a couple years of chess for grades 5-10 should be mandatory in every school curriculum.
Please, no. You might as well say that we should require every school to devote a semester in middle school to Rubik's Cube solving.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying chess is a simple puzzle that can be easily solved. I'm saying that chess is a strategy game, and like all strategy games, success is mostly a product of two things: (1) experience -- the more you play, the better you get, (2) ability to remember and recall standard strategies and scenarios. The actual abstract logic that you highlight is important at some level, but about at the same level that it is in solving a Rubik's Cube. That is -- a precious few people solve a Rubik's Cube from first principles or mathematical abstraction. But even if they do, they will generally happen upon certain common patterns that efficiently work toward a solution, and once those patterns are learned, they experience a significant improvement -- much more so than if they increased their logic skills. And often the majority of kids pick up these patterns not by deriving them from first principles or logic, but by watching their friends (or, these days, from the internet).
Most decent chess players will deny the role that memorization plays in the game, but LOTS of psychological studies have attempted to measure what constitutes "chess intelligence." And they have discovered again and again that those who excel tend to be (1) good at pattern recognition and (2) have a good visual memory. That's about it. MANY studies have shown absolutely NO correlation between good chess players and general intelligence (e.g., IQ) or general problem-solving skills. (There's one study that came out in the past couple years that claims to find a correlation between higher-level players and IQ, but it's really going against the trend of 80 years of studies which have shown little or no such correlation, so... at best, we should say there's little evidence accumulated yet of any such connection.)
So, if you want to use chess to stimulate "clear thinking," I think that's a misguided goal. Lower-level players who have good visual memory and pattern recognition, along with a memorized set of common strategies, will easily beat players at a similar level with superior logical skills.
This happened to me personally. I know anecdote is not data, but I only read the psychological studies I mentioned above after I had my own experience and was curious. Somebody taught me the rules of chess at a young age -- I was probably 6 or 7. I did really well, for a kid that age. But I didn't play a lot, and frankly I found the game boring. I tried doing a chess club for a while in middle school, but I realized I just had little "talent" for it (or so I thought). After that, despite playing a number of adults who also appeared to be thinking from first principles and using logic and critical thinking who tried to help me, I just never played much and wasn't very good.
On the other hand, I actually loved problem-solving. I was the kind of kid who read a book on formal logic in middle school for fun. I taught myself to code. I always enjoyed the "challenge problems" at the end of the math book that the teacher never assigned. Eventually, those grew tiresome, so I started working through a calculus textbook and doing all the problems in middle school.
But chess? Terrible at it. Found it boring.
Eventually, when I was in my mid-20s, I decided maybe I should improve my skills. I met a number of people in graduate school who seemed to value chess as some sort of marker of intelligence, but I was terrible at it. So I spent a few months reading up on tactics, opening patterns, endgame patterns, etc. And -- guess what -- suddenly I was able to beat a lot of my friends. All I did, from my perspective, was learn a set of common strategies and patterns that significantly improved my game. I certainly didn't improve
If you read my post, you will see that I disagree about countries that print their own currency. It's tantamount to a default if you spool up the presses and pay it off with worthless hyperinflated currency.
It won't be "worthless" or "hyperinflated" if the debt is paid off in that currency.
Hyperinflation is generally a phenomenon which occurs as part of a feedback loop -- country A owes money in country B's currency, for example. Country A runs the presses to pay the debt in currency B this month. To do so, it increases the monetary base of currency A; it then exchanges money for currency B. Those people who buy currency A to give out the B in exchange then spread the currency A money back into the economy, where inflation begins.
Since prices are inflated and the monetary base in use has enlarged, the exchange rate between A and B changes, so A now has less worth in B's denomination. Next month or quarter or whatever, when A has to come up with money in currency B, it now has to print the presses even more, because the exchange rate is no longer as favorable. That results in more money flowing into the economy, more inflation, etc. Each payment thus requires more printing of the presses than the previous month, and the currency is devalued.
Repeat cycle over a period of months or years, and country B never pays off debt, and its currency is completely wrecked by hyperinflation.
Now -- if a country has sovereign debt denominated in its own currency, then the government is the only source of the currency. Thus, the government already effectively "created" that money by issuing the bond in the first place. Some other person or country or whatever holds that debt has already said that it will accept payment in currency "created" by that government.
So, if country A now just decides tomorrow to run the presses and pay off ALL the debt, it can do so. Country A is guaranteed to be able to pay off ALL of its debt simply by an act authorizing payment of X dollars or yen or whatever. There is no possibility of the inflationary spiral above where it could require many multiples of X dollars or yen or whatever simply to pay off the debt, because the denomination already is ONLY X and X ONLY. The value of the debt is set.
It is possible that some inflation will ensue after the debt is paid, depending on exactly how this is done, and what the people who get paid this "money" do with it. (I put "money" in quotation marks, because all of these transactions mostly happen virtually on computers between major banks and such, with no real currency transactions happening in actual physical money.) But, in reality, foreign owners of debt in currency A will probably act in ways to actively discourage inflation in currency A as long as they hold some debt in that currency... otherwise, the value of their investment will decrease. So, anyone who holds this debt has an interest in keeping currency A afloat and avoiding hyperinflation -- rather than if the debt is denominated in currency B, in which case all that matters is getting the value into currency B.
But the point is that there is no need for the inflationary spiral to occur, because the money never has to go through the exchange process (and thereby doesn't necessarily change hands beyond the original holders of the debt).
Now -- how investors in that country's government could react going forward could have serious economic consequences, depending on how it is handled. But the money originally flowing to those who own the debt will be paid in currency with its current full value, not "worthless hyperinflated currency." If you don't understand that currency actually originates through government production, and thus production of government debt effectively "creates" money already, I'd suggest you go back and read a macroeconomics textbook.
One can argue about how crazy governments have to be to cause banks and investors and so forth t
On the contrary, in a couple decades, things will be much worse in Japan. The number of retirees will rise, and the number of younger working people will decline. The ratio of retired to working people will rise, and there won't be anyone to pay for the medical care of the old people. That's a recipe for immense suffering, both personal and economic.
This is unnecessarily alarmist. In the early 1900s (until about 1940) the Japanese birth rate was approximately 4 times what it is now. Who do you think paid to feed all those kids or for their medical care, etc.? Yeah, conditions were worse, but the point is that all of those resources that previously went from working adults directly into raising kids are no longer necessary.
As long as older people are relatively healthy, it's not like having to care for 2 parents (shared among their children) for 10 years more is going to require more in terms of food, etc. than taking care of 5 or 6 kids for 20 years as they grow up (as was needed in years gone by).
Now I know the big objection about this is going to have to do with health care -- obviously older people cost more in terms of health care, but this is a relatively novel phenomenon, mostly having to do with a general push toward life extension without consideration of quality of life. Older people who are not suffering from chronic medical issues are probably not going to cost society as a whole much more than the multitude of children every family had in years gone by. But, to take an even more "crass" perspective, at some point humans will have to start seriously considering quality of life issues, rather than extending lives in pain for years or decades at great expense. Maybe we're not there yet... but unless someone comes up with the "fountain of youth" elixir in the next couple decades, a LOT of Western societies are going to need to start dealing with this issue.
Japan currently averages about 1.4 kids per family. A stable, sustainable rate would be about 2.1 kids. (Not 2.0 because a small number will die before reaching reproductive age.) Japan's rate is much too low for a healthy society.
Yeah, who gets to decide what's "healthy"? The planet as a whole ecosystem, with us included, would probably be much "healthier" if we spent a few centuries with a declining birthrate on the order of Japan's. I agree with you that the bigger issue is large birth rates in other parts of the world, but -- if you're talking from a strictly environmental perspective -- we probably should be talking about a long-term decrease, not "healthy" stability.
In fact the article gives clear statistics showing the exact opposite.
One other thing: While the article does give SOME statistics, it is basically what is mentioned in the summary, i.e., numbers from ONE STATE which changed its laws, and a comparison of TWO CITIES that had very similar characteristics.
Anecdote is not data. The fact that things improved in one state after a law change shouldn't be conclusive proof that the same thing would happen elsewhere. And the fact that City X has better stats than very similar City Y is hardly conclusive proof that the policies should be adopted in all traffic situations in all cities (especially those with very different characteristics from Cities X and Y). Moreover, with only one comparison point, the whole thing could still be bogus -- all it takes is one significant difference between X and Y not to be taken into account, and the whole conclusion is nonsense.
When this person has stats from 10 or 20 states that have made this change and makes comparisons between 10 or 20 different pairs of cities with various characteristics, THEN we can say there are "clear statistics showing the exact opposite" in the general case
I'm not saying we shouldn't consider the policies proposed here -- but "clear statistics" that prove anything? Not in this article.
You can't be serious saying it is more dangerous to give way at slow speed versus coming to a complete stop and then having to huff and puff back up to speed, while simultaneously being overtaken with inches to spare by a bunch of impatient motorists because you can't outpace them.
Your policy makes perfect sense in normal traffic situations. It begins to fall apart in some situations where abnormal traffic arises and with higher concentrations of cyclists.
I lived in such an area for some years, and I had to commute most mornings through side streets along with hoards of cyclists who basically followed the traffic exceptions you recommend (even though they were supposed to be more cautious). Some old cities have poor urban planning -- streets are narrow, parking is scarce (so people park in places they normally wouldn't be allowed to, like closer to intersections), and cyclists often can get somewhere faster than cars if they behave in your recommended fashion... particularly with a dedicated bike lane (as there was along many parts of my commute).
Over the years, I personally witnessed dozens of near-misses of collisions between cars and cyclists, and at least two minor accidents. In most of those cases, the problems boiled down to two situations: (1) cars showing up "where they weren't supposed to", and (2) bicycles showing up "where they weren't supposed to."
And what I mean is NOT that anyone was doing anything illegal -- but rather that in high density areas, vehicles often appear in unexpected ways. All is well and good for a cyclist to coast through a stop sign if all the cars are where they normally are and behave in the most common ways. But what happens when a car pulls out of a driveway suddenly on the side street and proceeds as if the intersection is supposed to be clear (as it usually is, since opposing traffic has a stop)? Or what happens when a parked car does something unexpected? Or what happens when a cyclist pulls out of a driveway and zooms up on the right past a car unexpectedly, while the driver is trying to evaluate the other "normal" traffic patterns at that intersection? Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.
If low density traffic, with wide streets, not a lot of things to obstruct views (lots of trees, parked cars, etc.), and not a lot of other distracting things going on (rush hour traffic, loads of pedestrians, etc.), the policies you endorse make perfect sense. But the more bikes and the more cars on the roads, the more I'd strongly recommend that bikes try to follow standard traffic laws.
