A rich person doesn't want to give you money just so you can turn around and use it to buy stuff from him. Nobody gets richer that way.
Really? you might want to tell Henry Ford about that. In fact their is an entire economic theory named after him because he did just that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. The idea that Ford paid his workers more so they could buy cars is so ridiculous it is hard to believe the myth has spread so widely. Well not so hard to believe since so many people want to find references that "prove" the opinion they already had. I guess by this logic Boeing should raise their workers' wages high enough that each of them could buy a new jetliner. What is Boeing thinking by leaving those potential orders unfulfilled?
This article debunks this silly myth more thoroughly than I could in a Slashdot post.
They could understand the concepts of these things, but then something as simple as "when do I use a for loop or a while loop" they'd just completely fall off the rails. They just could not string it together.
While I admit my sample size is only a few dozen people who I have helped learn to program, but I have never run into anyone have trouble with For / While loops unless they were simply not intelligent, let alone good at math. The only exception is when the person teaching them is making things needlessly complicated, which is generally why I was helping these students in the first place. Most of the people I helped were not all that smart but they figured it out real fast.
Asking when to use While / For / Do loops is a common intro to programming question, but it has never taken me more than a few minutes to go over the difference and have the students understand and apply the knowledge. But regardless of how easy it is to teach I never look down on people who have trouble grasping the differences on their own because I remember self teaching myself in 5th grade and taking a long time to figure out FOR loops.
These weren't people who couldn't grasp the math, this was people who grokked the math with fullness, but couldn't do the programming.
I just find it so hard to reconcile this with my own experience tutoring, but like I said I haven't taught that many people. Its almost as if the people you know tried to take some 300 level class as their introduction to programming. Intro level programming is as simple as breaking down a problem into discrete steps and determining a very simple algorithm that only require a very small tool set to implement.
I simply cannot see someone who can understand Group Theory, Numerical and Complex Analysis, and Network Flows who cannot figure out when to use a while loop vs for loop. Even if computer science and mathematics were not related, such a person is simply too smart not to understand an intro to programming class. Unless they are pretty far along the autism spectrum and math equations are in their wheelhouse I guess.
I went to school with a woman who I now know to be a math teacher. But she couldn't be coached through first year programming. Not by the profs, not by paid tutors, and not by me, not by anybody else. She just couldn't wrap her head around it.
I tutored a few future math teachers in Calc 2 and I can tell you many math teachers can't wrap their head around any math more complicated than the fractions they will teach their 5th graders. The concepts taught in a first year programming class will be easily learned by any competent math major. A math major who cannot understand functions, conditional logic, recursive sequences, or summations is incompetent.
Because I've known a couple of PhDs in math who could barely use email, let alone anything more advanced.
Sending email has as much to do with computer science as beating level 84 of candy crush.
A field that doesn't lead to management is called "dead end job."
Project/Product Manager, Manager of Software Development, Director of Software Development, VP of Software Development / System Architecture, Application Architect, CTO, etc.
All of these are essentially management level jobs that software developers usually find themselves in by the age of 40 if they continue to progress in their career. Plenty decide to stay as a senior level developer until retirement, but their careers usually plateau if they make that decision. Same as the McDonald's worker from your example who will also have his career stall if he stays as a shift supervisor.
Still doesn't explain why most people quit the field by 40.
I have yet to see any studies showing a mass exodus from the field by age 40. They usually use similar stats as this article which merely show the majority of developers are under 40 (which is irrelevant for the reasons I mentioned in my original post).
A large number of developers do move into management by the age of 40, but that is true of almost all fields. I would be willing to bet their aren't many 45 year old financial analysts; they are probably VP of Whatever by then. While some people stay as senior developers their whole careers, plenty of others move into Director of Software Development, Application Architect, Entrepreneur, etc. careers by the age of 40. It doesn't mean they have left the field just because they don't consider themselves software developers anymore.
Googling is usually the option of last resort when stuck on a problem. I would be a little scared working with people that have to do this once let alone several times each day.
What are you talking about? Googling is almost always my first resort when stuck on a problem. The only exception I can think of is if the problem is algorithmic in nature. Most problems I run into have to do with how to use an API, framework, platform, or third party application. For those I would never waste time trying to figure it out by myself before seeing if someone already solved the issue.
