this is like only noticing that racism is a problem, when a "nice, pretty black women" gets in trouble with the KKK. I absolutely agree.
The thing is, though, you can't root out racism and sexism by politely appealing to racists and sexists (or to those who don't give a damn about racism and sexism in their blogs' comments) to adhere to some do-gooders rules.
The rules will only be held up by a minority of dreamers within the large group of people who already know how to behave. Those who don't, won't care.
This "code of conduct" might well be - like it might be expected of people like Tim O'Reilly - just an attempt to improve the public image of blogs, their protagonists and their business environments. It will change nothing at all, except providing a warm feeling for those who proudly publicize their adhering to the code.
Society's requirements vs. proper education
on
Is The Term Paper Dead?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Summary: The greatest cost of cheating is borne by the cheater.
In general, I could not agree more.
Unfortunately, society's expectations towards its members do not care about such notions. Society expects its members to efficiently adjust to their tasks of getting jobs, lest their chances of earning their living will be diminished. It's not simply laziness or some blameworthy inclination to take the path of least resistance, it's also society's vital requirements which coerce competing students to resort to methods which are bound to contradict what we might wish to be the essence of education.
To improve the foundation for "real education", society would have to get rid of quite a lot of adverse competitiveness. As things are now, and I think the tendency is that it's continually getting worse, people are more and more obliged to learn what pays, and to learn in a way that pays, not to really learn what would be interesting or valuable to know from an intellectual or even cultural point of view.
if they did own cars, they would probably be just as desirous of one that externalized the image that they're trying to present to the world -- in the same way that the clothes/briefcase/watch/cellphone/etc. Probably right, but here we go again: the kind of image people might want to convey with their cars is what matters and what needs to be changed long-term, globally.
There are already a lot of places even in the western world where people mostly just get sneered at for driving a big car. It's a matter of social norms in societies (and parts of societies), and there's always the chance they'll change, in fact they are always in the process of changing. Slowly. Of course, in western culture, it's the industry which has the most power to influence those norms by advertising etc., so to more effectively promote radically less fuel-consuming cars it probably will be necessary to get the industry into the boat in the first place, if we discard ideas like introducing requirements by law.
And by the way, the clothes metaphor does not apply at all. The environmental harmfulness of a huge overpowered car does not really compare to the "harmfulness" of an expensive suit--while, at least that's what I hope, the amount of people who want to include environmental concepts in their "image" is increasing as this world's environmental issues keep getting more and more severe...
> Majority of the users of Windows don't actually know how to use it.
Well, "know how to use it" to the extent of somehow getting it to do what it is supposed to...
> "What do you mean, I have just surfed the web and written some emails and edited some pictures. I haven't used Linux"
Exactly - would it be wrong to say that's just what you should expect from an operating system, that it run the apps you need and else does not get in the way? Which is why I find myself more sceptical towards every new Windows release - they alway introduce interface changes which actually do get in the way.
The former USSR and the former China were complete economic disasters Of course, and we could go on talking about the reasons a long way. But how about the living standards for the population? Do you actually think that the average former-USSR-citizen is better off nowadays? If he's still staying there, I mean?
my Chineese bodies tell me about the land of the Dragon, the modernization is helping all of these economies to increase employment especially in tech areas Ever cared to look at objective figures about China's unemployment situation? You seem to rely on rather, well, "selective" news sources. Rather than "especially", it's more like "only". Though the really cheap de-facto slave labor which is another facet of international competition is helping China's economy, even such jobs gets more and more under pressure from automation.
I don't need to continue this discussion. You do not live on the same planet. There, for once, I agree.;-)
Once the humans were able to even think of the laws of the land, it became illegal to murder people, however it is still done in the name of profit. Which actually was one of the points I was trying to make...
On average the standard of living is up from 100 years ago, what you see is some local disturbances No. Fact is that world poverty keeps increasing and poverty is increasing even in most of the industrialized states. Employment keeps decreasing nearly everywhere, and if you see employment figures somewhere increasing, it's a straw fire that cannot help the trend. In fact, the trend is a quite necessary result of modernization, and China is already being hit by it. Anyway, China and Russia are brilliant examples for the disastrous consequences, both humanitary and environmentally, of introducing full levels of market-economic competition.
