As a mathmatician myself I am well aware of the fact that people do mathematics for no monetary reward. However, this only serves to advance my cause because mathmaticians who aren't motivated by profit discover what is interesting not what is usefull!! It is only the greater funding (because of patents as well as other issues) which convinces mathmaticians to go take their work and apply it to real world problems (for the most part isolated exceptions as always exist).
All this BS back and forth is really irrelevant. As a factual matter of statistics countries that implement patent systems have a *MUCH* higher level of spending on R&D and much more technical progress.
I don't disagree that the patent system has massive problems and needs to be reformed. However, this reform will take the form of *better* regulations not the abscence of regulations.
No regulations huh? How do you expect to deal with patents? Surely you agree that haveing *some* compensation system for inventions has proven to be extremely beneficial (perhaps our system is far from the best but I challenge you to produce any reasonable system that just relies on common sense).
What about cases like the invention of the telephone where both Bell and his competitor turned in claims on the same day. If there weren't precisce rules about how much detail is needed for a patent and whether it is the individual who invented the item first or submitted the patent first who gets credited then the entire process would descend to chaos. You don't honestly think bitter rivals would accept an unfavorable interpratation of these common sense rules. Even worse such an enviornment is incredibly unpredictable. If companies can't see precisely laid out rules to do things like pay taxes or submit patents their will be much more risk to do buisness in the country. Having regulation even if it is bad regulation is quite important.
Certainly regulation can go overboard and laws are written to be interpreted by a judge. Still it is incumbent on a government to make these laws as reasonable precise as possible. If people have to guess how powerfull a radio transmitter they must build everyone is worse off. Quite possibly some do build over a limit and start causing unwanted interferance and others, afraid of potential penalties, wouldn't use the spectrum to it's full potential. This is not to say I disagree with the message in the cartoon. The problem is not that the air waves are regulated it is that they are regulated poorly, even our acoustic laws give decible levels so we have less disagreements about what the law says.
Good point, though I imagine John Nash is an exceptional individual and this probably doesn't work well for the vast majority of patients.
To be clear on the medication issue I have no qualms with the liberal prescription of medication. I am strongly of the opinion that the perceived difference between natural brain chemistry and artificially influenced chemistry is sill and arbitrary. We should never view medicine as a less prefered treatment just because the person is under the influence of a drug, we are always under the influence of our natural drugs.
My problem is the standards, for drug or other treatment, are often focused on the external performance and behavior of the individual. No doubt this attitude is encouraged by drug treatments as they don't require an empathetic understanding of the patient but it has nothing to do with the drug itself. The focus of psychiatric treatment should ultimately be on improving quality of life for the treated individual. While this usually involves normalizing their behavior this simply isn't always the case especially when the drugs have such severe side effects.
I do however have *extreme* issues with how drugs are prescribed in psychiatry. I know several individuals who have been prescribed brain damaging anti-psychotics (they weren't as bad as the old gaurd but still aren't good) for simple neurosis. On the other hand there is a strong resistance to prescribe drugs which might be abuseable. For instance marijuanna can be used to treat some neurosis but the vast majority of psychiatrists would sooner prescribe more damaging drugs with more severe side effects (both psychological and physiological) than recomend an 'abuseable' drug. Since any *truly* effective treatment for depression is likely to make normal people happier as well (and hence be abuseable) this is particularly troublesome.
Moreover, modern ECT is considerably less damaging.
This point is extremely important. The same argument now which says the mentally ill should trust their doctor and blindly agree to take brain damaging drugs is the same one that justified lobotomies and insulin shock therapy.
A quick summary of my point would be this. We need to be carefull what we mean when we say a medication is working for a particular individual. My point is simply that 'working' should reflect bettering the patients overall quality of life and not just making them a functioning member of society. Since anti-psychotics have so many detrimental effects even if they fix the symptoms they should only be used if every other medication has been tried and failed.
So what if a person masturbates for hours or does other crazy things. So long as they are commited and under medical supervision so they aren't causing problems to other people. I wasn't advocating that individuals behave irresponsibly and simply willy nilly stop taking their medicines. I was suggesting that patients should make the informed choice of whether life on or off the medications (with all the consequences or being commited then if they are a danger to others) is better for them.
Ohh wonderfull another person trying to prove a scientific claim by anecdotal evidence.
Yes, it is well documented that LSD can cause psychotic breaks in individuals so inclined. However, such breaks can also be caused by plenty of other stressfull intense experiences. Moreover the percentage of individuals who have psychotic breaks after LSD isn't very differnt from the percentage of individuals in the general population who have psychotic breaks. Thus we know that it can trigger the effect in individuals predisposed but we have no evidence for anything like brain damage. In fact government funded researchers have been trying for years to prove MJ and LSD cause brain damage and their continued failure is evidence that they don't. In fact a recent study showed that long term pot users who stop using have no functional deficencies versus those who have never used.
Finally we need to seperate claims about chemical/biological damage and issues of safety. For instance oxycontin is an extremely safe medicine with virtually no dangerous or damaging side effects and can be used to good effect medically. This of course in now way implies that there aren't plenty of addicts who fuck up their life because of it.
The best way to explain this is probably an analogy to porn. Certainly porn doesn't cause any biological harm to the brain but this doesn't mean some people can't become obsessed and ruin their lives with it.
No one in the discussion has suggested that the mentally ill should take psychoactices. These do have very serious ill effects in individuals prone to psychosis. However, this is no excuse to let false statements about these drugs fly.
Yes, it can cause psychotics breaks in people prone to this sort of thing, but so can plenty of other stressfull situations. This fact has no bearing on the fact that the statement which seemed to imply all pschoactive drugs were equally dangerous.
As for the visual imparments and other things of this nature we should look at the evidence. I forget the paper but studies of indivduals having taken LSD show serious psychological effects (psychosis etc.. etc..) are not significantly higher in this population then in the general public. This suggests very strongly that what we are seeing is the effect of an intense experience on mentally unstable individuals not some chemical effect from LSD. Even the issue of flashbacks is believed by many researchers to be nothing but an intense memory of an altered state.