10 years ago the number of technologies I could consider myself an "expert" on at one time was much lower than it is today. I could be an expert at perhaps one or two languages, probably one framework, and a few third party APIs. Today I can be my company's expert on a few languages, a half dozen frameworks and platforms, and dozens of third party APIs. I didn't get smarter. I just have the help of Google and sites like Stack Overflow.
This not only makes me more valuable, it helps prevent me from pigeonholing myself into a small niche market. I can be an AngularJS, Salesforce, C#, and MS SQL developer at the same time. There is no way I could be a senior level resource on all four of these technologies without the help of Google.
45% of respondents prefer tabs, while 33.6% prefer spaces, though the relationship flips at higher experience levels. On average, developers who work remotely earn more than developers who don't. Product managers reported the lowest levels of job satisfaction and the highest levels of caffeinated beverages consumed per day.
There are alternate plausible explanations for all those things other than the one that might first appear.
I think the most obvious explanation is that older programmers are more likely to remember older and less capable tools which couldn't handle tabs well. Today I cannot imagine why someone would use a tool that cannot customize tabs for each user. Mixing tabs and spaces is still a problem, but unless you are using a 20 year old editor why would you still be using spaces?
Anecdotes aren't proof. The stats, on the other hand, don't lie.
Stats don't lie, but conclusions based on stats sure do.
All new fields are going to have their ranks skewed towards young practitioners regardless of any age discrimination. People tend to choose careers at a young age and switching careers drastically is fairly rare. Since the computer programming field didn't start to explode in size until the 90's, it is obvious why there are few people (proportionally) over the age of 40 in this profession.
Take a look at the average age of developers in various countries. The United States was arguably the country where the software developer profession really took off, and it is also the country with the highest average developer age. The average age of developers in other countries will continue to rise, just as it is rising in the US, as this becomes a more established profession.
And again, if you are not presenting original research (which, if you are, should probably go somewhere peer reviewed-- not slashdot) you cannot make that statement
And again, I don't have to present original research because the two scientific bodies responsible for this research have already done it. I have cited my source, which is all that is needed for such widely accepted claims (accepted in psychological circles that is, which is what matters). While they do not know the causes of homosexuality, they do know it is not a choice for someone who feels this way. It has also not been a mental disorder for about 40 years now, which is another thing that separates it from conditions like the pedophilia you like to equate it with.
What I worry about is whether anything resembling freedom of religion can survive over the coming decades, because people do not seem to embrace the idea that someone can disagree with you and thats OK..
Thank god for that. ALL illegal discrimination boils down to someone believing their opinions are more important than the civil rights of others. It is very refreshing that our society does not allow people to use religious or any other cultural beliefs to interfere with the civil rights of others.
A religious person is allowed to not invite a homosexual over to a barbecue, but as soon as someone creates a business there are civil rights laws which supersede cultural prejudices. And like I said above, thank god for that.
Intrinsic qualities are not only caused by genes. Many disabilities have non-genetic causes but are still intrinsic qualities of the individual suffering from them. Whether or not homosexuality is caused by genetics is irrelevant to this discussion. If homosexuality is not genetic, that still doesn't make it a choice.
In this case, homosexuals have the ability to marry just as heterosexuals do
You can try to frame this however you like, but society decides what marriage is. And in case you haven't been paying attention the winds of change have made your definition of marriage incorrect.
Marriage used to just be a legal contract, and few people married for love. In that world your arguments make quite a bit of sense. Although any use of a historical definition of marriage is meaningless since almost no one in America feels the same way about marriage than even our great great grandparents did.
In today's world marriage is seen as an expression of love between two people. In this world, homosexuals are not allowed to express their love in the same way as heterosexuals. They are not given equal rights under the law, which is why the courts overwhelming strike down same sex marriage bans.
It is wild speculation to call homosexual an intrinsic trait; no causation has been proven one way or the other AFAIK.
Both the American Psychiatric Association and American Psychological Association have declared this a solved issue since the 70's. People do not choose to be homosexual any more than they choose to be Asian. Here is a link to some literature on the matter in case you are actually interested instead of just trolling.
In any case, its not an intrinsic attribute that is being "attacked" but a behavior or lifestyle.
