You seem to understand the differences better than many psychologists, but are missing the point I am making. A very important thing to get across is that many people with Autism can be and will be 'fine' even without help. However, the fact remains that they are different in a substantial way, and properly understanding this differences increases the chances that they will be fine. A good analogy for me is being left handed. There seems to have been some evidence that being left handed was once seen as incorrect or wrong, but to say that is quite ridiculous today. We understand that lefties work a different way and may need some degree of different treatment, but don't see that way as 'wrong' anymore. That's probably the right approach to take towards autism.
It still remains a question to what degree this is inherently a disadvantage and to what degree it is an advantage because of the structure of our society. From the perspective of an individual, it's probably not all that important, but in how to deal with this overall, it's profoundly important, as it determines whether we should focus on treating individuals or treating society.
I only recall playing video games as early as 4, but I don't recall with detail anything earlier than than that age, but I did have the ability to beat some of those games at that age, suggesting a fair bit of experience. So yeah, parent have been letting video games and televisions babysit their children about as long as they have been able to afford video games and television.
There's actually a pretty simple explanation. There's a cultural view that having sex with women is a wonderful, beautiful thing and having sex with men is a disgusting, horrible thing. Gay men have sex with men, therefore they are disgusting and horrible, and lesbians have sex with women, therefore they are wonderful and beautiful (at least as long as they aren't butch, anyway).
Except that there are still large differences in diagnosis rates in different places. You can largely explain this by having other parts of the country 'catch up' on the latest diagnosis methods.
TVs seem to be in decline as of late. You mentioned an iPad, but those tend to be at least as social as a video game console, while TVs aren't social at all. 20 years ago, those same kids would have been playing video games alone in their room.
Actually, the article states about half of those diagnosed have average or above average intelligence. Thus, autism is becoming less and less about intelligence and more about just having different behavior. I think this will likely be a great thing, as it will help separate the conflation of autism with mental retardation. This will benefit everyone across the spectrum of intelligence, and along the spectrum of what we consider severity for autism.
Facebook crushed myspace because myspace went to total shit faster than Facebook did, and arguably benefited a bit from learning from the mistakes of myspace and friendster. They have picked up some innovation in scalability and reliability along the way, but their success is more due to the incompetence of their competitors than their own competence.
We don't have to get the balance 'right', we just have to get the balance 'better' than it is right now. You are also making the bizarre assumption that health costs will go up, which doesn't seem to mesh with reality. Prohibition hasn't reduced usage, and a large share of the health-related concerns are due to impurities because these drugs are being made in environments not suitable for pharmaceutical grade production. Another concern is the lack of reliability of concentration, which is how a lot of overdoses happen. The biggest shift I would anticipate is going from alcohol to cannabis, which would be an overall reduction of health concerns.
Regarding civil forfeiture and militarization, while they might have happened through other methods, it's hard to argue that this wouldn't greatly reduce it by just changing it now. You can't buy your PD a tank if you don't have money, and the money comes largely from drugs.
I'm not saying that finding the right laws is easy. Far from it. I'm not saying that it will solve all of our problems. I'm just saying that it's not difficult to be less idiotic than we currently are. Stopping complete and total failure is an incredible step forward, and far beyond what most of our laws accomplish.
You can't actually know that, so stop deluding yourself.
Not conclusively, but we can speculate, especially since a number of places have significantly reduced enforcement and a few have legalized. We can also draw a number of parallels with alcohol prohibition.
Apparently it isn't, as seen by the lasts 35 years.
Is it tough politically? Yes. Is it tough to actually write laws better than our current ones? No.
Actually, it is a pretty simple matter. Legalization is going to be better overall than the current state. Moderate regulation may also be more beneficial, and would certainly be better than the status quo. Finding the ideal laws is no simple matter, but having better laws is a piece of cake.
And you really are downplaying the role the war on drugs has played on the militarization of police forces and the curtailing of our rights. Civil forfeiture is more or less due to prohibition (and the organized crime that it inevitably brings), and civil forfeiture funds local police departments to buy SWAT gear. Furthermore, it feeds into the prison-industrial complex, which is a concern in the same league. Fixing everything is not a simple matter, but making improvements over clearly awful problems is one.