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying LSD is safe and happy. However, most of it's ill effects seem to be shared with other very intense experiences (war etc..etc..) and we should avoid rhetoric suggesting it is chemically damaging in abscence of evidence to this effect. Also the low dosage really doesn't show anything, there are plenty of real neurotoxins which are effective at miniscule doses.
This post has so many errors I don't know where to begin.
First 72 hours is only the time allowed for the immediate commitment requiring no court order and no possibility of getting out of it. After this (at least in california) the supervising doctor can put in for a two week extension just on their discretion that the individual is a danger to themselves or others (but this is a very week standard which any psychotic person meets). This two week hold *can* be contested by the patient but pragmatically the presumption is against the patient. I'm not entierly sure what happens after this two week period (I only had the unpleasentness of this experience once) but if someone actually has a psychotic illness it is fairly easy to keep them commited.
As for the issue of psychoactive drugs you are simply out and out wrong. Despite lots of studies no one has ever been able to demonstrate any permenent damage from LSD, either functionally or biologically. I forget what journal it was in but there was fairly recently a review of all the evidence on long term effects of LSD and they determined there was no evidence of long term functional harm. Sure this doesn't mean there isn't any but there is no more reason to believe it exists than to believe it exists for something like asprin. Moreover, even things like 'flashbacks' are now believed to be nothing but strong memories of an altered state and not indicitive of any lasting damage.
On the other hand there is considerable scientific evidence that anti-psychotic drugs cause neuron death and damage. People who take these drugs for a long time have very significant functional losses as well as often develop facial ticks and other problems which persist even after they stop taking the drugs. They often usually result in severe depression for the user.
Quite simply you have no evidence to believe that psychoactive drugs in general cause any more permenent brain chemistry changes than normal experience does. In fact several recent long term studies of chronic marijuanna smokers concluded that after a period of abstinence they had identical performance with non-users. On the other hand there is tons of scientific evidence that anti-psychotics not only cause changes in brain chemistry but also permenet damage and reduced functionality.
Finally on the issue of capability I was clear (or at least I hope I was) in the original post that the person should make this choice while on the meds. When they are sane they have just as good judgement as anyone else and only they have access to their subjective experiences on and off the meds. As for the issue of being a danger to others it is certainly something to consider. Should someone be a danger to others he might need to be commited if he doesn't take his meds. In this case his choice is between on meds and freedom or off meds and being commited but this still should be his choice.
In short we shouldn't sentence someone to a life of misery just because they are more functional this way.
Well first of all I (if that is who you were replying to) have never actually been on anti-psychotic medication (my psychotic experiences were stimulant induced so I solved the problem by stopping using) I was just commenting on their effects in general.
I think your response gets to the fundamental question I am raising, what is it that we should consider when we medicate someone. Certainly any moral person will take into consideration the effect they will have on family and friends but no one has an obligation to be miserable just to keep their family from morning them.
My point is that ultimately doctors should be concerned primarily with the subjective well-being of the patient and not just their level of functioning. Even if an individual might not be 'sane' or normal off their medication if anti-psychotics drive them into extreme depression wherein the patient would prefer to be dead then this isn't a good solution. True, a responsible individual knowing he would be not sane should make arrangments (commitment?) so he will not be a danger to others. However, ultimately sanity and functionality should only be viewed as means to the end of personal satisfaction/enjoyment.
Let me be clear, I am not advocating blind pursuit of immediate pleasure. Many individuals will feel locally better off of their meds but because this will cause encounters will law enforcement and harm to friends or family and possibly eventually commitment they will in total feel worse off their meds. However, in some cases taking the meds makes life not worth living for these patients to the extent that they would prefer to be commited and reasonably happy then functional and suicidally depressed. In this case we should not put functionality over subjective enjoyment.
I am not saying that lithium is a magical safe drug. Merely that it is less serious than the anti-psychotics I am familiar with. My point was that all care should be given that their isn't any drug with less side-effects which will accomplish the same result not a general recomendation of lithium.
If you aren't the best judge of whether you should take your meds or not (while you are medicated and sane) then who is? Being a doctor doesn't give you any magical powers of judgement, the doctor should explain the alternatives and effects and let the individual make the deciscion.
Unfortunatly far too many doctors do *not* have the best interests of the individual. The goal of highest functionality is not always the same as the goal of a worthwhile existance.
Perhaps in your particular case taking the meds would have been better. However, would you really think that a person should be sentenced to lifelong depression (sometimes a fate worth than death). If the meds were to kill your family member you surely wouldn't think they should take them if that is what the doctor orders so why do you think they should take them if they make them feel like they would prefer to die.
My point is not that doctors advice should be disregarded or that going off meds should be taken lightly. Rather it is that quality of life should be the main concern of the deciscion maker *not* functionality. If the doctor is truly concerned with the subjective quality of life of the patient not merely their proper functioning I would agree with you.
You're right the description given sounds just as likely to be mania (with the associated paranoia) then skizophrenia. Before I went around encouraging someone to take their anti-psychotics I would make sure they had tried lithium and the other medicines used to treat mania.
While anti-psychotics are the only choice for those truly far gone unfortunatly they have very unplesant effects. They cause permenent brain damage (the new atypical anti-psychotics aren't as bad) can cause permanent facial ticks and other issues. Also they often cause extreme depression and those taking them find marijuanna is the only thing which makes them content.
I find it disturbing that people are happy to tell individuals they have never met that they need to be taking their anti-psychotics. This reveals one of my basic disagreements with most of the psychiatric community. Most psychiatrists (conciously or uncouncisly) seem to put as their first priority the normalcy of their patient. Perhaps they believe normalcy is equivalent to good but this simply isn't always true.
Having had both depressive and psychotic episodes myself I would rather be commited and psychotic then sane and sufficently depressed. To be fair this would have to be a fairly extreme depression but this really is a choice each person needs to make for themselves. If an individual decides he doesn't want to take his anti-psychotics anymore that should be his choice (although he should alert care providers).
As someone who has spent a fair bit of time studying mental illness and experienced several paranoid-skizophrenic experiences myself I need to correct the original post. NO, a beautiful mind is *nothing like* a skizophrenic experience.