In fact the article gives clear statistics showing the exact opposite. Just about every cyclist I know treat 'right of way' as synonymous to 'enter at your own risk'.
Yeah, a significant percentage of the cyclists I saw on an everyday basis did NOT "enter at your own risk." That's what begins to happen in a city where the culture changes to make cycling easier (bike lanes, etc.) and when it can be actually faster and more convenient than driving. Once cyclists don't exercise that kind of caution, bad things start to happen... because intersections are designed with the assumption that all moving vehicles are obeying traffic regulations. If you break those regulations, you will certainly have to start redesigning intersections in some high density areas.
"Boise... 150 percent fewer than Bakersfield." How'd they manage that?
Uh, isn't it obvious? This policy change was SO freakin' good that it caused victims of previous accidents to be spontaneously healed and to rise from the dead!
BMI is not perfect. However, unless you are a weightlifter or outrageously fit (not just "skinny fit", but bulging muscles) it's a pretty good indicator.
No it is NOT. SERIOUSLY. It is absolutely NOT a good indicator.
See, for example, this actual study on correlation between BMI and obesity measured by bodyfat percentage. The main finding, according to the study: "A BMI >= 30 had... a poor sensitivity (36% and 49 % [in men and women], respectively) to detect [Body-fat %]-defined obesity."
In other words, the current BMI cut-off of 30 only correctly identifies 36% of male obese people correctly, and only 49% of females. Does that sound like a "pretty good indicator" to you?
Now, most of the error here is actually underreporting obesity. So, you might say, let's decrease the threshold. But again, from the study: "Decreasing the BMI cut-off for obesity to >= 25 kg/m2 for instance, will still result in misclassifying as obese 38% of men and 16% of women."
In other words, if we lower the BMI threshold enough to capture more than 90% of obese people, we end up misdiagnosing about 1/3 of them as obese.
The article summarizes these problems:
The implications of mislabeling patients are not trivial. By using BMI as a marker of obesity, we misclassify >= 50% of patients with excess body fat as being normal or just overweight and we miss the opportunity to intervene and reduce health risk in such individuals. Conversely, BMI may lead to misclassification of persons with normal levels of fat as being overweight...
In other words, BMI is a TERRIBLE indicator of actual obesity. It ends up massively underreporting actual obesity, but it misclassifies a similarly large number as "overweight" even when those pounds represent extra muscle mass or other things unlikely to lead to health problems.
Seriously. People need to stop saying "Yeah, BMI's okay for most people." It is NOT okay. We need to stop using it, if we want to be accurate in classifying obesity.
Fat-shaming NEEDS to be a thing. Despite what those childish tumblr-tards say.
Later in your post, you say there should be exceptions for illnesses, genetics, etc. How exactly do you plan to explain when it's appropriate for kids to shame other fats vs. when they can't, for example? Or is it okay to shame everyone for their appearance if it might imply something bad about their character? A lot of black people commit crimes (on average, more so than some other groups) -- should we shame all black people too on the basis of their appearance?
It is an abnormality. The human body hasn't evolved to deal with it. And it shouldn't evolve to deal with it.
It's good that we have an AC to decide how the human race "should evolve." Congratulations: you've now entered into the exciting field of eugenics!
All these companies can put as much spin on it as possible, "oh, our meals are only meant to be one-offs every so often", or whatever other bullshit they can come up with, they are partly responsible for this.
Great -- the corporations are partly responsible. How much do you plan to charge them to contribute to healthcare for their "responsibility" for the fat people? Or do we only charge the fat people more, even though you claim some other people share the blame? (Just looking for the logic here.)
Quite frankly, I say make people pay double for healthcare
Yeah, this always comes up when morbidly obese people and smokers are discussed. (For the record, I'm neither -- but that shouldn't matter now, if we're discussing logically, should it?)
What's the argument here? Fat people (and smokers and whoever the demon of the week is) cost more in healthcare? Yeah, they do, on average -- on an annual basis. But guess what? They die earlier. There have been a number of studies that show a clear cost savings over the lifespan of an obese person. Why? Because old people need more health care. Who do you think will cost more over the course of retirement? The fat guy who dies in his mid-60s and basically never retires, but costs more for his 5 years of diabetes care or whatever? Or the skinny guy who lives to 95, spends 30 years drawing government retirement money, needs a couple knee replacements for the all the running he did by his late 60s, falls and breaks a hip and spends a year recuperating in his 70s, and then needs 10-15 years of care during his 80s and 90s as his brain slowly turns to mush from whatever random degenerative disease? Fat people die sooner, so even though they have more years of concentrated medical costs at a younger age, over their lifespan they cost significantly less. (And that's just healthcare costs -- factor in extra costs for the government to pay out retirement money, etc., and fat people cost society a LOT less.)
If you live in a country where you pay for health insurance, by all means, charge fat people more for their premiums. It makes sense from a cost-benefit analysis. But if you have a nationalized health system (or even if you don't), you should actually be giving these people a tax break -- if your goal is to save the system money.
It sounds counterintuitive, but most studies don't take into account decrease longevity when they talk about how fat people "cost more." (And governments downplay the few studies that have looked at this question, because they don't want to encourage obesity.) It gets even better for cigarette smokers -- a few different studies show that for ever pack of cigarettes someone smokes, they save society about 30 cents because they are likely to die sooner. I'm not kidding. And that's not even counting taxes on cigarettes.
(illnesses, genetics, and some medications like the steroidal types)
Exactly how do you determine which "genetics" are bad enough to justify that it's okay to be fat? I mean, the human race evolved
The formula for BMI is weight(kg) / heigth(m) * height(m). This formula only has two terms for height, but in reality I'm a 3d person.
Congratulations, I'm sure nobody has noticed that before.
I mean, It's entirely impossible that people don't scale up like, say, solid bronze statues would.
Well, if I cut through the sarcasm here, (1) people have noticed this before, and (2) people do NOT scale up like solid bronze would. On the other hand, your sarcasm doesn't make an exponent of 2 true or an accurate approximation, nor does it make the exponent 3 as the GP suggests. The actual value when derived from various empirical studies falls in an exponent range of 2.3-2.7. If you separate out men and women, you can narrow that range somewhat. If you take other factors into account, you can get even more accurate.
(By the way, statutes are a poor example. Large human figures by great artists often have exaggerated (larger than life) features on the top, since they are often viewed from below. A good sculptor understands the importance of distance in making things appear "too small," and will often overcompensate in various ways for large statutes, making them disproportionate with actual humans.)
Furthermore it'd be ludicrous to suggest that the formula wasn't an empirically derived approximation but was just made up by someone who wasn't as math-smart as you.
The sarcasm is so heavy here that it's difficult to know what you're saying.
Nonetheless, (3) the formula was an empirically derived approximation, but for populations, not individuals, and (4) the person who designed it may have been "math-smart," but it was made up in an era long before pocket calculators, and an exponent of 2.3 or something would have made things more complicated to calculate than simply squaring a number; the approximation of 2 worked well with other assumptions of the number. Furthermore, when it was made up, it was understood to apply to population statistics, so the people who were "math-dumb" were those in the medical profession who started applying it to individuals in the last 40 years, not the demographers who designed it 200 years ago.
The big problem with coming up with a measure for the population at large (no pun intended) is that men and women have very different body shapes, and women tend to have higher bodyfat percentages when they are healthy. But women are also shorter. Therefore, if you want ONE NUMBER to describe both sexes, you necessarily must design a measure that will allow short people to be fatter (but still "normal"), while tall people must have lower bodyfat than average to be "normal." Thus, BMI works great as an approximation for estimating the size of the population in general, but it is terrible for individuals. For short men and tall women it was designed to be terrible. For really short people, you basically have to be obese to be "normal" and for really tall people, you basically have to be emaciated.
Numerous subsequent medical studies have shown that any number of simple alternative measurements have higher correlations with actual adiposity and actual disease or mortality. For example, simply measuring a man's waist without taking anything else into account (no height, weight, body shape or anything) is a better predictor than BMI. It's still not great, but it's better than BMI.
You can live in denial and go on insulting people for being ignorant, but you're just hiding your own. BMI is a TERRIBLE measure of adiposity and propensity for disease -- it's explcitily designed to be for maybe 1/3 of the population or more.
What the Highway Department's chief IT guy for the new computerized roadway hated most was listening to the 'smart' components complain about being mixed with asphalt instead of silicon and made into speed bumps instead of graceful vases, like the one today from chip J176: "I coulda had glass; I coulda been a container; I coulda been some bottle, instead of a bump, which is what I am."
I don't know how you tell compelling stories getting into actual details without jargon and descriptions that will probably cause management to shut down and stop listening. ("He's going on again about some electronics crap I've never heard of...")
But one can easily create analogies. Your infrastructure is like your house, for example. You need to maintain the shingles on your roof, paint the wooden siding on your house, caulk up the cracks when they appear. Occasionally, you get a rotten board and you replace it. You get a leaking roof and you patch it. Occasionally, you need to deploy more extreme measures when the rats get in or termites are in the walls -- but if you put out the bait traps first, you might avoid expensive repairs to begin with.
Is it possible to do nothing on your house for a little while and it will keep functioning? Sure. But the longer you go without painting the siding and patching the roof, the deeper the problems get as wind and water and mice and termites start eating away... and suddenly you're stuck taking out a home equity loan just to do repairs.
I don't know if this is the kind of "story" you're looking for, but you can probably come up with some sort of analogy using anything that requires regular maintenance to explain what you're doing. It may not be the kind of language you'd use in an official report, but if you're chatting with the management, it can at least get across the necessity of the kind of work needed in the background to keep stuff working.
To this "story," you can add the use of graphs and visuals. "Look at this trendline -- this is how much money we start to lose if we didn't do X, but we implemented a new policy, and now look at the savings!" Emphasize measures of "efficiency," and make comparisons to what would happen if you didn't pay attention to whatever routine things you do (with graphs illustrating the difference).
Visuals + compelling (though potentially inaccurate) analogies in plain language will generally get your point across to non-tech specialists.
To me, this indicates a change in attitude. No longer are they striving to put out the best software, they're churning revs to keep revenue up. It's a sign of desperation and it has been going on for several years, now.
Meh. It's been going on for several decades. 20-ish years ago I was beta-testing Windows 95. Then I bought Windows 95 when it came out. It had some great new features, but it also was seriously broken in many ways. Office 95 was prettier and had some new features, but in other ways it was a bloated piece of garbage.
I knew a number of people who kept using their DOS version of WordPerfect until the early 2000s on their personal computers -- it was stable, it had basically all the features you could want... why change, other than to get something a little prettier?
At least with word processors you might be able to justify the WYSIWYG factor and the graphical elements as an important advance in functionality for people who like to play around with weird fonts and tweak the appearance of documents (usually without any decent sense of design).
