The status quo is that people will not get selected because of race. Everybody is racist to some extent. No matter what your race, your background, your sex, or your intelligence, you understand people better if they are more like you. Consequently, you will more likely select people that look like you. If you are male, you will understand males better than females and are more likely to give a guy a break. Likewise, if you are female, you will understand females better, and you will give that gal a break. So that's all good: everybody is equally racist, sexist, pedantic, as anybody else.
But now the problem starts. The majority, being equally discriminatory as the minority, has a disproportionate effect on the well-being of the minority. Take sexism at the workplace as an easy example. Suppose everybody, male or female, makes one sexist remark to the opposite sex once a week. Now also suppose that the workplace consists of 10 times the number of males over the number of females. Not out of the ordinary in tech circles. Then, on average, every male will get a sexist remark every 10 weeks. Every female will get 10 sexist remarks per week. The girl is harassed 100 times more often than the boy. The same goes if the ratios are reversed.
Should we do affirmative action, and ask the guys to watch their language 10 times better than the girls? Or is that sexist?
I'm pretty sure the founding fathers would be very proud of this representative republic they founded. Not entirely sure who it represents though. I guess it's time to call it the People's Republic of America, to emphasize where the power lies in this Republic.
It's typically a bit more subtle than this. Here's an example of the mathematics of discrimination.
Why is a male-dominated workplace typically sexist? Simple. Suppose that each person, regardless of sex, makes a sexist remark once every week to someone of opposite sex. Now suppose that the male-female ratio in the workplace is ten to one. Then, on average, every female in the workplace is subjected to 10 sexist remarks per week, while the average male is subject to 1 sexist remark every 10 weeks. For the males this doesn't feel sexist, the females experience a very hostile workplace, yet both are equally sexist. In order to balance this, males need to be 10 times less sexist than females. Is asking males to be more sensitive to their behavior than females in itself sexist?
This holds for any prejudice people have. The minority will be disproportionally affected by it. I'm not sure if affirmative action is the answer, but the status quo does mean that people of merit will not get where they could be.
So, explain then please: what form of government does Brittain have, or the Netherlands, or Denmark, or Sweden, or Norway. They cannot be republics, as they have a hereditary head of state. As per your logic they can't be democracies as 'representative democracy' is the same as 'partial democracy' and is a contradiction in terms. Under what type of government do I live? A monarchy? And am I now to argue that a monarchy is preferable to a democracy?
How come? If a bunch of people come together, they are a bunch of people. How do they suddenly lose rights? The fact is that corporations are not persons, they are owned by persons. Given a corporation a separate vote gives the owner a second vote. Give the corporation rights to bribe, and you give the owner the right to bribe. Walmart is not a person, it's the Waltons that run the show. Give Walmart a right, and it goes directly to the Waltons. They get that above and beyond the rights they have as US citizens. And that is undemocratic.
Nonsense. The US is the only country in the world where this weird construct of corporate personhood is used. Are you claiming there's no limited liability outside of the US?
Many of the rich have inherited the money. I've worked with second generation rich: they are well-intended, but typically so involved with their lifestyle that work is merely a hobby. Third generation rich are 'old-money', i.e., aristocracy. No positive influence is to be expected from them. I.e., the rich are a diverse bunch. The ones that actually became rich are typically awesome. But the world is ruled by Paris Hilton.
Obviously the concept of a representative democracy (i.e., the form of government all western republics and monarchies have adopted) is still foreign to you.
Hi Stenvar, you sound like a rational person. Have you actually read this thread where people are completely and openly questioning global warming occurring, questioning the morals of the people involved in climate research, questioning antropogenic global warming, arguing that scientific research is a gravy train that keeps on running, forwarding a conspiracy theory that politicians and corporations worldwide have for the first time been able to collude globally, and generally display an attitude resembling young earth creationists and truthers? These are the denialists. You are the only one in this entire thread that argues an economic opposite viewpoint based on the scientific evidence we have so far. All 100 others are simply denying a problem exists. They are trying to further a political agenda by attacking the messenger, not the message. They are denialists and are not worth discussing.
