Metric Moments

My Metric CD arrived in the mail today and it's as fabulous as I thought it might be. The one problem is that I had dropped my computer a few days ago. After a moment of shock (my life is in there!), I found out that everything is thankfully alright. Everything that is but one channel of output on the headphone jack. So because I lack a real CD player, I am forced to listen to music in one ear in stereo. Maybe this is karma for my promotion of file-sharing systems...I actually buy an album and look what happens.

Anyways I read this quote from Judge Richard Posner and I thought it quite cutting:

Individualism and a cult of originality go hand in hand. Each of us supposes that our contribution to society is unique rather than fungible and so deserves public recognition, which plagiarism clouds.

This is a modern view. We should be aware that the high value placed on originality is a specific cultural, and even field-specific, phenomenon, rather than an aspect of the universal moral law.

You too are replacable. I remember a debate about who would be more irreplacable if they never existed: famous scientists like Newton or Einstein or great artists like Shakespeare. Of course, it wasn't settled, but I tend to go with the argument that the theory that Newton or Einstein developed would have been done by someone else, and it in fact, almost was done by someone else, while although the artistic "movements" participated in by the artists may have continued the works of art themselves would not have been done.