But spreadsheets? Once pivot tables were invented in the early 90s, what did subsequent versions of Excel add other than bloat and prettier graphics? Yeah, you got your 3-D charts. Fantastic. Looks snazzy. But was it worth the HUGE increases in system resources for that?
The GUI for Windows 95 and subsequent versions has been useful. But let's be serious about this -- the standard features of the most common business applications reached maturity in the late 80s, and accumulated only a few more important features in the early 90s. Ever since then, it's mostly been about eye candy and arbitrary changes in interfaces, rather than the "best software." Sure, there are lots of advanced features that some people need that have been added, but mostly Microsoft has been about producing bloated stuff with new interfaces for at least 20 years... generally first with a crappy buggy version followed by something that keeps the same basic interface but fixes the problems... then a new interface and repeat the cycle.
And yes, people do have these problems. I work with Windows admins and while good at Windows, they don't quite grok UNIX-type filesystems and design, referring to the root partition as the 'root drive' or even 'C: drive'.
How is this possible? It doesn't make any sense, unless the people you're talking about are complete idiots who shouldn't be administering anything, including Windoes.
I guess I could sort of understand this if you were talking about DOS or Windows prior to the past 15 years or so.
But modern Windows actually acts like the various drives are "subdirectories" under "My Computer" in some ways (at least in appearance). And any actual admin would understand the idea of mapping a "network drive," which could often be a random directory on another computer, to a drive letter. And then one could create a shortcut from a specific folder to such an arbitrary location.
If your Windows admin has never had an occasion to connect to a random directory on a networked computer or use a shortcut to get to another root director on a drive... well, I don't know what to say. But if he/she has, the concept of Linux filesystem should just be a simple extension of that.
I'm sure Windows USERS often have trouble understanding the Linux filesystem. But a Windows admin who couldn't figure it out after a few days should be fired.
I call bullshit on their training claims. Staff that used Windows at previous jobs or at home will have a lower training needs.
Uh, how many training hours do you think were wasted converting users to the "ribbon" interface of Office 2007? Windows had a menu interface that worked, and admins could even customize shortcut menus on top if the workers needed specific access to common buttons, rather than digging through menus. But then there was a redesign... either you upgrade and retrain, or you deal with an inability to adequately use the new file formats when you need to communicate with others.
And that's just one significant redesign. When will Microsoft do another one?
In comparison, major Linux projects are often very stable in terms of interface. Even when a team decides to make major changes, it's usually possible for an admin to reconfigure the interface so it basically functions as before... and if there is any significant dissent about a new interface, there's generally a fork or alternative package to maintain the old one for quite some time.
And since source code is available, even if the Linux project goes in a different way, the government or company can easily pay coders to create a custom package or maintain the old one.
They also assume that staff time is free and ignore any lost productivity or errors from their new OS and applications.
Again, productivity is lost whenever Microsoft changes its interface on a whim. At least with Linux you often have a choice concerning major changes -- and if you don't, you have the source code to customize it yourself.
As for "staff time," well... if you're talking about staff for retraining, I've already discussed this problem is not unique to Linux -- and once the transition is made to Linux, open source ensures that companies can choose when and if they ever want to change something that would require retraining... rather than being forced to follow Microsoft's arbitrary upgrades or pay Microsoft to maintain compatibiility and patches on archaic versions without the option to do it yourself.
If by "staff time" you mean admin -- well, there's a reason why the vast majority of the world's servers run Linux. It's VERY stable on the server side, and though one may still encounter some annoying bugs on the desktop side, once the admins deal with the problems, they tend to stay fixed... unlike Microsoft patches and upgrades which sometimes fix one thing and break another, but because it's closed source, there's no way to avoid many of them in order to have a secure system.
Absolutely. But the product of their work is overseen by a doctor or hospital. If the level of care does not meet certain standards, the doctor and/or the hospital may lose accreditation.
and there are over-the-counter drugs which someone can advise you to take without being a doctor.
Yes, and...? You can also advise yourself to take them. In general, they are regarded as safe enough that when taking in dosages according to the directions on the bottle, you should almost always be safe.
Point is: someone else can certainly recommend that you take an over-the-counter drug. But that person cannot tell you to take the drug in some manner inconsistent with the labelling (e.g., more than listed dose, taking it if you have a named condition on the label that says not to take it, etc.) unless they are a doctor. Doing so probably violates some laws, and if they are making such recommendations as part of a business, they probably risk having whatever permits or licenses to operate said business revoked.
Another area where we have a similar issue is with the legal profession. A clerk could do most of the work you go to a lawyer for, as it's just filling out boilerplate forms.
Yet again, it's still ultimately the lawyer's responsibility to see that things are done correctly. If the clerk ends up forging forms or doing other incorrect or illegal stuff, and the lawyer lets that happen and signs off on it, etc., the lawyer could be disbarred.
If you want to have accountability for certain professions, that's fine, but you have to keep in mind that there is also a threat of protecting incumbents form competition, which can, on the grand scale, cause issues as bad or worse than a free for all.
Absolutely. Never said or implied otherwise. As I said, I didn't claim that the current question about London cabs justifies the level of competence of regulatory qualifications -- I don't know enough about the situation. But the GP just posed a very general question about why people shouldn't be able to choose some uncertified or unregulated person. The answer is that sometimes it is in the public good to ensure a certain minimum quality of service, particularly to ensure safety, to protect vulnerable people, and... perhaps in the cab case... to avoid scam artists and people who'd rip people off. Perhaps Uber satisfies a societal minimum standard, and perhaps the cabbies fighting it are overqualified. But that doesn't mean that regulation should always bow to the free market.
I don't claim to know much about London's particular situation, but let's consider your argument in the abstract, since that's what you apparently want.
People keep arguing that London's black cabs are better than Uber and therefore Uber should not be allowed to compete with them. If London's black cabs are everything you say they are (and I believe you are correct), why shouldn't people be free to take the risks with Uber if they feel the lower cost is worth the risk?
Okay, let's apply this to medicine. Probably 90% of illnesses people show up to a doctor's office with don't require a true medical expert to treat. Some random guy who learned some stuff on the internet and maybe took a few courses on common diseases could probably address most problems.
Should we give prescribing privileges for medication to someone like this? Should we simply let them practice medicine without additional regulation or licensing requirements? "Why shouldn't people be free to take the risks... if they feel the lower cost is worth the risk?"
Well, for one thing, of those 10% of less common diseases, many of them will have symptoms that sound very much like the 90% which are more common. Having at least some standard for medical practice assumes that the doctor will have enough knowledge to dig deeper when necessary to sort these things out, rather than doling out treatments or drugs that could potentially injure or kill people.
Also, people with diseases are often in vulnerable situations. They are willing to try things and make poor decisions to get better or to get rid of the pain. We, as a society, have a duty to protect them at least somewhat from charlatans and dangerous people.
And, if a physician consistently shows he/she is incapable of making the correct calls in such cases, the license will be revoked to protect ignorant consumers from being harmed by people claiming to know things or have skills that they do not.
I just don't get the argument, "Option A is better, so people should not be allowed to choose Option B." I understand your argument, but if the cabbies driving the black cabs are so much better than the competition from Uber, why do they need government regulation to keep Uber out of the market?
In some cases, the free market will solve problems like this. In other cases, like my medical example above, having some sort of regulation or certification is important to maintain a minimum SAFE standard for certain businesses.
The cab business has a few unusual traits: (1) they often deal with people who are unfamiliar with the area they are in, sometimes don't know the language, or could be otherwise incapacitated and vulnerable (drunk, lost, etc.), (2) they often get single people, including weak and vulnerable people by themselves, and (3) they are confining and propelling other people around in high-velocity missiles which are known to often cause serious or fatal injuries.
All of these are arguments for SOME regulation of cabbies. Even if some people want a cheaper alternative, the collective safe operation of services that cater to vulnerable people is a justification for having SOME standards to ensure a minimal service level.
Now, the question is whether the regulations for London's cabs set a standard that's unnecessarily high to provide a reasonable level of service. Maybe they are. And maybe that can justify lowering the standards. But there are in fact plenty of situations where you don't just want it to be a "free-for-all," and you want to force standards to exist... even if some people are willing to take riskier choices to save a few bucks.
I think the problem there might be more with the local law enforcement.
That is certainly part of the problem. And part of what often makes it easier for law enforcement to evaluate complaints and problems is an expectation of a certain accepted standard of behavior -- which regulations can sometimes help.
99.999% of society does not undergo background tests and yet do not go around killing and raping to make a little extra on the side.
Well, you zoomed in on the most extreme cases, didn't you? Mostly it's about the cheating that GP mentioned. The raping and murdering are extreme cases in extreme places -- usually, as you say, where law enforcement is problematic. But cheating people? That's much harder for law enforcement to pick up on... particularly when...
What is so unique about cabbies that that they will do so
... Well, for one thing, they often are hired by people from out of town and who are unfamiliar with the area, and you are entrusting your life to them (since car accidents are in fact one of the most common causes of death or serious injury after standard health problems).
How many other types of workers spend most of their time interacting with people who are unlikely to know much about the place they are in (often not even the language) AND have the ability to shuttle them at their whims at high speeds to wherever they like? If you can't see that this is an area more likely to lead to abuse (cheating, stealing, or other crimes) than most, I don't think you've thought about the situation very much.
Problem is, where I live, cabs are regulated, but the service is anything but first class. They're not on time, they're not nice and clean (seems like DC usually gets other cities' worn out cabs). At night, sometimes drivers turn off their meters. They're not allowed to refuse taking you to a destination, but they do anyway. They're not allowed to force passengers to share rides, but they do anyway. They are legally required to take credit cards, but they lie and say their machines are broken (until you say you can't pay because you don't have cash, at which point the machine magically starts working).
Have you reported them? With a quick internet search, here's an online complaint form, and you can also call (855) 484-4966, as discussed here.
I don't know much about this in DC, but in other major cities, cabbies will get major fines and ultimately have their licenses taken if they receive too many complaints about not following regulations. Most cities even require this information for complaint contacts to be prominently displayed in cabs.
If it is as bad as you say, it's up to people who ride in cabs to be proactive about getting these guys off the streets. Or you could pay the city more to have anonymous fake riders to go around and look for violations (which many cities do anyway) -- but it's quicker if people actually report these things.
Point being, regulation doesn't necessarily mean good service.
Well, what you're describing doesn't sound like "regulation" to me. It sounds like "suggestions" that drivers aren't following. I'm not saying that overregulating is always the answer, but it's not actually a valid objection to "regulation" to complain about people who don't follow the regulations... since other cities with similar regulations seem perfectly capable of enforcing them and thereby stopping the things you complain about from happening.