But if you have a reasoned argument on what needs to be done w.r.t. AGW, why are you spreading lies about the facts of AGW? And if you're not actively spreading lies (as you don't seem to be at least in this post), why are you defending those that are? Claiming something isn't true because you fear what others will propose (not enforce, propose) to mitigate the fact is at best childish. In this case it's close to criminal.
Awesome, we give the US the property rights to the atmoshpere above the US. We'll fine the US for any effects that it spreads around it's any area it doesn't control. I think three trillion dollars per ppm CO2 would be nice thank you.
I'm absolutely convinced that AWG is true, but I am severly skeptical about the measures proposed in your message to have the desired effect. Unfortunately, the discussion about AWG completely dwarfs the discussion about what we can do to mitigate the effects. That is really what pisses me off. The AWG deniers are absolutely preventing a sane solution to even be discussed. It's infuriating.
Okay, so you are denying a fact because you don't like the way some people want to mitigate the effects of that fact. That's pretty mature, in line with putting fingers in your ears and screaming lalalalalalalala.
There's no 100% proof, sorry. There's 90% proof, there's 99% proof, there's 99.9% proof, there's 99.99% proof, etc. However, there's are no certainties, no 100% proof. Sorry. Try living in this world.
On another note, how much proof of of NOT crashing in the next plane do you accept as tolerable for taking said plane? You seem to argue for 0%: we need to be absolutely sure that we are crashing this plane before we refuse to take it.If we survive 1 in a 100 flights, we shouldn't complain. We need to be absolutely sure that we crash this plane before we try to do something about it.
You are looking at a large construct where each and every part has been scrutinized. The parts are put in a consistent whole to create an overall indication of the state of the climate, and you are claiming it isn't fair that they didn't put in an obvious weak spot that could invalidate the whole? Are you asking the same of engineers when they construct a bridge? "Please, please, put a single point of failure in so I can destroy the bridge without too much effort? How else am I going to prove that the bridge will crumble under the load! It ain't fair!"
So yes, I'm sorry. The state of this part of science is such that all obvious issues have been addressed. Although far from perfect, the picture emerging is consistent with a climate that is quickly heating due to forcing by CO2. This CO2 is man-made by burning CO2 previously captured. To invalidate this whole, you will have to find non-obvious sources of error. This will require a lot of work, and, might not even be possible because you know, the overall picture might actually be roughly correct.
However the programming models that claim to be following this model want to take extremely complex modules (a database engine or GUI framework) and then just tie them together with a little syntactic glue. Plus they strongly discourage any programmer from creating their own modules or blocks (that's only for experts), and insist on forcing the wrong module to fit with extra duct tape rather than create a new module that is a better fit (there's a pathological fear of reinventing the wheel, even though when you go to the auto store you can see many varieties of wheels). And these are treated like black boxes; the programmers don't know how they work inside or why one is better than another for different uses.
And honestly, what's wrong with this? Complex modules such as database engines or GUI frameworks should be black boxes, with no need to look inside. What we're failing to do as a profession is to be able to clearly state what these black boxes are providing. So yes, I want to know that if I query this database on a field that hasn't got an index that it is O(n), instead of O(log(n)) if it has one. I truly don't care how they achieve that, and if they don't achieve what they claim, I would want to be able to sue and get another library.
What you're advocating is the status-quo. We don't really engineer our solutions so we need to have knowledge of each part of the solution. If you contrast this with real engineering: there every layer provides some form of guarantees. If you build a bridge, you know the forces steel products can withstand, and you pick your supplier of steel based on these guarantees. We don't do anything of the sort. We just pick at random and hope for the best. No engineering.
As the Boston bombing shows, the NSA is really not reading facebook. They're storing all this shit. but it's not used for any actual intelligence work. I can only speculate what it is used for, but chances are that's it's about money. So feel free to post on facebook, that's the last place they'll look.
e^{\pi i} + 1 = 0 is written simpler as e^{\pi i} = -1. So yes, Euler's formula is doing something redundant. And how come '0' is fundamental? It is just 1-1.
