I now spend time fixing my bicycle for everyday travel, adding a package rack for that trip to the supermarket located farther away.
Yet there are stupid things that would still be fun to play with, because difference and some very small pleasures.
The car I wanted to own when I was a teen was a Porsche 912 engine powered Fiat 600. Now there are still conversions out there much like the swapping that goes on in Cuba where tiny tractor engines wind up in full-size Detroit sedans.
My other favorites would be something powered by the more reliable Subaru Impreza engine.
The question is whether such a machine is reasonable given emissions controls and the possibility that electric motors will eventually be better.
Electric cars are not new, the problems of electricity storage and range remain challenging. More hopeful will be DIY hot-rodding of EVs.
More interesting is powering a vehicle by a cordless hand drill
and what I want is a Morgan EV3 … because with a world of driverless vehicles, some of us will still want autonomy, at least between home and the mass transit station. Even if that seems like an act of stupidity in a world of stupid people.
A driver in California was caught on video spewing an ugly, racist rant against Asians when another motorist wasn’t driving fast enough for her — but she won’t face charges, police said.
The unidentified woman launched into the xenophobic tirade after she got stuck behind another driver, James Ahn, in Fremont — and started harassing him over his race despite the fact he was driving the posted speed limit of 35 mph, he said.
“As I changed the lane, she kept driving towards my car gesturing to crush me and cutting in front of me to slam on the break,” Ahn posted Monday on Facebook. “I later realized that this was more like a hate crime than a road rage.”
nypost.com/...
Don’t feel obligated to read this science stuff below, just know that the problem of progress in science and other endeavors remains as a research topic tied to whether there are revolutions and if they exist, what is their structure.
The interesting problem in the dark ages when I was in grad school was whether one could accept the so-called CP Snow’s Two-Cultures analogy of science and art whether if there was a “normal science”, there was a “normal art” which is the artworld. The correlate problem is always the problem of innovation or revolutionary avant-gardes pushing the research frontier.
Unspoken influences are the reactionary domination of a field by Arrière Gardes, who don’t give a shit about whether a theoretical or methodological interest was important mainly because they might not support the dominant or acceptable research paradigm. Such are the limits of so-called liberal education, that you might get shot by the Canon, even in fields where the margins define progress in a field.
Thomas Kuhn's insistence that a paradigm shift was a mélange of sociology, enthusiasm and scientific promise, but not a logically determinate procedure, caused an uproar in reaction to his work. Kuhn addressed concerns in the 1969 postscript to the second edition. For some commentators The Structure of Scientific Revolutions introduced a realistic humanism into the core of science, while for others the nobility of science was tarnished by Kuhn's introduction of an irrational element into the heart of its greatest achievements.
[...]
Kuhn explains the process of scientific change as the result of various phases of paradigm change.
- Phase 1- It exists only once and is the pre-paradigm phase, in which there is no consensus on any particular theory. This phase is characterized by several incompatible and incomplete theories. Consequently, most scientific inquiry takes the form of lengthy books, as there is no common body of facts that may be taken for granted. If the actors in the pre-paradigm community eventually gravitate to one of these conceptual frameworks and ultimately to a widespread consensus on the appropriate choice of methods, terminology and on the kinds of experiment that are likely to contribute to increased insights.[12]
- Phase 2- Normal science begins, in which puzzles are solved within the context of the dominant paradigm. As long as there is consensus within the discipline, normal science continues. Over time, progress in normal science may reveal anomalies, facts that are difficult to explain within the context of the existing paradigm.[13] While usually these anomalies are resolved, in some cases they may accumulate to the point where normal science becomes difficult and where weaknesses in the old paradigm are revealed.[14]
- Phase 3- If the paradigm proves chronically unable to account for anomalies, the community enters a crisis period. Crises are often resolved within the context of normal science. However, after significant efforts of normal science within a paradigm fail, science may enter the next phase.[15]
- Phase 4- Paradigm shift, or scientific revolution, is the phase in which the underlying assumptions of the field are reexamined and a new paradigm is established.[16]
- Phase 5- Post-Revolution, the new paradigm's dominance is established and so scientists return to normal science, solving puzzles within the new paradigm.[17]
A science may go through these cycles repeatedly, though Kuhn notes that it is a good thing for science that such shifts do not occur often or easily.
[...]
The changes that occur in politics, society and business are often expressed in Kuhnian terms, however poor their parallel with the practice of science may seem to scientists and historians of science. The terms "paradigm" and "paradigm shift" have become such notorious clichés and buzzwords that they are sometimes viewed as effectively devoid of content.[51][52]
en.wikipedia.org/...
And much of it can be anomolously stupid or at least infested with stupidity:
It is unfortunate that in terms of Thomas S. Kuhn, his concepts had to wait for greater acceptance of (methodological) naturalism
One way of understanding this outcome is to see that Kuhn's relationship on the one hand to positivism and on the other hand to realism places him in an interesting position. Kuhn's thesis of the theory-dependence of observation parallels related claims by realists. In the hands of realists the thesis is taken to undermine the theory-observation dichotomy that permitted positivists to take an anti-realist attitude to theories. In the hands of Kuhn however, the thesis is taken, in effect, to extend anti-realism from theories to observation also. This in turn fuels the thesis of incommensurability. The fact that incommensurability is founded upon a response to positivism diametrically opposed to the realist response explains why much of Kuhn's later philosophical work, which developed the incommensurability thesis, has had little impact on the majority of philosophers of science.
The explanation of scientific development in terms of paradigms was not only novel but radical too, insofar as it gives a naturalistic explanation of belief-change. Naturalism was not in the early 1960s the familiar part of philosophical landscape that it has subsequently become. Kuhn's explanation contrasted with explanations in terms of rules of method (or confirmation, falsification etc.) that most philosophers of science took to be constitutive of rationality. Furthermore, the relevant disciplines (psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence) were not then advanced enough to to support Kuhn's contentions concerning paradigms, or those disciplines were antithetical to Kuhn's views (in the case of classical AI).
Now that naturalism has become an accepted component of philosophy, there has recently been interest in reassessing Kuhn's work in the light of developments in the relevant sciences, many of which provide corroboration for Kuhn's claim that science is driven by relations of perceived similarity and analogy. It may yet be that a characteristically Kuhnian thesis will play a prominent part in our understanding of science.
plato.stanford.edu/...
The stupids, albeit orange-colored, may yet rule the earth.