Consider the following scenarios1:
(i) Your neighbor comes home with your dream car, the car you have wanted since you were a teenager. He gets out of it beaming, obviously proud to have the money and ability to afford such a magnificent machine. As he walks towards you to surely boast about his purchase you grab a monkey wrench from the garage and bludgeon him to death in his own drive way. You get in the car of your dreams and (since the keys are still in the ignition) park the car in your garage and continue about your day.
(ii) After a night of libations and conversation at the local bar, you bid your company a good night walk out of the bar and begin your trek home. Upon reaching your apartment complex you find a wallet on the ground full of money. The license has an address in your building. The next morning you return the wallet to its owner (just as you found it).
(iii) A trolley is barreling towards a fork in the tracks, its operator is obviously some sort of villain as he has a menacing mustache and is laughing maniacally. Quickly you notice that one tine of the fork has three people tied to it and the other tine of the fork has one person tied to it. You can see ahead the lever that will switch the direction the trolley will travel on the fork. You have enough time to reach the lever before the trolley hits the fork, but certainly not enough time to try to untie anyone (do to your distance from the lever and the speed of the trolley). The fork is currently set so that the trolley barrel over the group of three, what should you do?
Each of these scenarios has surely evoked some sort of opinion in you. Most people (although not necessarily all) would disagree with murdering your neighbor for his new car as depicted in (i). Most people would agree with returning the wallet to its owner as in (ii). There is a sort of murkiness that is intentional when it comes to (iii), the outcome of your decision will ultimately result in some sort of harm done, more on (iii) later.
Now, your natural gut reaction to the scenarios here have something to do with the philosophical branch of philosophy called "ethics." People who study ethics are concerned with the concepts of "right" and "wrong." As in it would be "wrong" to murder your neighbor for a car. It is the "right thing to do" not to take any money out of the wallet and return it to your neighbor.
Ethics is a great subject to start the amateur philosopher with because everyone has a sort of idea what is "right" and what is "wrong." Whether you analyze each situation and make a decision accordingly or you subscribe to some sort of ethical system (that you have concocted or that accords with your religion, etc...).
Most studies in ethics are concerned with developing some sort of ethical system that can be applied to any situation and produce a consistent outcome. The tricky thing about ethics is that not every situation is ethically cut and dry as it is in both (i) and (ii).
As ridiculous as (iii) is, it demonstrates an ethically sticky situation. No matter what you decide to do a person will get horribly hurt or die. Perhaps you choose to switch the tracks so that the three people are saved and the single person faces the wrath of the trolley. What if i told you that the one person was a baby, and that the three people were three geriatric old men, would this change your decision? Or what if the one person was not a baby but the leader of a neo-nazi sect of the KKK and the three people were single mothers? What if they all were neo-nazis? What if they all were members of your family?
Scenario (iii) is a famous philosophical scenario and an important one because it makes us think about all ethical situations in such a way that we ask why we consider a decision to be a "right" one or a "wrong" one. The point of it is not to avoid the decision you have to make by say throwing yourself at the trolley in an attempt to stop it before it hits the fork, or running super fast and switching the tracks, using your machete to untie the single person saving everyone before the trolley can do any harm. The point of studying ethics is making that hard decision and knowing why you have chosen the way that you have.
What makes a question a philosophically ethical one? If it is concerned with morality and/or the difference between right and wrong.
1. These scenarios are all thought experiments, or hypothetical situations invented to evoke some sort of reaction to prove a point. Thought experiments are an important philosophical and scientific tool.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Administration
One of my professors at Portland State (Alexsandar Jokic) would always start his classes with the same lecture. The theme of that lecture was this: Philosophy is concerned with questions, so what sort of questions are philosophical ones? Genius that I am, I discarded all of my notes from college so I cannot tell you exactly what Professor Jokic defined as a philosophical question. The themes I will be discussing over the next ten posts or so will be my own attempt to answer that question.
In addition I will be tagging each post with a difficulty rating ranging from "freshman" to "senior". As this blog is a small effort to prepare myself for a larger project this will help me keep things organized and help you, the reader, gauge involvement.
