User:Ryguasu
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My real name is Chris Harris. I am a 24-year-old citizen of the United States, where I was born and where I reside. I graduated from Brown University in the spring of 2004 with a degree in computer science and an altogether unofficial "minor" in cognitive science. I currently live in Providence, RI, working as a tutor (mostly in mathematics) at the Met School ([1] (http://www.metcenter.org)), a very individualistic urban high school, and as a cashier at Brown's Bookstore.
In the last six months or so, I've gotten very interested in both teaching and education reform, which is why I'm pursuing this opportunity at the Met. I alternate between wanting to spend a lot more time and effort at schools and wanting to run as far away from them as I can.
I'm currently wondering if I could find a way to do more work with computers and drop my job at the Bookstore. Does anyone know about freelance computer programming, web design, or writing (writing in human languages, e.g. English)?
I've become an Anti-foundationalist about most everything through the process of asking too many questions. Under the influence of Nietzsche and William James, I feel both mildly liberated and not quite so mildly disturbed about how to lead my life. Let me know if you want to discuss how to live life in a Nietzschean, Pragmatic, or Humanistic way.
Wikipedia is by far my favorite web site, especially when it doesn't take 30+ seconds to save an edit. (On that note, I have so far been a free rider viz-a-viz Wikipedia's finances. I hope to make a donation sometime soon. Don't know quite why I haven't done it yet.)
Feel free to leave comments at User talk:Ryguasu
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About my username
My Wikipedia name, "Ryguasu", means "hen" (i.e. chicken) in Guarani, a language I learned a little bit of while living in Paraguay for a year. Arguably a stupid name (especially for a male?), it has the advantage that just about nobody on Earth except me has a desire to claim it as "theirs".
Articles
Here's a biased sample of articles I have been involved with:
- Vacuous truth
- Linguistics, Connotation
- Cognitive science
- Design, Teleology, Teleological argument
- George Lakoff, Moral Politics
- Ronald Coase, Transaction cost, Sunk cost, Cost, Homo economicus
- Ascribed characteristics, Social construction
- Guarani language and Guarana
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Paradox of the heap
- File format, Formal concept analysis
About some other Wikipedians
Kukkurovaca is my arch-nemesis and good friend. Sometimes I understand what he says. I am jealous that, since I introduced him to Wikipedia, he's gone on to become twice the Wiki-dork that I am. Where does he find the time?
- I hereby award you one blowfish.
कुक्कुरोवाच
Fred Bauder is the author of meta:Basic process, which, for some reason, bothers me more than any other article I've yet found on Wikipedia. My persistance finally got it moved to meta. Fred is the founder of Wikinfo. Although I am curious about what the effect of having articles written from several different points of view will be, I'm not convinced that his having forked Wikipedia will be beneficial overall; I think that having to come to some kind of consensus is good for an article. Interestingly, Fred has decided to include his Basic process article on Wikinfo, which makes me wonder if the "real" purpose of the fork wasn't to get away from me. =)
- I think your efforts served to enlighten me regarding the no original research aspect of Wikipedia; motivated me to establish a forum where original research was encouraged; and helped me conform my editing here to that policy. Fred Bauder 11:07, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)
Some thoughts about wikis
User:Ryguasu/Toward an ED156 wiki
Answers to my questions
Notes for self
Fareed Zakaria. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
- The deconstruction of mental illness is necessarily a high-priority task for postmodernism; if it fails, then the biological roots of mind/soul become more firmly established than postmodernism would care to admit.
To do
- Teleology: definition in terms of Purpose is problematic
- Conceptual metaphor: uh-oh -- the gobledygook squad was here!
- Double negative: add history, NPOVify
- add Copilia stuff
- "facet" is a synonym for "ommatidium". (neither have articles)
- "mental picture" is a vast oversimplification of "idea", in any reasonable understanding. fix it.
- make What the Tortoise Said to Achilles coherent, and make more relevant links to it
- put Ostrom-ish stuff at Tragedy of the commons and Prisoner's dilemma
- George Lakoff: add book summaries, relativism disclaimer; move the not Lakoff-specific stuff to other articles
- Cognitive science of mathematics vs Where mathematics comes from vs ...
- Gender-neutral pronouns or Gender-specific pronoun or Non-sexist language or Douglas Hofstadter: add reference to Hofstadter's race-based pronoun piece
- problematize Corporate welfare
- add US stuff to Zebra crossing and Pedestrian crossing
- Portable Document Format: clarify relationship to postscript
Ramblings
I might someday incorporate these into wikipedia articles:
- User:Ryguasu/Evolution
- User:Ryguasu/Rationality
- User:Ryguasu/Linguistics
- User:Ryguasu/Sociology, etc.
- User:Ryguasu/Logic, Math, etc.
Articles that need improvement
I don't really know how to fix these, but I can try to explain why I don't like them, if you're interested. (Note: this list was from the days when I thought I had time to add my two cents to every god damn article.)
- Propositional knowledge
- everything under statistics!
- hypothesis: not NPOV RE falsibiability
- phenomenon and friends
- Conservation laws
- Interpreted language: it's not about the language, but the language environment
- Grammar
- Grain of salt
- Class warfare
- Objectivity
- Basic process
- Concept
- Popular culture
- Organization
- Cultural imperialism
- Newspeak
See User:Ryguasu/basic processes.
To reexamine
- Ultimate reality: whose term is this, anyway?
- Thrift store: haven't I been to several for-profit thrift stores?
- Singular they: maybe compare to other singular/plural entities, e.g. "salt".
- History of economic thought
- Self-esteem
- Autonomous building
- intuition
- Programming language
- Exploitation
- Theory
- Knowledge
- Theory of justification
- Anti-Americanism
Ways Wikipedia is strange
Wow. There are pages for particular computer jokes: