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Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas
CHESTER COPPERPOT writes "Scott Berkun writes an interesting essay on 'Why smart people defend bad ideas'. He states a number of interesting highlights on smart people and dumb ideas. From the article: 'In the software industry, the common example of thinking at the wrong level is a team of rock star programmers who can make anything, but don't really know what to make: so they tend to build whatever things come to mind, never stopping to find someone who might not be adept at writing code, but can see where the value of their programming skills would be best applied.'."
Ego.
a lot of it has to do with ego, and a lot of it has to do with committing to something and saying "this is what we are going with"
some people invest a lot of time into ideas and when they see their ideas threatened, they throw up the defense like no other. it transends programming all the way up to world politics.
i am guilty of it, but i have gotten better at admiting my mistakes and using it as something to build upon. it takes a lot to realize when you are at fault and you fucked up.
Yeah, I had a friend that did the same thing.. and I didn't have the heart to say a word.
He's currently working for Apple pulling in a quarter million a year, while I sit here in Engineering school.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
considered smart?
Probably because they did well in school. But school (at least in the US) wasn't designed to teach people to think, but to teach them to memorize facts and follow directions.
There are lots of very capable coders out there who make excelent code for other techies, but for this very reason the UI often sucks. The individualism and "if you don't like it, fix the code yourself" attitude of many open source projects means that people who aren't code junkies, but are excelent at understanding what a user might want get excluded from the process far too often.
Or in other words... this whole article is meant as a defense for the existence and proliferation of "managers", whose MBA degrees supposedly give them the magical ability to manage and control, without actually knowing anything worth damn about what they are managing.
There is no excuse to put in charge MBA-only types (or individuals whose knowledge base does not correspond with that of the company's). How can a "manager" manage and make clear, informed decisions about the direction of his/her company, if he/she has only a vague idea of wtf is being done? Look at HP.
Yes, mod me down if you are a PHB type, or some weak moron who needs a complete dipshit in a suit to tell him day-to-day what to do.
You're describing somebody who is so afraid of making a bad decision, they can't make any. TFA describes pretty much the opposite problem: being unfraid to risk a bad decision, but never being able to admit that it was bad.
When someone, or a team, puts so much hard work into something pride prevents one from stepping back to say "Wow. That's really messed up. We need to abandon/start over/find a new job"...leadership is lacking. It doesn't necessarily mean that every project needs a dictator. Sometimes a person will step up and provide direction before disappearing into the masses. Sometimes natural chaos works, sometimes a king is sorely lacking. Direction should never be taked for granted, however.
Just because something starts out seeming uninteresting, that doesn't necessarily mean that it will end up being useless. And even if the project doesn't go anywhere, the experience you gain in writing it can end up serving you down the line, whether through code reuse or just through gaining a better general understanding of various technologies that you use along the way.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Isn't that what they feed everyone in school; "You can do anything if you just put your mind to it"?
In my younger years, I took this to mean "Do everything, because you can". Now that I'm in college, that entire lesson was bunk, and now I'm stuck with a bunch of what I'd consider useless knowledge.
The "Pretender" gene, as I often call it (after the TV series) is something a lot of us are blessed/cursed with. We have the ability to sit down at a computer and code anything, then get up, walk into a garage or workshop, pick up a hammer and build something, then go to a rally and speak about how you can change the world if your party will support you.
The problem with it is futility. Others like me, myself included, find it futile at times to do anything, since we've done everything we're interested in doing. Us general-purpose, disposable task people have to cast ourselves into single purpose, repetitive task people, and that's really hard for us, in college, and in life.
Sadly, I don't see an easy solution. Except I won't be telling my children that "They can do anything". I'll tell them "you can do something. but it's up to you to choose what that something is."
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
is when people who are very intelligent compared to the rest of the public think they know it all. I think there is probably nothing worse than arguing with someone who thinks that because they are brilliant in one area that they are now all of a sudden uniquely qualified to render an opinion in all areas.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I think the issue at hand is that many people confuse leadership ability with skill. Being a good programmer doesn't necessarily make you a good project manager, nor is the best manager also the best coder. It's sometimes the case, and certainly some very skilled people successfully rise into management because their skill translates into seeing the big picture and hence being a good manager.
But not all really skilled people see the big picture, and that's when ego kicks in. They can't stand taking orders from somebody less skilled than them. People complain about pointy-headed PHB's with no skills getting paid more that them, but the reality is that having 20 coders is a waste if they lack direction, and ideally, that's what the PHB is there for.