Now, if you want to argue that certain regulations are stupid or result in excessive prices or whatever, then we can have a debate about what "regulation" can do and whether or not it increases service level. But simply describing unregulated behavior says very little about regulation -- if anything, it says something bad about enforcement, not the regulation itself.
note the "may".
I completely agree, we may contact aliens in the next 50-100 years. The probability isn't zero.
Sure, that makes sense.
And, you know what, every Slashdot user who posted on this story may win the lottery in the next 50 years too. The probability isn't zero. Why not have a discussion about that? Let's have a big long thread about how we'll spend all the money we'll be getting.
(And if you say, "Nah -- I don't even buy lottery tickets," well, neither do I, and I've won almost $200 on scratch tickets some of my relatives have given me Christmas gifts... so even if you don't buy tickets, the probability of winning isn't zero. You could find a winning ticket on the street.)
Oh -- what's that? All of us winning the lottery seems too unlikely for us to waste time in discussion? Yeah, I agree.
There's a difference in discussing something that has a 1 in 10 chance of happening or even 1 in 100 or 1 in a million... compared to something that is, say, 1 in a google or 1 in a googleplex. Just because a probability is nonzero does not make it worth considering -- something that has a 1 in a googleplex chance of occurring is effectively impossible, though technically it "may" happen.
I'm not saying alien contact is impossible, though you have no evidence that it actually IS possible, since we only have one clear example of life proven to exist in the universe so far. Anecdote is not data. You can't extrapolate from one data point.
So, the probability of encountering aliens in the next 50-100 years could be 99% (perhaps ships are heading toward us right now and are only right outside our solar system), or it could be 1 in a google, because maybe life simply is much harder to spontaneously arise in the universe than some people think.
Just because something "may" happen doesn't automatically mean that the probability is high enough to care about. It doesn't mean it's too low not to care about either. Without any data, it simply means nothing, and your statement that "we may contact aliens in the next X" is effectively meaningless.
The main problem is we know other lifeforms evolved on this planet before us, and we're not the oldest planetary system out there.
Anecdote is not data.
Unless there is an absurd statistical imbalance in the formation of actual Earth-like planets - which survey data suggests is very unlikely - then the conditions were ripe for complex multi-cellular life to arise
Yeah, here's the problem: what, precisely, is "Earth-like"? Or, specifically, what is "Earth-like" enough that life is statistically likely (or even possible) to arise?
If you made your argument 50 or 60 years ago to most scientists, you'd be laughed out of the room. The idea that the universe was teeming with life just seemed a bit absurd, and not only because of religious views. Even if there were other stars and other galaxies, speculating about what was there just seemed like science fiction.
And precisely what has changed since then, other than people like Carl Sagan and other proponents of SETI convincing us to take sci-fi more seriously (not based on much evidence)?
Yes, we've verified that planets outside our solar system actually exist, but I doubt most astronomers 60 years ago would have assumed otherwise. And we've done experiments (beginning with the Miller-Urey experiment) that show that amino acids and various other organic molecules could form in what we assume was early Earth's chemistry.
But producing a few spontaneous amino acids is a far cry from abiogenesis. I know there is further speculative research trying to sort out how various processes might have led to spontaneous order arising, but there are A LOT of steps between amino acids and a self-replicating cell. Precisely which "Earth-like" conditions would be necessary to allow those things to happen? Given that we haven't sorted out all the details, it's really hard to know.
Sure, it could be that most planets with some vague approximation to the right chemical mix will produce life over a period of a billion years or so. But it could also be that conditions needed to be much more specific, or even that some crazy set of things came together for a very short time window to make it work out on Earth. So, the probability that an "Earth-like" planet according to your specifications might form life could be 90%, or it could be 1 in a billion or a trillion or a quadrillion. Life could be present around neighboring stars, or it could be more like once per galaxy, or it could be that we truly are unique.
I'm not saying it's likely that we're unique; I'm saying that we have only one data point to extrapolate from. Until we actually find life somewhere else, or it comes to us, or we mix together something in a lab and spontaneously generate a self-replicating cell, we're all just speculating.
So, your assertion that "the conditions were ripe for complex multi-cellular life to arise" is nothing more than idle speculation. I agree that it seems pretty likely that once you have multicellular life, it is likely to evolve to more complex things. Evolution with self-replicating life as a response to environmental conditions makes sense, and it has been actually observed on a smaller scale. But the problem is getting to that self-replicating life in the first place. People are working on theories to explain that, but we simply have no idea what the probability is. Thus anyone who claims to be able to use the Drake equation to produce a realistic estimate is full of crap.
Your comment presupposes that a "Ph.D. in Pedantry" exists. If such a degree did exist, I'm sure people many people around here would have attained one (if not granted multiple honorary doctorates).
Perhaps this calls for a new Slashdot achievement -- the Ph.D. in Pedantry. Once one achieves it, one gains the ability to mod posts as "pedantic" (since someone with a Ph.D. is obviously an official arbiter in the field). The fun thing about the "pedantic" mod is that it could serve as either +1 or -1, which would make it extra fun.
Accumulate enough posts modded "pedantic," and the Slashdot userbase will confer upon you a "Ph.D. in Pedantry.":)
You're also a long way from lots of other things. That's the trade-off for living in a low-density area.
Yeah, "long way" is relative if you include the time dimension. I've lived in places from big cities to fairly rural areas. The thing about big cities is that all that "high-density" of activity means it takes a long time to get anywhere. I lived only few miles from the center of cultural activities, etc. in a big city, and it would take me basically an hour to get there by any reasonable method. I could walk 10-15 minutes to the subway station, wait 5 minutes for a train, spend 20-30 minutes on the subway (including changing trains generally), and then walk another 5-15 minutes to the event.
Or I could just walk there for 4 miles or whatever, and probably it would take about the same amount of time.
OR -- I could live 20 miles outside the city, and on the occasion when I want to go to a major arts event, I could drive into the city, probably get there in less time than I would have spent on public transport, and park in the garage next to the event site.
"But!" you say, "Why couldn't you park in the garage and drive from your place in the city?! Or take a cab?" Well, yeah, I could -- except my rent or mortgage in the city is 3 times what it would be 20 miles outside the city. So, I can afford the parking garage easily with all the extra cash I still have in my pocket.
If you want a lot of variety, you need an urban setting
Meh. It's somewhat illusory. Yeah, it's easier to walk around your house and have a variety of restaurants or coffee shops or whatever. But unless you're rich enough to live in the center of the downtown, you'll probably still have a significant commute to get to a lot major event venues.
Regardless, if you live in or near a small city, you generally have as much variety in restaurants and such within a 10-20 minute drive as you would within a 10-20 minute walk in the city. The difference is that the city forces you to walk or take a cab, because there's often no parking anywhere (or you could take a car and spend $20 for parking or 20 minutes driving around to find a spot).
Basically, distances are much smaller in the city. But the high density means you cover those distances much more slowly. If you factor in the time dimension, "distances" (as in how long it actually takes you to get to things) to a variety of things may be basically the same for a smaller city or suburb of a smaller city.
You can tell yourself that you don't want the other things offered by a city â" it might even be true â" but that doesn't change the fact that you're choosing to be without them.
Maybe. It's a trade-off. But having lived in both sorts of places, I can say that except for major events that only a MAJOR city would have, you can get roughly the same accessibility and "density" of variety (factoring in time) in a lot of places... not just major cities. If you're looking for the upper end of culture, dining, shops, etc., obviously you're not going to find that in a lesser town or city... but most people I know who live in big cities can't afford to continuously attend or shop or go to such places on a regular basis anyway. If you live in a small city, you could instead just drive the hour or two to the major city when you want those things... probably with the same frequency that most people in the big cities take advantage of them.
Besides, what a stupid study. There are certain classes where 'remembering' is the most important part of the class, but at least in my engineering and science classes, 'knowing' and 'understanding' had slightly higher priority.
Actually, I think that was actually the point of the study.
Students who typed tended to transcribe verbatim, effectively doing a kind of "remembering" the lecture on their computer without ever "knowing" or "understanding" the material well enough to extract the important stuff and take notes on it.
Those who wrote things down had to be more selective -- they had to process the lecture, "understand" what was important in order to choose what notes to take, and then write it down so they could review it and cement that knowledge at a later time.
It's funny that you call a study "stupid" for not examining deeper comprehension, when you actually didn't comprehend the entire point of the study... which basically agrees with you.
There's a proviso on the seepage coverage that says they don't cover "repeated seepage" and since the seepage had been ocurring every time it rained for the last 10 years, it counted as 'repeated'. So we were on the hook for the whole $15,000.
Sorry this happened to you. But this whole thing sounds so ridiculous -- the very definition of "seepage" is that it happens slowly, over time, generally from repeated exposures to water events (rather than, say, "flooding," which happens all at once).
A "seepage" policy that doesn't cover "repeated seepage" sounds like a warranty against "drips" from a faucet that doesn't cover "repeated dripping."
You obviously have no experience with these products in at least the last five years. Yes, there was a time they earned a bad reputation, but the current versions are easily uninstalled and are much lighter on resources.
Not according to people I know who used them recently. For a few different family members in the past few years (who live far enough away that I can't troubleshoot their computer), I recommended installing antivirus to fix symptoms that obviously seemed to be some sort of malware. Yes, they found malware and viruses, and that often fixed some weird behavior. But inevitably it also tended to slow down their computers until they were basically unusable. Two of these family members ended up switching to tablets and just giving up on their laptops... and that's after I tried to recommend some tweaks to settings to stop the incessant background crap.
In fact, for many users (not the typical Slashdot user), modern AV (incl Symantec AV) can actually increase felt computer performance due to scheduled background maintenance tasks (defrag, for example).
What the heck are you talking about? My copy of Norton Utilities (came with AV package) I got in 1995 or 1996 something had automatic defrag operations (and all sorts of other "maintenance" it could do in the background) -- and it was PRECISELY all those background processes and tasks that slowed my system to a halt, leading me to dump the OS and reinstall everything without Norton.
I tried again maybe 10 years ago, and the same crap happened. The only usable AV that doesn't completely slow down your system is usually one tweaked so it doesn't perform any "background maintenance" nonsense.
Still, like all software, AV products do consume resources and can have a noticeable performance hit, especially on marginal hardware to start with.
Yeah, and that's the whole problem. AV products need to be designed for MARGINAL HARDWARE. That's probably their primary audience -- people who buy cheap underpowered systems that have crap "trial versions" of AV on them to try to convince people to buy, and people with older systems who have realized that "weird stuff is happening" and decide to try to purchase AV. If the AV companies can't make their stuff work reasonably well on older or underpowered machines, who the heck do they think they are going to sell to?
Slashdot Mirror
a couple years of chess for grades 5-10 should be mandatory in every school curriculum.