What a beautiful mind presents is what people who have never had an experience with a seriously altered state would expect skizophrenia to be like. Those of you who have used psychedelics (or at least high doses of them) will understand what I'm saying, this is the same misapprehension people have about what mind altering drugs are like. Actually, trying mind altering substances is a very good way to start to understand altered mental states. If you really want to understand what your sister is probably going to experience you should try several doses of various drugs. None of them (unless perhaps you enter meth psychosis which is indistingushable from one type of skizophrenia) will be exactly like what she is going through but it will give you a better basic idea of what altered mental states are like.
Unfortunatly, people whose only experience being altered is with something like alcohol or perhaps even weed have a very hard time understanding truly altered states. In order to offer a story of skizophrenia (not an explanation) to these people a bueatiful mind presented Nash's illness in a manner they could understand. Namely they portrayed him as acting rationally in response to illusionary situations. This isn't anything like how mental illness works.
While it would be very hard to portray on a movie, especially to individuals who have never experienced anything similar, the basic feature of skizophrenia (or at least paranoid-skizophrenia) is a disruption of normal reasonable thought. If a basically rational person started hearing voices not much would happen, they would immediatly conclude they were crazy and it would only be a minor annoyance. While the thought processes of a skizophrenic might be twistedly logical they are fundamentally unreasonable. For the most part they see the same features of the world as we do (plus sometimes voices and things at the corner of vision or in darkness) but they interpret them totally differntly.
I got so mad at the portrayl of skizophrenia in a Beautiful Mind that I had to walk out of the movie. Portraying skizophrenia as a vast consistant illusion is to delibrately encourage a horrible misapprehension of how mental illness works.
Perhaps, but why should I care. I am part of the educated technically able group. If the US has a big brain drain and a big percent of our technically competent individuals go to india or whereever then the job market is all the better for me. I simply don't see why I should care whether americans at large are well off or indians at large are well off.
In fact since the US is unlikely to slide into the extreme poverty that india is in now (even if our economy stopped growing and completly stagnated we produce enough to keep americans at a much higer standard of living than the majorities of indians) the world in total is likely to be better off it they win at our expense.
In short I feel the same way about india winning over the US as I do about missouri stealing companies from california.
So unlike many of the people replying I don't think having a computer grader in some classes is such a bad thing. Having been a TA myself I am well aware how subjective and inconsistant human grades can be. Even if this computer grader isn't wonderfull at least it is going to be very consistant (and will provide proof against lawsuits).
Still, I think it is entierly inappropriate for a high-school class like this. In high school we should be emphasizing reasoning ability and consistancy of argument not grammar and punctuation. Spelling and punctuation should be emphasized in Jr. high perhaps but the skills students really need in college are reasoning and analysis. These skills help them in all areas in life, poor punctuation can be fixed by a machine (well at least as well as a machine can grade punctuation).
This machine simply can't check logic and consistancy. However, this might just be a lost cause as I'm not sure if high school english teachers can do so either and their hands may already be tied as they have to teach to the new SAT and AP exams. Unfortunatly basic logical skills are lacking in much of our population and it wouldn't surprise me in the people we hire to grade these exams are no better.
This suggests a very distorted notion of the purpose of grades. Perhaps this is an appropriate philosophy for very young students where the only purpose of the grade is encouragement but it is simply not usefull for college students.
What is the prupose of grades in college? Why not just allow students to take all classes P/F (and this works fine from a learning perspective as the first year of my college showed)? Quite simply because the transcript is supposed to represent the students *competance* in various areas. Prospective employers and graduate schools need to be able to look at a transcript and evaluate the abilities of a particular individual.
Do you want a company to hire an engineer to build a bridge who tried really hard but nevertheless simply doesn't understand the physics involved? I would prefer, as most people that we pick the individual who had the best track record of knowing his shit regardless of the effort level. This is true in all areas, grades serve as an indication of mastery of the subject matter. Effort does not equal mastery.
In fact the argument can be made that those who put in alot of effort deserve a lower grade for the same work. As a prospective employer which is more valuable to me, the student who was only able to acheive that level of understanding after a great deal of effort or the student who pulled this off barely twitching a muscle. If both of them are going to work 40hours/week for me (or whatever other number I require) then the lazy student is going to be far more valubale. I don't in fact support this policy but it is far more than enough to realize we shouldn't give a special benefit to effort. If we wanted to recognize effort we should make two grades (one for effort one for ability) but we have already made our choice about what a grade represents when we decided to make only one of them.
All of this is ignoring the extreme practical problems with a system that rewards effort. Speaking as both a TA and a student I will testify that it is almost impossible to measure effort in a meaningfull way. Unfortunatly the first tendency of teachers is to credit students who are always in class or talking to them as being more dedicate. However, this is grossly unfair to many students who might learn differntly and encourages disgusting brown-nosing which interferes with actual learning.
For instance as an undergrad I found that lectures did me no good in mathematics. I spent a great deal of time on these clases learning from the book myself but I never showed up in class...it simply would have been a waste of time for me. Regardless of what you think about giving a bonus for effort certainly we shouldn't discriminate against those who put in their effort in a non-flashy way, by reading on their own and not spending all their time asking the teacher questions. Often these are the students more interested in learning as opposed to ones who just want the grade.
This brings me to the final problem. If you institute a system which gives better grades to stupid but diligent students things will get crazy. Already as a TA I have to deal with alot of students kissing ass and begging for better grades, if they find out that my opinion of them being diligent affects their grade it gets even worse. Valuable class time we could have spent learning would be used up by students asking questions they already know the answers to just to appear interested/diligent. Most likely smart students would start faking being stupid and diligent to get the grade bonus.
Finally I would offer the analogy. Why don't we run the olympics or college sports on this effort basis. Sure I might suck really bad at running but I am clearly at a disadvantage so my 6minute mile should count just as much as someone elses 3min mile. This is certainly absurd in sports so why would you suggest it in academics?
All of your points (except for the tax incentives) argue for my position.
Yes, offsourcing does build up indian companies at the cost of our own, no indians won't use the money to buy US software products. In short outsourcing *builds* their economy (perhaps at the cost of our own but this is another question). However, if indians are really just as deserving as americans why do you care if they gain and we fall...especially as they are far more needy than us so the benefit to them will be far more than the loss to us.
I would point out that you offer no reason to believe that this doesn't help india.
