You don't seem to have much understanding of how serious archaeologogists and historians go about their business.
If we found Popular Mechanics in the future, we'd think that some ancient humans once believed that they would have personal flying vehicles in the future.
Besides, it's not as if Popular Mechanics is providing the only hardcopy documentation of the era.
So the extrapolation from global climate modeling to other fields was unwarranted? Fair enough, but hardly a compelling endorsement of the current global climate modeling technology.
From TSA: "Popular Mechanics asks: Will an entire era of human history be lost?"
Obviously not; Popular Mechanics itself has preserved much of the era in traditional hardcopy formats, making it no less lossy than previous printed-word eras.
Of course, understanding the era from such incomplete and unreliable records will be a challenge to archaeologists and historians; again, not much different from previous eras.
I totally agree. For instance, most/. comments on this story fail to critique the validity of the test's questions or whether there was any bias in the study's selection of test-takers.
Actually, it's just that our critical reading skills made it instantly clear to most of us that such effort was totally unecessary, and therefore we didn't waste our time on it.
The most important part of critical thinking is knowing when to actually bother with it.
This reminds me of my petition that everybody capable of contributing to the development of lifesaving drugs drop whatever their current career is--be it software developer, accountant, homemaker, whatever--and dedicate the rest of their lives to developing lifesaving medicines.
Because, hey, if we can, then it's immoral not to.
Ironically, American public school teachers have more child molesters per capita than American Catholic priests. If the former isn't a serious problem that has us all up in arms questioning the value and trustworthiness of the institution, I don't see why the latter should be.
First, I'm not saying that people should give up their right to photograph things. Rather, I'm saying that just as it's reasonable to want to take pictures of things, so too is it reasonable to expect some government interest in people taking pictures of things.
Second, I'm never very impressed by slippery slope arguments. For example: America has had a military force longer than it's had an official status as a country, yet there are still no signs of us slipping down the slope to a military dictatorship (if you doubt me, consider all the genearals currently complaining about how the civilian CIC has failed them--this is not the behavior of a military in charge of the country). Another example: We have always censored television programming, and yet we still haven't slipped down the slope even as far as banning Hustler magazine.
If your slippery slope argument were truly valid, then we would have entered the horrible apocalyptic end-state which the slippery slope predicts a long time ago.
And if you truly believed in the validity of the slippery slope argument, you would be vehemently objecting to everything people have done since abandoning anarchy, on account of everything being exactly the same kind of tradeoff you object to here.
Essentially, the slippery slope argument totally ignores the tendency of humans to settle on compromise and moderation in most things. We censor some, but not all. We tax some, but not all. We criminalize some, but not all.
It seems to me that your argument boils down to this:
"It is right and good and praiseworthy for other people to give up their lives for your freedom, but shame on me for suggesting that you give up convenient photo opportunities in order to save lives."
>> Please explain to me how being able to photograph something YOU CAN WALK UP TO AND TOUCH specifically aids terrorism.
When undertaking an important task--say, the successful demolition of a bridge--it is usually prudent to study the situation thoroughly beforehand, and make detailed plans for various contingencies. In the case of illegal demolitions of bridges in use, you may have many technical engineering questions that will require several hours or days of research and study before these are answered. Studying the bridge in situ for an extended period of time is probably going to be unworkable. Taking a large number of photographs for later study in a private place would be preferred.
>> The lies have been repeated so much that people believe them. This is one of them.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what "lie" you're referring to. Do you mean that it is a lie that people wanting to successfully demolish a bridge would want to study the bridge in detail, without attracting attention to themselves, by means of taking pictures, in order to better ensure the success of their operation?
Imagine the police storming into your place of work or you family gathering to haul you off for questioning.
I guess I have no choice but to imagine it, since such widespread, blatant, and extreme abuse of police authority really hasn't been much of a problem in America over the years.
Is there any chance we could skip the part where you bring up individual, isolated cases, and I compare them to, say, the systematic and institutional policies of the KGB, or Romania's Securitate?
People are presumed innocent until proven guilty, sure, but that doesn't stop the police from investigating many people who are suspected of crimes but are proven innocent over the course of the investigation.
