I am not the one that brought it up. He has his domain name as his username and a link to his website in his signature. It's not like I'm digging around for his private religious views. He chooses to publicly advertise this view in every comment he posts.
I hope I didn't give the impression that I think being religious necessarily makes you stupid. I know lots of very smart religious people. I will say that I think it's harder to be a very smart person with an especially intolerant and IMHO naive religious view (e.g. all other religions have been proven fake except mine), especially nowadays (as compared to when Newton lived).
It does certainly seem that the proportion of smart people that are religious has been dropping over time.
I would also say that I think that religious views fall on a spectrum of being quite thought-provoking, to dim-witted to absolutely abhorrent. That is I don't believe all religious views should be treated as equally valid, profound. And no idea should be above criticism.
In actuality, you are cherry-picking to discredit him to fulfill your own bias.
I'm not sure what "fulfilling one's bias" means, but at no point did I claim to be unbiased. In fact I think it was pretty clear that I was presenting my bias openly.
If you actually gave a shit about him, you'd read through his other posts, not just a simple click of his signature.
It's not just his signature. It's also his username and his domain name. It seems pretty clear that he wants to be identified with the statement on his website.
In short, using someone's religion or other personal choices to detract from their words is the act of a petty, scared individual, incapable of debating in professional terms.
I wasn't using his religion detract from his words. I am using his words to detract from his credibility as a person with good analytical ability.
You might as well be deriding a programmer for being gay, or a woman. Rewrite your post using one of them, and you clearly come off as a bigot.
That's ironic considering that he is the one who basically claimed that all other worldviews are proven to be fakes. Which I consider to be much more offensive than anything I've said.
I'm not a bigot. It's not like I am not trying to pass laws preventing him from getting married or anything. I am not prejudiced against him for anything he can not control. I am judging his worldview to be one that sucks, which is exactly what he is doing to non-Christians.
So maybe I am just as bad as he is. But I'll bet I'm a better software engineer.
I don't think refactoring implies simplification. I think ideally it would simplify something about the code (e.g. semantics, interoperability, etc), but it will likely make some parts of the code more complex (e.g. more levels of abstraction, or a more complex design patterns, etc)
Code refactoring is the process of restructuring existing computer code – changing the factoring – without changing its external behavior. Refactoring improves nonfunctional attributes of the software. Advantages include improved code readability and reduced complexity to improve source code maintainability, and create a more expressive internal architecture or object model to improve extensibility.
I'm not sure I can trust the coding advice from a person who thinks all the predictions in the bible have been, or will be proven to be 100% true (meanwhile claiming all other belief systems have been proven to be fakes). There are a lot of "religious" programmers out their who are sure that their preferred language, design pattern, or style is the only good one, and all others are terrible, even without bringing in actual religion.
If a scientist were to tell me he is 100% sure that the planes that crashed on 9/11 where flown by the US government via remote control, and that the people that were supposed to be on those planes are held in some secret facility, I might question their ability to think critically. It's possible that their is really good evidence to support this, and I've just never seen it, but I think it is far more likely that this scientist has horrible intuition and is probably a terrible scientist as a result.
We gave random medicines to groups of random people, and there was no statistical improvement in their health. Some people became healthier, but many people actually became ill.
I think the bicycle vs. walking analogy is good at illustrating the concept of the potential for additional complexity to increase efficiency, but I don't think it applies well to this situation, given the fact that the most efficient solution is walking (i.e. not being distracted, rather than avoiding distractions).
I think a better analogy would be comparing a wheelchair to walking. Walking is better if you are capable of doing it, but a wheelchair is better than nothing. And in this context, what I am proposing is physical therapy to get you walking again rather than training to get really good at using your wheelchair, or upgrading to a rascal, etc.
Using a wheelchair is rather inconvenient, even if you get pretty good at it. If you can muster the will power to deal with that level of inconvenience, I am suggesting maybe you have the willpower necessary to learn to walk (however you are able to magically produce willpower), and if you can manage that, you will be better off given the added utility of walking.
You are describing yourself doing these things (i.e. closing your browser, and not opening it again), not how you mustered the willpower to do them.
I can give you lots of specific examples of my approach to beating distraction. You haven't given me a single one yet for your version. It still sounds to me like nothing more than "try harder".
My system is indeed nothing more than "try harder". What I am trying to show, is that your system is ultimately the same thing but just more convoluted, and less useful.