Quite simply indians earn more money if they get outsourced jobs. This gives the country more money to build various social services. Whether or not it is fair it would take a very twisted argument to justify that employing people in a foreign country at a higher wage then they are currently paid (and yes US outsorced jobs are very lucrative compared to other jobs availible there) *doesn't* help.
However, regardless of whether buisnesses get rich off of outsourcing or not the effect on the indian workers is pretty clear. Indians working in tech service centers or similar earn perhaps 1/3 of what the US worker would earn vs. salaries in much of india of no more than $1 a day. Sure these aren't exactly equivalent but it is clear indian tech workers are *way* better off than they would be without the jobs.
Improve the lives of indians by letting them have jobs!!
Yes, this means not discriminating against them because they aren't US citizens. An indian citizen is no less deserving than someone in the USA of a high standard of living. If we are really concerned about the livelihoods of our fellow humans (and not some bizarre ideology where american lives are worth more than indian lives) this means abandoning all these silly 'buy american' campaigns or protesting when IT companies outsource.
Almost certainly paypal had no choice in this manner. There are a great deal of government regulations about monetary transfers that prohibit anonymity. The failing war on drugs justified a great many rules restricting the anonymous flow of money (which didn't stop the drugs only encourage another criminal enterprise of money laundering) and the war on terror combined with the public prominence of the internet nailed the lid in anonymous monetary transfers.
Even if the significant government powers to stop and track sucpiscous monetary transactions don't explicitly bar paypal from allowing anonymous accounts (as the page suggests freenet was doing) the considerable influence of the government forces them to do so anyway. After all paypal relies on the patronage of credit card companies who we know would rather bow to government pressure than stick up for privacy. These E-gold type places can continue in the face of this opposition because they don't accept credit cards and they technically aren't transfering USD (rather ounces of gold) so probably fall under less restrictive laws. Most likely though they are simply too small to have been noticed yet.
Face it guys anonymous monetary transfers aren't going to be offered by a for profit company. Such companies have too much to lose by not allowing government scrutiny.
On a related note I wonder if Osama would pat up his 35 pounds of gold using E-gold.
So how can we distinguish between an application that simply uses the right buzzwords, like AES, from an application that is actually secure?
This statement about winzip is quite misleading. Either the author didn't bother to read the paper or has an emotional bias against non-free software.
The encryption method in WinZip is actually fairly secure, the attack mentioned in the article consists of tricking someone into sending back the decrypted output. While design improvements could be made to make this less likely this hardly qualifies as 'simply use(ing) the right busswords'. So long as you aren't an idiot and send data so confidentional you might reasonably be the victim of a complicated man in the middle attack this product will work fine for your security needs. In fact as they mention in the article PGP suffered from a similar problem.
In fact, aside from the documented fact that the file names and lengths are in plaintext, this tool provides all the security an individual user is ever really going to need. Even large corporations are unlikely to be the victims of sucesfull man in the middle attacks and certainly anyone using WinZip for their security needs doesn't really need to worry. This is certainly enough to stop your family friends and law enforcement from reading your shit.
I know I'm going to get jumped on by some crypto people and to be fair it *is* good we find issues like this report them and either document or fix them. However, if we are going to consider social factors (such as tricking someone into sending back 'garbage') it is only fair we credit social factors toward the credit of such a program. So we should consider the social factor that WinZip is hardly used by the government or milatary when asking if it is a reasonable security product.
If it was just bad education or less money for science we could fix it with a bill or two in congress. Unfortunatly this reflects a deep anti-intellectualism in america. If we want americans to be good scientists and engineers we need to make it desierable to be a scientist or engieneer.
This means more than paying them more. It means making them *respected* and not mearly perpetuating the mad scientist or nerd sterotype. Unless the United States starts electing intellectual figures (like tony blair rather than george bush) and stops making fun of nerds it will keep falling in it's scientific prowess.
Well I first want to point out whatever role piracy may have played in the initial spread of videogames I doubt it is significant now, at least not for the big developers. Quite simply it seems that everyone who is going to do so is hooked on videogames, there isn't a child out there who isn't exposed significantly to a video games system. Sure, one might claim that a certain percentage of piraters out there is good for the game industry by 'seeding' their friends, who aren't willing to pirate, to buy the game. Yes, but it is still in the industry's interest to discourage this practice, i.e. send people to jail who engage in it, to keep it small. Hell, if they wiped out all the pirates they can accomplish the same seed effect by running an internet giveaway of a certain number or copies, which no doubt would let them perfect the process making sure they hit differnt geographic areas proportionally and etc..
Now in the posts on slashdot I noticed two types of responses justifying piracy, some right-headed the other just outright selfish.
The first I noticed is probably the oldest excuse in the book, and one of the most annoying. The games are too expensive, why should I have to pay for failed games etc.. etc.. BECAUSE IF NO ONE DOES NO ONE WILL MAKE GAMES. There is no absolute price video games *should* be and they are over this price...the very notion is absurd. Neither is it the case that videogame companies are handled by complete incompetents who are just wasting money. This is just a thinly disguised excuse, "I don't want to shell out any money"
The second objection is more reasonable. Namely that they wouldn't be willing to buy the game so it doesn't hurt anyone should they play it anyway. This is entierly reasonable except for the fact that there is a natural slipperly slope here. It does however point out a terrible flaw in our pricing of intellectual property. We are being terribly inefficent because we have members of our population who could be living better at no cost to anyone (i.e. have extra entertainment in this case).
Instead the clear answer is to pay for IP directly via taxes. Fix a certain percent of total income and then distribute it to creators of IP via estimates of the use and ranking by it's readers of the work, in other words a scheme of mandatory liscenscing to all citizens. Now of course people will cry that this is socialicstic. Perhaps, but it would do well to remember *why* we use capitalism. Because it is the best way we discovered to divide goods.
It is a good way to divide goods provided that the price per good is roughly constant (for instance chairs...the price is just the materials and craftsmanship for that chair). However, intellectual property is essentially differnt, the additional cost to make one more good is essentially zero. This is why we have the government run things like the army where the cost of protecting one more individual is essentially zero (the cost of protecting the US is independent of the population). It simply wouldn't be efficent for everyone to pay for only their personal protection.