I have nothing against "inequalities" per se, I simply think that a society's purpose is the welfare of its members. All of them. If it wasn't, it would not be worth the effort to build a society in the first place. And I'm no friend of authoritarian governments either. But your extremist opposition against government and taxes, while quite popular among freelancers and entrepreneurs, is quite naive. As if their only purpose was to oppress the citizen (and, of course, especially the freelancer and the entrepreneur). And your "welcoming" competition is similarly naive - imagine, like it's the case for many other occupations, twenty or thirty times the competition in your market, or more. Right, you might be so good, you'd still make it - but even then, you probably wouldn't be so happy anymore about income and working conditions. It's not only skill, not only the right decisions, it's a fair amount of luck as well if your welfare, at the moment, is not in danger. And that has much to do with the level of competition which for more and more people reduces living standards to a minimum.
One problem is, "illegal" activities to help one competing are as inherent to competition (and have always been) as its tendency to build monopolies, to root out all competition. And what is "legal" and what not is always a widely arbitrary decision of those who by chance have the political power at the time, and everyone knows about how political power and economic power are interconnected.
Competition as a main principle for a human society could be discussed, if there were enough resources to be distributed and if competition would see to it that noone has to suffer, while at the same time rewarding better competitors with better supplies. The fact is, and the wealth figures over the last decades prove it, that market economy's competition principle is actually less and less able to provide populations even with the absolute minimum of needed supplies, while the markets, especially the labor markets, simply have less and less use for those who are expected to compete there.
The notion that getting rid of evolutionary inhumanity would hamper society, would hamper man, is just ideology without any hint of scientific foundation - and one of the worst of ideologies for that matter. Fact is that there are many examples where great human achievements came out of personal living conditions which did not involve having to bother at all about earning a living, about competing for ones existence. If your observation of a growing lethargy is true, there might simply be other reasons. Like being doomed to spend more and more energy for the daily chores of earning a living and at the same time trying not to lose the job, while finally understanding that elections don't change a thing.
There's nothing to say about competition as an option, if people choose to compete, or about competition in a game, but as a basic principle just to survive it is no better than stone age. Actually, in many situations competition is destructive even for economic goals like productivity. Competing, people always tend to work against one another instead of working together. The more pressure competition applies, the less effective cooperation will be - which is true for employees as well as managers. In many cases, even in market economy much more could be achieved by solidarity as a principle instead of competition...
I'd say, mankind had better find "a viable alternative to market economy", as under its global master conditions an "efficient economy" is mainly "efficient" as an end in itself and for those few who still profit from it. Where market economy is going gets quite clear from the wealth distribution figures of the last four decades. Appealing to the "responsibilities" of the rich and economically mighty is about as clever as appealing to the next best dictator's philantropy.
On a side note, regularly and feebly appealing to economy's and industry's "responsibilities" towards "the people" and "the country" is something which has become very popular for German political leaders from the mainstream left to the conservative right. As if it were not just those politicians themselves whose job it is to provide for the legal framework so that economy and industry will serve the citizens, not only the other way round as it is more and more the case all over this planet. Even in regions where capitalism and market economy used to seem a good idea at the time, thirty or forty years ago.
"Concept albums" are not automatically "art"... In fact, many of them are simply kitsch. Just as there are lots of uninspired and boring "collections of songs" albums, there are lots of "concept albums" trying to impress with the "concept" concept but just containing uninspired and boring music as well...
Your absolutely right. I'd like to comment on "the rich should lead comfortable, even luxurious lives", though. As long as there's reason to believe that the worsening poorness of this world's majorities, including the growing populations of poor the core nations of industrialization, is somehow connected to the ever increasing richness of minorities, it ought to be in order to question the legitimacy of richness itself...
No, you are wrong. You don't seem to see that to remove competition is an inherent principle of competition. Every competitor's plan is to remove as much competition as possible, and removing all competition is simply one competitor's ultimate success. It's where all competition tries to go. Which is why governments have laws for economic competition. In the end they cannot really prevent the development of monopolies and monopolistic cartels, though.
