Word: foolishment
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...people whose ultimate arbiter is utility, such actions seem naïve or irrational, a sentimental indulgence for guilt-ridden liberals. Yet the mighty logic of utility would also condemn voting as foolish. The probability that your vote would influence the outcome of an election is impossibly small. It would not even compensate for your having to schlep down to the voting booth...
...looming giant of Allston, and the intense media scrutiny.The presidents of Brown, Columbia, Duke, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Tufts all denied interest in Harvard’s top job. Some did so with a gust of humor (Duke President Richard H. Brodhead: “What a foolish question. I already have a great job”) and others with a gasp of exasperation (head of Penn Amy Gutmann ’71, who made it deep into the search that resulted in Lawrence H. Summers’ selection six years ago: “I am absolutely...
William James is the archetypal masked villain of American academia. Seldom seen on curricula, mentioned in hushed tones, his finger is seen on every subject from linguistics to comparative government. His ideological foes curse his philosophical ideas as self-evident and foolish, but few have been around him long enough to even know what they’re denouncing. In his ambitious book on James, biographer Robert Richardson illuminates the life and ideas of this oft-cited father of pragmatism with unprecedented clarity, though many of his attempts to legitimate James’ thought only deepen the subject?...
Asked last week whether he would leave Duke to lead Harvard, President Richard H. Brodhead wrote in an e-mail, “What a foolish question. I already have a great job,” according to the Duke Chronicle...
...endure electric shocks in a sham experiment on learning, those who were given a good rationale ("It will help scientists understand learning") rated the shocks as more painful than the ones given a feeble rationale ("We're curious.") Presumably, it's because the second group would have felt foolish to have suffered for no good reason. Yet when these people were asked why they agreed to be shocked, they offered bogus reasons of their own in all sincerity, like "I used to mess around with radios and got used to electric shocks...