This is a very simple theory and as far as theories go, the simpler ones are more likely correct. Of course, this theory has unthinkable implications for those who believe that the Bible is nothing more than a bunch of myths and falsehoods. People who do not wish to believe in the Bible and the God of the Bible will go to great lengths to come up with other, usually more complicated explanations for this data.
You're just wrong. It's not that the "simpler" theories are usually correct. It is "simpler" for computers and televisions to work by magic, rather than by complex circuitry. It is "simpler" that people are either "evil" or "good", but that's clearly not the case. The point of Occam's Razor and the thinking behind it, which is what you mistakenly cited in your post, is not the eliminate shades of gray, since most systems worth considering are complex.
Occam's Razor actually suggests that one should eliminate unnecessary assumptions. In the first example, having to assume that some sort of "magic" exists that just "magically" makes computers and televisions work is an unnecessary and untenable assumption.
Your little rant basically is saying: "Wouldn't it be nice if God just made it all work, and we didn't have to think - people should stop thinking!" The world clearly demonstrations that if it was explicitly created by a God, his goal was that it all work without assumptions like you are making.
Slashdot often discusses copyright as it applies to digital music, and it's interesting that the digital music industry began at a time in which there was heavy litigation over the copying of sheet music; this was in the late 1800's.
Hmm, whoops, I guess I mispoke. I don't know about the digital music industry beginning in the late 1800's. What I meant was the recorded music industry.
Either moderators were being kind and understanding (at Slashdot?!), or not only do slashdot members not RTFA, they don't RTFC either.
As far as the argument goes that the patent structure has been litigious, complicated, and obnoxious for a long time, I think we can all agree. Slashdot often discusses copyright as it applies to digital music, and it's interesting that the digital music industry began at a time in which there was heavy litigation over the copying of sheet music; this was in the late 1800's.
But the argument that this complex patent superstructure doesn't reduce efficiency seems a little far fetched to me. Just because we've done it this way for a long time doesn't automatically mean that it's the best system. Who can say what would have happened over the last century and a half with less complicated patent laws? I'm sure there would be no consensus as to whether we would have done better or worse.
The most compelling case for copyright, for me, comes from Joseph Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction. In essence, he argues that copyright creates more innovation because it does not allow people to use the status quo of ideas. However, I'm not sure that the complexity of the copyright system is what he had in mind, since adding complexity increases barrier entries to innovators without increasing incentives to monopolists (i.e. copyright holders) to improve as well.
I recall slashdot discussing this previously in terms of Freenet, although it's probably not a full discussion of legal ramifications (since everyone here says IANAL compulsively). You'll find it here.
As far as I can tell, much like any legal issue, most of what you'll find as far as legal discussion is mainly a lot of "Well, such-and-such may or may not apply here. Please consult your lawyer."
As if we all just have consitutional (if you're in the US) lawyers on retainer. I wish people would just give some advice, even though it will not be authoritative.
For some specific dissembling on this topic, you can also see freenet's legal FAQ.
Not only does it cut both ways, but it should. The thing about freedom is that 9 times out of 10 it only becomes clear that an action was that of a "freedom fighter" rather than a "terrorist" in hindsight. This is the reason for the high standards for prior restraint of the press.
I'm not a fan of "sticking it to the man" in general, but when I hear about Tor and similar programs being used for "the wrong purposes" (whether that be organized crime, terrorism, etc), I feel better knowing that the software exists.
The day when no secure methods exist for organized crime to communicate with each other is likely the day when one is guilty until proven innocent. The broad curtailing of freedoms should give us pause every time it comes up; that doesn't seem to necessarily be the case anymore.
I always hear about these sorts of discoveries, of new planets more and more similar to earth, but having almost no astronomy background, I have no idea how significant they are.
How much do we really know about these planets, and how much is guessing? How close are these planets, really, to earth?
It's interesting that the author attributes the outliers' success partially to their circumstances, as if each of these individuals was somehow fated to pursue their exact paths regardless of the time period they lived in.
It seems at least as plausible to me that part of their talent lay in recognizing the opportunity which they pursued. It reminds me mostly of how many scientific breakthroughs are pursued at the same time by many thinkers in the field. The climate is right for that kind of breakthrough, and talented individuals recognize the potential breakthroughs - and then make them. You could read breakthroughs two ways: 1) the individuals were "lucky" to have lived right before the breakthrough was made, or 2) the individuals were talented enough that they would have had a reasonable change of making a breakthrough, and the timing just influenced which breakthrough was made by them.