As much as I dislike MS, they could probably actually do something with it and it al least sort of makes sense. Zuckerberg seems to just buy shit that seems cool without any regards for what to do with it or without any kind of proportinate assessment of value.
Like other federal agencies, the NSA is compelled by law to try to commercialize its R&D.
The closest thing I'm aware of is Bayh-Dole, which applies to grants from non-federal agencies. Such a policy would seem contrary to our philosophy on copyright regarding federal entities, which prohibits them from obtaining copyright on works created by the US government. I realize that copyright and patents are two different entities, but they have very similar intentions in their constitutional basis.
Absent government enforcement, NO ONE would be in the software business so the contribution to monopoly is ultimately neutral. So much for that argument.
Not true at all. The business would be very differently structured, but it would still exist, and would likely be much more productive.
Anti-trust was government DOING ITS JOB, serving the public good over the private evil. It was CORRUPT government (republican in this case, though there are plenty of examples of Democrats doing likewise) and all you can argue there is that Capitalism CORRUPTS and absolute Captialism Corrupts Absolutely.
The Anti-trust trial was a legitimate action of the government, it failed in that regard due to corruption, but political corrupttion has nothing to do with absolute capitalism. It's cronyism that is the problem, and copyright and patent based businesses are very much antithetical to capitalism. Free markets are free as in freedom, after all.
Government contracts are issued BASED ON WHAT BUSINESS OFFERS, not the other way around.
I give you the Osprey as an example.
I was saying that parties with closer ties tend to get a lot more government contracts regardless of the actual quality and features of their products and services.
Not reproducing is by definition an evolutionary dead end, no matter how many times you do it. There's no way for that trait to become dominant because it does not spread itself well. The trait is literally "NOT COMING BACK", which is something that does not keep coming back BY DEFINITION. Evolution favors reproduction. The inevitable failure related to terminator crops is not that the terminator genes will spread, but that the other genes will.
If the consequences for weev and Apple/AT&T were roughly proportional, there would probably be a lot less outcry. However, as far as a cursory search reveals, they didn't receive any kind of reprimand other than looking like idiots.
Actually, it is a big concern when the justice system is perverted against its fundamental ideals. We used the whole 'ends justify the means, so fuck the rules' crap to take down some mob bosses, and now we have all the RICO crap and civili forfeiture is commonplace. This allows unjust and impractical laws to stand unchallenged because the state can nail anybody if they really want to, and they have the leverage to make most people plea bargain out. We commit crimes on a regular basis because of our incredibly complex legal system, the NSA tracks every time we wipe our ass, and they drop information to locals for 'parallel construction.' That means that, absent sufficient public outcry and scrutiny, they can put anyone in jail whenever they want.
Our justice system was set up the way it is for a very good reason, and it's incredibly naive of you to think that this is okay because weev is an asshole.
The notion is more that AT&T has a responsibility to its customers to diligently protect its customers' sensitive information. It's not really saying that there is nothing wrong with the actions, but rather that the far greater concern is the irresponsibility of the party whose security was so poor.
Let's take this idea to an extreme scenario, albeit one that's not too improbable. For a very long time, a nuclear launch code was actually '00000000.' Let's say some hacker had accessed their network, determined this was the case, and made all of the machines with displays on the network say 'Change the fucking password before you doom us all, you stupid fuckwits.' Who are you going to be angry at, the hacker who intercepted their network, or the party that ignored their responsibility in protecting something that could have potentially destroyed civilization as we know it?
One, Microsoft's monopoly is very much tied to copyright and patents, which very much do need government. Two, you seem to not be understanding that 'a lot of good friends' doesn't equate with complete control of the government, it means that they can nudge things in their behavior from time to time, which they clearly can, and the anti-trust trial is a pretty good example of that.
no, getting huge is a result of the monopoly practice of business and does not need government.