If a business was against all marriages then you could make a case for them attacking a lifestyle or behavior. But in this case they are only attacking those with an intrinsic attribute who wish to behave and live like those without this attribute.
You are essentially making an argument that if women were still not allowed to vote, it wouldn't be discriminatory because you are only against the behavior of women voting, not discriminatory towards women in general. It is a very poor argument.
What if someone argued "I was intrinsically born a pedophile", would you agree that you couldnt refuse to serve them because it was intrinsic?
I would agree that ex-cons have rights. Even pedophiles. Ex-cons do have legal limitations to protect society, such as protecting children from pedophiles. But I would defend a pedophile's right to order a burger at McDonalds without being discriminated against.
I dare you to go to any gathering of the black community and try to foist off that "civil rights" equivalency shit.
I have discussed these matters with many African American coworkers and friends and have never had resistance with treating both black and homosexual rights as civil rights matters. I obviously wouldn't insinuate the oppression (as you put it) of homosexuals is equal to what went on during the civil rights movement, since it isn't true. But I would absolutely say African Americans and homosexuals deserve the same rights for the same reasons.
I make the comparison not because they are equivalent in scale, but because by now society generally agrees that African Americans deserve the rights of the rest of us. For instance very few people still believe blacks and whites shouldn't marry each other. It makes this a perfect comparison to show how people will view today's struggle for LGBT rights 100 years from now.
A lot of people including religious folks like myself might be OK with that. But the issue at stake now is whether personal objections to someone elses behavior can be allowed.
You are allowed to act upon personal objections you have toward someone's behavior, just not to an intrinsic part of who they are. So you can refuse to serve someone because they are a 49ers fan, but not because they are a black person. It is a pretty easy distinction to see.
If a cake company refuses to make cakes for any weddings because they are against the institute of marriage, that would be well within their right. But refusing to make cakes for a homosexual wedding is absolutely no different than refusing to make cakes for an African American wedding. And that is where equal protection rights come in.
And after the indiana legislation, several businesses have refused to do business in indiana. How is one boycott bigotry, and the other isnt?
One is boycotting based on intrinsic attributes of a person, such as being black or homosexual. One is boycotting based on decisions made, such as being a member of a hate group or passing legislation with the intention to discriminate.
If you don't see the difference, I'm not sure how to continue any discussion on the matter.
But if a company believes in a goal so much that they are willing to influence on the domestic side, then shouldn't they also care enough about it to be willing to give up on the foreign market?
False equivalency much? A company or individual being smart enough to pick battles which can be won is not being hypocritical. Refusing to do work with Saudi Arabia now would accomplish nothing. Perhaps refusing to do business with them 30 years from now if their own internal opinion on gay rights grows enough could do some good. And most likely only companies who continue to do business with them would have that leverage at all.
Part of the college experience is maturing as an individual, which is made possible by interpersonal interactions that occur in a large community.
Well I for one know I matured a lot more while working in the real world than I did in college. Most likely I would have been a more mature 21 year old if I had started working at 17 than if I went to college. This isn't an argument that college is worthless, just that the idea an 18 year old in a dorm will mature faster than an 18 year old who needs to work to put food on the table is suspect.
Most 22 year old kids are more mature than most 18 year old kids, regardless of college.
I think you are glossing over the intractable problems associated with the limitations of current AI and sensor technology.
Yes I am completely glossing over problems with current autonomous driving technology. I am only referring to a world that has these problems figured out. It may be in 5 years, it may be in 50, but it will happen. Any discussion over limitations of current technology is just a red herring.
the inconvenience of having to wait 20-40 minutes for a pickup every trip is too much. Like every public system, there'll never be enough seats going enough places to meet peaktime demands.
First off, this will be nothing like any public system we currently have. It solves the last mile problem perfectly, and it a far more personal experience. In most situations each person will have their own car during commutes. Considering commuting times generally range from 7:00 am - 9 am, and the average commute is 25 minutes, even during the worst of peak times you could easily have 1 car to every 3 commuters after factoring in inefficiencies. Not everyone works 9-5, and not everyone with a car commutes to work. Even having enough cars to handle the worst of rush hour would likely require maybe a tenth of the total cars we have now. And that is without any increases carpooling.
