He must have been talking about the fruit. Stupid people don't remember eating the large ones, causing them to ingest them over and over, which is a choking hazard. This is evolution at work.
The tortured genius is not tortured by substances.
We smart people use alcohol as a method of temporarily relieving the lonely burden of not being a moron, in order to fit in with the rest of you.
If it weren't for alcohol, most, if not all, of my slashdot posts would not exist. Judging by the rest of the posts here, I'm not alone in my relentless pursuit of mediocrity.
I tend to overlook the obvious, and go for the bizarre interpretations of things.
Hmm, if I had to guess, I'd say that you probably have this disability as a result of being abducted by highly intelligent purple sea creatures who altered your genetic code as part of a ritual they come to the surface to perform only once every thousand years.
The bad karma is skipping over the two best generations of Windows to go from the absolute worst to the second worst.
If I were your wife, I'd be e-filing for divorce about now. She probably is trying, but the number of prompts and obstacles in her way are preventing her from completing the task. You should get a copy of XP on there -- much cheaper than a lawyer.
1) Drastically cut defense, by at least half. Bring the troops home, and I don't mean just in Iraq. Defense should be about preventing an invasion of this country, which we are failing to do. Station defense forces on Mexican border. Continue funding defense research, especially the type that enables us to do more with less, like UAV's and the F22.
2) Complete federal-government wide hiring freeze. Let people retire, then shift jobs around, eliminating unnecessary ones. I've worked for a three letter agency, you could easily eliminate about 40% of the people with no loss in functionality.
3) Homeland security is gone. Same with HUD, Department of Education, Agriculture, National Science Foundation.
4) Merge the entire Intelligence community under the CIA.
5) Eliminate the income tax. Replace with Fair Tax, with a plan to decrease that tax annually until all federal expenses are paid via inflationary measures only. Write an amendment that the total annual federal budget can not exceed 5% of GDP except in time of war, with war being defined as actions taken to counter aggressive foreign occupation of a U.S. state.
7) Allow anyone who wants to opt out of Social Security. This means they don't pay into it, and can never receive benefits.
8) Repeal the prescription drug plan.
9) Veto everything until both a line item veto amendment and a balanced budget amendment are passed.
And that's about it. I think that these things are almost necessary for the country to survive another 100 years without an economic collapse.
You shouldn't have to promote anything. It's counter-productive, and you'll get blamed when stuff goes wrong. If FOSS solves a problem people have, make them aware of that. Then keep your mouth shut.
The broken window fallacy doesn't apply to the space program as a whole, because there is a real and measurable benefit.
If you did a cost benefit analysis of the broken window scenario, you'd find that the wealth of the system after all of the transactions had taken place had not increased. In other words, the state of the store before then breaking and fixing of the window is exactly the same. This doesn't seem like it would be detrimental until you realize that this doesn't take place in a vacuum. In a neighborhood where crime is rampant, the shopkeeper will pack up and go somewhere else, reducing absolutely the wealth of that neighborhood.
The space program doesn't just maintain a status quo by fixing broken things. Our wealth as a nation and globally is increased as a result of it. We have a GPS system, for example.
The manned space program, however, has produced much less of a tangible benefit. We have a flag on the moon, national pride, can repair some satellites, etc., but the tremendous cost of sending men up there is arguably less easy to justify.
The problem with this article is that alternatives are not explored. Is a manned space program worth the cost? Well that depends entirely on what else could we do with that money. Could we have additional space telescopes up there? Could we have additional satellite communication infrastructure? The benefit of those have to be analyzed before you can answer the first question.
But nobody's doing the analysis, they're just trying to justify the expense without considering alternatives. This is an emotional argument with no basis in logic. Saying, "the manned space mission is definitely worth $16 billion a year," is meaningless without consideration for alternative uses of that money.
No, each of those things has a price. With limited funds, you will have to choose to do one or the other. Whenever you spend money, you're making this choice, whether you think about it or not.
To clarify, many people will ask, "Is it worth $10,000 to keep a brain-dead man alive for a year?" They will then go on to say how a man's life has a value that you can't put a price on, yadda yadda yadda. But this ignores the fact that there are many possible uses for that $10,000, so by spending the money on keeping that man alive, you are not using it for other, possibly more beneficial, purposes.
The proper question to ask is, "What is the best possible use of my $10,000?" Otherwise, you get into heated emotional arguments that inevitably end with, "How can you be so cold hearted and put a price on _____!?!?!?"
In this case, we're asking, "Is the space program worth _______?" This is unanswerable, because the best anyone can do is make a relative decision, and we're not given any alternatives. The responsible question is, "Given the money currently spent on the space program, what is the best possible use of those dollars?"