Slashdot Mirror
As a mathmatician myself I am well aware of the fact that people do mathematics for no monetary reward. However, this only serves to advance my cause because mathmaticians who aren't motivated by profit discover what is interesting not what is usefull!! It is only the greater funding (because of patents as well as other issues) which convinces mathmaticians to go take their work and apply it to real world problems (for the most part isolated exceptions as always exist).
All this BS back and forth is really irrelevant. As a factual matter of statistics countries that implement patent systems have a *MUCH* higher level of spending on R&D and much more technical progress.
I don't disagree that the patent system has massive problems and needs to be reformed. However, this reform will take the form of *better* regulations not the abscence of regulations.
No regulations huh? How do you expect to deal with patents? Surely you agree that haveing *some* compensation system for inventions has proven to be extremely beneficial (perhaps our system is far from the best but I challenge you to produce any reasonable system that just relies on common sense).
What about cases like the invention of the telephone where both Bell and his competitor turned in claims on the same day. If there weren't precisce rules about how much detail is needed for a patent and whether it is the individual who invented the item first or submitted the patent first who gets credited then the entire process would descend to chaos. You don't honestly think bitter rivals would accept an unfavorable interpratation of these common sense rules. Even worse such an enviornment is incredibly unpredictable. If companies can't see precisely laid out rules to do things like pay taxes or submit patents their will be much more risk to do buisness in the country. Having regulation even if it is bad regulation is quite important.
Certainly regulation can go overboard and laws are written to be interpreted by a judge. Still it is incumbent on a government to make these laws as reasonable precise as possible. If people have to guess how powerfull a radio transmitter they must build everyone is worse off. Quite possibly some do build over a limit and start causing unwanted interferance and others, afraid of potential penalties, wouldn't use the spectrum to it's full potential. This is not to say I disagree with the message in the cartoon. The problem is not that the air waves are regulated it is that they are regulated poorly, even our acoustic laws give decible levels so we have less disagreements about what the law says.
Good point, though I imagine John Nash is an exceptional individual and this probably doesn't work well for the vast majority of patients.
To be clear on the medication issue I have no qualms with the liberal prescription of medication. I am strongly of the opinion that the perceived difference between natural brain chemistry and artificially influenced chemistry is sill and arbitrary. We should never view medicine as a less prefered treatment just because the person is under the influence of a drug, we are always under the influence of our natural drugs.
My problem is the standards, for drug or other treatment, are often focused on the external performance and behavior of the individual. No doubt this attitude is encouraged by drug treatments as they don't require an empathetic understanding of the patient but it has nothing to do with the drug itself. The focus of psychiatric treatment should ultimately be on improving quality of life for the treated individual. While this usually involves normalizing their behavior this simply isn't always the case especially when the drugs have such severe side effects.
I do however have *extreme* issues with how drugs are prescribed in psychiatry. I know several individuals who have been prescribed brain damaging anti-psychotics (they weren't as bad as the old gaurd but still aren't good) for simple neurosis. On the other hand there is a strong resistance to prescribe drugs which might be abuseable. For instance marijuanna can be used to treat some neurosis but the vast majority of psychiatrists would sooner prescribe more damaging drugs with more severe side effects (both psychological and physiological) than recomend an 'abuseable' drug. Since any *truly* effective treatment for depression is likely to make normal people happier as well (and hence be abuseable) this is particularly troublesome.
Moreover, modern ECT is considerably less damaging.
This point is extremely important. The same argument now which says the mentally ill should trust their doctor and blindly agree to take brain damaging drugs is the same one that justified lobotomies and insulin shock therapy.
A quick summary of my point would be this. We need to be carefull what we mean when we say a medication is working for a particular individual. My point is simply that 'working' should reflect bettering the patients overall quality of life and not just making them a functioning member of society. Since anti-psychotics have so many detrimental effects even if they fix the symptoms they should only be used if every other medication has been tried and failed.
So what if a person masturbates for hours or does other crazy things. So long as they are commited and under medical supervision so they aren't causing problems to other people. I wasn't advocating that individuals behave irresponsibly and simply willy nilly stop taking their medicines. I was suggesting that patients should make the informed choice of whether life on or off the medications (with all the consequences or being commited then if they are a danger to others) is better for them.
Ohh wonderfull another person trying to prove a scientific claim by anecdotal evidence.
Yes, it is well documented that LSD can cause psychotic breaks in individuals so inclined. However, such breaks can also be caused by plenty of other stressfull intense experiences. Moreover the percentage of individuals who have psychotic breaks after LSD isn't very differnt from the percentage of individuals in the general population who have psychotic breaks. Thus we know that it can trigger the effect in individuals predisposed but we have no evidence for anything like brain damage. In fact government funded researchers have been trying for years to prove MJ and LSD cause brain damage and their continued failure is evidence that they don't. In fact a recent study showed that long term pot users who stop using have no functional deficencies versus those who have never used.
Finally we need to seperate claims about chemical/biological damage and issues of safety. For instance oxycontin is an extremely safe medicine with virtually no dangerous or damaging side effects and can be used to good effect medically. This of course in now way implies that there aren't plenty of addicts who fuck up their life because of it.
The best way to explain this is probably an analogy to porn. Certainly porn doesn't cause any biological harm to the brain but this doesn't mean some people can't become obsessed and ruin their lives with it.
No one in the discussion has suggested that the mentally ill should take psychoactices. These do have very serious ill effects in individuals prone to psychosis. However, this is no excuse to let false statements about these drugs fly.
Yes, it can cause psychotics breaks in people prone to this sort of thing, but so can plenty of other stressfull situations. This fact has no bearing on the fact that the statement which seemed to imply all pschoactive drugs were equally dangerous.
As for the visual imparments and other things of this nature we should look at the evidence. I forget the paper but studies of indivduals having taken LSD show serious psychological effects (psychosis etc.. etc..) are not significantly higher in this population then in the general public. This suggests very strongly that what we are seeing is the effect of an intense experience on mentally unstable individuals not some chemical effect from LSD. Even the issue of flashbacks is believed by many researchers to be nothing but an intense memory of an altered state.
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying LSD is safe and happy. However, most of it's ill effects seem to be shared with other very intense experiences (war etc..etc..) and we should avoid rhetoric suggesting it is chemically damaging in abscence of evidence to this effect. Also the low dosage really doesn't show anything, there are plenty of real neurotoxins which are effective at miniscule doses.