It usually does. Government contracts bring in a lot of money, and end up causing everyone working with anyone working with the government to be compatible with you. That's pretty much the only thing keeping fax machines alive today.
Fortunately, life finds a way, and time bombs are an evolutionary dead end. I'm not saying that GMOs shouldn't be scrutinized, but you don't seem to be looking at this properly, and also seem to be conflating what the GMO industry is doing right now with the underlying technology.
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You seem to understand the differences better than many psychologists, but are missing the point I am making. A very important thing to get across is that many people with Autism can be and will be 'fine' even without help. However, the fact remains that they are different in a substantial way, and properly understanding this differences increases the chances that they will be fine. A good analogy for me is being left handed. There seems to have been some evidence that being left handed was once seen as incorrect or wrong, but to say that is quite ridiculous today. We understand that lefties work a different way and may need some degree of different treatment, but don't see that way as 'wrong' anymore. That's probably the right approach to take towards autism.
It still remains a question to what degree this is inherently a disadvantage and to what degree it is an advantage because of the structure of our society. From the perspective of an individual, it's probably not all that important, but in how to deal with this overall, it's profoundly important, as it determines whether we should focus on treating individuals or treating society.
I only recall playing video games as early as 4, but I don't recall with detail anything earlier than than that age, but I did have the ability to beat some of those games at that age, suggesting a fair bit of experience. So yeah, parent have been letting video games and televisions babysit their children about as long as they have been able to afford video games and television.
There's actually a pretty simple explanation. There's a cultural view that having sex with women is a wonderful, beautiful thing and having sex with men is a disgusting, horrible thing. Gay men have sex with men, therefore they are disgusting and horrible, and lesbians have sex with women, therefore they are wonderful and beautiful (at least as long as they aren't butch, anyway).
Except that there are still large differences in diagnosis rates in different places. You can largely explain this by having other parts of the country 'catch up' on the latest diagnosis methods.
TVs seem to be in decline as of late. You mentioned an iPad, but those tend to be at least as social as a video game console, while TVs aren't social at all. 20 years ago, those same kids would have been playing video games alone in their room.
Actually, the article states about half of those diagnosed have average or above average intelligence. Thus, autism is becoming less and less about intelligence and more about just having different behavior. I think this will likely be a great thing, as it will help separate the conflation of autism with mental retardation. This will benefit everyone across the spectrum of intelligence, and along the spectrum of what we consider severity for autism.
Facebook crushed myspace because myspace went to total shit faster than Facebook did, and arguably benefited a bit from learning from the mistakes of myspace and friendster. They have picked up some innovation in scalability and reliability along the way, but their success is more due to the incompetence of their competitors than their own competence.
We don't have to get the balance 'right', we just have to get the balance 'better' than it is right now. You are also making the bizarre assumption that health costs will go up, which doesn't seem to mesh with reality. Prohibition hasn't reduced usage, and a large share of the health-related concerns are due to impurities because these drugs are being made in environments not suitable for pharmaceutical grade production. Another concern is the lack of reliability of concentration, which is how a lot of overdoses happen. The biggest shift I would anticipate is going from alcohol to cannabis, which would be an overall reduction of health concerns.
Regarding civil forfeiture and militarization, while they might have happened through other methods, it's hard to argue that this wouldn't greatly reduce it by just changing it now. You can't buy your PD a tank if you don't have money, and the money comes largely from drugs.
I'm not saying that finding the right laws is easy. Far from it. I'm not saying that it will solve all of our problems. I'm just saying that it's not difficult to be less idiotic than we currently are. Stopping complete and total failure is an incredible step forward, and far beyond what most of our laws accomplish.
Not conclusively, but we can speculate, especially since a number of places have significantly reduced enforcement and a few have legalized. We can also draw a number of parallels with alcohol prohibition.
Is it tough politically? Yes. Is it tough to actually write laws better than our current ones? No.
Actually, it is a pretty simple matter. Legalization is going to be better overall than the current state. Moderate regulation may also be more beneficial, and would certainly be better than the status quo. Finding the ideal laws is no simple matter, but having better laws is a piece of cake.