Furthermore, there seems to be a difference between attributing outliers' success to external factors and explaining a population's success via cultural factors. Cultural factors are not external to the population in the same way that luck is external to an individual outlier, so at first glance, it seems like these chapters do not speak to each other much.
Wish I could mod parent up. Playing these sorts of tricks with people only works as long as they trust you, and it's essentially manipulation. I suppose you might argue that the ends justify the means, but in my experience the teachers that have had the most influence on me were ones that were genuinely interested in a topic, and honest enough to share their experiences without trying to influence me they way they thought best.
In the end, we're all just different from each other, and rather than trying to trick them into learning the way you want them to, I suspect it's better to show them your excitement about a topic and then just learn to accept it if they go another direction.
Although you comment that the race is to equilibrium, which is right, basic economic theory suggests that in a market such as this (where marginal costs go to zero), the long term equilibrium will be at zero. As usual (and as many other posts here have correctly said), the race is to exploit places where markets are not in equilibrium (this practically always happens in the short term).
The key point here is that not only is the software industry a race to zero, so is practically everything else. The only real exceptions are places where markets can't operate (e.g. some oil companies can operate with profits greater than zero at equilibrium because they got in the game early and got some choice pieces of land with easy to extract oil, while the late-comers have to deal with hard to extract oil).
Economics is pretty clear about this, and experience definitely bears it out: if you're making a positive profit, someone else is going to notice that and jump on the bandwagon, right up to the point where no one in the industry is making positive profit. The equilibrium condition for profit always goes to zero, and in the case of the software industry, since marginal costs go to zero, the equilibrium condition for prices will also be for them to go to zero.
Although this is probably better left for Drupal support forums...
Try going to the User Administration -> Permissions page, and set appropriate permissions for the fields. They default to no one having permission, so they never show up.
^_^
Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo -> Bing -> Google
Looks like Yahoo gets the 3-day-old-bagel of search results.
This is a very simple theory and as far as theories go, the simpler ones are more likely correct. Of course, this theory has unthinkable implications for those who believe that the Bible is nothing more than a bunch of myths and falsehoods. People who do not wish to believe in the Bible and the God of the Bible will go to great lengths to come up with other, usually more complicated explanations for this data.
You're just wrong. It's not that the "simpler" theories are usually correct. It is "simpler" for computers and televisions to work by magic, rather than by complex circuitry. It is "simpler" that people are either "evil" or "good", but that's clearly not the case. The point of Occam's Razor and the thinking behind it, which is what you mistakenly cited in your post, is not the eliminate shades of gray, since most systems worth considering are complex.
Occam's Razor actually suggests that one should eliminate unnecessary assumptions. In the first example, having to assume that some sort of "magic" exists that just "magically" makes computers and televisions work is an unnecessary and untenable assumption.
Your little rant basically is saying: "Wouldn't it be nice if God just made it all work, and we didn't have to think - people should stop thinking!" The world clearly demonstrations that if it was explicitly created by a God, his goal was that it all work without assumptions like you are making.
Slashdot often discusses copyright as it applies to digital music, and it's interesting that the digital music industry began at a time in which there was heavy litigation over the copying of sheet music; this was in the late 1800's.
Hmm, whoops, I guess I mispoke. I don't know about the digital music industry beginning in the late 1800's. What I meant was the recorded music industry.
Either moderators were being kind and understanding (at Slashdot?!), or not only do slashdot members not RTFA, they don't RTFC either.
As far as the argument goes that the patent structure has been litigious, complicated, and obnoxious for a long time, I think we can all agree. Slashdot often discusses copyright as it applies to digital music, and it's interesting that the digital music industry began at a time in which there was heavy litigation over the copying of sheet music; this was in the late 1800's.
But the argument that this complex patent superstructure doesn't reduce efficiency seems a little far fetched to me. Just because we've done it this way for a long time doesn't automatically mean that it's the best system. Who can say what would have happened over the last century and a half with less complicated patent laws? I'm sure there would be no consensus as to whether we would have done better or worse.