This post has so many errors I don't know where to begin.
First 72 hours is only the time allowed for the immediate commitment requiring no court order and no possibility of getting out of it. After this (at least in california) the supervising doctor can put in for a two week extension just on their discretion that the individual is a danger to themselves or others (but this is a very week standard which any psychotic person meets). This two week hold *can* be contested by the patient but pragmatically the presumption is against the patient. I'm not entierly sure what happens after this two week period (I only had the unpleasentness of this experience once) but if someone actually has a psychotic illness it is fairly easy to keep them commited.
As for the issue of psychoactive drugs you are simply out and out wrong. Despite lots of studies no one has ever been able to demonstrate any permenent damage from LSD, either functionally or biologically. I forget what journal it was in but there was fairly recently a review of all the evidence on long term effects of LSD and they determined there was no evidence of long term functional harm. Sure this doesn't mean there isn't any but there is no more reason to believe it exists than to believe it exists for something like asprin. Moreover, even things like 'flashbacks' are now believed to be nothing but strong memories of an altered state and not indicitive of any lasting damage.
On the other hand there is considerable scientific evidence that anti-psychotic drugs cause neuron death and damage. People who take these drugs for a long time have very significant functional losses as well as often develop facial ticks and other problems which persist even after they stop taking the drugs. They often usually result in severe depression for the user.
Quite simply you have no evidence to believe that psychoactive drugs in general cause any more permenent brain chemistry changes than normal experience does. In fact several recent long term studies of chronic marijuanna smokers concluded that after a period of abstinence they had identical performance with non-users. On the other hand there is tons of scientific evidence that anti-psychotics not only cause changes in brain chemistry but also permenet damage and reduced functionality.
Finally on the issue of capability I was clear (or at least I hope I was) in the original post that the person should make this choice while on the meds. When they are sane they have just as good judgement as anyone else and only they have access to their subjective experiences on and off the meds. As for the issue of being a danger to others it is certainly something to consider. Should someone be a danger to others he might need to be commited if he doesn't take his meds. In this case his choice is between on meds and freedom or off meds and being commited but this still should be his choice.
In short we shouldn't sentence someone to a life of misery just because they are more functional this way.
Well first of all I (if that is who you were replying to) have never actually been on anti-psychotic medication (my psychotic experiences were stimulant induced so I solved the problem by stopping using) I was just commenting on their effects in general.
I think your response gets to the fundamental question I am raising, what is it that we should consider when we medicate someone. Certainly any moral person will take into consideration the effect they will have on family and friends but no one has an obligation to be miserable just to keep their family from morning them.
My point is that ultimately doctors should be concerned primarily with the subjective well-being of the patient and not just their level of functioning. Even if an individual might not be 'sane' or normal off their medication if anti-psychotics drive them into extreme depression wherein the patient would prefer to be dead then this isn't a good solution. True, a responsible individual knowing he would be not sane should make arrangments (commitment?) so he will not be a danger to others. However, ultimately sanity and functionality should only be viewed as means to the end of personal satisfaction/enjoyment.
Let me be clear, I am not advocating blind pursuit of immediate pleasure. Many individuals will feel locally better off of their meds but because this will cause encounters will law enforcement and harm to friends or family and possibly eventually commitment they will in total feel worse off their meds. However, in some cases taking the meds makes life not worth living for these patients to the extent that they would prefer to be commited and reasonably happy then functional and suicidally depressed. In this case we should not put functionality over subjective enjoyment.
I am not saying that lithium is a magical safe drug. Merely that it is less serious than the anti-psychotics I am familiar with. My point was that all care should be given that their isn't any drug with less side-effects which will accomplish the same result not a general recomendation of lithium.
Sorry if this was at all confusing.
If you aren't the best judge of whether you should take your meds or not (while you are medicated and sane) then who is? Being a doctor doesn't give you any magical powers of judgement, the doctor should explain the alternatives and effects and let the individual make the deciscion.
Unfortunatly far too many doctors do *not* have the best interests of the individual. The goal of highest functionality is not always the same as the goal of a worthwhile existance.
Perhaps in your particular case taking the meds would have been better. However, would you really think that a person should be sentenced to lifelong depression (sometimes a fate worth than death). If the meds were to kill your family member you surely wouldn't think they should take them if that is what the doctor orders so why do you think they should take them if they make them feel like they would prefer to die.
My point is not that doctors advice should be disregarded or that going off meds should be taken lightly. Rather it is that quality of life should be the main concern of the deciscion maker *not* functionality. If the doctor is truly concerned with the subjective quality of life of the patient not merely their proper functioning I would agree with you.
You're right the description given sounds just as likely to be mania (with the associated paranoia) then skizophrenia. Before I went around encouraging someone to take their anti-psychotics I would make sure they had tried lithium and the other medicines used to treat mania.
While anti-psychotics are the only choice for those truly far gone unfortunatly they have very unplesant effects. They cause permenent brain damage (the new atypical anti-psychotics aren't as bad) can cause permanent facial ticks and other issues. Also they often cause extreme depression and those taking them find marijuanna is the only thing which makes them content.
I find it disturbing that people are happy to tell individuals they have never met that they need to be taking their anti-psychotics. This reveals one of my basic disagreements with most of the psychiatric community. Most psychiatrists (conciously or uncouncisly) seem to put as their first priority the normalcy of their patient. Perhaps they believe normalcy is equivalent to good but this simply isn't always true.
Having had both depressive and psychotic episodes myself I would rather be commited and psychotic then sane and sufficently depressed. To be fair this would have to be a fairly extreme depression but this really is a choice each person needs to make for themselves. If an individual decides he doesn't want to take his anti-psychotics anymore that should be his choice (although he should alert care providers).
As someone who has spent a fair bit of time studying mental illness and experienced several paranoid-skizophrenic experiences myself I need to correct the original post. NO, a beautiful mind is *nothing like* a skizophrenic experience.
