I'm interested in learning how repressive China is, but I can't seem to find any quantitative studies on how repressive China is relative to the rest of the world. Can anyone point me to such a thing, if it exists?
first off, like your post. Second off, I think that contemplation on whether you are happy or on whether your life is good is a real factor in depression.
I often wonder if third-world farmers who work almost all day, every day are less unhappy than us priviledged with more free time to consider our own existence and its meaning.
This seems sound reasoning to me. As a libertarian, I'm loath to rely on regulatory solutions. Can anyone think or a reason why we couldn't just start encrypting all our packets, or why regulation would be a better solution?
why blame people who don't vote when you can blame a system that relies on people to become sufficiently informed and vote? Personally, I think it's insane to expect the American public to make informed decisions about anything.
I generally consider myself to have largely libertarian political beliefs. But I have never understood the rationale for the gold standard. Certainly, having a currency tied to a limited resource is a good thing, but why would you want to exchange a currency for gold, unless you knew that there was either: -a increased demand for gold -a decreased demand for the currency I don't think that people should expect to have things that do not fluctuate in value. But I also don't think that people should rely on the government to give them one currency with which to trade. Currency should be privatized.
I believe I have the same problem, but it is hard to figure on, since it could easily be a case of mistyped/written address. I registered an address with a period, and I just sent an email to the same address with no period to see if I get a response.
I thought when people said that they were referring to the necessity of college and high school for employment, not the educational value. Of course, if a larger percentage of the potential workforce is going to college because they feel they need to in order to acquire a good job, then the college will have to adjust its expectations for larger, less intelligent group... and thus making college less intellectually challenging... which I guess is fairly accurate from my point of view as a state college student.
with two companies, customers (or citizens) feel like they have a choice. I think that part of the joy of consumerism is feeling that your choice somehow reflects you. People like to exercise their choice, even if their pool of choices is very limited. In fact, people probably prefer fewer choices, since they don't have to invest as much study into their choices.
And the fewer competing entities, the easier it is to collude against the consumers.
Ok... today you've got Democrats standing up to oppose the renewal of the Patriot Act. But that's a relately new thing. They were perfectly fine with it when it was originally passed.
And remind me how many Democrats voted against the Iraq war?
Anyway, the only reason the Democrats are finally voicing their own opinions on issues is because all politicians realize that Bush has almost no popular support anymore. I'm sure that the Republicans are just as eager, if not more eager, to paint themselves as having different views as the whitehouse at this point.
Why do you say we don't need a third party? Why stop at three parties? Ok, so say we get a government that, in your opinion, gives a shit about civil rights. Why do we even need two parties then? We can have one party, the good party (I assume you're thinking Democrats) running the country.
people should be held responsible in a social way: they should be rated by their peers, and what they say should be weighed in light of what people think of them.
And I agree with your sentiment that people look to legal, or authoritarian solutions much too often, when instead they could just take initiative themselves, and recruit their friends/people they know to their cause.
I actually can't really disagree with you, but it is more of an "inciteful" remark than an insightful remark.
I've been trying to figure out why this issue is getting people so worked up (myself included), because it's all about some random website claiming to be a sort of encyclopedia. People claim to be experts all the time, and they lie or misinform out of ignorance; it's not a new phenomenon. Why then, do we have articles written like the one at the register, urging a call to arms over "moral responsibility?
It's all over one word: Encyclopedia. If wikipedia called itself the "Unreliable Encyclopedia", would this article have been written? I suppose the author would have had a hernia over what he considered the contradiction in terms. And yet, there do exist unreliable encyclopedias I suspect: those published in the 1950s do not contain up-to-date political and scientific information. They are unreliable, although I would not like to try and guess if they are more or less reliable than wikipedia.
I think that responsibility is the heart of this issue, and is why so many people get worked up about it. It's about who is to be assigned blame if wikipedia is inaccurate.
The author of the register article obviously wants the administrators of wikipedia to be held responsible, as if it was a top-down heirarchy. But it's not: it's more of a sort of p2p encyclopedia. It's not useful to blame wikipedia for being irresponsible any more than it is to blame gnutella for having illegal media on its network.
And the problem with attacking wikipedia and saying its not only useless, but it is harmful, is that it is not only attacking those people who spread disinformation. It is also attacking smart people who have a lot of worthwhile knowledge, and have carefully attempted to transfer this knowledge to an online medium that they knew people would use.
Now, maybe those people who write good articles for wikipedia shouldn't do so, because it'll only confuse people into thinking that wikipedia is more than a mountain of lies.
But I think that the answer lies in finding a way to hold individual wikipedia authors more accountable for their actions.
Hopefully as the internet grows up, people will go from thinking "I have to be careful in believing what I read on the internet" to "I have to be careful in what I say on the internet, because it represents me". We should start believing that it is a serious offense to spread disinformation on the internet, so that people will hold themselves to higher standards.