Whether the PHB is actually effective is another story. Leadership is a nebulous thing and much harder to quantify and identify than skill - hence the embarrasing examples that slip through the cracks.
The problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they're wrong.
I've known smart people like that.
And fantastically dumb people like that.
I've had someone argue that the queen of England isn't rich, and get this, when I explained that she's the biggest land owner in the U.K. and she made about 27 million a year last time I checked, he argued that she isn't rich because when she dies someone else will inherit her money (unlike Bill Gates, who'll bring it with him to the afterlife?).
Smart people just defend their insanity with more flair.
You can't take the sky from me...
Lots of ideas become 'good' or 'bad' only with hindsight. (E.g., pet rocks, E-books...) And, 'smart' doesn't always mean 'prescient' ...or 'lucky'...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
Michael Bolton: You think the pet rock was a great idea?
Tom: Of course it was! The guy made a million dollars!
That's a lousy example. Didn't he fight to promote DC because he held the patent on DC current and NOT on AC current? It had nothing to do with being a bad idea, it had to do with Edison wanting to cash in on his invention.
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RumorsDaily
Any really intelligent person will weigh all sides of an issue before making a decision.
The great ones are the ones that select the facet that is the least known, but has no good reason to be unknown; and they make it very well known - either just because, or because they can.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Are the Chinese dumb? No. The average score of a Chinese on a calculus/trigonometry test is significantly above average, outscoring the nearest American.
The problem here is that we are mistaking test-score smarts or book smarts for compassion and kindness. Smarts do not imply kindness. Hitler was smart. Most Chinese are smart. Yet, most observers would agree that both are brutal.
There are lots of very capable coders out there who make excelent code for other techies, but for this very reason the UI often sucks.
I write apps for techies and I write apps for non-techies. The UIs and requirements are very different. Apps written for techies and accepted by techies is not proprly judged by non-techies, and vica versa. The arrogance is found in the people in both camps who insist that UI should fit their camp when it was written for the other camp.
If I write an app for techies and they like it, there is nothing "wrong" with it. Often, "techie" interfaces are aimed at functionality, not "point click drool". Thus any remarks about it being ugly are simply irrelevant.
The individualism and "if you don't like it, fix the code yourself" attitude of many open source projects means that people who aren't code junkies, but are excelent at understanding what a user might want get excluded from the process far too often.
And if they aren't the "target market" of the code author(s) that is just fine. Quite frankly much of the apps I write are not intended for end-user non-technical people and I don't care if they don't like it. Nor should I. Making it pretty will NOT enhance my market in the slightest, it will only pollute it. The same goes for end-user non-technical apps I write.
And finally, there is the "you get what you pay for" comment. Most open soruce apps are done for free. As such, Joe EndUser has no right to be "included" in the process.
Now to tie it all up with the favorite computer analogy: cars. GM (for example) sells cars. They sell cars for the enduser, and cars for the techie. Most people are familiar with the first category. But they also sell race-only versions of some of their cars, such as the C5R or upcoming C6R. The general public has zero input into these models, as it should be. Other companies also make race cars. These are oriented around a specific purpose.
The Mosler for example is a race-oriented car. Sure you can drive it on the street (and end user could buy and drive one), but it is aimed at being a performance auto for the track. It is the "code written by geeks for geeks" side.
Then you have the minivans and sedans, for example. They are built for the general consumer (the end user w/o technical skills). Sure a racer can drive one, even adapt it for racing (tens of thousands of Americans do this every year), but as a racer their input is not part of the design process or feature list. Witness the near-universal elimination of options like radio-delete and ac-delete.
IMO, nearly all these rants about ugly yet functional interfaces versus pretty but reduced functionality but pretty shiney interface fall under the categories above. Everybody wants a hand-built Ferrari for the price of a 10 year old wrecked and stripped Geo Metro. And they blame the "industry" for them not getting it.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Practice makes perfect. But, does a lack of practice make horrible? Quite possibly, through atrophy, or even never having done something.
During high school, I had such a great memory for what the teacher said that I could just listen, without taking notes, and then without studying anything, get good grades on the test. Throughout college, the classes where I struggled extremely were the ones in which I was expected to learn certain things outside of class. In those classes, since I had no practice of studying, or even the belief that I even should study, I did relatively poorly.