The question of whether Machines Can Think... is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.
-- Dijkstra (1984) The threats to computing science
As a corollary -- we did not need to actually understand much about how biological organisms swim to be able to build a submarine.
Slashdot Mirror
When people start to make decisions based on merit instead of familiarity, you might have a point.
But now the problem starts. The majority, being equally discriminatory as the minority, has a disproportionate effect on the well-being of the minority. Take sexism at the workplace as an easy example. Suppose everybody, male or female, makes one sexist remark to the opposite sex once a week. Now also suppose that the workplace consists of 10 times the number of males over the number of females. Not out of the ordinary in tech circles. Then, on average, every male will get a sexist remark every 10 weeks. Every female will get 10 sexist remarks per week. The girl is harassed 100 times more often than the boy. The same goes if the ratios are reversed.
Should we do affirmative action, and ask the guys to watch their language 10 times better than the girls? Or is that sexist?
I'm pretty sure the founding fathers would be very proud of this representative republic they founded. Not entirely sure who it represents though. I guess it's time to call it the People's Republic of America, to emphasize where the power lies in this Republic.
Why is a male-dominated workplace typically sexist? Simple. Suppose that each person, regardless of sex, makes a sexist remark once every week to someone of opposite sex. Now suppose that the male-female ratio in the workplace is ten to one. Then, on average, every female in the workplace is subjected to 10 sexist remarks per week, while the average male is subject to 1 sexist remark every 10 weeks. For the males this doesn't feel sexist, the females experience a very hostile workplace, yet both are equally sexist. In order to balance this, males need to be 10 times less sexist than females. Is asking males to be more sensitive to their behavior than females in itself sexist?
This holds for any prejudice people have. The minority will be disproportionally affected by it. I'm not sure if affirmative action is the answer, but the status quo does mean that people of merit will not get where they could be.
So, explain then please: what form of government does Brittain have, or the Netherlands, or Denmark, or Sweden, or Norway. They cannot be republics, as they have a hereditary head of state. As per your logic they can't be democracies as 'representative democracy' is the same as 'partial democracy' and is a contradiction in terms. Under what type of government do I live? A monarchy? And am I now to argue that a monarchy is preferable to a democracy?
Not really, There is typically a left/right divide, and there's a conservative/progressive divide, but no simple mapping as you sketch exists.
How come? If a bunch of people come together, they are a bunch of people. How do they suddenly lose rights? The fact is that corporations are not persons, they are owned by persons. Given a corporation a separate vote gives the owner a second vote. Give the corporation rights to bribe, and you give the owner the right to bribe. Walmart is not a person, it's the Waltons that run the show. Give Walmart a right, and it goes directly to the Waltons. They get that above and beyond the rights they have as US citizens. And that is undemocratic.
Nonsense. The US is the only country in the world where this weird construct of corporate personhood is used. Are you claiming there's no limited liability outside of the US?
Jesus was a hippie.
Many of the rich have inherited the money. I've worked with second generation rich: they are well-intended, but typically so involved with their lifestyle that work is merely a hobby. Third generation rich are 'old-money', i.e., aristocracy. No positive influence is to be expected from them. I.e., the rich are a diverse bunch. The ones that actually became rich are typically awesome. But the world is ruled by Paris Hilton.
Obviously the concept of a representative democracy (i.e., the form of government all western republics and monarchies have adopted) is still foreign to you.
And of course, no declaration of war was made. The US constitution had been superceded. By what exactly is left as an exercise to the reader.