I say we need secure, historied, online personae.
I can only assume that the parent's post was not supportive of this bill, and was merely attempting to make it sound somewhat rational.
However, it seems that these contortions of thought rely on the basic idea that the analog signal consumers have a right to their TV, and that it is unjust to take that away. I think there is a danger in considering entertainment a right (Now, I realise one could argue that a TV provides news and other information, but I should think that radios, print media and computers could adequately replace the TV for these functions). Is it the government's role to make sure that the citizens are entertained? Is it too much to say that, when the government is paying (no, I can't agree the mental gymnastics required to think that it is really analog TV owners paying) to facilitate big media corporations' product delivery to its citizens, that this government is slowly sliding into fascism?
Maybe the parent was irritated at the rhetoric of the grandparent's post, but I feel this rhetoric is quite forgiveable, as this seems a legitimate issue to get angry about.
"Credible" news outlets refuse to cover this stuff. Black box voting almost got on CNN, but it never panned out. It got stuck in credibility morass that was eventually proved baseless, but by that time the window of opportunity had passed.
From reading the article: Apparently Gene Stowe, the guy who invented what sounds like an early prototype of this machine died six months after meeting Joe Williams.
Conspiracy theorists, go at it!
If you read the first page of his site, you probably noticed that he put the word axioms in quotes. Math is all about discarding old "axioms" and coming up with new axioms. You just have to realize that as axioms age, they often become "axioms". Get it?
There seems to be a fair amount of character assassination attempts on slashdot, and you seem to be one of the victims.
I hope that slashdotters will read your post here and realize your commitment to rational debate and perhaps take you more seriously.
Yes, of course he's not using scientific method, because most politicians don't have scientific training. Which makes the fact that they run the country a little unsettling. There's one job a politician absolutely has to be good at: getting the most people to vote for them. Too bad skills for that job aren't really transferrable to any responsibilities in running the country besides diplomatic issues.
If it wasn't too easy to introduce bias into the scientific method, I'd say our government should be more meritocratic.
No, I don't think that is quite correct. The world isn't a cold, hard place. It just may seem that way in comparison to the illusions that we are brought up with.
A problem with living for objective results is that once you achieve what you focus your life on, you can end up feeling empty and, well... depressed, because you don't know what to do next. I think that is more why college students get depressed upon graduation. Feeling entitled to a good job after college probably doesn't help, either.
Self-esteem and positive thinking are often a good fallback when everything else seems to be going wrong. If the world seems a bad place, you can change either it or your perception of it. Often the latter is easier.
I took a look at your ESR hate page, and was slightly amused. There were some rather disturbing bits about ESR, which if true, would tend to tarnish his image, but it was largely a collection of ways to say how much he sucks without saying why he sucks.
Anyway, most notables in the open source community are given to ranting and rambling about things that make little sense. You should not discount everything they say after the first thing they say that you don't agree with. Seriously, everything he's written or said since the cathedral and bazaar is crap? I tend to ignore statements with such ridiculous absolutes.
I like your original response, but man... yeah, your scenario is a little strained. I agree that a large portion of grammar and spelling issues reduces clarity or introduces ambiguity. But not enough for many intelligent techies to care. The fact that you could only come up with a pretty lame scenario to illustrate your point seems to reinforce my idea that the issue is pretty trivial. But then, I'm really, really bad with coming up scenarios to reinforce my points, too.
I think the reason that spelling and grammar mistakes tend to irritate to people is as I said, an issue of clashing with intellectual culture, not because those bothered really can't understand what those of poor english are trying to say.
Yes, I find it interesting that the submitter in their illustration of the alleged problem, talked of "definately" vs. "definitely" and "should of" vs. "should have", and then went on to talk about communicating effectively. Is "definately" less "effective" than definitely in providing the intended meaning?
Proper grammar/spelling is mostly an artifact of academic culture. It's an easy way of categorizing how smart someone is (since most smart people are well educated). I don't mind if people correct my spelling or grammar; I realize that it's important to follow certain rituals if you want to be part of a certain culture.
But I have to sympathize with those geeks who refuse to learn academic english, because I don't see the added value in conveying meaning for most academic rules.
In summary, I think getting annoyed at "definately" is like getting annoyed because someone doesn't wear a suit to an interview. It can provide a good baseline judgement on how willing the interviewee is to work with other's expectations (those who are willing to follow other people's rules of grammar are probably more likely to follow other people's coding design recommendations), but as even the submitter will admit, it may not tell much about their intelligence.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm interested in learning how repressive China is, but I can't seem to find any quantitative studies on how repressive China is relative to the rest of the world. Can anyone point me to such a thing, if it exists?
first off, like your post.