When I was in college I flunked out twice, because I was distracted by video games. I tried hard not to be distracted by video games, and now I am no longer distracted by them.
This story of the form where I describe the process of "magically have the will power to do X", while it may seem ridiculous, is ultimately no different than your process of "magically have the willpower to do Y which then gives you X without the need for willpower". You correctly point out that "have the willpower to do X" is a very dubious suggestion. What I am saying is that your suggestion of "All you need to do to get X is Y" just a misdirection, because the real question is "How do you magically get Y?"
So as an example, what would you tell someone who says "I tried closing my browser to avoid distraction, but I can rarely muster the willpower to do that, and when I do I can't stop myself from reopening it." You are essentially telling them "try harder, and just have the willpower to close your browser and leave it closed".
Obviously if you can force yourself to close your browser and leave it closed, you won't be distracted by facebook.
My claim is that it takes basically the same amount of willpower not to open a browser as it does not to click on a bookmark or link and saying "have the willpower to close your browser so you won't go to facebook" is no better and less useful than saying "have the willpower not to go to facebook", because if you can do the latter, it means you can still use your browser for productive things.
Reading a book the old-fashioned way means that I have to get up, navigate towards the nearest tablet/computer/phone, unlock it, and open the Facebook app. The inconvenience means I'm less likely to give in when a momentary impulse strikes.
I am not disputing that having a distraction be a little bit more inconvenient will make you a little less likely to be distracted by it. I think that is fairly obvious.
What I am saying is that the effort spent to make these distractions inconvenient is not negligible. Couldn't this effort be better spent?
If you find yourself in a foreign country where you don't speak the language (let's say it's Russia). One strategy you might employ is teaching everyone you want to interact with English so that you can communicate with them. A better strategy might be to simply learn Russian. It's easier in the long term and you have the added benefit of a new skill.
Training yourself not to be distractable (as opposed to training yourself to avoid distractions), is in my opinion a better investment, because you get the added benefit of being able to use computers.
I would recommend to a person with a cookie problem, to focus their energy on solving their cookie will power problem rather than enhancing their ability to keep cookies at least 5 miles away.
Windows users hate the OS they love the most. They think they know what they want. They want a modern OS with all the bells and whistles but without any of the bloat or a UI they are unfamiliar with.
For all the people who hate the new windows: You'll still use it no matter how much you complain, and Microsoft knows this and therefore doesn't care what you think. What are you gonna do? Switch to mac or linux? You don't know how, or you would just complain even more.
For everyone else: I'm sure it will be fine. It will seem weird at first and have its quirks, but it will probably work pretty well for the most part, and after some time you'll just get used to it, like every other UI.
Here's the thing: avoiding distraction while using a medium full of distraction requires constant vigilance. On the other hand, you can make a good decision once, when you decide to pursue an activity, to cut out distraction and then you require no more willpower. This is useful for people who have more willpower at certain times than others, which is all of them as far as I can tell. Set things up well when you are motivated, so that you won't falter when you are tired/stressed or otherwise have your discipline compromised.
Do you get rid of all your phones and computers?
I went through college (probably the time when I procrastinated the most), with physical books, and it did not prevent me from being distracted by my computer. Reading a physical book doesn't prevent you from being distracted by your computer so long as you still have immediate access to it.
I think physical books present at most a very mild evasion of distraction. It might help people with enough willpower to abstain from using the computer they have access to but not enough will power to abstain from opening certain applications or clicking on certain links.
Unless you are actually somehow preventing access to your computers (i.e. driving to a park, and leaving your laptops, tablets, and smartphones behind), I don't see this choice of reading a physical book as being "one good decision", but rather one followed by a constant stream of good decisions to continue reading that book rather than using these devices that are ubiquitous and immediately accessible to nearly everyone in the 1st world (and even many in the 3rd world).
I got burned by bad ati drivers a long time ago too. There was a time when I was a "hardcore" nvidia supporter. But I was never so hardcore that my loyalty to one company over another was unconditional. I really do feel like AMD is doing a better job on linux development at the moment, while nvidia is coasting on its past achievements.
I find myself on both sides of the procrastination/distraction divide. Sometimes I am very determined to finish the task at hand, and other times I am dis tractable by nearly anything. It usually depends on how interesting vs. anxiety provoking the task is.