In addition I will be tagging each post with a difficulty rating ranging from "freshman" to "senior". As this blog is a small effort to prepare myself for a larger project this will help me keep things organized and help you, the reader, gauge involvement.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
The New Age Conversation
Quite some time ago while I was tending bar and I had a fascinating conversation with a man who works in the publishing industry, specifically he is and editor and publicist for an author of New-Age literature. After some idle chatter about the weather I prodded him to describe his New-Age view of the world, as I was interested what that entailed exactly.
He started by telling me that god is everything and everything is god, we are all manifestations of the same type of thing, he explained. The details are blurry now but when he was finished I said, "Sounds like Spinoza." In truth, what he described was a brand of Spinozism; I explained to him what that was, he shrugged and went on.
We continued and he went on to describe the human soul and reincarnation. He said he believes that being born is the most traumatic experience a soul can have and that we all tend to be certain ways because our soul is remembering the past lives it has had, I understood immediately, "That's Plato!" I said. I got an emphatic "No way!" as a response. I explained the Platonic concept of anamnesis. As the conversation went on we got into Hume's problem of induction and Kantian ethics, there were many tangents, all in all the conversation was very entertaining.
When he had finished eating and drinking he had a whole lot of reading he wanted to do. I have had many conversations like this one but what he said before he left stuck with me: "I would never have thought that philosophy was interesting." In truth, I never would have thought talking about somebodies New-Age views would be interesting.
Another reason why this conversation has stuck with me is because all the philosophy i had studied became a frame of reference for this man's description of his own philosophical views. Mind you, he would probably not describe his views a philosophical ones, but in truth that's what they are.
Next up: Philosophy 101 - What is a Philosophical question?
He started by telling me that god is everything and everything is god, we are all manifestations of the same type of thing, he explained. The details are blurry now but when he was finished I said, "Sounds like Spinoza." In truth, what he described was a brand of Spinozism; I explained to him what that was, he shrugged and went on.
We continued and he went on to describe the human soul and reincarnation. He said he believes that being born is the most traumatic experience a soul can have and that we all tend to be certain ways because our soul is remembering the past lives it has had, I understood immediately, "That's Plato!" I said. I got an emphatic "No way!" as a response. I explained the Platonic concept of anamnesis. As the conversation went on we got into Hume's problem of induction and Kantian ethics, there were many tangents, all in all the conversation was very entertaining.
When he had finished eating and drinking he had a whole lot of reading he wanted to do. I have had many conversations like this one but what he said before he left stuck with me: "I would never have thought that philosophy was interesting." In truth, I never would have thought talking about somebodies New-Age views would be interesting.
Another reason why this conversation has stuck with me is because all the philosophy i had studied became a frame of reference for this man's description of his own philosophical views. Mind you, he would probably not describe his views a philosophical ones, but in truth that's what they are.
Next up: Philosophy 101 - What is a Philosophical question?
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
History of money: Real Research!
I have bought to books on the history of money. The one I have started to read seems to be the book that I would want to write myself which is both fortunate and unfortunate as it goes. It is called (crazy enough) Money, a History edited by Johnathan Williams. While it reads like a text book if you are at all interested in the subject it is proving to be a valuable read.
My research is fueled by my need to know when money became so important. As a species humans became sedentary as a means of easing the struggles of providing for ones own health and well being. As our cultures became more complex we learned to specialize in things. With this specialization came surplus which could be traded for things other people specialized in. The point to note here is that each persons specialization had something to do with survival.
At some point money became everyones specialization, to the point where most of us have nothing to do with our own survival. All we need is money. I am not anti-money or anti-technology, I am just fascinated by this phenomenon.
With that:
Money as a concept emerged in the third millennium BCE in Mesopotamia. At this point in the history of human culture most societies worked with an economic system of 'centralized redistribution' in which all the resources amassed by a society were given to that societies authorities and then redistributed among the public (minus tribute, one can assume). Outside of these agricultural/textile goods, silver (as well as other precious metals) was regarded as a very valuable thing. So valuable in fact that its exact value was determined by the authorities of ones society. These standardized weights were kept in sacred places. A sheqel for instance was not a coin but a standardized amount of silver. Each society had a standard weight of silver used as a monetary standard and early societies used this silver standard as a means of calculating interest on loans, determining fines, and assessing value of other non-silver things. So we can see that as soon as we become a stationary people and amass a surplus we began to assess and compare that surplus to silver. How much we humans love our shiny things...