Even assuming a 20 minute wait for each pickup (which I think is high, but I'll concede the point for arguments sake), that doesn't really delay most people for most trips. I am almost never in a situation where I decide to take a trip on a moments notice. Every time I leave the house there are some tasks I need to complete first. Make a grocery list, shower, pack the diaper bag, finish watching an episode of Walking Dead, etc. And lets not forget "oh crap where did I put my phone/keys/shoes/etc!" A 20 minute wait from the time I call for a car is very unlikely to ever delay me.
But as I admitted in another thread, it is often true that newer technologies require a slight inconvenience to enjoy great advantages. I fondly remember a time when I didn't "need" to carry my phone everywhere, but I can't imagine not having access to the Internet at any time. Sharing cars will certainly be less convenient in some situations, but in many ways it even increases freedom. I would have the freedom to "own" a minivan, truck, sedan, and fuel efficient commuter car at the same time. And on weekends I can have a convertible sports car arrive autonomously and then give me control for a more fun drive. As someone who still misses the Mustang I had in my youth, that sounds pretty great.
Owning a car and owning a horse give you power: the ability to travel when you wish. Graduating from horse to car allowed us greater benefits while retaining that basic power.
I think you are overestimating the amount of power lost by sharing autonomous cars. Once this sees widespread adoption any wait time is likely to be minimal. Getting ready to leave the house will probably take far longer than it takes the cab to get there.
Even the simplistic public transport systems we have now are chronically late.
We aren't talking about autonomous buses on a schedule, we are talking about autonomous vehicles that don't require a salary. They will be at least a couple orders of magnitude more common than cabs are today, so the wait times will be nothing like public transit today.
The only reason our cars cost what they do for as much as they cost to develop, is due to the millions and millions of them sold.
It often costs a billion dollars to bring a new car model to market, and that is for an established company that already knows how to do it.
If they sell 75% fewer cars because most people share them, the price will go up. Nothing is really gained in that process.
According to my reference below, on average only 23% of the total costs of each car is in R&D, Advertising, and Administration. Only 6% total is R&D. This means it is reasonable to assume if 75% fewer cars are sold, the total cost of the cars would go down around 57.75% (assuming administration costs would not be reduced). It isn't 75% savings, but it is still quite a lot. There would be more administration costs for the automated taxi services, but it would be heavily automated so it probably won't be much. Overall its likely people could see their monthly auto costs cut in half. That's assuming your 75% reduction figure is accurate that is.
You also would have savings from not needing a garage, which would be about $20k or $100 month less on your mortgage. Obviously this is only for new houses and retrofitted houses, but it would become more common over time to not have garages.
To contrast the fact you don't own your car, now you can change what type of car you want to drive each day. Drive a minivan when hauling the kids, a fuel efficient mini-car when commuting to work, and a sports car on the weekends (prices for certain cars will likely vary by day for this very reason).
Why such animosity? You obviously will be able to own your own car if you want to. It may be more expensive to own a car, or especially to find a house that hasn't converted their garage to other living space, but you can still own one. Why do you care so much if 90% of people find they don't need to own a car anymore? Are you upset that no one owns their own horse anymore, and that it is more expensive now to own one than it was is 1850?
*That's* the real end of college: the value derived isn't worth the pricetag any longer.
That will be the real end of college, or at least college as we know it, but it not likely to be soon. College is simply still too good of an investment for most people. The differences in earnings between college graduates and high school graduates are staggering, and in today's economy the gap is growing. I believe this gap has more to do with HR screening policies than the actual education given, but that is irrelevant when making the decision of whether to go to college.
The purpose of a university degree is to learn to learn
This statement gets thrown around a lot when discussing college, but I just don't see how it holds up. It is very rare for an undergraduate to do any significant research, so most of the learning comes from assignments and probably a little group work. Assignments usually just teach that all the answers you need to solve any problem can be found in the 1-3 books provided by the school. Usually you are even told which chapter has the answers, since that is the chapter you are currently studying. Group work teaches that the few talented kids should be careful not to delegate important work to their teammates, and most kids learn they can lean on the talented kids to do most of the work. One could say this helps teach delegation, but I have delegated in college and in the workplace and they are not comparable experiences.
There are plenty of students who take initiative to do research and get more from their professors. They are by far the exception to the rule. And almost always they are the students who already learned how to learn before they entered college.