My point is that I feel like middle ground of not having enough self control to use a computer without being distracted, but still having enough self control to force yourself to get a physical book, rather than an electronic version, seems quite narrow to the point of being rather silly.
My mom diligently sets all her clocks to run 15 minutes early, so she won't be late. Why not just use all that diligence to simply be on time. It seems easier to do that with the added benefit of having your clocks be accurate.
Why not just focus your will power on not being distracted by distractions rather than simply avoiding distractions. It seems to me, both easier, and you get the added benefit of being able to use a computer and the added productivity it provides.
People with poor self control prefer limits on their behavior. I guess they have enough self control to recognize their own deficiencies, but not enough to fix them.
They seem to be doing a pretty good job on the graphics front. Their open source driver is in better shape and has more momentum than the nvidia open source driver.
My impression is that Intel has better linux support for their IGP but the performance is about a generation behind.
At one point in history (that wasn't even too long ago) it was "extremely unlikely" that computers would ever be able to defeat the best human player at chess. People look back now and it seems like it was inevitable. It was inevitable, but hardly anyone realized it until it happened.
Lots of friendly fire is caused by miscommunication (something that humans are bad at), and computers are very good at. In addition, computers are already better at recognizing human faces than other humans.
Far from being extremely unlikely, robots having a lower collateral damage rate, is inevitable.
Maybe everyone should get royalties for the work they do, and not just musicians. If I write a really good piece of software, shouldn't my children benefit from that even after I die?
It seems like artists think they have a RIGHT to a job making music even if there is no market demand for non-free music.
Rather than getting all pissed off at consumers for not paying you, why not get a job producing something that people are actually willing to pay for?
Either that, or make music that is so good people can't live without it, and cram it full of DRM and don't allow it to be played on the radio or pandora or spotify. You could charge huge subscription fees and make all the money you want.
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I am not the one that brought it up. He has his domain name as his username and a link to his website in his signature. It's not like I'm digging around for his private religious views. He chooses to publicly advertise this view in every comment he posts.
I hope I didn't give the impression that I think being religious necessarily makes you stupid. I know lots of very smart religious people. I will say that I think it's harder to be a very smart person with an especially intolerant and IMHO naive religious view (e.g. all other religions have been proven fake except mine), especially nowadays (as compared to when Newton lived).
It does certainly seem that the proportion of smart people that are religious has been dropping over time.
I would also say that I think that religious views fall on a spectrum of being quite thought-provoking, to dim-witted to absolutely abhorrent. That is I don't believe all religious views should be treated as equally valid, profound. And no idea should be above criticism.
Christians love to be the victim...
You are not using logic. You only think you are
I am expressing an opinion.
In actuality, you are cherry-picking to discredit him to fulfill your own bias.
I'm not sure what "fulfilling one's bias" means, but at no point did I claim to be unbiased. In fact I think it was pretty clear that I was presenting my bias openly.
If you actually gave a shit about him, you'd read through his other posts, not just a simple click of his signature.
It's not just his signature. It's also his username and his domain name. It seems pretty clear that he wants to be identified with the statement on his website.
In short, using someone's religion or other personal choices to detract from their words is the act of a petty, scared individual, incapable of debating in professional terms.
I wasn't using his religion detract from his words. I am using his words to detract from his credibility as a person with good analytical ability.
You might as well be deriding a programmer for being gay, or a woman. Rewrite your post using one of them, and you clearly come off as a bigot.
That's ironic considering that he is the one who basically claimed that all other worldviews are proven to be fakes. Which I consider to be much more offensive than anything I've said.
I'm not a bigot. It's not like I am not trying to pass laws preventing him from getting married or anything. I am not prejudiced against him for anything he can not control. I am judging his worldview to be one that sucks, which is exactly what he is doing to non-Christians.
So maybe I am just as bad as he is. But I'll bet I'm a better software engineer.
I don't think refactoring implies simplification. I think ideally it would simplify something about the code (e.g. semantics, interoperability, etc), but it will likely make some parts of the code more complex (e.g. more levels of abstraction, or a more complex design patterns, etc)
Refactoring definitely doesn't imply optimization.
from wikipedia
Code refactoring is the process of restructuring existing computer code – changing the factoring – without changing its external behavior. Refactoring improves nonfunctional attributes of the software. Advantages include improved code readability and reduced complexity to improve source code maintainability, and create a more expressive internal architecture or object model to improve extensibility.