If you still answer that question with, "explore space by sending people up there!" after you've decided that every other possible alternative use of the billions of dollars is less beneficial, then you've got a decent argument for manned space exploration. This is a proper economic justification.
Interestingly, this is the kind of analysis that happens automatically in a large distributed network when the free market is allowed to operate. Alternately, if I ever heard of this kind of analysis being done by the Federal government, I think I'd fall over.
As to the fallacy itself I can't entirely agree with it.
You'd have some ground to disagree with the fallacy if people saved money by hiding it under their mattress. But what happens is that capital not spent on a broken window sits in a bank where it is loaned to people who have an immediate use for it. Easy access to capital is what drives an economy, not fixing broken windows over and over.
If you take this to the extreme, let's assume the window is broken by vandals every night, so the baker is in the red after he pays for the window to be fixed, and eventually must close up shop. Now you have an unemployed baker, a glass repair man with a smaller customer base, and the price of bread in town has doubled since it must be imported from somewhere else. Everyone spends less on something else since they have to eat, and the entire economy suffers.
Putting things in dollar values is depressing, until you think that those dollars could be used for benefit.
Is it worth the cost of keeping a permanently brain dead man alive for a year at the expense of providing excellent cancer treatment to a child? These things both have a dollar value, but the dollar value hides the real decision that is taking place every time you spend or don't spend money.
A quick analysis shows that we humans are extremely selfish and unconcerned about people we don't know intimately. If you've bought a DVD instead of sending that $10 to St. Jude hospital, you've made a decision that adversely affects a child with cancer in order to have a couple of hours of entertainment. And yet I doubt anyone feels guilty about buying a DVD.
The thing is, economics provides exactly the right tools to quantify ALL of these things, but my guess is that our collective egos can't handle the natural questions about our nature that result, so we don't think about it too hard.
How do you justify the space exploration form of entertainment over other forms?
If there's no direct economic benefit, wouldn't it be better to use the money to pay a portion of everyone's cable bill? That would satisfy a much larger number of people, and probably cost less.
Maybe space exploration is a worthwhile goal, but it's hideously expensive at this point. Why not wait fifty or so years for technology to improve? It's likely that the cost will go down. Why is it so important that it has to be funded right now? If this truly is the destiny of humanity, can't it wait a hundred years? What's a hundred years compared to the length of time humans have been around?
I don't have answers, but these are the types of things we should be asking ourselves. People arguing for funding should be able to answer these.
If we don't have peaceful space exploration and means of growing outwards, our only solutions are war, mass genocide, famine, disease and many horrible ugly scenarios.
People say this as if this very thing hasn't been the norm throughout history and is still the norm today.
There isn't a precipice we're heading toward where massive wars break out or we all starve. The wars and genocide are already happening today all over the place. If they're not happening in your neighborhood, then odds are your culture already has a handle on the sustainment problem.
Civilized societies are approaching negative population growth. Overpopulation is not a problem for a country that has the resources to colonize other planets.
<!-- cheater512's NDA script v0.9 DON'T LOOK AT THIS LOOSERS!!! --> <head><script language="javascript"> function interp(text) {
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This apparently is version 0.9. In version 1.0, the p < 10 condition is replaced with p < 5, doubling performance with only a slight loss in functionality.
If only someone had thought of this when they started the USA -- instead of a single mega-nation, we could just have a loose union of independent states for the purpose of common defense, monetary units, and maybe throw in a post office for shits and giggles.
That would have solved a lot of problems over the past 150 years or so!
We should send letters to our congressmen urging them to support this idea. Maybe it could evolve into an amendment to the Constitution to make the change permanent!
While I agree this is absurd, I think it shows the opposite of corruption in government. The people governed are getting exactly what they want, and they have the freedom to screw up their kids' education as they see fit.
I think I'd prefer to allow people to make mistakes in order to preserve this kind of freedom.
I think probably the no advancement and raises are the deciding factors there.
Six figures sounds like a lot, but if you have a family with a couple kids, want to own a house, and have been paying attention to the value of the US dollar, it's not unreasonable to be worried that a six figure salary won't cut it ten years from now, especially if you want to save money for retirement.
Slashdot Mirror
He must have been talking about the fruit. Stupid people don't remember eating the large ones, causing them to ingest them over and over, which is a choking hazard. This is evolution at work.
The tortured genius is not tortured by substances.
We smart people use alcohol as a method of temporarily relieving the lonely burden of not being a moron, in order to fit in with the rest of you.
If it weren't for alcohol, most, if not all, of my slashdot posts would not exist. Judging by the rest of the posts here, I'm not alone in my relentless pursuit of mediocrity.
Race you to the bottom, gentlemen!
I tend to overlook the obvious, and go for the bizarre interpretations of things.