That as intelligence-gathering techniques became cheaper and easier and more accessible to the general public, that the government would pay less attention to intel-gathering activities?
Are you one of those people who believes that nobody who photographs a bridge may be planning to blow it up? Or are you one of those people who believes that the occasional blown-up bridge is worth it, so long as your desire to take pictures of bridges is not scrutinized?
The punching is justified because analogies always fail when discussed in bad faith.
Better to avoid analogies altogether in this case, and talk about rogue nations developing nuclear weapons and selling missile technology to other rogue nations, while holding cities full of people hostage using the credible threat of devastating and unavoidable chemical weapons attacks.
Talk about the actual facts of the matter, and suddenly the whole idea of punching becomes both eminently desireable and eminently unworkable.
I'm responding to the submitter's comment, "It strikes me as odd that students must leave campus to learn...", wherein he implies that learning DOES become impossible without the Internet. It is THAT mindset, expressed by the submitter and endorsed by many in this thread, that strikes me as odd.
I was replying to the submitter's remark that it struck them "as odd that students must leave campus to learn..."
The "must" in that remark struck me as disingenuous.
I'm not denying that the Internet is a valuable educational tool.
What I am questioning is the submitter's assertion that the Internet is a must-have right now, today, today, for Universities.
You and I obviously have different opinions on what makes a top-notch University. I stand by my opinion that while the Internet is a valuable educational tool at the University level, today's Universities can still deliver quality education while providing only limited Internet access. Any student that believes Internet access is a prerequisite to a good education is deluding themselves, and probably wouldn't get a good education regardless of how much Internet their University gave them.
I never presumed "that any single institution could provide all of the information and references on any given topic".
Rather, I presumed that whereas Universities managed to get by for hundreds of years without the Internet, it shouldn't be the case that not having the Internet now automatically means a University can't teach anymore.
So you're saying that ever since the Internet came along, less than thirty years ago, Universities have been unable to deliver quality education unless students have that precious network connection?
Research libraries, classroom lectures, textbooks, lab experiments... these have suddenly all lost their magic smoke, overwhelmed by the mystical powers of wikipedia.com?
It seems to me much more likely that the underachievers would be trying to coast by on Internet-based research, while the overachievers spent their time in serious research facilities.
First, I don't see this as "censorship" so much as "incompetent bandwidth management policy".
Second, I think that the Internet is largely a suboptimal source of valuable higher education materials, and that most high school graduates would benefit immensely from several years of learning in the old way, without access to the Internet.
For this university, it appears to be a costly tool the value of which doesn't really outweigh the costs. Seems like a good enough reason to me.
What the original poster describes isn't necessarily censorship, even though the original poster says they feel like it's censorship.
That said, we practice censorship all the time in our society. For example, when was the last time you saw explicit sex acts on prime-time network television?
I honestly believe that it's right to censor some things for some reasons, and wrong to censor other things for other reasons. I take the issue of censorship on a case by case basis.
In this case, where a University IT department is haphazardly blocking access to arbitrary Internet resources, in what appears to be a rather incompetent attempt to reduce bandwidth costs, I think:
- that there's a lot of room for personal bias in such a policy,
- that this will inevitably lead to credible allegations of "bad" censorship
- that there is no official, institutional policy to censor the Internet at this University
- that over time, University IT departments will refine their bandwidth usage policies to allow more perfect (i.e., less censorius) access to useful educational resources on the Internet, while still being good stewards of the resources available to them and charged to their care.
As far as "sparking a debate" goes, I'm pretty sure that's covered under Slashdot's system of articles+comments. The submitter and the editor were trying to spark a debate when they brought this story. I'm just participating in that debate.
Might as well wonder if you honestly believe that what the submitter describes is censorship, or if you're just trying to spark a debate. As if it can't be both, and as if sparking a debate is a bad thing.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't seem to have much understanding of how serious archaeologogists and historians go about their business.
If we found Popular Mechanics in the future, we'd think that some ancient humans once believed that they would have personal flying vehicles in the future.
