• HardWorker
    83
    Whether or not something is hard or easy is a matter of perspective and the main factor if not the only factor would be on whose doing it. For instance, what's harder calculus or basic addition? When looked at by themselves with no other factors its obvious that calculus is much harder than basic addition but when you take into perspective who would be learning calculus vs who would be learning addition the answer is not so simple.

    I was first learning to add when I was in nursery school so you could say that somebody learning addition would be in nursery school or kindergarten. Now, as for who would be learning calculus, a student at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) would be somebody who would be learning calculus. So now the question is what is harder, for somebody in nursery school to learn how to add or somebody at MIT who is much more experienced with academics and in particular much more experienced with math to learn calculus? Taking that into consideration an accurate answer becomes much more complicated.
  • Philosophim
    2.3k
    No hard disagreement here. I think this is easy to understand.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Indeed it is.

    Think in terms of love, honor, respect, friendship, to name but a few of the ideas that are floating around (still) and the world becomes an unsolvable puzzle.

    Shift your perspective, look at things from a dollar angle and everything becomes rather simple, in fact very simple.

    The point I'm trying to make, despite the cynical stance I've adopted, is not that humans are bad per se but that changing one's point of view may simplify matters to a point where one might ask yourself, reproachfully, "who would've thought it was that simple?!"
  • T Clark
    13k
    Whether or not something is hard or easy is a matter of perspective and the main factor if not the only factor would be on whose doing it.HardWorker

    You're in good company. This is from "The Tao Te Ching," Verse 2, Stephen Mitchell's translation.

    When people see some things as beautiful,
    other things become ugly.
    When people see some things as good,
    other things become bad.

    Being and non-being create each other.
    Difficult and easy support each other.
    Long and short define each other.
    High and low depend on each other.
    Before and after follow each other.
  • jgill
    3.6k
    "Hard and easy is a matter of perspective" about says it all.
  • sime
    1k
    I dislike the word "hard", for it seems to encourage an inaccurate association of pain and struggle with respect to the "hard" objective concerned, leading to procrastination.

    I think the concept of difficulty should be eliminated for the concept of expense, which is more objective and might be perceived as being a less painful concept.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    To those who agree with the OP, me inclusive, try this on for size: The HARD problem of consciousness
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.