Most of the silver any given community or society had was owned by kings and temples. That being said, not all transactions were dealt with in silver, in fact most were not. As the aristocracy be it theistic or royal had most of the silver, they were the ones who would deal in silver. While a man might know or count how much his millet he had harvested was worth in silver, that standard was used as a means of calculating barter. I have two bundles of millet which is worth a gram of silver, a gram of silver is worth a goat, therefore: two bundles of millet is equal in . worth to a goat. It is amazing that this early in our evolution as a thinking creature we developed an extraction of a things worth. Why would not two bundles of millet just be equal in worth to a goat?
The first coins emerge in the kingdom of Lydia. With the development of the minting of coins, the necessity of stamping them followed so as to identify where the coin had been made. It is important to note that at this time coins were very valuable; even the smallest coin was much to valuable to use on an everyday basis and there is debate about how much these early coins were circulated. In effect the smallest coin would be worth (picking a denomination at random to prove a point) 500 of our contemporary U.S. dollars.
With the advent of coins we start to see an unusual phenomenon. As coins become more and more popular as a means of commerce, the value of a coin starts to separate itself from the worth of the amount of precious metal from which it was made. We also see coins from the community you are living in be worth more than coins acquired from other societies.
More to come...
My research is fueled by my need to know when money became so important. As a species humans became sedentary as a means of easing the struggles of providing for ones own health and well being. As our cultures became more complex we learned to specialize in things. With this specialization came surplus which could be traded for things other people specialized in. The point to note here is that each persons specialization had something to do with survival.
At some point money became everyones specialization, to the point where most of us have nothing to do with our own survival. All we need is money. I am not anti-money or anti-technology, I am just fascinated by this phenomenon.
With that:
Money as a concept emerged in the third millennium BCE in Mesopotamia. At this point in the history of human culture most societies worked with an economic system of 'centralized redistribution' in which all the resources amassed by a society were given to that societies authorities and then redistributed among the public (minus tribute, one can assume). Outside of these agricultural/textile goods, silver (as well as other precious metals) was regarded as a very valuable thing. So valuable in fact that its exact value was determined by the authorities of ones society. These standardized weights were kept in sacred places. A sheqel for instance was not a coin but a standardized amount of silver. Each society had a standard weight of silver used as a monetary standard and early societies used this silver standard as a means of calculating interest on loans, determining fines, and assessing value of other non-silver things. So we can see that as soon as we become a stationary people and amass a surplus we began to assess and compare that surplus to silver. How much we humans love our shiny things...
Most of the silver any given community or society had was owned by kings and temples. That being said, not all transactions were dealt with in silver, in fact most were not. As the aristocracy be it theistic or royal had most of the silver, they were the ones who would deal in silver. While a man might know or count how much his millet he had harvested was worth in silver, that standard was used as a means of calculating barter. I have two bundles of millet which is worth a gram of silver, a gram of silver is worth a goat, therefore: two bundles of millet is equal in . worth to a goat. It is amazing that this early in our evolution as a thinking creature we developed an extraction of a things worth. Why would not two bundles of millet just be equal in worth to a goat?
The first coins emerge in the kingdom of Lydia. With the development of the minting of coins, the necessity of stamping them followed so as to identify where the coin had been made. It is important to note that at this time coins were very valuable; even the smallest coin was much to valuable to use on an everyday basis and there is debate about how much these early coins were circulated. In effect the smallest coin would be worth (picking a denomination at random to prove a point) 500 of our contemporary U.S. dollars.
With the advent of coins we start to see an unusual phenomenon. As coins become more and more popular as a means of commerce, the value of a coin starts to separate itself from the worth of the amount of precious metal from which it was made. We also see coins from the community you are living in be worth more than coins acquired from other societies.
More to come...
Sunday, August 2, 2009
A Departure: The olafactory sense
I have started real research on the history of money and am excited to share what I am learning soon. For now I am going to expunge some research I was doing some time ago on the olfactory system.
I was attending a lecture with my fiance at Portland State some time ago by a very talented and interesting artist by the name of Daniel Bozhkov. In the lecture he talked about a handful of projects he had worked on, all of them interesting, but when he was talking about a particular project a certain statement he made caught my attention.