Besides, it's not as if Popular Mechanics is providing the only hardcopy documentation of the era.
So the extrapolation from global climate modeling to other fields was unwarranted? Fair enough, but hardly a compelling endorsement of the current global climate modeling technology.
From TSA: "Popular Mechanics asks: Will an entire era of human history be lost?"
Obviously not; Popular Mechanics itself has preserved much of the era in traditional hardcopy formats, making it no less lossy than previous printed-word eras.
Of course, understanding the era from such incomplete and unreliable records will be a challenge to archaeologists and historians; again, not much different from previous eras.
In conclusion: doesn't matter, hardly news.
Actually, it's just that our critical reading skills made it instantly clear to most of us that such effort was totally unecessary, and therefore we didn't waste our time on it.
The most important part of critical thinking is knowing when to actually bother with it.
(Protip: Slashdot? Not so much.)
I can only assume that our sarcasm beams got crossed, here.
This reminds me of my petition that everybody capable of contributing to the development of lifesaving drugs drop whatever their current career is--be it software developer, accountant, homemaker, whatever--and dedicate the rest of their lives to developing lifesaving medicines.
Because, hey, if we can, then it's immoral not to.
What about believing in things for which there is lots of credible evidence of various kinds, but no conclusive evidence?
Ironically, American public school teachers have more child molesters per capita than American Catholic priests. If the former isn't a serious problem that has us all up in arms questioning the value and trustworthiness of the institution, I don't see why the latter should be.
... than the deal they got from the gay community.
First, I'm not saying that people should give up their right to photograph things. Rather, I'm saying that just as it's reasonable to want to take pictures of things, so too is it reasonable to expect some government interest in people taking pictures of things.
Second, I'm never very impressed by slippery slope arguments. For example: America has had a military force longer than it's had an official status as a country, yet there are still no signs of us slipping down the slope to a military dictatorship (if you doubt me, consider all the genearals currently complaining about how the civilian CIC has failed them--this is not the behavior of a military in charge of the country). Another example: We have always censored television programming, and yet we still haven't slipped down the slope even as far as banning Hustler magazine.
If your slippery slope argument were truly valid, then we would have entered the horrible apocalyptic end-state which the slippery slope predicts a long time ago.
And if you truly believed in the validity of the slippery slope argument, you would be vehemently objecting to everything people have done since abandoning anarchy, on account of everything being exactly the same kind of tradeoff you object to here.
Essentially, the slippery slope argument totally ignores the tendency of humans to settle on compromise and moderation in most things. We censor some, but not all. We tax some, but not all. We criminalize some, but not all.
It seems to me that your argument boils down to this:
"It is right and good and praiseworthy for other people to give up their lives for your freedom, but shame on me for suggesting that you give up convenient photo opportunities in order to save lives."
>> Please explain to me how being able to photograph something YOU CAN WALK UP TO AND TOUCH specifically aids terrorism.
When undertaking an important task--say, the successful demolition of a bridge--it is usually prudent to study the situation thoroughly beforehand, and make detailed plans for various contingencies. In the case of illegal demolitions of bridges in use, you may have many technical engineering questions that will require several hours or days of research and study before these are answered. Studying the bridge in situ for an extended period of time is probably going to be unworkable. Taking a large number of photographs for later study in a private place would be preferred.
>> The lies have been repeated so much that people believe them. This is one of them.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what "lie" you're referring to. Do you mean that it is a lie that people wanting to successfully demolish a bridge would want to study the bridge in detail, without attracting attention to themselves, by means of taking pictures, in order to better ensure the success of their operation?
I guess I have no choice but to imagine it, since such widespread, blatant, and extreme abuse of police authority really hasn't been much of a problem in America over the years.
Is there any chance we could skip the part where you bring up individual, isolated cases, and I compare them to, say, the systematic and institutional policies of the KGB, or Romania's Securitate?
People are presumed innocent until proven guilty, sure, but that doesn't stop the police from investigating many people who are suspected of crimes but are proven innocent over the course of the investigation.
What did you expect?
That as intelligence-gathering techniques became cheaper and easier and more accessible to the general public, that the government would pay less attention to intel-gathering activities?