Please, no. You might as well say that we should require every school to devote a semester in middle school to Rubik's Cube solving.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying chess is a simple puzzle that can be easily solved. I'm saying that chess is a strategy game, and like all strategy games, success is mostly a product of two things: (1) experience -- the more you play, the better you get, (2) ability to remember and recall standard strategies and scenarios. The actual abstract logic that you highlight is important at some level, but about at the same level that it is in solving a Rubik's Cube. That is -- a precious few people solve a Rubik's Cube from first principles or mathematical abstraction. But even if they do, they will generally happen upon certain common patterns that efficiently work toward a solution, and once those patterns are learned, they experience a significant improvement -- much more so than if they increased their logic skills. And often the majority of kids pick up these patterns not by deriving them from first principles or logic, but by watching their friends (or, these days, from the internet).
Most decent chess players will deny the role that memorization plays in the game, but LOTS of psychological studies have attempted to measure what constitutes "chess intelligence." And they have discovered again and again that those who excel tend to be (1) good at pattern recognition and (2) have a good visual memory. That's about it. MANY studies have shown absolutely NO correlation between good chess players and general intelligence (e.g., IQ) or general problem-solving skills. (There's one study that came out in the past couple years that claims to find a correlation between higher-level players and IQ, but it's really going against the trend of 80 years of studies which have shown little or no such correlation, so... at best, we should say there's little evidence accumulated yet of any such connection.)
So, if you want to use chess to stimulate "clear thinking," I think that's a misguided goal. Lower-level players who have good visual memory and pattern recognition, along with a memorized set of common strategies, will easily beat players at a similar level with superior logical skills.
This happened to me personally. I know anecdote is not data, but I only read the psychological studies I mentioned above after I had my own experience and was curious. Somebody taught me the rules of chess at a young age -- I was probably 6 or 7. I did really well, for a kid that age. But I didn't play a lot, and frankly I found the game boring. I tried doing a chess club for a while in middle school, but I realized I just had little "talent" for it (or so I thought). After that, despite playing a number of adults who also appeared to be thinking from first principles and using logic and critical thinking who tried to help me, I just never played much and wasn't very good.
On the other hand, I actually loved problem-solving. I was the kind of kid who read a book on formal logic in middle school for fun. I taught myself to code. I always enjoyed the "challenge problems" at the end of the math book that the teacher never assigned. Eventually, those grew tiresome, so I started working through a calculus textbook and doing all the problems in middle school.
But chess? Terrible at it. Found it boring.
Eventually, when I was in my mid-20s, I decided maybe I should improve my skills. I met a number of people in graduate school who seemed to value chess as some sort of marker of intelligence, but I was terrible at it. So I spent a few months reading up on tactics, opening patterns, endgame patterns, etc. And -- guess what -- suddenly I was able to beat a lot of my friends. All I did, from my perspective, was learn a set of common strategies and patterns that significantly improved my game. I certainly didn't improve
If you read my post, you will see that I disagree about countries that print their own currency. It's tantamount to a default if you spool up the presses and pay it off with worthless hyperinflated currency.
It won't be "worthless" or "hyperinflated" if the debt is paid off in that currency.
Hyperinflation is generally a phenomenon which occurs as part of a feedback loop -- country A owes money in country B's currency, for example. Country A runs the presses to pay the debt in currency B this month. To do so, it increases the monetary base of currency A; it then exchanges money for currency B. Those people who buy currency A to give out the B in exchange then spread the currency A money back into the economy, where inflation begins.
Since prices are inflated and the monetary base in use has enlarged, the exchange rate between A and B changes, so A now has less worth in B's denomination. Next month or quarter or whatever, when A has to come up with money in currency B, it now has to print the presses even more, because the exchange rate is no longer as favorable. That results in more money flowing into the economy, more inflation, etc. Each payment thus requires more printing of the presses than the previous month, and the currency is devalued.
Repeat cycle over a period of months or years, and country B never pays off debt, and its currency is completely wrecked by hyperinflation.
Now -- if a country has sovereign debt denominated in its own currency, then the government is the only source of the currency. Thus, the government already effectively "created" that money by issuing the bond in the first place. Some other person or country or whatever holds that debt has already said that it will accept payment in currency "created" by that government.
So, if country A now just decides tomorrow to run the presses and pay off ALL the debt, it can do so. Country A is guaranteed to be able to pay off ALL of its debt simply by an act authorizing payment of X dollars or yen or whatever. There is no possibility of the inflationary spiral above where it could require many multiples of X dollars or yen or whatever simply to pay off the debt, because the denomination already is ONLY X and X ONLY. The value of the debt is set.
It is possible that some inflation will ensue after the debt is paid, depending on exactly how this is done, and what the people who get paid this "money" do with it. (I put "money" in quotation marks, because all of these transactions mostly happen virtually on computers between major banks and such, with no real currency transactions happening in actual physical money.) But, in reality, foreign owners of debt in currency A will probably act in ways to actively discourage inflation in currency A as long as they hold some debt in that currency... otherwise, the value of their investment will decrease. So, anyone who holds this debt has an interest in keeping currency A afloat and avoiding hyperinflation -- rather than if the debt is denominated in currency B, in which case all that matters is getting the value into currency B.
But the point is that there is no need for the inflationary spiral to occur, because the money never has to go through the exchange process (and thereby doesn't necessarily change hands beyond the original holders of the debt).
Now -- how investors in that country's government could react going forward could have serious economic consequences, depending on how it is handled. But the money originally flowing to those who own the debt will be paid in currency with its current full value, not "worthless hyperinflated currency." If you don't understand that currency actually originates through government production, and thus production of government debt effectively "creates" money already, I'd suggest you go back and read a macroeconomics textbook.
One can argue about how crazy governments have to be to cause banks and investors and so forth t
On the contrary, in a couple decades, things will be much worse in Japan. The number of retirees will rise, and the number of younger working people will decline. The ratio of retired to working people will rise, and there won't be anyone to pay for the medical care of the old people. That's a recipe for immense suffering, both personal and economic.
This is unnecessarily alarmist. In the early 1900s (until about 1940) the Japanese birth rate was approximately 4 times what it is now. Who do you think paid to feed all those kids or for their medical care, etc.? Yeah, conditions were worse, but the point is that all of those resources that previously went from working adults directly into raising kids are no longer necessary.
As long as older people are relatively healthy, it's not like having to care for 2 parents (shared among their children) for 10 years more is going to require more in terms of food, etc. than taking care of 5 or 6 kids for 20 years as they grow up (as was needed in years gone by).
Now I know the big objection about this is going to have to do with health care -- obviously older people cost more in terms of health care, but this is a relatively novel phenomenon, mostly having to do with a general push toward life extension without consideration of quality of life. Older people who are not suffering from chronic medical issues are probably not going to cost society as a whole much more than the multitude of children every family had in years gone by. But, to take an even more "crass" perspective, at some point humans will have to start seriously considering quality of life issues, rather than extending lives in pain for years or decades at great expense. Maybe we're not there yet... but unless someone comes up with the "fountain of youth" elixir in the next couple decades, a LOT of Western societies are going to need to start dealing with this issue.
Japan currently averages about 1.4 kids per family. A stable, sustainable rate would be about 2.1 kids. (Not 2.0 because a small number will die before reaching reproductive age.) Japan's rate is much too low for a healthy society.
Yeah, who gets to decide what's "healthy"? The planet as a whole ecosystem, with us included, would probably be much "healthier" if we spent a few centuries with a declining birthrate on the order of Japan's. I agree with you that the bigger issue is large birth rates in other parts of the world, but -- if you're talking from a strictly environmental perspective -- we probably should be talking about a long-term decrease, not "healthy" stability.
In fact the article gives clear statistics showing the exact opposite.
One other thing: While the article does give SOME statistics, it is basically what is mentioned in the summary, i.e., numbers from ONE STATE which changed its laws, and a comparison of TWO CITIES that had very similar characteristics.
Anecdote is not data. The fact that things improved in one state after a law change shouldn't be conclusive proof that the same thing would happen elsewhere. And the fact that City X has better stats than very similar City Y is hardly conclusive proof that the policies should be adopted in all traffic situations in all cities (especially those with very different characteristics from Cities X and Y). Moreover, with only one comparison point, the whole thing could still be bogus -- all it takes is one significant difference between X and Y not to be taken into account, and the whole conclusion is nonsense.
When this person has stats from 10 or 20 states that have made this change and makes comparisons between 10 or 20 different pairs of cities with various characteristics, THEN we can say there are "clear statistics showing the exact opposite" in the general case
I'm not saying we shouldn't consider the policies proposed here -- but "clear statistics" that prove anything? Not in this article.
You can't be serious saying it is more dangerous to give way at slow speed versus coming to a complete stop and then having to huff and puff back up to speed, while simultaneously being overtaken with inches to spare by a bunch of impatient motorists because you can't outpace them.
Your policy makes perfect sense in normal traffic situations. It begins to fall apart in some situations where abnormal traffic arises and with higher concentrations of cyclists.
I lived in such an area for some years, and I had to commute most mornings through side streets along with hoards of cyclists who basically followed the traffic exceptions you recommend (even though they were supposed to be more cautious). Some old cities have poor urban planning -- streets are narrow, parking is scarce (so people park in places they normally wouldn't be allowed to, like closer to intersections), and cyclists often can get somewhere faster than cars if they behave in your recommended fashion... particularly with a dedicated bike lane (as there was along many parts of my commute).
Over the years, I personally witnessed dozens of near-misses of collisions between cars and cyclists, and at least two minor accidents. In most of those cases, the problems boiled down to two situations: (1) cars showing up "where they weren't supposed to", and (2) bicycles showing up "where they weren't supposed to."
And what I mean is NOT that anyone was doing anything illegal -- but rather that in high density areas, vehicles often appear in unexpected ways. All is well and good for a cyclist to coast through a stop sign if all the cars are where they normally are and behave in the most common ways. But what happens when a car pulls out of a driveway suddenly on the side street and proceeds as if the intersection is supposed to be clear (as it usually is, since opposing traffic has a stop)? Or what happens when a parked car does something unexpected? Or what happens when a cyclist pulls out of a driveway and zooms up on the right past a car unexpectedly, while the driver is trying to evaluate the other "normal" traffic patterns at that intersection? Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.
If low density traffic, with wide streets, not a lot of things to obstruct views (lots of trees, parked cars, etc.), and not a lot of other distracting things going on (rush hour traffic, loads of pedestrians, etc.), the policies you endorse make perfect sense. But the more bikes and the more cars on the roads, the more I'd strongly recommend that bikes try to follow standard traffic laws.
In fact the article gives clear statistics showing the exact opposite. Just about every cyclist I know treat 'right of way' as synonymous to 'enter at your own risk'.
