Wow! An easy answer to every problem. I think you might actually have a semantic stop-sign; an answer to everything that suppresses curiosity. Why isn’t the hospital curing more patients? “That’s not its purpose!”
The purpose of the hospital is to cure patients as cost-effectively as it can. We don’t have enough doctors in Canada, not because that is by design, but because we are failing as a country and could do better.
The internet was obviously not created with that intention, but social media may have that purpose.
Anyway, what I love about this phrase, the purpose of a system is what it does, is that it implies there’s no point in trying to fix anything. There’s no point in even checking if there is anything that can be fixed or improved; there is no point in separating the good stuff from the bad when we burn everything down; the only way to improve anything is revolution. That’s different of course from my perspective – revolution can fix the worst problems but there still exist other problems that can be solved without such a dicy method.
This is why I can’t take “The purpose of a system is what it does” seriously
Why? The purpose of the system is to not work, so there are no democratic checks.
Seems fatalist to me. Take your preferred system of government, introduce on flaw, and critics will say the flaw is intentional rather than proposing ways to fix it. Also, the purpose of a cancer hospital is to cure two-thirds of cancer patients.
The purpose of a hospital is to cure just enough patients.
And the purpose of Ukraine is to be caught in a stalemate. The West gives them just enough support to never lose, but never enough support to win.
And the purpose of the British government is to pretend like it is responsive to protests.
And the purpose of buses is to burn gasoline and support the oil industry, when trains or trams would be much more efficient.
And the purpose of arguing on the internet is to waste everyone’s time while accomplishing nothing
Etc etc
Wow! An easy answer to every problem. I think you might actually have a semantic stop-sign; an answer to everything that suppresses curiosity. Why isn’t the hospital curing more patients? “That’s not its purpose!”
The purpose of the hospital is to cure patients as cost-effectively as it can. We don’t have enough doctors in Canada, not because that is by design, but because we are failing as a country and could do better.
The internet was obviously not created with that intention, but social media may have that purpose.
Anyway, what I love about this phrase, the purpose of a system is what it does, is that it implies there’s no point in trying to fix anything. There’s no point in even checking if there is anything that can be fixed or improved; there is no point in separating the good stuff from the bad when we burn everything down; the only way to improve anything is revolution. That’s different of course from my perspective – revolution can fix the worst problems but there still exist other problems that can be solved without such a dicy method.