Second off, I think that contemplation on whether you are happy or on whether your life is good is a real factor in depression.
I often wonder if third-world farmers who work almost all day, every day are less unhappy than us priviledged with more free time to consider our own existence and its meaning.
This seems sound reasoning to me. As a libertarian, I'm loath to rely on regulatory solutions. Can anyone think or a reason why we couldn't just start encrypting all our packets, or why regulation would be a better solution?
why blame people who don't vote when you can blame a system that relies on people to become sufficiently informed and vote?
Personally, I think it's insane to expect the American public to make informed decisions about anything.
I generally consider myself to have largely libertarian political beliefs. But I have never understood the rationale for the gold standard. Certainly, having a currency tied to a limited resource is a good thing, but why would you want to exchange a currency for gold, unless you knew that there was either:
-a increased demand for gold
-a decreased demand for the currency
I don't think that people should expect to have things that do not fluctuate in value. But I also don't think that people should rely on the government to give them one currency with which to trade. Currency should be privatized.
I believe I have the same problem, but it is hard to figure on, since it could easily be a case of mistyped/written address.
I registered an address with a period, and I just sent an email to the same address with no period to see if I get a response.
I thought when people said that they were referring to the necessity of college and high school for employment, not the educational value. Of course, if a larger percentage of the potential workforce is going to college because they feel they need to in order to acquire a good job, then the college will have to adjust its expectations for larger, less intelligent group... and thus making college less intellectually challenging... which I guess is fairly accurate from my point of view as a state college student.
with two companies, customers (or citizens) feel like they have a choice. I think that part of the joy of consumerism is feeling that your choice somehow reflects you. People like to exercise their choice, even if their pool of choices is very limited. In fact, people probably prefer fewer choices, since they don't have to invest as much study into their choices.
And the fewer competing entities, the easier it is to collude against the consumers.
Don't be sure that we elected him the second time, either. I think Diebold can claim that honor. But we'll never know.
Ok... today you've got Democrats standing up to oppose the renewal of the Patriot Act. But that's a relately new thing. They were perfectly fine with it when it was originally passed.
And remind me how many Democrats voted against the Iraq war?
Anyway, the only reason the Democrats are finally voicing their own opinions on issues is because all politicians realize that Bush has almost no popular support anymore. I'm sure that the Republicans are just as eager, if not more eager, to paint themselves as having different views as the whitehouse at this point.
Why do you say we don't need a third party? Why stop at three parties? Ok, so say we get a government that, in your opinion, gives a shit about civil rights. Why do we even need two parties then? We can have one party, the good party (I assume you're thinking Democrats) running the country.
people should be held responsible in a social way: they should be rated by their peers, and what they say should be weighed in light of what people think of them.
And I agree with your sentiment that people look to legal, or authoritarian solutions much too often, when instead they could just take initiative themselves, and recruit their friends/people they know to their cause.
I actually can't really disagree with you, but it is more of an "inciteful" remark than an insightful remark.
I've been trying to figure out why this issue is getting people so worked up (myself included), because it's all about some random website claiming to be a sort of encyclopedia. People claim to be experts all the time, and they lie or misinform out of ignorance; it's not a new phenomenon. Why then, do we have articles written like the one at the register, urging a call to arms over "moral responsibility?
It's all over one word: Encyclopedia. If wikipedia called itself the "Unreliable Encyclopedia", would this article have been written? I suppose the author would have had a hernia over what he considered the contradiction in terms. And yet, there do exist unreliable encyclopedias I suspect: those published in the 1950s do not contain up-to-date political and scientific information. They are unreliable, although I would not like to try and guess if they are more or less reliable than wikipedia.
I think that responsibility is the heart of this issue, and is why so many people get worked up about it. It's about who is to be assigned blame if wikipedia is inaccurate.
The author of the register article obviously wants the administrators of wikipedia to be held responsible, as if it was a top-down heirarchy. But it's not: it's more of a sort of p2p encyclopedia. It's not useful to blame wikipedia for being irresponsible any more than it is to blame gnutella for having illegal media on its network.
And the problem with attacking wikipedia and saying its not only useless, but it is harmful, is that it is not only attacking those people who spread disinformation. It is also attacking smart people who have a lot of worthwhile knowledge, and have carefully attempted to transfer this knowledge to an online medium that they knew people would use.
Now, maybe those people who write good articles for wikipedia shouldn't do so, because it'll only confuse people into thinking that wikipedia is more than a mountain of lies.
But I think that the answer lies in finding a way to hold individual wikipedia authors more accountable for their actions.
Hopefully as the internet grows up, people will go from thinking "I have to be careful in believing what I read on the internet" to "I have to be careful in what I say on the internet, because it represents me". We should start believing that it is a serious offense to spread disinformation on the internet, so that people will hold themselves to higher standards.