Everyone I've ever known that described a college degree as 'a piece of paper' was bitter about it it some way - either their family or personal situation had not allowed them to go, maybe they'd been denied a job opportunity without it, maybe they'd flunked out.
And mostly everyone I've ever known who hold college degrees in high regard are not that good at much of anything.
I have a Masters degree with a near 4.0 GPA in my junior/senior undergrad years and my graduate years (don't ask about fresh/soph, I was still growing up). And all of that means basically shit. My degrees are pieces of paper, although they are pieces of paper which for some reason hold clout with VP and C-level executives. That is why I got them after all. And while it is impossible to know which if any jobs I have gotten or which salary negotiations have been enhanced based on these degrees, I feel the cost was worth it.
The main cost of the degrees was not the dollars spent on them, it was the opportunity costs from spending time in class and doing assignments instead of learning more useful information at a more rapid pace. But I have no regrets (I spent a great deal of my free time learning that other information anyway). It is important to take the world for what it is instead of what you wish it would be, and in this world many important people see great value in these pieces of paper.
Perhaps if I had gone to MIT or Stanford I would have a higher opinion of a college education, but that I can never know. (not that my program wasn't highly rated, just not a top 10 school in my field)
One of the few things I learned in college was how to learn things. Today I could teach myself almost anything. I know how to assemble the resources, how to study them, how to test my understanding.
Freshman me would not have a clue how to do this.
If you learned that in college you are among an elite few college graduates. Even above average college graduates rarely have these abilities unless they already had them before entering college. You seem to describe someone with ten years of experience working in a challenging environment with quality mentors, not a graduating college senior. That isn't to say it is important for most people to get 16 years of education instead of just 12. But most people I have worked with become useful and resourceful in their early 30's, not at the age of 22.
Slashdot Mirror
A rich person doesn't want to give you money just so you can turn around and use it to buy stuff from him. Nobody gets richer that way.
Really? you might want to tell Henry Ford about that. In fact their is an entire economic theory named after him because he did just that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. The idea that Ford paid his workers more so they could buy cars is so ridiculous it is hard to believe the myth has spread so widely. Well not so hard to believe since so many people want to find references that "prove" the opinion they already had. I guess by this logic Boeing should raise their workers' wages high enough that each of them could buy a new jetliner. What is Boeing thinking by leaving those potential orders unfulfilled?
This article debunks this silly myth more thoroughly than I could in a Slashdot post.
They could understand the concepts of these things, but then something as simple as "when do I use a for loop or a while loop" they'd just completely fall off the rails. They just could not string it together.
While I admit my sample size is only a few dozen people who I have helped learn to program, but I have never run into anyone have trouble with For / While loops unless they were simply not intelligent, let alone good at math. The only exception is when the person teaching them is making things needlessly complicated, which is generally why I was helping these students in the first place. Most of the people I helped were not all that smart but they figured it out real fast.
Asking when to use While / For / Do loops is a common intro to programming question, but it has never taken me more than a few minutes to go over the difference and have the students understand and apply the knowledge. But regardless of how easy it is to teach I never look down on people who have trouble grasping the differences on their own because I remember self teaching myself in 5th grade and taking a long time to figure out FOR loops.
These weren't people who couldn't grasp the math, this was people who grokked the math with fullness, but couldn't do the programming.
I just find it so hard to reconcile this with my own experience tutoring, but like I said I haven't taught that many people. Its almost as if the people you know tried to take some 300 level class as their introduction to programming. Intro level programming is as simple as breaking down a problem into discrete steps and determining a very simple algorithm that only require a very small tool set to implement.
I simply cannot see someone who can understand Group Theory, Numerical and Complex Analysis, and Network Flows who cannot figure out when to use a while loop vs for loop. Even if computer science and mathematics were not related, such a person is simply too smart not to understand an intro to programming class. Unless they are pretty far along the autism spectrum and math equations are in their wheelhouse I guess.
I went to school with a woman who I now know to be a math teacher. But she couldn't be coached through first year programming. Not by the profs, not by paid tutors, and not by me, not by anybody else. She just couldn't wrap her head around it.