And you really are downplaying the role the war on drugs has played on the militarization of police forces and the curtailing of our rights. Civil forfeiture is more or less due to prohibition (and the organized crime that it inevitably brings), and civil forfeiture funds local police departments to buy SWAT gear. Furthermore, it feeds into the prison-industrial complex, which is a concern in the same league. Fixing everything is not a simple matter, but making improvements over clearly awful problems is one.
As much as I dislike MS, they could probably actually do something with it and it al least sort of makes sense. Zuckerberg seems to just buy shit that seems cool without any regards for what to do with it or without any kind of proportinate assessment of value.
The closest thing I'm aware of is Bayh-Dole, which applies to grants from non-federal agencies. Such a policy would seem contrary to our philosophy on copyright regarding federal entities, which prohibits them from obtaining copyright on works created by the US government. I realize that copyright and patents are two different entities, but they have very similar intentions in their constitutional basis.
That's like saying it's a cop's job to shoot people.
If they are compromising sysadmins without due process, then a sysadmin like Snowden compromising them is just desserts.
Not true at all. The business would be very differently structured, but it would still exist, and would likely be much more productive.
The Anti-trust trial was a legitimate action of the government, it failed in that regard due to corruption, but political corrupttion has nothing to do with absolute capitalism. It's cronyism that is the problem, and copyright and patent based businesses are very much antithetical to capitalism. Free markets are free as in freedom, after all.
I was saying that parties with closer ties tend to get a lot more government contracts regardless of the actual quality and features of their products and services.
The question is who commited the greater violation of trust, weev or AT&T?
Not reproducing is by definition an evolutionary dead end, no matter how many times you do it. There's no way for that trait to become dominant because it does not spread itself well. The trait is literally "NOT COMING BACK", which is something that does not keep coming back BY DEFINITION. Evolution favors reproduction. The inevitable failure related to terminator crops is not that the terminator genes will spread, but that the other genes will.
If the consequences for weev and Apple/AT&T were roughly proportional, there would probably be a lot less outcry. However, as far as a cursory search reveals, they didn't receive any kind of reprimand other than looking like idiots.
Actually, it is a big concern when the justice system is perverted against its fundamental ideals. We used the whole 'ends justify the means, so fuck the rules' crap to take down some mob bosses, and now we have all the RICO crap and civili forfeiture is commonplace. This allows unjust and impractical laws to stand unchallenged because the state can nail anybody if they really want to, and they have the leverage to make most people plea bargain out. We commit crimes on a regular basis because of our incredibly complex legal system, the NSA tracks every time we wipe our ass, and they drop information to locals for 'parallel construction.' That means that, absent sufficient public outcry and scrutiny, they can put anyone in jail whenever they want.
Our justice system was set up the way it is for a very good reason, and it's incredibly naive of you to think that this is okay because weev is an asshole.
The notion is more that AT&T has a responsibility to its customers to diligently protect its customers' sensitive information. It's not really saying that there is nothing wrong with the actions, but rather that the far greater concern is the irresponsibility of the party whose security was so poor.
Let's take this idea to an extreme scenario, albeit one that's not too improbable. For a very long time, a nuclear launch code was actually '00000000.' Let's say some hacker had accessed their network, determined this was the case, and made all of the machines with displays on the network say 'Change the fucking password before you doom us all, you stupid fuckwits.' Who are you going to be angry at, the hacker who intercepted their network, or the party that ignored their responsibility in protecting something that could have potentially destroyed civilization as we know it?
It usually does. Government contracts bring in a lot of money, and end up causing everyone working with anyone working with the government to be compatible with you. That's pretty much the only thing keeping fax machines alive today.
Fortunately, life finds a way, and time bombs are an evolutionary dead end. I'm not saying that GMOs shouldn't be scrutinized, but you don't seem to be looking at this properly, and also seem to be conflating what the GMO industry is doing right now with the underlying technology.
Except being drunk is actually a benefit in a car crash. You are relatively relaxed, which reduces the extent of injury.
It only took them a few decades to figure this one out.