for the redneck. If he provides solid evidence, solid argument, and never asks you to 'just trust him', you review his argument and evidence exactly the same.
Most real-world problems are over-constrained or under-constrained, and a missing axiom (as much as you can have axioms for things as fuzzy as the real world) can give bogus results without being immediately obvious.
If it is something that I do not expect neither to have detailed knowledge of, I'll base my trust on the transferability of the domain. So, for example, a nobel price winner in physics will still have a reasonable understanding of chemistry, and thus cooking.
I'd simply expect a scientist to have finished 4-8 years more in school, and to have spent several decades with smart and learned people. Again, depending on the subject being discussed.
There is also the case to be made that a Nobel price winner will have a reputation to uphold. Going on the record saying silly things will hurt him more than someone that has no reputation. Though I'm less inclined to this reasoning, as this assumes that reputation is something important to the Nobel prize winner.
Instead, it is a state of mind reached through experience and enlightenment, endowed to one by those whom seek same.
As I recall, nothing was ever deleted. It was classified, and you could filter as you liked. But I don't remember specifics.
The owner took it down some years ago. Because the trolling had become intolerable.
- http://beatrice.com/wordpress/tao-te-ching/
- The original free version - http://www.beatrice.com/TAO.pdf
Here's the same verse, I think:
The Masters do what needs doing
and that's all they do.
Do what you have to do
without arrogance or pride.
Get the job done
and don't brag about it afterwards.
Do what you have to do,
not for your own benefit,
but because it needs to be done.
And don't do it the way
you think it should be done,
do it the way it needs to be done.Tao Te Ching shall be the next book on my reading list. Have a nice day!
Material progress is useful, but hollow.
Watch them flourish.
Revisit them.
To watch them crumble.
Update them to learn your mistake.
Educate the next generation.
On where you failed.
Rinse and repeat.
Education is the only thing holding society together.
Maybe some real wisdom exists out there, that unfortunately involves not telling other people about it.
Essentially, it means "lead by example", "let others learn through acts and not words", "there are situations which no amount of skill can rectify", and "accept that some may not understand what you try to teach."
Asking what something means is effectively asking for a translation. Unfortunately, that's almost always a lossy process, and in the worst case it invites an "understanding" that's largely different than the author's original intent.
If intended meaning is something you'd like to get at, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the question, "what mindset and situation would I have to be in such that those words come naturally, spontaneously to mind?"
Anyway, in my experience with lots of meditation, the sentiment expressed in OP's quote is something that feels close to home. I think it has more to do with staying close to the problem at hand and being keenly aware of how all the pieces of you fit into that picture.
There exists a mental space where you can do things and have desires while at the same time seeing a larger context that breeds equanimity. It's a space thst makes things like personal thoughts, feeling and beliefs seem as simple and matter-of-fact as crickets chirping in the night.
It means that everything will only change when you change yourself. Find your own harmony and don’t worry about others. Their path is theirs.
Some of these types of books say that yourself is the only thing which you can truly change because, they say, everything else is an illusion or simply that trying to change others is a futile task. How you perceive reality is everything.
I find this idea to be very liberating and pragmatic and when I remember to utilize this in practice, things flow much better for me. I become more flexible.
As Bruce Lee says - "You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend."
Or, you could check out my personal introduction to the Tao... The Tao of Pooh. I read it when I was a teenager, thinking it positively absurd that anyone would create a book attempting to explain an ancient school of philosophy through Winnie the Pooh. It's not absurd. I found it sublime, and the idea of taoism made a powerful impression on me and probably played a sizable role in driving me to further study of philosophy.
Chinese Medicine is new age, and yet the practice supposedly dates back 3,500 years. I wonder if they were also killing rhinos for their horns to make useless “medicine” back then?
I would say: If you try to convince others of something, focus your energy on one thing. You won't be very convincing if you argue "I've heard that X" on 100 topics, but it will be more effective if you go deep into one topic and have a huge number of arguments on standby, with links to further resources, so that you can create a concise and focused rebuttal when that particular topic comes up.
Other chapters in the Tao address this objection, by emphasizing the value of humility and leading by example over cleverness and trying to beat people into submission with words.
Express yourself completely,
then keep quiet.
Be like the forces of nature:
when it blows, there is only wind;
when it rains, there is only rain;
when the clouds pass, the sun shines through.
Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
The Master doesn't talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, "Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!"
There's something oxymoronic about this phrase.
There's convincing with words, and convincing by example.
"The Master does his job" - not necessarily in private or alone. If people see someone successfully accomplishing something, they will follow. For me, seeing something work is a lot more powerful change actor than someone talking in hypotheticals trying to convince me.
If you say something to someone and they are unconvinced, I doubt more prodding will convince them. Eventually they will say they are convinced, just to have you go away, and let them do it the same way. Then they become more entrenched in their beliefs, even if they know it's wrong.
“Every truth has four corners. As a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three.”
–Confucius
No, sometimes the master's job is to teach someone something. It's just not all the time or even every time someone is wrong on the internet.
To build on quotes from the Tao Te Ching, same translation:
“Throw away holiness and wisdom, and people will be a hundred times happier. Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing. Throw away industry and profit, and there won't be any thieves.
If these three aren't enough, just stay at the center of the circle and let all things take their course.”
This "who can talk better to convince the crowd" business appeared more than once throughout history and was at it's peak effectiveness among the scientific community during the enlightenment phase of europe where your peers are actually as intelligent or more intelligent than you are, and your tools are empirical evidence rather than your charisma.
The idea later reverted to it's hellenistic form of democratic political dialogue which is only effective as the critics of it's listeners, or the demos.