I tutored a few future math teachers in Calc 2 and I can tell you many math teachers can't wrap their head around any math more complicated than the fractions they will teach their 5th graders. The concepts taught in a first year programming class will be easily learned by any competent math major. A math major who cannot understand functions, conditional logic, recursive sequences, or summations is incompetent.
Because I've known a couple of PhDs in math who could barely use email, let alone anything more advanced.
Sending email has as much to do with computer science as beating level 84 of candy crush.
A field that doesn't lead to management is called "dead end job."
Project/Product Manager, Manager of Software Development, Director of Software Development, VP of Software Development / System Architecture, Application Architect, CTO, etc.
All of these are essentially management level jobs that software developers usually find themselves in by the age of 40 if they continue to progress in their career. Plenty decide to stay as a senior level developer until retirement, but their careers usually plateau if they make that decision. Same as the McDonald's worker from your example who will also have his career stall if he stays as a shift supervisor.
Still doesn't explain why most people quit the field by 40.
I have yet to see any studies showing a mass exodus from the field by age 40. They usually use similar stats as this article which merely show the majority of developers are under 40 (which is irrelevant for the reasons I mentioned in my original post).
A large number of developers do move into management by the age of 40, but that is true of almost all fields. I would be willing to bet their aren't many 45 year old financial analysts; they are probably VP of Whatever by then. While some people stay as senior developers their whole careers, plenty of others move into Director of Software Development, Application Architect, Entrepreneur, etc. careers by the age of 40. It doesn't mean they have left the field just because they don't consider themselves software developers anymore.
Googling is usually the option of last resort when stuck on a problem. I would be a little scared working with people that have to do this once let alone several times each day.
What are you talking about? Googling is almost always my first resort when stuck on a problem. The only exception I can think of is if the problem is algorithmic in nature. Most problems I run into have to do with how to use an API, framework, platform, or third party application. For those I would never waste time trying to figure it out by myself before seeing if someone already solved the issue.
10 years ago the number of technologies I could consider myself an "expert" on at one time was much lower than it is today. I could be an expert at perhaps one or two languages, probably one framework, and a few third party APIs. Today I can be my company's expert on a few languages, a half dozen frameworks and platforms, and dozens of third party APIs. I didn't get smarter. I just have the help of Google and sites like Stack Overflow.
This not only makes me more valuable, it helps prevent me from pigeonholing myself into a small niche market. I can be an AngularJS, Salesforce, C#, and MS SQL developer at the same time. There is no way I could be a senior level resource on all four of these technologies without the help of Google.
45% of respondents prefer tabs, while 33.6% prefer spaces, though the relationship flips at higher experience levels. On average, developers who work remotely earn more than developers who don't. Product managers reported the lowest levels of job satisfaction and the highest levels of caffeinated beverages consumed per day.
There are alternate plausible explanations for all those things other than the one that might first appear.
I think the most obvious explanation is that older programmers are more likely to remember older and less capable tools which couldn't handle tabs well. Today I cannot imagine why someone would use a tool that cannot customize tabs for each user. Mixing tabs and spaces is still a problem, but unless you are using a 20 year old editor why would you still be using spaces?
Anecdotes aren't proof. The stats, on the other hand, don't lie.
Stats don't lie, but conclusions based on stats sure do.
All new fields are going to have their ranks skewed towards young practitioners regardless of any age discrimination. People tend to choose careers at a young age and switching careers drastically is fairly rare. Since the computer programming field didn't start to explode in size until the 90's, it is obvious why there are few people (proportionally) over the age of 40 in this profession.
Take a look at the average age of developers in various countries. The United States was arguably the country where the software developer profession really took off, and it is also the country with the highest average developer age. The average age of developers in other countries will continue to rise, just as it is rising in the US, as this becomes a more established profession.
And again, if you are not presenting original research (which, if you are, should probably go somewhere peer reviewed-- not slashdot) you cannot make that statement
And again, I don't have to present original research because the two scientific bodies responsible for this research have already done it. I have cited my source, which is all that is needed for such widely accepted claims (accepted in psychological circles that is, which is what matters). While they do not know the causes of homosexuality, they do know it is not a choice for someone who feels this way. It has also not been a mental disorder for about 40 years now, which is another thing that separates it from conditions like the pedophilia you like to equate it with.