Yeah, a significant percentage of the cyclists I saw on an everyday basis did NOT "enter at your own risk." That's what begins to happen in a city where the culture changes to make cycling easier (bike lanes, etc.) and when it can be actually faster and more convenient than driving. Once cyclists don't exercise that kind of caution, bad things start to happen... because intersections are designed with the assumption that all moving vehicles are obeying traffic regulations. If you break those regulations, you will certainly have to start redesigning intersections in some high density areas.
"Boise... 150 percent fewer than Bakersfield." How'd they manage that?
Uh, isn't it obvious? This policy change was SO freakin' good that it caused victims of previous accidents to be spontaneously healed and to rise from the dead!
BMI is not perfect. However, unless you are a weightlifter or outrageously fit (not just "skinny fit", but bulging muscles) it's a pretty good indicator.
No it is NOT. SERIOUSLY. It is absolutely NOT a good indicator.
See, for example, this actual study on correlation between BMI and obesity measured by bodyfat percentage. The main finding, according to the study: "A BMI >= 30 had ... a poor sensitivity (36% and 49 % [in men and women], respectively) to detect [Body-fat %]-defined obesity."
In other words, the current BMI cut-off of 30 only correctly identifies 36% of male obese people correctly, and only 49% of females. Does that sound like a "pretty good indicator" to you?
Now, most of the error here is actually underreporting obesity. So, you might say, let's decrease the threshold. But again, from the study: "Decreasing the BMI cut-off for obesity to >= 25 kg/m2 for instance, will still result in misclassifying as obese 38% of men and 16% of women."
In other words, if we lower the BMI threshold enough to capture more than 90% of obese people, we end up misdiagnosing about 1/3 of them as obese. The article summarizes these problems:
The implications of mislabeling patients are not trivial. By using BMI as a marker of obesity, we misclassify >= 50% of patients with excess body fat as being normal or just overweight and we miss the opportunity to intervene and reduce health risk in such individuals. Conversely, BMI may lead to misclassification of persons with normal levels of fat as being overweight...
In other words, BMI is a TERRIBLE indicator of actual obesity. It ends up massively underreporting actual obesity, but it misclassifies a similarly large number as "overweight" even when those pounds represent extra muscle mass or other things unlikely to lead to health problems.
Seriously. People need to stop saying "Yeah, BMI's okay for most people." It is NOT okay. We need to stop using it, if we want to be accurate in classifying obesity.
Fat-shaming NEEDS to be a thing. Despite what those childish tumblr-tards say.
Later in your post, you say there should be exceptions for illnesses, genetics, etc. How exactly do you plan to explain when it's appropriate for kids to shame other fats vs. when they can't, for example? Or is it okay to shame everyone for their appearance if it might imply something bad about their character? A lot of black people commit crimes (on average, more so than some other groups) -- should we shame all black people too on the basis of their appearance?
It is an abnormality. The human body hasn't evolved to deal with it. And it shouldn't evolve to deal with it.
It's good that we have an AC to decide how the human race "should evolve." Congratulations: you've now entered into the exciting field of eugenics!
All these companies can put as much spin on it as possible, "oh, our meals are only meant to be one-offs every so often", or whatever other bullshit they can come up with, they are partly responsible for this.
Great -- the corporations are partly responsible. How much do you plan to charge them to contribute to healthcare for their "responsibility" for the fat people? Or do we only charge the fat people more, even though you claim some other people share the blame? (Just looking for the logic here.)
Quite frankly, I say make people pay double for healthcare
Yeah, this always comes up when morbidly obese people and smokers are discussed. (For the record, I'm neither -- but that shouldn't matter now, if we're discussing logically, should it?)
What's the argument here? Fat people (and smokers and whoever the demon of the week is) cost more in healthcare? Yeah, they do, on average -- on an annual basis. But guess what? They die earlier. There have been a number of studies that show a clear cost savings over the lifespan of an obese person. Why? Because old people need more health care. Who do you think will cost more over the course of retirement? The fat guy who dies in his mid-60s and basically never retires, but costs more for his 5 years of diabetes care or whatever? Or the skinny guy who lives to 95, spends 30 years drawing government retirement money, needs a couple knee replacements for the all the running he did by his late 60s, falls and breaks a hip and spends a year recuperating in his 70s, and then needs 10-15 years of care during his 80s and 90s as his brain slowly turns to mush from whatever random degenerative disease? Fat people die sooner, so even though they have more years of concentrated medical costs at a younger age, over their lifespan they cost significantly less. (And that's just healthcare costs -- factor in extra costs for the government to pay out retirement money, etc., and fat people cost society a LOT less.)
If you live in a country where you pay for health insurance, by all means, charge fat people more for their premiums. It makes sense from a cost-benefit analysis. But if you have a nationalized health system (or even if you don't), you should actually be giving these people a tax break -- if your goal is to save the system money.
It sounds counterintuitive, but most studies don't take into account decrease longevity when they talk about how fat people "cost more." (And governments downplay the few studies that have looked at this question, because they don't want to encourage obesity.) It gets even better for cigarette smokers -- a few different studies show that for ever pack of cigarettes someone smokes, they save society about 30 cents because they are likely to die sooner. I'm not kidding. And that's not even counting taxes on cigarettes.
(illnesses, genetics, and some medications like the steroidal types)
Exactly how do you determine which "genetics" are bad enough to justify that it's okay to be fat? I mean, the human race evolved
The formula for BMI is weight(kg) / heigth(m) * height(m). This formula only has two terms for height, but in reality I'm a 3d person.
Congratulations, I'm sure nobody has noticed that before.
I mean, It's entirely impossible that people don't scale up like, say, solid bronze statues would.
Well, if I cut through the sarcasm here, (1) people have noticed this before, and (2) people do NOT scale up like solid bronze would. On the other hand, your sarcasm doesn't make an exponent of 2 true or an accurate approximation, nor does it make the exponent 3 as the GP suggests. The actual value when derived from various empirical studies falls in an exponent range of 2.3-2.7. If you separate out men and women, you can narrow that range somewhat. If you take other factors into account, you can get even more accurate.
(By the way, statutes are a poor example. Large human figures by great artists often have exaggerated (larger than life) features on the top, since they are often viewed from below. A good sculptor understands the importance of distance in making things appear "too small," and will often overcompensate in various ways for large statutes, making them disproportionate with actual humans.)
Furthermore it'd be ludicrous to suggest that the formula wasn't an empirically derived approximation but was just made up by someone who wasn't as math-smart as you.
The sarcasm is so heavy here that it's difficult to know what you're saying.
Nonetheless, (3) the formula was an empirically derived approximation, but for populations, not individuals, and (4) the person who designed it may have been "math-smart," but it was made up in an era long before pocket calculators, and an exponent of 2.3 or something would have made things more complicated to calculate than simply squaring a number; the approximation of 2 worked well with other assumptions of the number. Furthermore, when it was made up, it was understood to apply to population statistics, so the people who were "math-dumb" were those in the medical profession who started applying it to individuals in the last 40 years, not the demographers who designed it 200 years ago.
The big problem with coming up with a measure for the population at large (no pun intended) is that men and women have very different body shapes, and women tend to have higher bodyfat percentages when they are healthy. But women are also shorter. Therefore, if you want ONE NUMBER to describe both sexes, you necessarily must design a measure that will allow short people to be fatter (but still "normal"), while tall people must have lower bodyfat than average to be "normal." Thus, BMI works great as an approximation for estimating the size of the population in general, but it is terrible for individuals. For short men and tall women it was designed to be terrible. For really short people, you basically have to be obese to be "normal" and for really tall people, you basically have to be emaciated.
Numerous subsequent medical studies have shown that any number of simple alternative measurements have higher correlations with actual adiposity and actual disease or mortality. For example, simply measuring a man's waist without taking anything else into account (no height, weight, body shape or anything) is a better predictor than BMI. It's still not great, but it's better than BMI.
You can live in denial and go on insulting people for being ignorant, but you're just hiding your own. BMI is a TERRIBLE measure of adiposity and propensity for disease -- it's explcitily designed to be for maybe 1/3 of the population or more.
How do you tell a compelling story about IT infrastructure?
Once upon a time, there was a filing cabinet.
How about inspiration from last year's winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, such as this gem:
What the Highway Department's chief IT guy for the new computerized roadway hated most was listening to the 'smart' components complain about being mixed with asphalt instead of silicon and made into speed bumps instead of graceful vases, like the one today from chip J176: "I coulda had glass; I coulda been a container; I coulda been some bottle, instead of a bump, which is what I am."
I don't know how you tell compelling stories getting into actual details without jargon and descriptions that will probably cause management to shut down and stop listening. ("He's going on again about some electronics crap I've never heard of...")
But one can easily create analogies. Your infrastructure is like your house, for example. You need to maintain the shingles on your roof, paint the wooden siding on your house, caulk up the cracks when they appear. Occasionally, you get a rotten board and you replace it. You get a leaking roof and you patch it. Occasionally, you need to deploy more extreme measures when the rats get in or termites are in the walls -- but if you put out the bait traps first, you might avoid expensive repairs to begin with.
Is it possible to do nothing on your house for a little while and it will keep functioning? Sure. But the longer you go without painting the siding and patching the roof, the deeper the problems get as wind and water and mice and termites start eating away... and suddenly you're stuck taking out a home equity loan just to do repairs.
I don't know if this is the kind of "story" you're looking for, but you can probably come up with some sort of analogy using anything that requires regular maintenance to explain what you're doing. It may not be the kind of language you'd use in an official report, but if you're chatting with the management, it can at least get across the necessity of the kind of work needed in the background to keep stuff working.
To this "story," you can add the use of graphs and visuals. "Look at this trendline -- this is how much money we start to lose if we didn't do X, but we implemented a new policy, and now look at the savings!" Emphasize measures of "efficiency," and make comparisons to what would happen if you didn't pay attention to whatever routine things you do (with graphs illustrating the difference).
Visuals + compelling (though potentially inaccurate) analogies in plain language will generally get your point across to non-tech specialists.
To me, this indicates a change in attitude. No longer are they striving to put out the best software, they're churning revs to keep revenue up. It's a sign of desperation and it has been going on for several years, now.
Meh. It's been going on for several decades. 20-ish years ago I was beta-testing Windows 95. Then I bought Windows 95 when it came out. It had some great new features, but it also was seriously broken in many ways. Office 95 was prettier and had some new features, but in other ways it was a bloated piece of garbage.
I knew a number of people who kept using their DOS version of WordPerfect until the early 2000s on their personal computers -- it was stable, it had basically all the features you could want... why change, other than to get something a little prettier?
At least with word processors you might be able to justify the WYSIWYG factor and the graphical elements as an important advance in functionality for people who like to play around with weird fonts and tweak the appearance of documents (usually without any decent sense of design).