The project was called "The scent of America." Daniel was staying at a hotel in Istanbul where Hemingway once stayed during his travels in Europe as a young reporter. In this part of the world, and particularly in Istanbul, there are perfumeries where one can create a unique scent to please your particular taste in such things. This is how Daniel came up with the idea of creating a scent that represented Hemmingway (as a sort of virile American symbol). He came up with three finalists and took them to an annual Hemingway look alike contest in the Key West. There he asked the lookalikes which one smelled the most like Hemingway; there was a clear winner. He then went back to Istanbul and bottled some "Scent of America" cologne.
Now, when he was talking about why he embarked on such an interesting project he talked about the sort of guttural, primal instincts that some smells can invoke. He mentioned specifically that the part of the brain that processes smells is the limbic system which is the "reptilian" part of the brain.
This fascinated me. I began to wonder, what are smells? How do we process smells? Seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting seem to be fairly straight forward senses. Smelling became more and more elusive as I pondered its mechanics. And so I researched. Here is the result of that research:
Daniel called the limbic system the "reptilian" brain. It is also called the paleomammalian brain as it is the oldest part of the brain evolutionarily speaking. In addition to the olfactory sense, the limbic system is also associated with long term memory, the senses of reward and fear, as well as the regulation of happiness.
What is a smell? A smell or odor is a combination of chemicals. There are many chemicals that float about in the air and each odor we experience is comprised of a certain combination of chemicals.
When an odor enters the nose it is met with the olfactory sensors. Olfactory sensors are patches of nerves behind your nose at the top of your nasal passage. Each nerve in your olfactory sensor is encoded by a particular gene (therefore if one were missing a gene or had a damaged gene they would not be able to detect the odor associated with said damaged or missing gene).
The olfactory epithelium is the tissue that comprises the part of the olfactory sensor that is directly involved with detecting and defining smells. There are three types of cells that make up the olfactory epithelium: the olfactory cells combine to form an olfactory nerve, the supporting cells support the integrity of the whole, and basal cells are stem cells that split to form either supporting cells or olfactory cells (the constant division of basal cells results in a completely new epithelium every two to four weeks).
When a odor enters the nose and reaches the olfactory sensor the chemicals that it is comprised of are recognized by the nerve associated with each chemical in the odor. This information is transmitted via the olfactory nerve to the olfactory bulb (located in the limbic system) where it is interpreted and identified.
While it is recognized that each nerve in the olfactory sensor is associated with certain airborn chemicals there is debate in the scientific community how the information triggered in the olfactory sensor is transmitted to the olfactory bulb. Some believe that the combination of nerves that have identified a chemical is transmitted; that is to say, the areas of the olfactory sensors that are triggered by a certain odor is sent to the olfactory bulb. Others think that the nerves that are triggred by an odor are translated into self generating electrochemical activity (a sort od morse code if you will) and transmited along the olfactiry nerve thusly. Still others argue that it is a combinmation of the two, of course.
Side note: smelling salts irritate the olfactory sensors evoking a reation that helps arouse consciousness.
And that is an elementary explanation of how we smell and what smells are. I will leave you with some interesting definitions:
Phantosmia: an olfactory hallucination; smelling a non-existent odor (the most common phantosmia are urine, feces, rotting flesh, and smoke)
Parosmia: a distorted sense of smell; misinterpreting one smell for another (the most common parsosmia are the same as phantosmia). Parosmia can be caused by a sever cold or some other damage to the olfactory system
Anosmia: lack of the sense of smell. Anosmia can be total or specific. It can be the result of genetics (as mentioned above) or the result of trauma/damage to the olfactory system as with parosmia.
Hyperosmia: hightened or extremely sensitive olfaction
Hyposmia: lessened or dulled sense of olfaction
I was attending a lecture with my fiance at Portland State some time ago by a very talented and interesting artist by the name of Daniel Bozhkov. In the lecture he talked about a handful of projects he had worked on, all of them interesting, but when he was talking about a particular project a certain statement he made caught my attention.
The project was called "The scent of America." Daniel was staying at a hotel in Istanbul where Hemingway once stayed during his travels in Europe as a young reporter. In this part of the world, and particularly in Istanbul, there are perfumeries where one can create a unique scent to please your particular taste in such things. This is how Daniel came up with the idea of creating a scent that represented Hemmingway (as a sort of virile American symbol). He came up with three finalists and took them to an annual Hemingway look alike contest in the Key West. There he asked the lookalikes which one smelled the most like Hemingway; there was a clear winner. He then went back to Istanbul and bottled some "Scent of America" cologne.
