OLDaily

UNICEF warn of remote learning issues for 463m
Viggo Stacey, The PIE News, 2020/09/02

The message is as it has always been: "At least 31% – some 463 million – of schoolchildren worldwide cannot be reached by digital and broadcast remote learning programs enacted to counter school closures, UNICEF has revealed." I wonder how many of them were not able to access schooling (or housing, or food, or electricity) before remote learning became a thing. The argument here is that things are getting worse - "the deepening digital divide is one of the many inequalities that the Covid-19 pandemic has underscored” - but I'm not sure whether it's deepening, or just bad.

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Online Learning Student Experience is the New Climbing Wall
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2020/09/02

This post continues the discussion of what distinguishes an on-campus education from one where all the materials are available online, particularly where those (say) are MIT materials. The usual talk about "the serendipity that results from taking a life-changing course you weren’t thinking about because your friend is in it or having a deeply meaningful and entirely unplanned conversation" is offered here again. But no - it's not about the learning, it's about the network and connections and the status that attending the institution can afford. Contra Feldstein, the institutions don't have to do anything on campus to nurture this - they just need to keep on being elite and exclusive. Their customers and the wider public will do the rest.

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Simple Signal Guide For Everyone
Set Of Principles, 2020/09/02

This is a very basic introduction to Signal, an encrypted text messaging app. You would use it just like text messaging on your mobile phone (on Android, it can replace the default service, supporting both existing and encrypted text messages). The appeal of signal is of course its privacy, but also that it's non-commercial, there are no advertisements and there is no tracking or spying, and it's free for everyone.

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Are all practical reasons based on value?
Benjamin Kiesewetter, PhilPapers, 2020/09/02

The value-based theory of practical reasons (VBT) is the idea that any practical reason that can be given for performing a task can be explained in terms of value. 'Value' here means not just monetary value, but also instrumental value, such as pleasure or companionship. This article (29 page PDF) gives an account of the theory and then several reasons to question it with relation to (say) keeping promises, following orders or ensuring equitable distribution - reasons why actions may be good even though the action produces no particular value. This (to me, and in a broader sense) undermines the idea that 'good actions' are based on reason at all, not even practical reasons. The paper is an interesting read, gives you background into VBT and its objections, though it's written in that typically analytical philosophical language. Image: Schwartz theory of basic values.

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