What a beautiful mind presents is what people who have never had an experience with a seriously altered state would expect skizophrenia to be like. Those of you who have used psychedelics (or at least high doses of them) will understand what I'm saying, this is the same misapprehension people have about what mind altering drugs are like. Actually, trying mind altering substances is a very good way to start to understand altered mental states. If you really want to understand what your sister is probably going to experience you should try several doses of various drugs. None of them (unless perhaps you enter meth psychosis which is indistingushable from one type of skizophrenia) will be exactly like what she is going through but it will give you a better basic idea of what altered mental states are like.
Unfortunatly, people whose only experience being altered is with something like alcohol or perhaps even weed have a very hard time understanding truly altered states. In order to offer a story of skizophrenia (not an explanation) to these people a bueatiful mind presented Nash's illness in a manner they could understand. Namely they portrayed him as acting rationally in response to illusionary situations. This isn't anything like how mental illness works.
While it would be very hard to portray on a movie, especially to individuals who have never experienced anything similar, the basic feature of skizophrenia (or at least paranoid-skizophrenia) is a disruption of normal reasonable thought. If a basically rational person started hearing voices not much would happen, they would immediatly conclude they were crazy and it would only be a minor annoyance. While the thought processes of a skizophrenic might be twistedly logical they are fundamentally unreasonable. For the most part they see the same features of the world as we do (plus sometimes voices and things at the corner of vision or in darkness) but they interpret them totally differntly.
I got so mad at the portrayl of skizophrenia in a Beautiful Mind that I had to walk out of the movie. Portraying skizophrenia as a vast consistant illusion is to delibrately encourage a horrible misapprehension of how mental illness works.
Perhaps, but why should I care. I am part of the educated technically able group. If the US has a big brain drain and a big percent of our technically competent individuals go to india or whereever then the job market is all the better for me. I simply don't see why I should care whether americans at large are well off or indians at large are well off.
In fact since the US is unlikely to slide into the extreme poverty that india is in now (even if our economy stopped growing and completly stagnated we produce enough to keep americans at a much higer standard of living than the majorities of indians) the world in total is likely to be better off it they win at our expense.
In short I feel the same way about india winning over the US as I do about missouri stealing companies from california.
So unlike many of the people replying I don't think having a computer grader in some classes is such a bad thing. Having been a TA myself I am well aware how subjective and inconsistant human grades can be. Even if this computer grader isn't wonderfull at least it is going to be very consistant (and will provide proof against lawsuits).
Still, I think it is entierly inappropriate for a high-school class like this. In high school we should be emphasizing reasoning ability and consistancy of argument not grammar and punctuation. Spelling and punctuation should be emphasized in Jr. high perhaps but the skills students really need in college are reasoning and analysis. These skills help them in all areas in life, poor punctuation can be fixed by a machine (well at least as well as a machine can grade punctuation).
This machine simply can't check logic and consistancy. However, this might just be a lost cause as I'm not sure if high school english teachers can do so either and their hands may already be tied as they have to teach to the new SAT and AP exams. Unfortunatly basic logical skills are lacking in much of our population and it wouldn't surprise me in the people we hire to grade these exams are no better.
This suggests a very distorted notion of the purpose of grades. Perhaps this is an appropriate philosophy for very young students where the only purpose of the grade is encouragement but it is simply not usefull for college students.
What is the prupose of grades in college? Why not just allow students to take all classes P/F (and this works fine from a learning perspective as the first year of my college showed)? Quite simply because the transcript is supposed to represent the students *competance* in various areas. Prospective employers and graduate schools need to be able to look at a transcript and evaluate the abilities of a particular individual.
Do you want a company to hire an engineer to build a bridge who tried really hard but nevertheless simply doesn't understand the physics involved? I would prefer, as most people that we pick the individual who had the best track record of knowing his shit regardless of the effort level. This is true in all areas, grades serve as an indication of mastery of the subject matter. Effort does not equal mastery.
In fact the argument can be made that those who put in alot of effort deserve a lower grade for the same work. As a prospective employer which is more valuable to me, the student who was only able to acheive that level of understanding after a great deal of effort or the student who pulled this off barely twitching a muscle. If both of them are going to work 40hours/week for me (or whatever other number I require) then the lazy student is going to be far more valubale. I don't in fact support this policy but it is far more than enough to realize we shouldn't give a special benefit to effort. If we wanted to recognize effort we should make two grades (one for effort one for ability) but we have already made our choice about what a grade represents when we decided to make only one of them.
All of this is ignoring the extreme practical problems with a system that rewards effort. Speaking as both a TA and a student I will testify that it is almost impossible to measure effort in a meaningfull way. Unfortunatly the first tendency of teachers is to credit students who are always in class or talking to them as being more dedicate. However, this is grossly unfair to many students who might learn differntly and encourages disgusting brown-nosing which interferes with actual learning.
For instance as an undergrad I found that lectures did me no good in mathematics. I spent a great deal of time on these clases learning from the book myself but I never showed up in class...it simply would have been a waste of time for me. Regardless of what you think about giving a bonus for effort certainly we shouldn't discriminate against those who put in their effort in a non-flashy way, by reading on their own and not spending all their time asking the teacher questions. Often these are the students more interested in learning as opposed to ones who just want the grade.
This brings me to the final problem. If you institute a system which gives better grades to stupid but diligent students things will get crazy. Already as a TA I have to deal with alot of students kissing ass and begging for better grades, if they find out that my opinion of them being diligent affects their grade it gets even worse. Valuable class time we could have spent learning would be used up by students asking questions they already know the answers to just to appear interested/diligent. Most likely smart students would start faking being stupid and diligent to get the grade bonus.
Finally I would offer the analogy. Why don't we run the olympics or college sports on this effort basis. Sure I might suck really bad at running but I am clearly at a disadvantage so my 6minute mile should count just as much as someone elses 3min mile. This is certainly absurd in sports so why would you suggest it in academics?
All of your points (except for the tax incentives) argue for my position.
Yes, offsourcing does build up indian companies at the cost of our own, no indians won't use the money to buy US software products. In short outsourcing *builds* their economy (perhaps at the cost of our own but this is another question). However, if indians are really just as deserving as americans why do you care if they gain and we fall...especially as they are far more needy than us so the benefit to them will be far more than the loss to us.
I would point out that you offer no reason to believe that this doesn't help india.