The most compelling case for copyright, for me, comes from Joseph Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction. In essence, he argues that copyright creates more innovation because it does not allow people to use the status quo of ideas. However, I'm not sure that the complexity of the copyright system is what he had in mind, since adding complexity increases barrier entries to innovators without increasing incentives to monopolists (i.e. copyright holders) to improve as well.
Some days I just wish that Slashdot had a "favorites" feature. Just good stuff.
I recall slashdot discussing this previously in terms of Freenet, although it's probably not a full discussion of legal ramifications (since everyone here says IANAL compulsively). You'll find it here.
As far as I can tell, much like any legal issue, most of what you'll find as far as legal discussion is mainly a lot of "Well, such-and-such may or may not apply here. Please consult your lawyer."
As if we all just have consitutional (if you're in the US) lawyers on retainer. I wish people would just give some advice, even though it will not be authoritative.
For some specific dissembling on this topic, you can also see freenet's legal FAQ.
Not only does it cut both ways, but it should. The thing about freedom is that 9 times out of 10 it only becomes clear that an action was that of a "freedom fighter" rather than a "terrorist" in hindsight. This is the reason for the high standards for prior restraint of the press.
I'm not a fan of "sticking it to the man" in general, but when I hear about Tor and similar programs being used for "the wrong purposes" (whether that be organized crime, terrorism, etc), I feel better knowing that the software exists.
The day when no secure methods exist for organized crime to communicate with each other is likely the day when one is guilty until proven innocent. The broad curtailing of freedoms should give us pause every time it comes up; that doesn't seem to necessarily be the case anymore.
I always hear about these sorts of discoveries, of new planets more and more similar to earth, but having almost no astronomy background, I have no idea how significant they are.
How much do we really know about these planets, and how much is guessing? How close are these planets, really, to earth?
It's interesting that the author attributes the outliers' success partially to their circumstances, as if each of these individuals was somehow fated to pursue their exact paths regardless of the time period they lived in.
It seems at least as plausible to me that part of their talent lay in recognizing the opportunity which they pursued. It reminds me mostly of how many scientific breakthroughs are pursued at the same time by many thinkers in the field. The climate is right for that kind of breakthrough, and talented individuals recognize the potential breakthroughs - and then make them. You could read breakthroughs two ways: 1) the individuals were "lucky" to have lived right before the breakthrough was made, or 2) the individuals were talented enough that they would have had a reasonable change of making a breakthrough, and the timing just influenced which breakthrough was made by them.
Furthermore, there seems to be a difference between attributing outliers' success to external factors and explaining a population's success via cultural factors. Cultural factors are not external to the population in the same way that luck is external to an individual outlier, so at first glance, it seems like these chapters do not speak to each other much.
Wish I could mod parent up. Playing these sorts of tricks with people only works as long as they trust you, and it's essentially manipulation. I suppose you might argue that the ends justify the means, but in my experience the teachers that have had the most influence on me were ones that were genuinely interested in a topic, and honest enough to share their experiences without trying to influence me they way they thought best.
In the end, we're all just different from each other, and rather than trying to trick them into learning the way you want them to, I suspect it's better to show them your excitement about a topic and then just learn to accept it if they go another direction.
Although you comment that the race is to equilibrium, which is right, basic economic theory suggests that in a market such as this (where marginal costs go to zero), the long term equilibrium will be at zero. As usual (and as many other posts here have correctly said), the race is to exploit places where markets are not in equilibrium (this practically always happens in the short term).
The key point here is that not only is the software industry a race to zero, so is practically everything else. The only real exceptions are places where markets can't operate (e.g. some oil companies can operate with profits greater than zero at equilibrium because they got in the game early and got some choice pieces of land with easy to extract oil, while the late-comers have to deal with hard to extract oil).
Economics is pretty clear about this, and experience definitely bears it out: if you're making a positive profit, someone else is going to notice that and jump on the bandwagon, right up to the point where no one in the industry is making positive profit. The equilibrium condition for profit always goes to zero, and in the case of the software industry, since marginal costs go to zero, the equilibrium condition for prices will also be for them to go to zero.
Although this is probably better left for Drupal support forums... Try going to the User Administration -> Permissions page, and set appropriate permissions for the fields. They default to no one having permission, so they never show up. ^_^