I'm not sure I can trust the coding advice from a person who thinks all the predictions in the bible have been, or will be proven to be 100% true (meanwhile claiming all other belief systems have been proven to be fakes). There are a lot of "religious" programmers out their who are sure that their preferred language, design pattern, or style is the only good one, and all others are terrible, even without bringing in actual religion.
If a scientist were to tell me he is 100% sure that the planes that crashed on 9/11 where flown by the US government via remote control, and that the people that were supposed to be on those planes are held in some secret facility, I might question their ability to think critically. It's possible that their is really good evidence to support this, and I've just never seen it, but I think it is far more likely that this scientist has horrible intuition and is probably a terrible scientist as a result.
Maybe they mean the source code is less susceptible to bitrot after refactoring...
We gave random medicines to groups of random people, and there was no statistical improvement in their health. Some people became healthier, but many people actually became ill.
I think the bicycle vs. walking analogy is good at illustrating the concept of the potential for additional complexity to increase efficiency, but I don't think it applies well to this situation, given the fact that the most efficient solution is walking (i.e. not being distracted, rather than avoiding distractions).
I think a better analogy would be comparing a wheelchair to walking. Walking is better if you are capable of doing it, but a wheelchair is better than nothing. And in this context, what I am proposing is physical therapy to get you walking again rather than training to get really good at using your wheelchair, or upgrading to a rascal, etc.
Using a wheelchair is rather inconvenient, even if you get pretty good at it. If you can muster the will power to deal with that level of inconvenience, I am suggesting maybe you have the willpower necessary to learn to walk (however you are able to magically produce willpower), and if you can manage that, you will be better off given the added utility of walking.
You are describing yourself doing these things (i.e. closing your browser, and not opening it again), not how you mustered the willpower to do them.
I can give you lots of specific examples of my approach to beating distraction. You haven't given me a single one yet for your version. It still sounds to me like nothing more than "try harder".
My system is indeed nothing more than "try harder". What I am trying to show, is that your system is ultimately the same thing but just more convoluted, and less useful.
When I was in college I flunked out twice, because I was distracted by video games. I tried hard not to be distracted by video games, and now I am no longer distracted by them.
This story of the form where I describe the process of "magically have the will power to do X", while it may seem ridiculous, is ultimately no different than your process of "magically have the willpower to do Y which then gives you X without the need for willpower". You correctly point out that "have the willpower to do X" is a very dubious suggestion. What I am saying is that your suggestion of "All you need to do to get X is Y" just a misdirection, because the real question is "How do you magically get Y?"
So as an example, what would you tell someone who says "I tried closing my browser to avoid distraction, but I can rarely muster the willpower to do that, and when I do I can't stop myself from reopening it." You are essentially telling them "try harder, and just have the willpower to close your browser and leave it closed".
Obviously if you can force yourself to close your browser and leave it closed, you won't be distracted by facebook.
My claim is that it takes basically the same amount of willpower not to open a browser as it does not to click on a bookmark or link and saying "have the willpower to close your browser so you won't go to facebook" is no better and less useful than saying "have the willpower not to go to facebook", because if you can do the latter, it means you can still use your browser for productive things.
How do you learn to "avoid distractions"? What are the reliable ways to develop this skill?
Reading a book the old-fashioned way means that I have to get up, navigate towards the nearest tablet/computer/phone, unlock it, and open the Facebook app. The inconvenience means I'm less likely to give in when a momentary impulse strikes.
I am not disputing that having a distraction be a little bit more inconvenient will make you a little less likely to be distracted by it. I think that is fairly obvious.
What I am saying is that the effort spent to make these distractions inconvenient is not negligible. Couldn't this effort be better spent?
If you find yourself in a foreign country where you don't speak the language (let's say it's Russia). One strategy you might employ is teaching everyone you want to interact with English so that you can communicate with them. A better strategy might be to simply learn Russian. It's easier in the long term and you have the added benefit of a new skill.
Training yourself not to be distractable (as opposed to training yourself to avoid distractions), is in my opinion a better investment, because you get the added benefit of being able to use computers.
I would recommend to a person with a cookie problem, to focus their energy on solving their cookie will power problem rather than enhancing their ability to keep cookies at least 5 miles away.
Windows users hate the OS they love the most. They think they know what they want. They want a modern OS with all the bells and whistles but without any of the bloat or a UI they are unfamiliar with.