I say we need secure, historied, online personae.
other than the last two steps, what you have written is a thing of beauty
I can only assume that the parent's post was not supportive of this bill, and was merely attempting to make it sound somewhat rational.
However, it seems that these contortions of thought rely on the basic idea that the analog signal consumers have a right to their TV, and that it is unjust to take that away. I think there is a danger in considering entertainment a right (Now, I realise one could argue that a TV provides news and other information, but I should think that radios, print media and computers could adequately replace the TV for these functions). Is it the government's role to make sure that the citizens are entertained? Is it too much to say that, when the government is paying (no, I can't agree the mental gymnastics required to think that it is really analog TV owners paying) to facilitate big media corporations' product delivery to its citizens, that this government is slowly sliding into fascism?
Maybe the parent was irritated at the rhetoric of the grandparent's post, but I feel this rhetoric is quite forgiveable, as this seems a legitimate issue to get angry about.
"Credible" news outlets refuse to cover this stuff. Black box voting almost got on CNN, but it never panned out. It got stuck in credibility morass that was eventually proved baseless, but by that time the window of opportunity had passed.
From reading the article:
Apparently Gene Stowe, the guy who invented what sounds like an early prototype of this machine died six months after meeting Joe Williams.
Conspiracy theorists, go at it!
If you read the first page of his site, you probably noticed that he put the word axioms in quotes.
Math is all about discarding old "axioms" and coming up with new axioms. You just have to realize that as axioms age, they often become "axioms". Get it?
There seems to be a fair amount of character assassination attempts on slashdot, and you seem to be one of the victims.
I hope that slashdotters will read your post here and realize your commitment to rational debate and perhaps take you more seriously.
Yes, of course he's not using scientific method, because most politicians don't have scientific training. Which makes the fact that they run the country a little unsettling. There's one job a politician absolutely has to be good at: getting the most people to vote for them. Too bad skills for that job aren't really transferrable to any responsibilities in running the country besides diplomatic issues.
If it wasn't too easy to introduce bias into the scientific method, I'd say our government should be more meritocratic.
No, I don't think that is quite correct. The world isn't a cold, hard place. It just may seem that way in comparison to the illusions that we are brought up with.
A problem with living for objective results is that once you achieve what you focus your life on, you can end up feeling empty and, well... depressed, because you don't know what to do next. I think that is more why college students get depressed upon graduation. Feeling entitled to a good job after college probably doesn't help, either.
Self-esteem and positive thinking are often a good fallback when everything else seems to be going wrong. If the world seems a bad place, you can change either it or your perception of it. Often the latter is easier.
I took a look at your ESR hate page, and was slightly amused. There were some rather disturbing bits about ESR, which if true, would tend to tarnish his image, but it was largely a collection of ways to say how much he sucks without saying why he sucks.
Anyway, most notables in the open source community are given to ranting and rambling about things that make little sense. You should not discount everything they say after the first thing they say that you don't agree with. Seriously, everything he's written or said since the cathedral and bazaar is crap? I tend to ignore statements with such ridiculous absolutes.
I like your original response, but man... yeah, your scenario is a little strained. I agree that a large portion of grammar and spelling issues reduces clarity or introduces ambiguity. But not enough for many intelligent techies to care. The fact that you could only come up with a pretty lame scenario to illustrate your point seems to reinforce my idea that the issue is pretty trivial. But then, I'm really, really bad with coming up scenarios to reinforce my points, too.
I think the reason that spelling and grammar mistakes tend to irritate to people is as I said, an issue of clashing with intellectual culture, not because those bothered really can't understand what those of poor english are trying to say.
Yes, I find it interesting that the submitter in their illustration of the alleged problem, talked of "definately" vs. "definitely" and "should of" vs. "should have", and then went on to talk about communicating effectively. Is "definately" less "effective" than definitely in providing the intended meaning?
Proper grammar/spelling is mostly an artifact of academic culture. It's an easy way of categorizing how smart someone is (since most smart people are well educated). I don't mind if people correct my spelling or grammar; I realize that it's important to follow certain rituals if you want to be part of a certain culture.
But I have to sympathize with those geeks who refuse to learn academic english, because I don't see the added value in conveying meaning for most academic rules.
In summary, I think getting annoyed at "definately" is like getting annoyed because someone doesn't wear a suit to an interview. It can provide a good baseline judgement on how willing the interviewee is to work with other's expectations (those who are willing to follow other people's rules of grammar are probably more likely to follow other people's coding design recommendations), but as even the submitter will admit, it may not tell much about their intelligence.
I liked this series of games... I think I spent the most time with ATRobots, where programming was done in a sort of assembly.
It'd be great to have a moon colony of those cute little blue spider things. Oooooh... Tachikawa.