Now, when he was talking about why he embarked on such an interesting project he talked about the sort of guttural, primal instincts that some smells can invoke. He mentioned specifically that the part of the brain that processes smells is the limbic system which is the "reptilian" part of the brain.
This fascinated me. I began to wonder, what are smells? How do we process smells? Seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting seem to be fairly straight forward senses. Smelling became more and more elusive as I pondered its mechanics. And so I researched. Here is the result of that research:
Daniel called the limbic system the "reptilian" brain. It is also called the paleomammalian brain as it is the oldest part of the brain evolutionarily speaking. In addition to the olfactory sense, the limbic system is also associated with long term memory, the senses of reward and fear, as well as the regulation of happiness.
What is a smell? A smell or odor is a combination of chemicals. There are many chemicals that float about in the air and each odor we experience is comprised of a certain combination of chemicals.
When an odor enters the nose it is met with the olfactory sensors. Olfactory sensors are patches of nerves behind your nose at the top of your nasal passage. Each nerve in your olfactory sensor is encoded by a particular gene (therefore if one were missing a gene or had a damaged gene they would not be able to detect the odor associated with said damaged or missing gene).
The olfactory epithelium is the tissue that comprises the part of the olfactory sensor that is directly involved with detecting and defining smells. There are three types of cells that make up the olfactory epithelium: the olfactory cells combine to form an olfactory nerve, the supporting cells support the integrity of the whole, and basal cells are stem cells that split to form either supporting cells or olfactory cells (the constant division of basal cells results in a completely new epithelium every two to four weeks).
When a odor enters the nose and reaches the olfactory sensor the chemicals that it is comprised of are recognized by the nerve associated with each chemical in the odor. This information is transmitted via the olfactory nerve to the olfactory bulb (located in the limbic system) where it is interpreted and identified.
While it is recognized that each nerve in the olfactory sensor is associated with certain airborn chemicals there is debate in the scientific community how the information triggered in the olfactory sensor is transmitted to the olfactory bulb. Some believe that the combination of nerves that have identified a chemical is transmitted; that is to say, the areas of the olfactory sensors that are triggered by a certain odor is sent to the olfactory bulb. Others think that the nerves that are triggred by an odor are translated into self generating electrochemical activity (a sort od morse code if you will) and transmited along the olfactiry nerve thusly. Still others argue that it is a combinmation of the two, of course.
Side note: smelling salts irritate the olfactory sensors evoking a reation that helps arouse consciousness.
And that is an elementary explanation of how we smell and what smells are. I will leave you with some interesting definitions:
Phantosmia: an olfactory hallucination; smelling a non-existent odor (the most common phantosmia are urine, feces, rotting flesh, and smoke)
Parosmia: a distorted sense of smell; misinterpreting one smell for another (the most common parsosmia are the same as phantosmia). Parosmia can be caused by a sever cold or some other damage to the olfactory system
Anosmia: lack of the sense of smell. Anosmia can be total or specific. It can be the result of genetics (as mentioned above) or the result of trauma/damage to the olfactory system as with parosmia.
Hyperosmia: hightened or extremely sensitive olfaction
Hyposmia: lessened or dulled sense of olfaction
Monday, July 27, 2009
Numismatics Part Two: {Meta} & Rushkoff
The very idea of money has begun to fascinate me. I am researching now some books to read about the creation and standardization of money and while I am still in the early stages I am seeing a lot of histories of money in the west not so much about money as it was developed in ancient China or anywhere in the Americas.
What is money? It is a symbol; it represents something. To have money is to have wealth; to have surplus. That is a powerful concept. It is no coincidence then that money as a symbol, as a tangible thing, originated in the very place where humans learned how to create a sustainable food source and thus a constant surplus? This expands what the symbol "money" represents to/for the human experience.
"Money isn't everything
but everything makes me want it."
De La Soul
Recently Tom brought Douglas Rushkoff to my attention. He has written a book recently called Life Incorporated where he discusses the effects of the corporate mentality on the society at large [explained here] (in areas not related to corporations). In the context of his book he discusses the establishment of "the coin of the realm" and the dawn of corporate thinking. It is an interesting take on how we stopped (or were forced out of) believing in barter and started believing in the dollar [clip here].