Hi Stenvar, you sound like a rational person. Have you actually read this thread where people are completely and openly questioning global warming occurring, questioning the morals of the people involved in climate research, questioning antropogenic global warming, arguing that scientific research is a gravy train that keeps on running, forwarding a conspiracy theory that politicians and corporations worldwide have for the first time been able to collude globally, and generally display an attitude resembling young earth creationists and truthers? These are the denialists. You are the only one in this entire thread that argues an economic opposite viewpoint based on the scientific evidence we have so far. All 100 others are simply denying a problem exists. They are trying to further a political agenda by attacking the messenger, not the message. They are denialists and are not worth discussing.
But if you have a reasoned argument on what needs to be done w.r.t. AGW, why are you spreading lies about the facts of AGW? And if you're not actively spreading lies (as you don't seem to be at least in this post), why are you defending those that are? Claiming something isn't true because you fear what others will propose (not enforce, propose) to mitigate the fact is at best childish. In this case it's close to criminal.
Awesome, we give the US the property rights to the atmoshpere above the US. We'll fine the US for any effects that it spreads around it's any area it doesn't control. I think three trillion dollars per ppm CO2 would be nice thank you.
I'm absolutely convinced that AWG is true, but I am severly skeptical about the measures proposed in your message to have the desired effect. Unfortunately, the discussion about AWG completely dwarfs the discussion about what we can do to mitigate the effects. That is really what pisses me off. The AWG deniers are absolutely preventing a sane solution to even be discussed. It's infuriating.
Okay, so you are denying a fact because you don't like the way some people want to mitigate the effects of that fact. That's pretty mature, in line with putting fingers in your ears and screaming lalalalalalalala.
On another note, how much proof of of NOT crashing in the next plane do you accept as tolerable for taking said plane? You seem to argue for 0%: we need to be absolutely sure that we are crashing this plane before we refuse to take it.If we survive 1 in a 100 flights, we shouldn't complain. We need to be absolutely sure that we crash this plane before we try to do something about it.
Awesome. As long as I can kill everyone and their progeny if despite our efforts, temperatures rise by 3 degrees, I'm game.
So yes, I'm sorry. The state of this part of science is such that all obvious issues have been addressed. Although far from perfect, the picture emerging is consistent with a climate that is quickly heating due to forcing by CO2. This CO2 is man-made by burning CO2 previously captured. To invalidate this whole, you will have to find non-obvious sources of error. This will require a lot of work, and, might not even be possible because you know, the overall picture might actually be roughly correct.
However the programming models that claim to be following this model want to take extremely complex modules (a database engine or GUI framework) and then just tie them together with a little syntactic glue. Plus they strongly discourage any programmer from creating their own modules or blocks (that's only for experts), and insist on forcing the wrong module to fit with extra duct tape rather than create a new module that is a better fit (there's a pathological fear of reinventing the wheel, even though when you go to the auto store you can see many varieties of wheels). And these are treated like black boxes; the programmers don't know how they work inside or why one is better than another for different uses.
And honestly, what's wrong with this? Complex modules such as database engines or GUI frameworks should be black boxes, with no need to look inside. What we're failing to do as a profession is to be able to clearly state what these black boxes are providing. So yes, I want to know that if I query this database on a field that hasn't got an index that it is O(n), instead of O(log(n)) if it has one. I truly don't care how they achieve that, and if they don't achieve what they claim, I would want to be able to sue and get another library.
What you're advocating is the status-quo. We don't really engineer our solutions so we need to have knowledge of each part of the solution. If you contrast this with real engineering: there every layer provides some form of guarantees. If you build a bridge, you know the forces steel products can withstand, and you pick your supplier of steel based on these guarantees. We don't do anything of the sort. We just pick at random and hope for the best. No engineering.
As the Boston bombing shows, the NSA is really not reading facebook. They're storing all this shit. but it's not used for any actual intelligence work. I can only speculate what it is used for, but chances are that's it's about money. So feel free to post on facebook, that's the last place they'll look.
e^{\tau i} = 1.
This is impressive. Unfortunately, you're off by a factor 2.
-- Dijkstra (1984) The threats to computing science
As a corollary -- we did not need to actually understand much about how biological organisms swim to be able to build a submarine.