The people who are smart enough to go through High School without even having to pay attention are in a worse situation than I was, because in college, what the teacher says is very important.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Geeks can get infatuated with an idea that seems good, ignoring other good ideas that conflict with it. We used to call this "the tyranny of the single idea" - especially ideas that seem so good that they're treated as a "magic bullet", or (from a perhaps gentler folk era) a "panacea". This seems to be an variant of the Usenet wisdom immortalized in /usr/bin/fortune as "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
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make install -not war
Are the Chinese dumb? No. The average score of a Chinese on a calculus/trigonometry test is significantly above average, outscoring the nearest American.
That is because they actually use that stuff over there. We don't make physical stuff anymore, and thus don't deal with geometry etc. as much. We make junk bonds and bad movies, and you don't need trig for that.
Table-ized A.I.
Maybe... they aren't all that smart. Now, to answer the question why does society recognize absolute cretins as people of respectable intelligence?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I think you may be confusing agreement with people who decide that you're a complete idiot (rather than a condescending nuisance), nod politely and look for an escape route. Certainly, whenever someone starts yammering to me about "sheep" (or worse, "sheeple"!), I "agree without justification" and flee as soon as an opportunity permits...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
That's the essence of what the military calls command presence. When there are two passes through a mountain range, and they are both very much equal obstacles, a good commander swiftly declares, "That one, it's obviously better!", and gets everyone moving.
If you don't have enough clear criteria to evaluate a situation to your satisfaction, don't waste time evaluating it by ambiguous criteria. If the situation looks very much 50-50, then either choice is as right as right can be.
'Either bale might be wrong' paralizes - 'either bale must be right' frees.
Who is John Cabal?
Most of the time the point is just "fun". We don't do this to serve you, we do it for our own enjoyment. However, sometimes the point is "to get stuff done". In which case we do just enough to the job done and then we put up what we've got so others don't have to start from scratch. If you need more than my bare minimum then I expect you to code what you need, not come whining back to me that I didn't do what you need. The alternative is to start from scratch, so I think you should consider yourself lucky that I went to the bother of putting my stuff out there (and it is a bother).
Ultimately, if you can't take open source and tailor it to your own needs then you need to either put up or shut up. Either put up code or cash to get it to do what you want or shut up and use what you've been given.
On the other hand, if you've already paid someone for some open source software feel free to bitch and moan to that person as much as you like. Feel free to tell everyone that person didn't supply you what you paid them to supply you.
How we know is more important than what we know.
In my younger years, I took this to mean "Do everything, because you can". Now that I'm in college, that entire lesson was bunk, and now I'm stuck with a bunch of what I'd consider useless knowledge.
[...] something a lot of us are blessed/cursed with [...]
The problem with it is futility [...]
Sadly, I don't see an easy solution.
In art, it's known as the "white page syndrome".
You have a clean, white canvas, on it your talents enable you to paint anything. So you sit there, awash in the mental miasma of the endless possibilities assailing you.
The way I deal with it is to stop thinking and draw a random line, then based on what this restricts the possibilities to, I can build around it.
And the use I found for my "useless" knowledge is to wait for the conditions under which it will become usefull.
Maybe you'll be at a job interview and you'll have knowledge of something the interviewer is passionate about: Bang, you have the edge, you get chosen over the other equally qualified applicants.
My knowledge of all-around trivia actually became usefull when I was employed in a company that did some localisation work, it wasn't what I did there, but whenever the translators were faced with a subject they were unfamiliar with, they came to me. The kids in highschool were hostile to me for being a know-it-all, but at that job it made me quite popular.
Off course, I still feel this... lassitude, sometimes. I haven't found an easy solution, but since in a hundred years' time we'll all be dead, we might as well be ourselves while we can : )
You can't take the sky from me...
Smart people defend bad ideas...
because there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.
A friend of mine was taught a nifty lesson from her parents. It's in the vein of your "You can do anything..." quote, but maybe more apt, with a minor change.
The quote was "You can have anything you want--but you can't have everything you want."
Substitute "do" for "have" and booya!
Edison had the chance (repeatedly) to hire Tesla and keep him. Westinghouse ended up hiring him instead. Edison had chances to work with Westinghouse and many others in ways that could have been very profitable, but insisted on being a solo star ticket at practically all costs. Edison chose repeatedly to spend lots of money on patent litigation, demonstrations for the public, and other fluff to try and prove his points (electrocuting elephants isn't cheap!).