But spreadsheets? Once pivot tables were invented in the early 90s, what did subsequent versions of Excel add other than bloat and prettier graphics? Yeah, you got your 3-D charts. Fantastic. Looks snazzy. But was it worth the HUGE increases in system resources for that?
The GUI for Windows 95 and subsequent versions has been useful. But let's be serious about this -- the standard features of the most common business applications reached maturity in the late 80s, and accumulated only a few more important features in the early 90s. Ever since then, it's mostly been about eye candy and arbitrary changes in interfaces, rather than the "best software." Sure, there are lots of advanced features that some people need that have been added, but mostly Microsoft has been about producing bloated stuff with new interfaces for at least 20 years... generally first with a crappy buggy version followed by something that keeps the same basic interface but fixes the problems... then a new interface and repeat the cycle.
And yes, people do have these problems. I work with Windows admins and while good at Windows, they don't quite grok UNIX-type filesystems and design, referring to the root partition as the 'root drive' or even 'C: drive'.
How is this possible? It doesn't make any sense, unless the people you're talking about are complete idiots who shouldn't be administering anything, including Windoes.
I guess I could sort of understand this if you were talking about DOS or Windows prior to the past 15 years or so.
But modern Windows actually acts like the various drives are "subdirectories" under "My Computer" in some ways (at least in appearance). And any actual admin would understand the idea of mapping a "network drive," which could often be a random directory on another computer, to a drive letter. And then one could create a shortcut from a specific folder to such an arbitrary location.
If your Windows admin has never had an occasion to connect to a random directory on a networked computer or use a shortcut to get to another root director on a drive... well, I don't know what to say. But if he/she has, the concept of Linux filesystem should just be a simple extension of that.
I'm sure Windows USERS often have trouble understanding the Linux filesystem. But a Windows admin who couldn't figure it out after a few days should be fired.
I call bullshit on their training claims. Staff that used Windows at previous jobs or at home will have a lower training needs.
Uh, how many training hours do you think were wasted converting users to the "ribbon" interface of Office 2007? Windows had a menu interface that worked, and admins could even customize shortcut menus on top if the workers needed specific access to common buttons, rather than digging through menus. But then there was a redesign... either you upgrade and retrain, or you deal with an inability to adequately use the new file formats when you need to communicate with others.
And that's just one significant redesign. When will Microsoft do another one?
In comparison, major Linux projects are often very stable in terms of interface. Even when a team decides to make major changes, it's usually possible for an admin to reconfigure the interface so it basically functions as before... and if there is any significant dissent about a new interface, there's generally a fork or alternative package to maintain the old one for quite some time.
And since source code is available, even if the Linux project goes in a different way, the government or company can easily pay coders to create a custom package or maintain the old one.
They also assume that staff time is free and ignore any lost productivity or errors from their new OS and applications.
Again, productivity is lost whenever Microsoft changes its interface on a whim. At least with Linux you often have a choice concerning major changes -- and if you don't, you have the source code to customize it yourself.
As for "staff time," well... if you're talking about staff for retraining, I've already discussed this problem is not unique to Linux -- and once the transition is made to Linux, open source ensures that companies can choose when and if they ever want to change something that would require retraining... rather than being forced to follow Microsoft's arbitrary upgrades or pay Microsoft to maintain compatibiility and patches on archaic versions without the option to do it yourself.
If by "staff time" you mean admin -- well, there's a reason why the vast majority of the world's servers run Linux. It's VERY stable on the server side, and though one may still encounter some annoying bugs on the desktop side, once the admins deal with the problems, they tend to stay fixed... unlike Microsoft patches and upgrades which sometimes fix one thing and break another, but because it's closed source, there's no way to avoid many of them in order to have a secure system.
Nurses do a considerable amount of the work,
Absolutely. But the product of their work is overseen by a doctor or hospital. If the level of care does not meet certain standards, the doctor and/or the hospital may lose accreditation.
and there are over-the-counter drugs which someone can advise you to take without being a doctor.
Yes, and...? You can also advise yourself to take them. In general, they are regarded as safe enough that when taking in dosages according to the directions on the bottle, you should almost always be safe.
Point is: someone else can certainly recommend that you take an over-the-counter drug. But that person cannot tell you to take the drug in some manner inconsistent with the labelling (e.g., more than listed dose, taking it if you have a named condition on the label that says not to take it, etc.) unless they are a doctor. Doing so probably violates some laws, and if they are making such recommendations as part of a business, they probably risk having whatever permits or licenses to operate said business revoked.
Another area where we have a similar issue is with the legal profession. A clerk could do most of the work you go to a lawyer for, as it's just filling out boilerplate forms.
Yet again, it's still ultimately the lawyer's responsibility to see that things are done correctly. If the clerk ends up forging forms or doing other incorrect or illegal stuff, and the lawyer lets that happen and signs off on it, etc., the lawyer could be disbarred.
If you want to have accountability for certain professions, that's fine, but you have to keep in mind that there is also a threat of protecting incumbents form competition, which can, on the grand scale, cause issues as bad or worse than a free for all.
Absolutely. Never said or implied otherwise. As I said, I didn't claim that the current question about London cabs justifies the level of competence of regulatory qualifications -- I don't know enough about the situation. But the GP just posed a very general question about why people shouldn't be able to choose some uncertified or unregulated person. The answer is that sometimes it is in the public good to ensure a certain minimum quality of service, particularly to ensure safety, to protect vulnerable people, and... perhaps in the cab case... to avoid scam artists and people who'd rip people off. Perhaps Uber satisfies a societal minimum standard, and perhaps the cabbies fighting it are overqualified. But that doesn't mean that regulation should always bow to the free market.
I don't claim to know much about London's particular situation, but let's consider your argument in the abstract, since that's what you apparently want.
People keep arguing that London's black cabs are better than Uber and therefore Uber should not be allowed to compete with them. If London's black cabs are everything you say they are (and I believe you are correct), why shouldn't people be free to take the risks with Uber if they feel the lower cost is worth the risk?
Okay, let's apply this to medicine. Probably 90% of illnesses people show up to a doctor's office with don't require a true medical expert to treat. Some random guy who learned some stuff on the internet and maybe took a few courses on common diseases could probably address most problems.
Should we give prescribing privileges for medication to someone like this? Should we simply let them practice medicine without additional regulation or licensing requirements? "Why shouldn't people be free to take the risks... if they feel the lower cost is worth the risk?"
Well, for one thing, of those 10% of less common diseases, many of them will have symptoms that sound very much like the 90% which are more common. Having at least some standard for medical practice assumes that the doctor will have enough knowledge to dig deeper when necessary to sort these things out, rather than doling out treatments or drugs that could potentially injure or kill people.
Also, people with diseases are often in vulnerable situations. They are willing to try things and make poor decisions to get better or to get rid of the pain. We, as a society, have a duty to protect them at least somewhat from charlatans and dangerous people. And, if a physician consistently shows he/she is incapable of making the correct calls in such cases, the license will be revoked to protect ignorant consumers from being harmed by people claiming to know things or have skills that they do not.
I just don't get the argument, "Option A is better, so people should not be allowed to choose Option B." I understand your argument, but if the cabbies driving the black cabs are so much better than the competition from Uber, why do they need government regulation to keep Uber out of the market?
In some cases, the free market will solve problems like this. In other cases, like my medical example above, having some sort of regulation or certification is important to maintain a minimum SAFE standard for certain businesses.
The cab business has a few unusual traits: (1) they often deal with people who are unfamiliar with the area they are in, sometimes don't know the language, or could be otherwise incapacitated and vulnerable (drunk, lost, etc.), (2) they often get single people, including weak and vulnerable people by themselves, and (3) they are confining and propelling other people around in high-velocity missiles which are known to often cause serious or fatal injuries.
All of these are arguments for SOME regulation of cabbies. Even if some people want a cheaper alternative, the collective safe operation of services that cater to vulnerable people is a justification for having SOME standards to ensure a minimal service level.
Now, the question is whether the regulations for London's cabs set a standard that's unnecessarily high to provide a reasonable level of service. Maybe they are. And maybe that can justify lowering the standards. But there are in fact plenty of situations where you don't just want it to be a "free-for-all," and you want to force standards to exist... even if some people are willing to take riskier choices to save a few bucks.
I think the problem there might be more with the local law enforcement.
That is certainly part of the problem. And part of what often makes it easier for law enforcement to evaluate complaints and problems is an expectation of a certain accepted standard of behavior -- which regulations can sometimes help.
99.999% of society does not undergo background tests and yet do not go around killing and raping to make a little extra on the side.
Well, you zoomed in on the most extreme cases, didn't you? Mostly it's about the cheating that GP mentioned. The raping and murdering are extreme cases in extreme places -- usually, as you say, where law enforcement is problematic. But cheating people? That's much harder for law enforcement to pick up on... particularly when...
What is so unique about cabbies that that they will do so
... Well, for one thing, they often are hired by people from out of town and who are unfamiliar with the area, and you are entrusting your life to them (since car accidents are in fact one of the most common causes of death or serious injury after standard health problems).
How many other types of workers spend most of their time interacting with people who are unlikely to know much about the place they are in (often not even the language) AND have the ability to shuttle them at their whims at high speeds to wherever they like? If you can't see that this is an area more likely to lead to abuse (cheating, stealing, or other crimes) than most, I don't think you've thought about the situation very much.
Problem is, where I live, cabs are regulated, but the service is anything but first class. They're not on time, they're not nice and clean (seems like DC usually gets other cities' worn out cabs). At night, sometimes drivers turn off their meters. They're not allowed to refuse taking you to a destination, but they do anyway. They're not allowed to force passengers to share rides, but they do anyway. They are legally required to take credit cards, but they lie and say their machines are broken (until you say you can't pay because you don't have cash, at which point the machine magically starts working).
Have you reported them? With a quick internet search, here's an online complaint form, and you can also call (855) 484-4966, as discussed here.
I don't know much about this in DC, but in other major cities, cabbies will get major fines and ultimately have their licenses taken if they receive too many complaints about not following regulations. Most cities even require this information for complaint contacts to be prominently displayed in cabs.
If it is as bad as you say, it's up to people who ride in cabs to be proactive about getting these guys off the streets. Or you could pay the city more to have anonymous fake riders to go around and look for violations (which many cities do anyway) -- but it's quicker if people actually report these things.
Point being, regulation doesn't necessarily mean good service.
Well, what you're describing doesn't sound like "regulation" to me. It sounds like "suggestions" that drivers aren't following. I'm not saying that overregulating is always the answer, but it's not actually a valid objection to "regulation" to complain about people who don't follow the regulations... since other cities with similar regulations seem perfectly capable of enforcing them and thereby stopping the things you complain about from happening.