What I worry about is whether anything resembling freedom of religion can survive over the coming decades, because people do not seem to embrace the idea that someone can disagree with you and thats OK..
Thank god for that. ALL illegal discrimination boils down to someone believing their opinions are more important than the civil rights of others. It is very refreshing that our society does not allow people to use religious or any other cultural beliefs to interfere with the civil rights of others.
A religious person is allowed to not invite a homosexual over to a barbecue, but as soon as someone creates a business there are civil rights laws which supersede cultural prejudices. And like I said above, thank god for that.
Intrinsic qualities are not only caused by genes. Many disabilities have non-genetic causes but are still intrinsic qualities of the individual suffering from them. Whether or not homosexuality is caused by genetics is irrelevant to this discussion. If homosexuality is not genetic, that still doesn't make it a choice.
In this case, homosexuals have the ability to marry just as heterosexuals do
You can try to frame this however you like, but society decides what marriage is. And in case you haven't been paying attention the winds of change have made your definition of marriage incorrect.
Marriage used to just be a legal contract, and few people married for love. In that world your arguments make quite a bit of sense. Although any use of a historical definition of marriage is meaningless since almost no one in America feels the same way about marriage than even our great great grandparents did.
In today's world marriage is seen as an expression of love between two people. In this world, homosexuals are not allowed to express their love in the same way as heterosexuals. They are not given equal rights under the law, which is why the courts overwhelming strike down same sex marriage bans.
It is wild speculation to call homosexual an intrinsic trait; no causation has been proven one way or the other AFAIK.
Both the American Psychiatric Association and American Psychological Association have declared this a solved issue since the 70's. People do not choose to be homosexual any more than they choose to be Asian. Here is a link to some literature on the matter in case you are actually interested instead of just trolling.
In any case, its not an intrinsic attribute that is being "attacked" but a behavior or lifestyle.
If a business was against all marriages then you could make a case for them attacking a lifestyle or behavior. But in this case they are only attacking those with an intrinsic attribute who wish to behave and live like those without this attribute.
You are essentially making an argument that if women were still not allowed to vote, it wouldn't be discriminatory because you are only against the behavior of women voting, not discriminatory towards women in general. It is a very poor argument.
What if someone argued "I was intrinsically born a pedophile", would you agree that you couldnt refuse to serve them because it was intrinsic?
I would agree that ex-cons have rights. Even pedophiles. Ex-cons do have legal limitations to protect society, such as protecting children from pedophiles. But I would defend a pedophile's right to order a burger at McDonalds without being discriminated against.
I dare you to go to any gathering of the black community and try to foist off that "civil rights" equivalency shit.
I have discussed these matters with many African American coworkers and friends and have never had resistance with treating both black and homosexual rights as civil rights matters. I obviously wouldn't insinuate the oppression (as you put it) of homosexuals is equal to what went on during the civil rights movement, since it isn't true. But I would absolutely say African Americans and homosexuals deserve the same rights for the same reasons.
I make the comparison not because they are equivalent in scale, but because by now society generally agrees that African Americans deserve the rights of the rest of us. For instance very few people still believe blacks and whites shouldn't marry each other. It makes this a perfect comparison to show how people will view today's struggle for LGBT rights 100 years from now.
A lot of people including religious folks like myself might be OK with that. But the issue at stake now is whether personal objections to someone elses behavior can be allowed.
You are allowed to act upon personal objections you have toward someone's behavior, just not to an intrinsic part of who they are. So you can refuse to serve someone because they are a 49ers fan, but not because they are a black person. It is a pretty easy distinction to see.
If a cake company refuses to make cakes for any weddings because they are against the institute of marriage, that would be well within their right. But refusing to make cakes for a homosexual wedding is absolutely no different than refusing to make cakes for an African American wedding. And that is where equal protection rights come in.
And after the indiana legislation, several businesses have refused to do business in indiana. How is one boycott bigotry, and the other isnt?
One is boycotting based on intrinsic attributes of a person, such as being black or homosexual. One is boycotting based on decisions made, such as being a member of a hate group or passing legislation with the intention to discriminate.
If you don't see the difference, I'm not sure how to continue any discussion on the matter.
But if a company believes in a goal so much that they are willing to influence on the domestic side, then shouldn't they also care enough about it to be willing to give up on the foreign market?