Who is John Cabal?
Slashdot should change it's slogan from "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" to "Slashdot: smart people defending bad ideas". Never before have I seen a more apropos description of this very sight than the article linked herein.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Or what about how he screwed Tesla over?
Edison: I'll pay you $50,000 if you redesign and improve this generator design.
....some time later....
Tesla: Sure, no problem.
Tesla: Done. Now wheres my money?
Edison Haha! Gocha good!
Tesla: Nothing? Not even a bit of it?
Edison: I'm sorry you don't understand American humor.
Tesla was a far greater man, and has been robbed of his place in history and in the mind of the public.
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Registered .sig quotient : 1337
Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas
Because their parents, and/or religious leaders, tell them to.
*puts on asbestos suit*
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Maybe not, but it was *their* totalitarian theocratic regime.
Imagine how people would feel if the Chinese tried to overthrow the totalitarian theocratic regime in Saudi Arabia, or the United States...
The face of 'evil' is always the face of total need
Three words
"Pride of authorship"
In any case, six-figure salaries aren't really uncommon for senior programmers / engineers with a couple decades of experience.
I went through gifted classes with kids who exemplified this thinking. Everything was about showing off their smarts. Making a calculator out of flashlight bulbs and switches. Creating new number and word games every single day. Designing new things and creating new programs and writing new reports every day.
To keep the brain working at peak performance, you have to exercise it just like you do your muscles. That's exactly what the behavior a highly intelligent person should be exhibiting.
They can't see that Windows is easier to install, configure, use, and support than any Unix variant for the average person and try to make Linux as easy.
Everyone who cares is trying to make Linux as easy. Most of the rest aren't interested in making the needs of the average person their goal. I see no real evidence for this generalization.
give the USA back to the native Americans or go home and shut the fuck up.
you'll grow out of it soon hopefully.
I used to be a bit like that when I was a kid but actually its a crashingly purile thing to go around doing, I'm guessing you haven't hit 20 yet. Possibly you are still the wrong side of adolescence.
Apart from automatically labelling you as an asshole, the truth is that the people most able to contradict you and justify their positions intelligently are the very people who'll avoid saying anything to you on matters you are interested in if thats how you behave. You see not everyone is caught up in your mindset, you've pretty much labelled yourself as not worthy of addressing seriously. You appear to imagine people care what you think of them and its not necessarily true. And thats if they twig you are playing some sort of devil's advocacy games. Otherwise you have announced to the world at large you are a dolt and frankly theres far too many of them around (e.g., people who suggest simplistic solutions to complex problems) for it to be worth correcting them. By suggesting a ludicrous plan such as the above it would rarely if ever be worth correcting you because it would be clear there are literally hours and hours of issues and historical incidents to inform you of and get out of the way. Who has the time? Better to nod, mutter something non-commital and go and find someone to talk to.
The further problem is that you are confusing willingness to get into an argument with you with a willingness to think and ultimately act independently anyway.
Get my drift? Please drop the habit. Its doing you no favours.
In fact, it's quite the opposite of what you're thinking. A post like that isn't ego driven; it's frustration. Nothing has pissed me off more in life than "trying to find a purpose", ie something to do with my life, since I know I can "do anything if I put my mind to it". The problem isn't capability of our youth. I feel like anyone else; we all can learn to do anything if we choose to, but the question is "how do we choose to?" So instead of teaching us how to choose a task, our schools pack us with so many choices that it's generally impossible to choose.
I chose something because it's what I spent most of my time doing, even if I don't really enjoy it.
Implicit understanding of my philosophies kind of drove your post off into a misunderstanding of what I'm getting at. Not all kids, myself included, know exactly what to do. My high school graduates less than a hundred students a year. Fourty of them leap off into state schools and different colleges. Twenty jump into vocations and tech schools. The other ten of us, the few that never really excelled at any one thing, the few that were completely and totally average in every subject (or in the case of my friends, completely and totally ABOVE average in every single subject) had no clue what to do. So we scatter off into collleges and universities, spending who knows how much on even more education towards even more indecision.
I don't consider myself superior, nor do I find myself below everyone else. I'm just your standard, middle class American with student loans and misunderstandings. Ever seen American Beauty??