For all the people who hate the new windows: You'll still use it no matter how much you complain, and Microsoft knows this and therefore doesn't care what you think. What are you gonna do? Switch to mac or linux? You don't know how, or you would just complain even more.
For everyone else: I'm sure it will be fine. It will seem weird at first and have its quirks, but it will probably work pretty well for the most part, and after some time you'll just get used to it, like every other UI.
Here's the thing: avoiding distraction while using a medium full of distraction requires constant vigilance. On the other hand, you can make a good decision once, when you decide to pursue an activity, to cut out distraction and then you require no more willpower. This is useful for people who have more willpower at certain times than others, which is all of them as far as I can tell. Set things up well when you are motivated, so that you won't falter when you are tired/stressed or otherwise have your discipline compromised.
Do you get rid of all your phones and computers?
I went through college (probably the time when I procrastinated the most), with physical books, and it did not prevent me from being distracted by my computer. Reading a physical book doesn't prevent you from being distracted by your computer so long as you still have immediate access to it.
I think physical books present at most a very mild evasion of distraction. It might help people with enough willpower to abstain from using the computer they have access to but not enough will power to abstain from opening certain applications or clicking on certain links.
Unless you are actually somehow preventing access to your computers (i.e. driving to a park, and leaving your laptops, tablets, and smartphones behind), I don't see this choice of reading a physical book as being "one good decision", but rather one followed by a constant stream of good decisions to continue reading that book rather than using these devices that are ubiquitous and immediately accessible to nearly everyone in the 1st world (and even many in the 3rd world).
I got burned by bad ati drivers a long time ago too. There was a time when I was a "hardcore" nvidia supporter. But I was never so hardcore that my loyalty to one company over another was unconditional. I really do feel like AMD is doing a better job on linux development at the moment, while nvidia is coasting on its past achievements.
I find myself on both sides of the procrastination/distraction divide. Sometimes I am very determined to finish the task at hand, and other times I am dis tractable by nearly anything. It usually depends on how interesting vs. anxiety provoking the task is.
My point is that I feel like middle ground of not having enough self control to use a computer without being distracted, but still having enough self control to force yourself to get a physical book, rather than an electronic version, seems quite narrow to the point of being rather silly.
My mom diligently sets all her clocks to run 15 minutes early, so she won't be late. Why not just use all that diligence to simply be on time. It seems easier to do that with the added benefit of having your clocks be accurate.
Why not just focus your will power on not being distracted by distractions rather than simply avoiding distractions. It seems to me, both easier, and you get the added benefit of being able to use a computer and the added productivity it provides.
I don't think OSS is an artificial restriction when we are talking about linux drivers.
And yet neither of the AMD drivers actually have good performance or hardware support.
Good performance compared to what? Intel IGP? nouveau, the proprietary Nvidia binary driver?
The support is light-years ahead, unless it's one of the licensed PowerVRs.
So are you agreeing with me?
People with poor self control prefer limits on their behavior. I guess they have enough self control to recognize their own deficiencies, but not enough to fix them.
They seem to be doing a pretty good job on the graphics front. Their open source driver is in better shape and has more momentum than the nvidia open source driver.
My impression is that Intel has better linux support for their IGP but the performance is about a generation behind.
At one point in history (that wasn't even too long ago) it was "extremely unlikely" that computers would ever be able to defeat the best human player at chess. People look back now and it seems like it was inevitable. It was inevitable, but hardly anyone realized it until it happened.
Lots of friendly fire is caused by miscommunication (something that humans are bad at), and computers are very good at. In addition, computers are already better at recognizing human faces than other humans.
Far from being extremely unlikely, robots having a lower collateral damage rate, is inevitable.
Is it because if killer robots can deliver a lower collateral damage rate than humans, it will be a job killer?
Maybe everyone should get royalties for the work they do, and not just musicians. If I write a really good piece of software, shouldn't my children benefit from that even after I die?
You say 1/1000 of a dollar, I say 1/1000 of a penny, it's just a difference of opinion.
It seems like artists think they have a RIGHT to a job making music even if there is no market demand for non-free music.
Rather than getting all pissed off at consumers for not paying you, why not get a job producing something that people are actually willing to pay for?
Either that, or make music that is so good people can't live without it, and cram it full of DRM and don't allow it to be played on the radio or pandora or spotify. You could charge huge subscription fees and make all the money you want.
Also, stop whining