And your even more wrong in cultivating the idea that evolutionary principles were a feasible basis for a human society. The opposite is the case; a society is the more advanced, the more it eliminates evolutionary mechanisms (which, in this context, are also known as Social Darwinism).
So people still let their personal worthiness be judged on their job productivity. While the world's employment figures of the last three decades don't show anything but the fact that productivity is the problem, not the solution. But no, everyone still seems to even derive some kind of part self-deluding, part self-destructive pride out of their being even more and more effectively exploited - whether with a cluttered or a most tidy desk...
Your school memories may be misleading you. Mine were not too positive either, which does not provide a logical reason to judge the whole by one of its elements, though.
Your suggested relationship of 'doing' and 'teaching' is not just plain stupid in its semantic analysis (teaching is, for one thing, doing); if true, it would imply that a competent teacher was strictly impossible, and that schools would best be closed down altogether. While I sometimes had such an impression while being at school myself, it's obviously stupid. More than that, school is not primarily supposed to make you able to 'do', but to let to 'know' and 'think' - which, by the way, would be something that could keep one from formulating stupid relationships.
Another thing. Your reference to Ireland may suggest that mass unemployment there, at this time, seems to be covered by the mere fact that it's less pronounced (although rising again) than in most of the rest of the industrialized world. In my country, there are millions of people, most of which 'can' and 'want', but economy does not let them 'do' anymore, neither do schools let those who could 'teach', as there are enough learned teachers to choose from and the schools' budgets keep getting thinner and thinner.
Even if some still make their careers, it's no more a world of such simple implications like skill leads to job. Which is something that still has to be grasped by many more people until society will be able to properly adjust to the phenomenon, I fear.
Yeah. About ten years ago I connected the three flats of the house I lived in then by BNC - out through one window frame, in through another window frame, as there was no chance to get the landlord to install ducts and trenches (or, for that matter, any one of the involved parties to pay for them). The black cables were practically wound around the house, we tried only slightly to not let them become too visible. When one of us moved to another place, it was 1 km away. We immediately considered extending the connection alongside the power lines, though our consideration probably was on less serious terms than yours. As both places did not see each other we had to discard any ideas of point-to-point radio as well. It took quite a while until internet access became fast enough and cheap enough to provide a real replacent for our early LAN connection.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is, though, you can't root out racism and sexism by politely appealing to racists and sexists (or to those who don't give a damn about racism and sexism in their blogs' comments) to adhere to some do-gooders rules.
The rules will only be held up by a minority of dreamers within the large group of people who already know how to behave. Those who don't, won't care.
This "code of conduct" might well be - like it might be expected of people like Tim O'Reilly - just an attempt to improve the public image of blogs, their protagonists and their business environments. It will change nothing at all, except providing a warm feeling for those who proudly publicize their adhering to the code.
In general, I could not agree more.
Unfortunately, society's expectations towards its members do not care about such notions. Society expects its members to efficiently adjust to their tasks of getting jobs, lest their chances of earning their living will be diminished. It's not simply laziness or some blameworthy inclination to take the path of least resistance, it's also society's vital requirements which coerce competing students to resort to methods which are bound to contradict what we might wish to be the essence of education.
To improve the foundation for "real education", society would have to get rid of quite a lot of adverse competitiveness. As things are now, and I think the tendency is that it's continually getting worse, people are more and more obliged to learn what pays, and to learn in a way that pays, not to really learn what would be interesting or valuable to know from an intellectual or even cultural point of view.
if they did own cars, they would probably be just as desirous of one that externalized the image that they're trying to present to the world -- in the same way that the clothes/briefcase/watch/cellphone/etc. Probably right, but here we go again: the kind of image people might want to convey with their cars is what matters and what needs to be changed long-term, globally.
There are already a lot of places even in the western world where people mostly just get sneered at for driving a big car. It's a matter of social norms in societies (and parts of societies), and there's always the chance they'll change, in fact they are always in the process of changing. Slowly. Of course, in western culture, it's the industry which has the most power to influence those norms by advertising etc., so to more effectively promote radically less fuel-consuming cars it probably will be necessary to get the industry into the boat in the first place, if we discard ideas like introducing requirements by law.
