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I downloaded the paper and read through it -- with my teenage boys alongside. I think he may be on to something because of the quantity of unexplained and partially explained phenomena he can give a simple explanation for -- it may be wrong, but it sounds simple, feels elegant. I especially liked the idea of getting rid of the "tuning-fork" model of classifying galaxies which seemed arbitrary enough to invoke Ole's Law: wrongness = ugliness * hardness.

But again, let me emphasize: I don't know enough about the rest of the science behind the classification to give good reasons beyond æsthetic ones regarding why I didn't like it.

As soon as I saw the title of this subject, it got me thinking about Mayer's paper. I'm sorry to see the thing has gotten shut down this hard. The chain of events that led to him losing his (visible) guest access shows that his ideas struck a lot of our truth-sense nerves as being on. It'll be interesting to see if his notions are borne out in the end.

to truth...ank

No need to look that far abroad. It is the same situation in the USA.
Look at this map with regards to the last presidential election results...

This is a link to an old Slashdot story from maybe three years ago, that very eloquently talks about how the instantaneous nature of email, IM, and business in general these days is affecting people.

After reading it, I have turned off all notifications on my computer, and haven't looked back since. It's nice to be master of your own domain, even if it is a tiny one.

I think the biggest flaw with this argument has to be with the idea that you can shift gears and take care of small tasks quickly without interrupting a larger task. This article on the tyranny of email pretty much sums it up. If you're in a zone, coding away, and you get a phone call, all those variables and processes, and whatever else you're holding onto and manipulating in your mind get crowded out and it takes you a lot of time to get back up to speed. Taking care of small tasks as they come up can actually take up more time than writing them down and taking care of them after you emerge from your creative cycle.

It's obviously an effort to show that they lack intelligence to use even the consumer items that they have purchased. Somewhat ironic.

A more proper show would be to point out how a recent study showed how mostly breeders were voting for Bush and a separate study that showing having children can cause your IQ to drop by 20 points.

Or how about the study that showed that religion and IQ are negatively correlated? I only point this out due to the fact that so many religious people vote for Dubya.

The rule that 95% of everything is shit also applies to the human race; they can't all be rocket scientists and naturally someone is going to polarize the morons versus the educated... and their are always going to be alot more morons out there. :)

It's obviously an effort to show that they lack intelligence to use even the consumer items that they have purchased. Somewhat ironic.

A more proper show would be to point out how a recent study showed how mostly breeders were voting for Bush and a separate study that showing having children can cause your IQ to drop by 20 points.

Or how about the study that showed that religion and IQ are negatively correlated? I only point this out due to the fact that so many religious people vote for Dubya.

The rule that 95% of everything is shit also applies to the human race; they can't all be rocket scientists and naturally someone is going to polarize the morons versus the educated... and their are always going to be alot more morons out there. :)

What follows is a long musing on the Dean campaign's use of internet tools, but it has a short thesis: the hard thing to explain is not how the Dean campaign blew such a huge lead, but rather why we ever thought that lead actually existed. Dean's campaign didn't just fail, it dissolved on contact with reality.

I received tremendous feedback in response to this article (thanks everyone!), and have posted a summary of the most interesting observations and comments as Tyranny Revisited, in case you are interested...