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
The point of this phrase is not "you can do everything without trying", but "you are capable of achieving any (one) thing, if you focus on succeeding"
I've seen enough talentless but driven people succeed to realize that talent and skills are gifts, but you gotta use 'em properly to get maximum benefit from them.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
There are people in this world who simply could not be replaced with any number of 'normal' employees -- because most employees want a 9 to 5 job and a paycheck, and that's it. From Starbucks to NASA. Some people make their jobs their lives -- hey, whatever makes you happy.
;~) ).
And.. I want to say *ANY 'employee' making over a few mill a year, but really it is just MOST people being paid such is being paid as a form of recognition, not because the person being paid cares about the money itself.
And a CEO with vision can be worth infinitely more than 500 programmers -- because a company without a PURPOSE goes bankrupt and there are no more programmers (div by zero
That said, writing a contract that lets a CEO commit murder and still get paid is pretty damned stupid.
The writer is talking about poseurs and pseudo-intellectuals. You know - the ones you can't *avoid* hearing at parties... These people know that they are not *that* smart and try to protect their image of intelligence by defending every statement. While they believe that they have successfully pulled this off (as in the article...) what they have really done is convinced practically everyone around that they have no clue.
In contrast, the majority of *really* smart people don't really care if they're wrong occasionally since they *know* that they are smart and being wrong once in a while is no biggie and they'll learn something so that they will be right (again) the next time...
Doesn't that open room for more people to earn 2 million?
I.e. Someone says, I'm making my two-million now, so I can stop working so hard, but I can see there is scope for more, so partner, why don't you get in on some of this?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Sorry
This is the "argument from authority", which - as a student of Plato - you should know is the weakest of all arguments:
"There are degrees and areas of expertise. The speaker is actually claiming to be more expert, in the relevant subject area, than anyone else in the room."
I've met lot's of "smart guys" like you in the tech industry who throw up a whole set of ridiculous notions in the hope that some "idiot" (like me) won't notice how stupid the basic premise is.
And the whole thing is based on "who's the biggest prat in the room?" You propose something outside the comfort zone of the victim and try to take the audience with you.
Unfortunately, it such a cheap trick, it's dumb, and you don't do yourself any favors.
Haven't you ever heard the advice "don't argue with a fool - people watching can't tell the difference"
A PhD doesn't validate every idiotic opinion you have you know, only the one that was the subject of your thesis.
You imply that if a land is taken by force from original occupiers .. that is legitimate, moral, and right? No need to feel bad about handing out the smallpox blankets?
Am I getting u straight?
I hope you were aiming for funny, not the insightful moderation you got...
For those who modded it insightful, have you ever heard of playing Devil's Advocate and simply debating for the sake of debate? It's an excellent way to learn the tactics and refine your own ideas, whether you're arguing for or against them.
I recently argued about the Israel-Palestine issue with two different people - thing is, I took the oppsite side in both. It really makes you think about the situation, and about what you really think the answer is.
Jw
...deriding religion on Slashdot. Why, I think that's never been done before.
It's a special kind of funny to see folks who fancy themselves "out-there", real "edgy thinking" being about as cliched as can possibly be imagined. Who do they think they're foolin?
Take the Chinese for example. The majority of them insist that Tibet should be occupied by Chinese military forces.
That would probably be due to the fact that information is very strictly controlled in China. If the only source you have for information is the communist media, then the persecution of the Tibetans, the Uighurs, Falun Gong, and the Tienanmen Square Massacre will all seem like the enlightened policies of a benevolent state.
When I chat with Chinese people via the internet, they all know that they lost a relative or two during the 1960's, but they have no idea that Mao's "great leap forward" debacle killed something more than twenty million people.
Likewise, they have no idea that that little twerp of a Stalinist runt running North Korea let three million people starve to death so that his pride wouldn't be hurt by getting out of the way of the foreign aid that could have saved them.
Chinese people aren't stupid, by any means. Just observing the ingenuity with which they work around their totalitarian masters, making a living while paying lip-service to the memory of the man who killed around thirty million of them ("great leader", indeed!), will show you that they're remarkably resourceful.
What gives me great hope for China, is the way that the Chinese I speak with are so eager to find out what the thugs don't want them to know. Back when Deng ordered the slaughter in 1989, he had to bring in troops from far out in the country, who had no idea what was going on in Beijing, since the local garrison wouldn't have opened fire on unarmed protestors.