And by the way, the clothes metaphor does not apply at all. The environmental harmfulness of a huge overpowered car does not really compare to the "harmfulness" of an expensive suit--while, at least that's what I hope, the amount of people who want to include environmental concepts in their "image" is increasing as this world's environmental issues keep getting more and more severe...
> Majority of the users of Windows don't actually know how to use it.
Well, "know how to use it" to the extent of somehow getting it to do what it is supposed to...
> "What do you mean, I have just surfed the web and written some emails and edited some pictures. I haven't used Linux"
Exactly - would it be wrong to say that's just what you should expect from an operating system, that it run the apps you need and else does not get in the way? Which is why I find myself more sceptical towards every new Windows release - they alway introduce interface changes which actually do get in the way.
The former USSR and the former China were complete economic disasters Of course, and we could go on talking about the reasons a long way. But how about the living standards for the population? Do you actually think that the average former-USSR-citizen is better off nowadays? If he's still staying there, I mean?
;-)
my Chineese bodies tell me about the land of the Dragon, the modernization is helping all of these economies to increase employment especially in tech areas Ever cared to look at objective figures about China's unemployment situation? You seem to rely on rather, well, "selective" news sources. Rather than "especially", it's more like "only". Though the really cheap de-facto slave labor which is another facet of international competition is helping China's economy, even such jobs gets more and more under pressure from automation.
I don't need to continue this discussion. You do not live on the same planet. There, for once, I agree.
Once the humans were able to even think of the laws of the land, it became illegal to murder people, however it is still done in the name of profit. Which actually was one of the points I was trying to make...
On average the standard of living is up from 100 years ago, what you see is some local disturbances No. Fact is that world poverty keeps increasing and poverty is increasing even in most of the industrialized states. Employment keeps decreasing nearly everywhere, and if you see employment figures somewhere increasing, it's a straw fire that cannot help the trend. In fact, the trend is a quite necessary result of modernization, and China is already being hit by it. Anyway, China and Russia are brilliant examples for the disastrous consequences, both humanitary and environmentally, of introducing full levels of market-economic competition.
I have nothing against "inequalities" per se, I simply think that a society's purpose is the welfare of its members. All of them. If it wasn't, it would not be worth the effort to build a society in the first place. And I'm no friend of authoritarian governments either. But your extremist opposition against government and taxes, while quite popular among freelancers and entrepreneurs, is quite naive. As if their only purpose was to oppress the citizen (and, of course, especially the freelancer and the entrepreneur). And your "welcoming" competition is similarly naive - imagine, like it's the case for many other occupations, twenty or thirty times the competition in your market, or more. Right, you might be so good, you'd still make it - but even then, you probably wouldn't be so happy anymore about income and working conditions. It's not only skill, not only the right decisions, it's a fair amount of luck as well if your welfare, at the moment, is not in danger. And that has much to do with the level of competition which for more and more people reduces living standards to a minimum.
One problem is, "illegal" activities to help one competing are as inherent to competition (and have always been) as its tendency to build monopolies, to root out all competition. And what is "legal" and what not is always a widely arbitrary decision of those who by chance have the political power at the time, and everyone knows about how political power and economic power are interconnected.
Competition as a main principle for a human society could be discussed, if there were enough resources to be distributed and if competition would see to it that noone has to suffer, while at the same time rewarding better competitors with better supplies. The fact is, and the wealth figures over the last decades prove it, that market economy's competition principle is actually less and less able to provide populations even with the absolute minimum of needed supplies, while the markets, especially the labor markets, simply have less and less use for those who are expected to compete there.
The notion that getting rid of evolutionary inhumanity would hamper society, would hamper man, is just ideology without any hint of scientific foundation - and one of the worst of ideologies for that matter. Fact is that there are many examples where great human achievements came out of personal living conditions which did not involve having to bother at all about earning a living, about competing for ones existence. If your observation of a growing lethargy is true, there might simply be other reasons. Like being doomed to spend more and more energy for the daily chores of earning a living and at the same time trying not to lose the job, while finally understanding that elections don't change a thing.