Hmm, if I had to guess, I'd say that you probably have this disability as a result of being abducted by highly intelligent purple sea creatures who altered your genetic code as part of a ritual they come to the surface to perform only once every thousand years.
Am I right?
The bad karma is skipping over the two best generations of Windows to go from the absolute worst to the second worst.
If I were your wife, I'd be e-filing for divorce about now. She probably is trying, but the number of prompts and obstacles in her way are preventing her from completing the task. You should get a copy of XP on there -- much cheaper than a lawyer.
I was sitting on the floor one day testing vacuum tubes, as teenagers are apt to do
Ah yes, gone are the carefree and reckless days of youth.
HOLY SHIT, THAT TAXI IS GOING TO RUN ME OVER!!!!!!!!!
There you go. Didn't even need a complicated simulation.
Yes, and that point is when the TV can match or exceed a good movie theater.
I love HDTV, and don't watch TV at all. Movies are great, though.
Here's my plan:
1) Drastically cut defense, by at least half. Bring the troops home, and I don't mean just in Iraq. Defense should be about preventing an invasion of this country, which we are failing to do. Station defense forces on Mexican border. Continue funding defense research, especially the type that enables us to do more with less, like UAV's and the F22.
2) Complete federal-government wide hiring freeze. Let people retire, then shift jobs around, eliminating unnecessary ones. I've worked for a three letter agency, you could easily eliminate about 40% of the people with no loss in functionality.
3) Homeland security is gone. Same with HUD, Department of Education, Agriculture, National Science Foundation.
4) Merge the entire Intelligence community under the CIA.
5) Eliminate the income tax. Replace with Fair Tax, with a plan to decrease that tax annually until all federal expenses are paid via inflationary measures only. Write an amendment that the total annual federal budget can not exceed 5% of GDP except in time of war, with war being defined as actions taken to counter aggressive foreign occupation of a U.S. state.
7) Allow anyone who wants to opt out of Social Security. This means they don't pay into it, and can never receive benefits.
8) Repeal the prescription drug plan.
9) Veto everything until both a line item veto amendment and a balanced budget amendment are passed.
And that's about it. I think that these things are almost necessary for the country to survive another 100 years without an economic collapse.
You shouldn't have to promote anything. It's counter-productive, and you'll get blamed when stuff goes wrong. If FOSS solves a problem people have, make them aware of that. Then keep your mouth shut.
The broken window fallacy doesn't apply to the space program as a whole, because there is a real and measurable benefit.
If you did a cost benefit analysis of the broken window scenario, you'd find that the wealth of the system after all of the transactions had taken place had not increased. In other words, the state of the store before then breaking and fixing of the window is exactly the same. This doesn't seem like it would be detrimental until you realize that this doesn't take place in a vacuum. In a neighborhood where crime is rampant, the shopkeeper will pack up and go somewhere else, reducing absolutely the wealth of that neighborhood.
The space program doesn't just maintain a status quo by fixing broken things. Our wealth as a nation and globally is increased as a result of it. We have a GPS system, for example.
The manned space program, however, has produced much less of a tangible benefit. We have a flag on the moon, national pride, can repair some satellites, etc., but the tremendous cost of sending men up there is arguably less easy to justify.
The problem with this article is that alternatives are not explored. Is a manned space program worth the cost? Well that depends entirely on what else could we do with that money. Could we have additional space telescopes up there? Could we have additional satellite communication infrastructure? The benefit of those have to be analyzed before you can answer the first question.
But nobody's doing the analysis, they're just trying to justify the expense without considering alternatives. This is an emotional argument with no basis in logic. Saying, "the manned space mission is definitely worth $16 billion a year," is meaningless without consideration for alternative uses of that money.
No, each of those things has a price. With limited funds, you will have to choose to do one or the other. Whenever you spend money, you're making this choice, whether you think about it or not.
To clarify, many people will ask, "Is it worth $10,000 to keep a brain-dead man alive for a year?" They will then go on to say how a man's life has a value that you can't put a price on, yadda yadda yadda. But this ignores the fact that there are many possible uses for that $10,000, so by spending the money on keeping that man alive, you are not using it for other, possibly more beneficial, purposes.
The proper question to ask is, "What is the best possible use of my $10,000?" Otherwise, you get into heated emotional arguments that inevitably end with, "How can you be so cold hearted and put a price on _____!?!?!?"
In this case, we're asking, "Is the space program worth _______?" This is unanswerable, because the best anyone can do is make a relative decision, and we're not given any alternatives. The responsible question is, "Given the money currently spent on the space program, what is the best possible use of those dollars?"
If you still answer that question with, "explore space by sending people up there!" after you've decided that every other possible alternative use of the billions of dollars is less beneficial, then you've got a decent argument for manned space exploration. This is a proper economic justification.