Now, if you want to argue that certain regulations are stupid or result in excessive prices or whatever, then we can have a debate about what "regulation" can do and whether or not it increases service level. But simply describing unregulated behavior says very little about regulation -- if anything, it says something bad about enforcement, not the regulation itself.
note the "may".
I completely agree, we may contact aliens in the next 50-100 years. The probability isn't zero.
Sure, that makes sense.
And, you know what, every Slashdot user who posted on this story may win the lottery in the next 50 years too. The probability isn't zero. Why not have a discussion about that? Let's have a big long thread about how we'll spend all the money we'll be getting.
(And if you say, "Nah -- I don't even buy lottery tickets," well, neither do I, and I've won almost $200 on scratch tickets some of my relatives have given me Christmas gifts... so even if you don't buy tickets, the probability of winning isn't zero. You could find a winning ticket on the street.)
Oh -- what's that? All of us winning the lottery seems too unlikely for us to waste time in discussion? Yeah, I agree.
There's a difference in discussing something that has a 1 in 10 chance of happening or even 1 in 100 or 1 in a million... compared to something that is, say, 1 in a google or 1 in a googleplex. Just because a probability is nonzero does not make it worth considering -- something that has a 1 in a googleplex chance of occurring is effectively impossible, though technically it "may" happen.
I'm not saying alien contact is impossible, though you have no evidence that it actually IS possible, since we only have one clear example of life proven to exist in the universe so far. Anecdote is not data. You can't extrapolate from one data point.
So, the probability of encountering aliens in the next 50-100 years could be 99% (perhaps ships are heading toward us right now and are only right outside our solar system), or it could be 1 in a google, because maybe life simply is much harder to spontaneously arise in the universe than some people think.
Just because something "may" happen doesn't automatically mean that the probability is high enough to care about. It doesn't mean it's too low not to care about either. Without any data, it simply means nothing, and your statement that "we may contact aliens in the next X" is effectively meaningless.
The main problem is we know other lifeforms evolved on this planet before us, and we're not the oldest planetary system out there.
Anecdote is not data.
Unless there is an absurd statistical imbalance in the formation of actual Earth-like planets - which survey data suggests is very unlikely - then the conditions were ripe for complex multi-cellular life to arise
Yeah, here's the problem: what, precisely, is "Earth-like"? Or, specifically, what is "Earth-like" enough that life is statistically likely (or even possible) to arise?
If you made your argument 50 or 60 years ago to most scientists, you'd be laughed out of the room. The idea that the universe was teeming with life just seemed a bit absurd, and not only because of religious views. Even if there were other stars and other galaxies, speculating about what was there just seemed like science fiction.
And precisely what has changed since then, other than people like Carl Sagan and other proponents of SETI convincing us to take sci-fi more seriously (not based on much evidence)?
Yes, we've verified that planets outside our solar system actually exist, but I doubt most astronomers 60 years ago would have assumed otherwise. And we've done experiments (beginning with the Miller-Urey experiment) that show that amino acids and various other organic molecules could form in what we assume was early Earth's chemistry.
But producing a few spontaneous amino acids is a far cry from abiogenesis. I know there is further speculative research trying to sort out how various processes might have led to spontaneous order arising, but there are A LOT of steps between amino acids and a self-replicating cell. Precisely which "Earth-like" conditions would be necessary to allow those things to happen? Given that we haven't sorted out all the details, it's really hard to know.
Sure, it could be that most planets with some vague approximation to the right chemical mix will produce life over a period of a billion years or so. But it could also be that conditions needed to be much more specific, or even that some crazy set of things came together for a very short time window to make it work out on Earth. So, the probability that an "Earth-like" planet according to your specifications might form life could be 90%, or it could be 1 in a billion or a trillion or a quadrillion. Life could be present around neighboring stars, or it could be more like once per galaxy, or it could be that we truly are unique.
I'm not saying it's likely that we're unique; I'm saying that we have only one data point to extrapolate from. Until we actually find life somewhere else, or it comes to us, or we mix together something in a lab and spontaneously generate a self-replicating cell, we're all just speculating.
So, your assertion that "the conditions were ripe for complex multi-cellular life to arise" is nothing more than idle speculation. I agree that it seems pretty likely that once you have multicellular life, it is likely to evolve to more complex things. Evolution with self-replicating life as a response to environmental conditions makes sense, and it has been actually observed on a smaller scale. But the problem is getting to that self-replicating life in the first place. People are working on theories to explain that, but we simply have no idea what the probability is. Thus anyone who claims to be able to use the Drake equation to produce a realistic estimate is full of crap.
Can a Ph.D. be bestowed by an individual? :P
Your comment presupposes that a "Ph.D. in Pedantry" exists. If such a degree did exist, I'm sure people many people around here would have attained one (if not granted multiple honorary doctorates).
Perhaps this calls for a new Slashdot achievement -- the Ph.D. in Pedantry. Once one achieves it, one gains the ability to mod posts as "pedantic" (since someone with a Ph.D. is obviously an official arbiter in the field). The fun thing about the "pedantic" mod is that it could serve as either +1 or -1, which would make it extra fun.
Accumulate enough posts modded "pedantic," and the Slashdot userbase will confer upon you a "Ph.D. in Pedantry." :)
You're also a long way from lots of other things. That's the trade-off for living in a low-density area.
Yeah, "long way" is relative if you include the time dimension. I've lived in places from big cities to fairly rural areas. The thing about big cities is that all that "high-density" of activity means it takes a long time to get anywhere. I lived only few miles from the center of cultural activities, etc. in a big city, and it would take me basically an hour to get there by any reasonable method. I could walk 10-15 minutes to the subway station, wait 5 minutes for a train, spend 20-30 minutes on the subway (including changing trains generally), and then walk another 5-15 minutes to the event.
Or I could just walk there for 4 miles or whatever, and probably it would take about the same amount of time.
OR -- I could live 20 miles outside the city, and on the occasion when I want to go to a major arts event, I could drive into the city, probably get there in less time than I would have spent on public transport, and park in the garage next to the event site.
"But!" you say, "Why couldn't you park in the garage and drive from your place in the city?! Or take a cab?" Well, yeah, I could -- except my rent or mortgage in the city is 3 times what it would be 20 miles outside the city. So, I can afford the parking garage easily with all the extra cash I still have in my pocket.
If you want a lot of variety, you need an urban setting
Meh. It's somewhat illusory. Yeah, it's easier to walk around your house and have a variety of restaurants or coffee shops or whatever. But unless you're rich enough to live in the center of the downtown, you'll probably still have a significant commute to get to a lot major event venues.
Regardless, if you live in or near a small city, you generally have as much variety in restaurants and such within a 10-20 minute drive as you would within a 10-20 minute walk in the city. The difference is that the city forces you to walk or take a cab, because there's often no parking anywhere (or you could take a car and spend $20 for parking or 20 minutes driving around to find a spot).
Basically, distances are much smaller in the city. But the high density means you cover those distances much more slowly. If you factor in the time dimension, "distances" (as in how long it actually takes you to get to things) to a variety of things may be basically the same for a smaller city or suburb of a smaller city.
You can tell yourself that you don't want the other things offered by a city â" it might even be true â" but that doesn't change the fact that you're choosing to be without them.
Maybe. It's a trade-off. But having lived in both sorts of places, I can say that except for major events that only a MAJOR city would have, you can get roughly the same accessibility and "density" of variety (factoring in time) in a lot of places... not just major cities. If you're looking for the upper end of culture, dining, shops, etc., obviously you're not going to find that in a lesser town or city... but most people I know who live in big cities can't afford to continuously attend or shop or go to such places on a regular basis anyway. If you live in a small city, you could instead just drive the hour or two to the major city when you want those things... probably with the same frequency that most people in the big cities take advantage of them.
Besides, what a stupid study. There are certain classes where 'remembering' is the most important part of the class, but at least in my engineering and science classes, 'knowing' and 'understanding' had slightly higher priority.
Actually, I think that was actually the point of the study.
Students who typed tended to transcribe verbatim, effectively doing a kind of "remembering" the lecture on their computer without ever "knowing" or "understanding" the material well enough to extract the important stuff and take notes on it.
Those who wrote things down had to be more selective -- they had to process the lecture, "understand" what was important in order to choose what notes to take, and then write it down so they could review it and cement that knowledge at a later time.
It's funny that you call a study "stupid" for not examining deeper comprehension, when you actually didn't comprehend the entire point of the study... which basically agrees with you.
There's a proviso on the seepage coverage that says they don't cover "repeated seepage" and since the seepage had been ocurring every time it rained for the last 10 years, it counted as 'repeated'. So we were on the hook for the whole $15,000.
Sorry this happened to you. But this whole thing sounds so ridiculous -- the very definition of "seepage" is that it happens slowly, over time, generally from repeated exposures to water events (rather than, say, "flooding," which happens all at once).
A "seepage" policy that doesn't cover "repeated seepage" sounds like a warranty against "drips" from a faucet that doesn't cover "repeated dripping."
You obviously have no experience with these products in at least the last five years. Yes, there was a time they earned a bad reputation, but the current versions are easily uninstalled and are much lighter on resources.
Not according to people I know who used them recently. For a few different family members in the past few years (who live far enough away that I can't troubleshoot their computer), I recommended installing antivirus to fix symptoms that obviously seemed to be some sort of malware. Yes, they found malware and viruses, and that often fixed some weird behavior. But inevitably it also tended to slow down their computers until they were basically unusable. Two of these family members ended up switching to tablets and just giving up on their laptops... and that's after I tried to recommend some tweaks to settings to stop the incessant background crap.
In fact, for many users (not the typical Slashdot user), modern AV (incl Symantec AV) can actually increase felt computer performance due to scheduled background maintenance tasks (defrag, for example).
What the heck are you talking about? My copy of Norton Utilities (came with AV package) I got in 1995 or 1996 something had automatic defrag operations (and all sorts of other "maintenance" it could do in the background) -- and it was PRECISELY all those background processes and tasks that slowed my system to a halt, leading me to dump the OS and reinstall everything without Norton.
I tried again maybe 10 years ago, and the same crap happened. The only usable AV that doesn't completely slow down your system is usually one tweaked so it doesn't perform any "background maintenance" nonsense.
Still, like all software, AV products do consume resources and can have a noticeable performance hit, especially on marginal hardware to start with.
Yeah, and that's the whole problem. AV products need to be designed for MARGINAL HARDWARE. That's probably their primary audience -- people who buy cheap underpowered systems that have crap "trial versions" of AV on them to try to convince people to buy, and people with older systems who have realized that "weird stuff is happening" and decide to try to purchase AV. If the AV companies can't make their stuff work reasonably well on older or underpowered machines, who the heck do they think they are going to sell to?