The commies will fall, and they will fall because internal communication is improving by leaps and bounds. One thing a totalitarian regime needs above all else to stay in power, is the ability to lie and effectively supress the truth. That ability is rapidly slipping away from the Chinese government, and sooner or later, they'll fall just like the Soviets. Once that happens, hold on to your hat, because China will accomplish some truly amazing things.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Well then that's not a fucking large corporation like Apple which is the theme of this discussion. Jesus Christ, do you people even pay attention to the topic, or do you throw in wild arguments just for the hell of it??!!
Isn't that what they feed everyone in KINDERGARDEN; "You can do anything if you just put your mind to it"?
In my younger years, I took this to mean "Do everything, because you can". Now that I'm in FIRST GRADE, that entire lesson was bunk, and now I'm stuck with a bunch of what I'd consider useless knowledge.
The "Pretender" gene, as I often call it (after the TV series) is something a lot of us are blessed/cursed with. We have the ability to sit down at a BOOK and COLOR anything, then get up, walk into a BACKYARD, pick up JUNK and build A FORT, then go to a FRIEND'S HOUSE and IMPRESS THEM.
The problem with it is futility. Others like me, myself included, find it futile at times to do anything, since we've done everything we're interested in doing. Us general-purpose, disposable task people have to cast ourselves into single purpose, repetitive task people, and that's really hard for us, in FIRST GRADE, and in life.
Sadly, I don't see an easy solution. Except I won't be telling my children that "They can do anything". I'll tell them "you can do something. but it's up to you to choose what that something is."
MAYBE I'LL CURE AIDS, STOP WAR, END DEATH AND SUFFERING BY NOON TOMORROW. AFTER ALL, I CAN DO ANYTHING. I'M DELUDED.
To a great extent this issue reminds me of the observations made of those more and less likely to believe in the supernatural. Sceptics are likely to miss pattern that exists, and believers are likely to invent non-existent pattern (or so we believe). To spot counter-cultural pattern, then, is also to be more likely to invent pattern that isn't there.
The trouble being that there are many conclusions that the informed or observant can make that differ from "common sense", and the brain being what it is, we don't necessarily know the steps of how to get there. This doesn't make us wrong... or right; our perception is different.
I'll pick an example that generates more heat than light on slashdot: how do illegal downloads effect aggregate sales of music and movies? The common man is sure that IP infringement must lead to reduced sales, yet many slashdotters believe this not to be the case, and a few even believe the opposite.
What is the truth? The form of the question can affect the outcome. For example: restrict your study to (relatively poor) students, and you get the "common sense" result. Aggregate sales using a detailed and sophisticated economic analysis, and you get no effect. But maybe our intellect is misleading us: if we get goods for free, although it might shift our spending onto other music and movies, are we perhaps less motivated to work in the first place? with this larger frame of reference, it appears that the intelligent individual has quite possibly picked a convenient intermediate-sized frame of reference, when a frame of reference that was larger still would (perhaps) reveal 'theft' from the economy as a whole. This is a bit of a conconcted 'counter-example', though: our greed is such that we're likely to keep working to own more, regardless of how much we have.
What about software patents? Most of us here (myself included) are anti. Assuming (for the moment) that the 'anti' stance is right, why then do so many lawyers believe the converse? I doubt that it's wholly because of their self-interest (although that might bias them); it's because of a particular view of the business of business, of the value and importance of contract and of property, and of incentives and defined rights that meld, to the lawerly mind, with morality, and the natural way of things. To break with this, brings them to presuppose harm, and their experience with the concrete (case by case), rather than the systemic effects reinforces this way of thinking. Is the abstract argument really wrong? That it's harm to think of examples of avenues that will be impeded (they haven't been thought of yet!) doesn't make them any less real. Here, then, the emphasis upon concreteness is itself misleading.
Another example: minimum wages. I believe that one of my own JEs illustrates this well. I don't think that I (arguing for a minimum) argued at my best, and Red Warrior applied some experience, but neither of us "won", I feel. However, one thing's for sure; most of the pro-free-market intellectuals ignore the 'monopsony' effect of deliberately cartelising the labour force, so that the first level of abstraction is misleading as to the degree of the effect on unemployment. To some extent, then, here the 'simple' reaction that it redistributes wealth the the relatively poor has a lot of truth to it. The intellectual's love of pristine, perfect, simple systems can and does mislead. My stance might itself be flawed. The intellectual's stance often comes from a deeper analysis or intuition, and they could easily be at a loss to explain it. From this difficulty, it's difficult to decide which way is the truth. Not all difficulty is denial.
Wikileaks, no DNS