There's nothing to say about competition as an option, if people choose to compete, or about competition in a game, but as a basic principle just to survive it is no better than stone age. Actually, in many situations competition is destructive even for economic goals like productivity. Competing, people always tend to work against one another instead of working together. The more pressure competition applies, the less effective cooperation will be - which is true for employees as well as managers. In many cases, even in market economy much more could be achieved by solidarity as a principle instead of competition...
I'd say, mankind had better find "a viable alternative to market economy", as under its global master conditions an "efficient economy" is mainly "efficient" as an end in itself and for those few who still profit from it. Where market economy is going gets quite clear from the wealth distribution figures of the last four decades. Appealing to the "responsibilities" of the rich and economically mighty is about as clever as appealing to the next best dictator's philantropy.
On a side note, regularly and feebly appealing to economy's and industry's "responsibilities" towards "the people" and "the country" is something which has become very popular for German political leaders from the mainstream left to the conservative right. As if it were not just those politicians themselves whose job it is to provide for the legal framework so that economy and industry will serve the citizens, not only the other way round as it is more and more the case all over this planet. Even in regions where capitalism and market economy used to seem a good idea at the time, thirty or forty years ago.
"Concept albums" are not automatically "art"... In fact, many of them are simply kitsch. Just as there are lots of uninspired and boring "collections of songs" albums, there are lots of "concept albums" trying to impress with the "concept" concept but just containing uninspired and boring music as well...
Your absolutely right. I'd like to comment on "the rich should lead comfortable, even luxurious lives", though. As long as there's reason to believe that the worsening poorness of this world's majorities, including the growing populations of poor the core nations of industrialization, is somehow connected to the ever increasing richness of minorities, it ought to be in order to question the legitimacy of richness itself...
No, you are wrong. You don't seem to see that to remove competition is an inherent principle of competition. Every competitor's plan is to remove as much competition as possible, and removing all competition is simply one competitor's ultimate success. It's where all competition tries to go. Which is why governments have laws for economic competition. In the end they cannot really prevent the development of monopolies and monopolistic cartels, though.
And your even more wrong in cultivating the idea that evolutionary principles were a feasible basis for a human society. The opposite is the case; a society is the more advanced, the more it eliminates evolutionary mechanisms (which, in this context, are also known as Social Darwinism).
So people still let their personal worthiness be judged on their job productivity. While the world's employment figures of the last three decades don't show anything but the fact that productivity is the problem, not the solution. But no, everyone still seems to even derive some kind of part self-deluding, part self-destructive pride out of their being even more and more effectively exploited - whether with a cluttered or a most tidy desk...
Cheers,
d. d.
Your school memories may be misleading you. Mine were not too positive either, which does not provide a logical reason to judge the whole by one of its elements, though.
Your suggested relationship of 'doing' and 'teaching' is not just plain stupid in its semantic analysis (teaching is, for one thing, doing); if true, it would imply that a competent teacher was strictly impossible, and that schools would best be closed down altogether. While I sometimes had such an impression while being at school myself, it's obviously stupid. More than that, school is not primarily supposed to make you able to 'do', but to let to 'know' and 'think' - which, by the way, would be something that could keep one from formulating stupid relationships.
Another thing. Your reference to Ireland may suggest that mass unemployment there, at this time, seems to be covered by the mere fact that it's less pronounced (although rising again) than in most of the rest of the industrialized world. In my country, there are millions of people, most of which 'can' and 'want', but economy does not let them 'do' anymore, neither do schools let those who could 'teach', as there are enough learned teachers to choose from and the schools' budgets keep getting thinner and thinner.
Even if some still make their careers, it's no more a world of such simple implications like skill leads to job. Which is something that still has to be grasped by many more people until society will be able to properly adjust to the phenomenon, I fear.
Yeah. About ten years ago I connected the three flats of the house I lived in then by BNC - out through one window frame, in through another window frame, as there was no chance to get the landlord to install ducts and trenches (or, for that matter, any one of the involved parties to pay for them). The black cables were practically wound around the house, we tried only slightly to not let them become too visible. When one of us moved to another place, it was 1 km away. We immediately considered extending the connection alongside the power lines, though our consideration probably was on less serious terms than yours. As both places did not see each other we had to discard any ideas of point-to-point radio as well. It took quite a while until internet access became fast enough and cheap enough to provide a real replacent for our early LAN connection.