Are you one of those people who believes that nobody who photographs a bridge may be planning to blow it up? Or are you one of those people who believes that the occasional blown-up bridge is worth it, so long as your desire to take pictures of bridges is not scrutinized?
The punching is justified because analogies always fail when discussed in bad faith.
Better to avoid analogies altogether in this case, and talk about rogue nations developing nuclear weapons and selling missile technology to other rogue nations, while holding cities full of people hostage using the credible threat of devastating and unavoidable chemical weapons attacks.
Talk about the actual facts of the matter, and suddenly the whole idea of punching becomes both eminently desireable and eminently unworkable.
What now?
I'm conflating nothing.
I'm responding to the submitter's comment, "It strikes me as odd that students must leave campus to learn...", wherein he implies that learning DOES become impossible without the Internet. It is THAT mindset, expressed by the submitter and endorsed by many in this thread, that strikes me as odd.
I was replying to the submitter's remark that it struck them "as odd that students must leave campus to learn..."
The "must" in that remark struck me as disingenuous.
I'm not denying that the Internet is a valuable educational tool.
What I am questioning is the submitter's assertion that the Internet is a must-have right now, today, today, for Universities.
You and I obviously have different opinions on what makes a top-notch University. I stand by my opinion that while the Internet is a valuable educational tool at the University level, today's Universities can still deliver quality education while providing only limited Internet access. Any student that believes Internet access is a prerequisite to a good education is deluding themselves, and probably wouldn't get a good education regardless of how much Internet their University gave them.
I never presumed "that any single institution could provide all of the information and references on any given topic".
Rather, I presumed that whereas Universities managed to get by for hundreds of years without the Internet, it shouldn't be the case that not having the Internet now automatically means a University can't teach anymore.
So you're saying that ever since the Internet came along, less than thirty years ago, Universities have been unable to deliver quality education unless students have that precious network connection?
Research libraries, classroom lectures, textbooks, lab experiments... these have suddenly all lost their magic smoke, overwhelmed by the mystical powers of wikipedia.com?
Really?
It seems to me much more likely that the underachievers would be trying to coast by on Internet-based research, while the overachievers spent their time in serious research facilities.
First, I don't see this as "censorship" so much as "incompetent bandwidth management policy".
Second, I think that the Internet is largely a suboptimal source of valuable higher education materials, and that most high school graduates would benefit immensely from several years of learning in the old way, without access to the Internet.
For this university, it appears to be a costly tool the value of which doesn't really outweigh the costs. Seems like a good enough reason to me.
What the original poster describes isn't necessarily censorship, even though the original poster says they feel like it's censorship.
That said, we practice censorship all the time in our society. For example, when was the last time you saw explicit sex acts on prime-time network television?
I honestly believe that it's right to censor some things for some reasons, and wrong to censor other things for other reasons. I take the issue of censorship on a case by case basis.
In this case, where a University IT department is haphazardly blocking access to arbitrary Internet resources, in what appears to be a rather incompetent attempt to reduce bandwidth costs, I think:
- that there's a lot of room for personal bias in such a policy,
- that this will inevitably lead to credible allegations of "bad" censorship
- that there is no official, institutional policy to censor the Internet at this University
- that over time, University IT departments will refine their bandwidth usage policies to allow more perfect (i.e., less censorius) access to useful educational resources on the Internet, while still being good stewards of the resources available to them and charged to their care.
As far as "sparking a debate" goes, I'm pretty sure that's covered under Slashdot's system of articles+comments. The submitter and the editor were trying to spark a debate when they brought this story. I'm just participating in that debate.
Might as well wonder if you honestly believe that what the submitter describes is censorship, or if you're just trying to spark a debate. As if it can't be both, and as if sparking a debate is a bad thing.
I was actually responding specifically to the blurb in the submitter's summary that begins "it strikes me as odd..."
How you got from there to "what strikes you as odd is completely unrelated to the TFA", I DON'T know.
If you think that what the submitter was saying, and what I was responding to, is completely unrelated to TFA, talk to the submitter, not me.