More soon...
What is money? It is a symbol; it represents something. To have money is to have wealth; to have surplus. That is a powerful concept. It is no coincidence then that money as a symbol, as a tangible thing, originated in the very place where humans learned how to create a sustainable food source and thus a constant surplus? This expands what the symbol "money" represents to/for the human experience.
"Money isn't everything
but everything makes me want it."
De La Soul
Recently Tom brought Douglas Rushkoff to my attention. He has written a book recently called Life Incorporated where he discusses the effects of the corporate mentality on the society at large [explained here] (in areas not related to corporations). In the context of his book he discusses the establishment of "the coin of the realm" and the dawn of corporate thinking. It is an interesting take on how we stopped (or were forced out of) believing in barter and started believing in the dollar [clip here].
More soon...
Monday, July 20, 2009
Numismatics: Part One
I have written and rewritten this post many times. It began as a post about the future of money and what that means for the plausibility of community currencies. This naturally lead me to to the history of money and what the history of money meant for community economics.
And so I embarked on a self guided tour of numismatics.
The first question I asked was: How long has currency existed?
Well currency has existed for quite some time. The Sumerians first used commodity money as a means of accounting. The Babylonians are credited with the first sort of economic systems. From there the Ancient Egyptians created the first minted coins and this spread to Greece and then to Rome and so on and so forth.
That question being answered made me wonder. While money as a physical thing and commonly accepted concept has been in use since the essential dawn of civilization when was it that money became the dominant provider of survival for individuals? That is to say, when did we stop herding goats and start hoarding money?
The Sumerians were practicing agriculture and domesticating animals, and they had a form of currency, but this currency seems to be a sort of side note. The economy of the currency at large played a parallel role to the economies of communities (towns, areas, etc...). This seems to have remained true up through Egypt, Greece, and Rome. While there was royalty and a sort of aristocracy that were a part of all of these cultures the aristocracies surplus seemed to have been based on certain virtues whether they be academic, artistic, heroic, or pious. Those of the "working classes" gave to these people because of their virtues.
I am having a bit of trouble finding resources on this topic specifically, not just on the history of money but how money and its related economies worked with/along side the local merchant/specialized craft economies.
The first road block in the discussion of community currencies is the problem of plausibility; people often think you are crazy or that the goal of community economics and alternative currencies set themselves up for an unachievable goal. My natural response is "We used to operate this way." However my knowledge on the actual history of this was rudimentary to say the least. This next series of posts will focus on the history of money and its larger worth within the society it existed in during all its historical manifestations.
Please suggest any reading you think is appropriate!
And so I embarked on a self guided tour of numismatics.
The first question I asked was: How long has currency existed?
Well currency has existed for quite some time. The Sumerians first used commodity money as a means of accounting. The Babylonians are credited with the first sort of economic systems. From there the Ancient Egyptians created the first minted coins and this spread to Greece and then to Rome and so on and so forth.
That question being answered made me wonder. While money as a physical thing and commonly accepted concept has been in use since the essential dawn of civilization when was it that money became the dominant provider of survival for individuals? That is to say, when did we stop herding goats and start hoarding money?
The Sumerians were practicing agriculture and domesticating animals, and they had a form of currency, but this currency seems to be a sort of side note. The economy of the currency at large played a parallel role to the economies of communities (towns, areas, etc...). This seems to have remained true up through Egypt, Greece, and Rome. While there was royalty and a sort of aristocracy that were a part of all of these cultures the aristocracies surplus seemed to have been based on certain virtues whether they be academic, artistic, heroic, or pious. Those of the "working classes" gave to these people because of their virtues.
I am having a bit of trouble finding resources on this topic specifically, not just on the history of money but how money and its related economies worked with/along side the local merchant/specialized craft economies.
The first road block in the discussion of community currencies is the problem of plausibility; people often think you are crazy or that the goal of community economics and alternative currencies set themselves up for an unachievable goal. My natural response is "We used to operate this way." However my knowledge on the actual history of this was rudimentary to say the least. This next series of posts will focus on the history of money and its larger worth within the society it existed in during all its historical manifestations.
Please suggest any reading you think is appropriate!
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