Quite simply indians earn more money if they get outsourced jobs. This gives the country more money to build various social services. Whether or not it is fair it would take a very twisted argument to justify that employing people in a foreign country at a higher wage then they are currently paid (and yes US outsorced jobs are very lucrative compared to other jobs availible there) *doesn't* help.
If you want we can have a long debate about this.
However, regardless of whether buisnesses get rich off of outsourcing or not the effect on the indian workers is pretty clear. Indians working in tech service centers or similar earn perhaps 1/3 of what the US worker would earn vs. salaries in much of india of no more than $1 a day. Sure these aren't exactly equivalent but it is clear indian tech workers are *way* better off than they would be without the jobs.
Well no I didn't read about this the only link being given in the article just being to freenets homepage.
Amazing how I got moded up to a 5 anyway despite adding completly useless and incorrect information.
Improve the lives of indians by letting them have jobs!!
Yes, this means not discriminating against them because they aren't US citizens. An indian citizen is no less deserving than someone in the USA of a high standard of living. If we are really concerned about the livelihoods of our fellow humans (and not some bizarre ideology where american lives are worth more than indian lives) this means abandoning all these silly 'buy american' campaigns or protesting when IT companies outsource.
Almost certainly paypal had no choice in this manner. There are a great deal of government regulations about monetary transfers that prohibit anonymity. The failing war on drugs justified a great many rules restricting the anonymous flow of money (which didn't stop the drugs only encourage another criminal enterprise of money laundering) and the war on terror combined with the public prominence of the internet nailed the lid in anonymous monetary transfers.
Even if the significant government powers to stop and track sucpiscous monetary transactions don't explicitly bar paypal from allowing anonymous accounts (as the page suggests freenet was doing) the considerable influence of the government forces them to do so anyway. After all paypal relies on the patronage of credit card companies who we know would rather bow to government pressure than stick up for privacy. These E-gold type places can continue in the face of this opposition because they don't accept credit cards and they technically aren't transfering USD (rather ounces of gold) so probably fall under less restrictive laws. Most likely though they are simply too small to have been noticed yet.
Face it guys anonymous monetary transfers aren't going to be offered by a for profit company. Such companies have too much to lose by not allowing government scrutiny.
On a related note I wonder if Osama would pat up his 35 pounds of gold using E-gold.
This statement about winzip is quite misleading. Either the author didn't bother to read the paper or has an emotional bias against non-free software.
The encryption method in WinZip is actually fairly secure, the attack mentioned in the article consists of tricking someone into sending back the decrypted output. While design improvements could be made to make this less likely this hardly qualifies as 'simply use(ing) the right busswords'. So long as you aren't an idiot and send data so confidentional you might reasonably be the victim of a complicated man in the middle attack this product will work fine for your security needs. In fact as they mention in the article PGP suffered from a similar problem.
In fact, aside from the documented fact that the file names and lengths are in plaintext, this tool provides all the security an individual user is ever really going to need. Even large corporations are unlikely to be the victims of sucesfull man in the middle attacks and certainly anyone using WinZip for their security needs doesn't really need to worry. This is certainly enough to stop your family friends and law enforcement from reading your shit.
I know I'm going to get jumped on by some crypto people and to be fair it *is* good we find issues like this report them and either document or fix them. However, if we are going to consider social factors (such as tricking someone into sending back 'garbage') it is only fair we credit social factors toward the credit of such a program. So we should consider the social factor that WinZip is hardly used by the government or milatary when asking if it is a reasonable security product.
If it was just bad education or less money for science we could fix it with a bill or two in congress. Unfortunatly this reflects a deep anti-intellectualism in america. If we want americans to be good scientists and engineers we need to make it desierable to be a scientist or engieneer.
This means more than paying them more. It means making them *respected* and not mearly perpetuating the mad scientist or nerd sterotype. Unless the United States starts electing intellectual figures (like tony blair rather than george bush) and stops making fun of nerds it will keep falling in it's scientific prowess.
Well I first want to point out whatever role piracy may have played in the initial spread of videogames I doubt it is significant now, at least not for the big developers. Quite simply it seems that everyone who is going to do so is hooked on videogames, there isn't a child out there who isn't exposed significantly to a video games system. Sure, one might claim that a certain percentage of piraters out there is good for the game industry by 'seeding' their friends, who aren't willing to pirate, to buy the game. Yes, but it is still in the industry's interest to discourage this practice, i.e. send people to jail who engage in it, to keep it small. Hell, if they wiped out all the pirates they can accomplish the same seed effect by running an internet giveaway of a certain number or copies, which no doubt would let them perfect the process making sure they hit differnt geographic areas proportionally and etc..
Now in the posts on slashdot I noticed two types of responses justifying piracy, some right-headed the other just outright selfish.
The first I noticed is probably the oldest excuse in the book, and one of the most annoying. The games are too expensive, why should I have to pay for failed games etc.. etc.. BECAUSE IF NO ONE DOES NO ONE WILL MAKE GAMES. There is no absolute price video games *should* be and they are over this price...the very notion is absurd. Neither is it the case that videogame companies are handled by complete incompetents who are just wasting money. This is just a thinly disguised excuse, "I don't want to shell out any money"
The second objection is more reasonable. Namely that they wouldn't be willing to buy the game so it doesn't hurt anyone should they play it anyway. This is entierly reasonable except for the fact that there is a natural slipperly slope here. It does however point out a terrible flaw in our pricing of intellectual property. We are being terribly inefficent because we have members of our population who could be living better at no cost to anyone (i.e. have extra entertainment in this case).
Instead the clear answer is to pay for IP directly via taxes. Fix a certain percent of total income and then distribute it to creators of IP via estimates of the use and ranking by it's readers of the work, in other words a scheme of mandatory liscenscing to all citizens. Now of course people will cry that this is socialicstic. Perhaps, but it would do well to remember *why* we use capitalism. Because it is the best way we discovered to divide goods.
It is a good way to divide goods provided that the price per good is roughly constant (for instance chairs...the price is just the materials and craftsmanship for that chair). However, intellectual property is essentially differnt, the additional cost to make one more good is essentially zero. This is why we have the government run things like the army where the cost of protecting one more individual is essentially zero (the cost of protecting the US is independent of the population). It simply wouldn't be efficent for everyone to pay for only their personal protection.