Interestingly, this is the kind of analysis that happens automatically in a large distributed network when the free market is allowed to operate. Alternately, if I ever heard of this kind of analysis being done by the Federal government, I think I'd fall over.
As to the fallacy itself I can't entirely agree with it.
You'd have some ground to disagree with the fallacy if people saved money by hiding it under their mattress. But what happens is that capital not spent on a broken window sits in a bank where it is loaned to people who have an immediate use for it. Easy access to capital is what drives an economy, not fixing broken windows over and over.
If you take this to the extreme, let's assume the window is broken by vandals every night, so the baker is in the red after he pays for the window to be fixed, and eventually must close up shop. Now you have an unemployed baker, a glass repair man with a smaller customer base, and the price of bread in town has doubled since it must be imported from somewhere else. Everyone spends less on something else since they have to eat, and the entire economy suffers.
Putting things in dollar values is depressing, until you think that those dollars could be used for benefit.
Is it worth the cost of keeping a permanently brain dead man alive for a year at the expense of providing excellent cancer treatment to a child? These things both have a dollar value, but the dollar value hides the real decision that is taking place every time you spend or don't spend money.
A quick analysis shows that we humans are extremely selfish and unconcerned about people we don't know intimately. If you've bought a DVD instead of sending that $10 to St. Jude hospital, you've made a decision that adversely affects a child with cancer in order to have a couple of hours of entertainment. And yet I doubt anyone feels guilty about buying a DVD.
The thing is, economics provides exactly the right tools to quantify ALL of these things, but my guess is that our collective egos can't handle the natural questions about our nature that result, so we don't think about it too hard.
How do you justify the space exploration form of entertainment over other forms?
If there's no direct economic benefit, wouldn't it be better to use the money to pay a portion of everyone's cable bill? That would satisfy a much larger number of people, and probably cost less.
Maybe space exploration is a worthwhile goal, but it's hideously expensive at this point. Why not wait fifty or so years for technology to improve? It's likely that the cost will go down. Why is it so important that it has to be funded right now? If this truly is the destiny of humanity, can't it wait a hundred years? What's a hundred years compared to the length of time humans have been around?
I don't have answers, but these are the types of things we should be asking ourselves. People arguing for funding should be able to answer these.
I could take that same 10% from the military to fund national Free Kielbasa Tuesdays, but just because I can, doesn't make it a good idea.
The "Hey, we waste money on this one thing, we can certainly waste other money on something different that I like!" argument doesn't hold water.
It has been reported that the US Department of Defense has "misplaced" 2.3 trillion dollars of "stuff."
That's more than the DoD's entire budget for the past five years. I suggest you find better reporting sources.
To get a trillion dollars, you'd have to use nearly all of the individual income tax revenue collected in a single year.
And what are these conservative investments that you'd put a trillion dollars into? Government bonds?
You do realize that taking a trillion dollars out of circulation just might have some effect on the overall economy and the value of a dollar, no?
You talk about a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon it starts to add up to real money.
If we don't have peaceful space exploration and means of growing outwards, our only solutions are war, mass genocide, famine, disease and many horrible ugly scenarios.
People say this as if this very thing hasn't been the norm throughout history and is still the norm today.
There isn't a precipice we're heading toward where massive wars break out or we all starve. The wars and genocide are already happening today all over the place. If they're not happening in your neighborhood, then odds are your culture already has a handle on the sustainment problem.
Civilized societies are approaching negative population growth. Overpopulation is not a problem for a country that has the resources to colonize other planets.
It's GPL, we can add it back.
And we can add in kidnappings and beheadings. Everyone wins!
Step 0.5) Remove paint
Screw that, load me up with the fake stuff, please. I like my ingredients mined, not squirted out of some cow.
If only someone had thought of this when they started the USA -- instead of a single mega-nation, we could just have a loose union of independent states for the purpose of common defense, monetary units, and maybe throw in a post office for shits and giggles.
That would have solved a lot of problems over the past 150 years or so!
We should send letters to our congressmen urging them to support this idea. Maybe it could evolve into an amendment to the Constitution to make the change permanent!
While I agree this is absurd, I think it shows the opposite of corruption in government. The people governed are getting exactly what they want, and they have the freedom to screw up their kids' education as they see fit.
I think I'd prefer to allow people to make mistakes in order to preserve this kind of freedom.
I think probably the no advancement and raises are the deciding factors there.
Six figures sounds like a lot, but if you have a family with a couple kids, want to own a house, and have been paying attention to the value of the US dollar, it's not unreasonable to be worried that a six figure salary won't cut it ten years from now, especially if you want to save money for retirement.