False equivalency much? A company or individual being smart enough to pick battles which can be won is not being hypocritical. Refusing to do work with Saudi Arabia now would accomplish nothing. Perhaps refusing to do business with them 30 years from now if their own internal opinion on gay rights grows enough could do some good. And most likely only companies who continue to do business with them would have that leverage at all.
Part of the college experience is maturing as an individual, which is made possible by interpersonal interactions that occur in a large community.
Well I for one know I matured a lot more while working in the real world than I did in college. Most likely I would have been a more mature 21 year old if I had started working at 17 than if I went to college. This isn't an argument that college is worthless, just that the idea an 18 year old in a dorm will mature faster than an 18 year old who needs to work to put food on the table is suspect.
Most 22 year old kids are more mature than most 18 year old kids, regardless of college.
I think you are glossing over the intractable problems associated with the limitations of current AI and sensor technology.
Yes I am completely glossing over problems with current autonomous driving technology. I am only referring to a world that has these problems figured out. It may be in 5 years, it may be in 50, but it will happen. Any discussion over limitations of current technology is just a red herring.
the inconvenience of having to wait 20-40 minutes for a pickup every trip is too much. Like every public system, there'll never be enough seats going enough places to meet peaktime demands.
First off, this will be nothing like any public system we currently have. It solves the last mile problem perfectly, and it a far more personal experience. In most situations each person will have their own car during commutes. Considering commuting times generally range from 7:00 am - 9 am, and the average commute is 25 minutes, even during the worst of peak times you could easily have 1 car to every 3 commuters after factoring in inefficiencies. Not everyone works 9-5, and not everyone with a car commutes to work. Even having enough cars to handle the worst of rush hour would likely require maybe a tenth of the total cars we have now. And that is without any increases carpooling.
Even assuming a 20 minute wait for each pickup (which I think is high, but I'll concede the point for arguments sake), that doesn't really delay most people for most trips. I am almost never in a situation where I decide to take a trip on a moments notice. Every time I leave the house there are some tasks I need to complete first. Make a grocery list, shower, pack the diaper bag, finish watching an episode of Walking Dead, etc. And lets not forget "oh crap where did I put my phone/keys/shoes/etc!" A 20 minute wait from the time I call for a car is very unlikely to ever delay me.
But as I admitted in another thread, it is often true that newer technologies require a slight inconvenience to enjoy great advantages. I fondly remember a time when I didn't "need" to carry my phone everywhere, but I can't imagine not having access to the Internet at any time. Sharing cars will certainly be less convenient in some situations, but in many ways it even increases freedom. I would have the freedom to "own" a minivan, truck, sedan, and fuel efficient commuter car at the same time. And on weekends I can have a convertible sports car arrive autonomously and then give me control for a more fun drive. As someone who still misses the Mustang I had in my youth, that sounds pretty great.
Owning a car and owning a horse give you power: the ability to travel when you wish. Graduating from horse to car allowed us greater benefits while retaining that basic power.
I think you are overestimating the amount of power lost by sharing autonomous cars. Once this sees widespread adoption any wait time is likely to be minimal. Getting ready to leave the house will probably take far longer than it takes the cab to get there.
Even the simplistic public transport systems we have now are chronically late.
We aren't talking about autonomous buses on a schedule, we are talking about autonomous vehicles that don't require a salary. They will be at least a couple orders of magnitude more common than cabs are today, so the wait times will be nothing like public transit today.
The only reason our cars cost what they do for as much as they cost to develop, is due to the millions and millions of them sold.
It often costs a billion dollars to bring a new car model to market, and that is for an established company that already knows how to do it.
If they sell 75% fewer cars because most people share them, the price will go up. Nothing is really gained in that process.
According to my reference below, on average only 23% of the total costs of each car is in R&D, Advertising, and Administration. Only 6% total is R&D. This means it is reasonable to assume if 75% fewer cars are sold, the total cost of the cars would go down around 57.75% (assuming administration costs would not be reduced). It isn't 75% savings, but it is still quite a lot. There would be more administration costs for the automated taxi services, but it would be heavily automated so it probably won't be much. Overall its likely people could see their monthly auto costs cut in half. That's assuming your 75% reduction figure is accurate that is.
You also would have savings from not needing a garage, which would be about $20k or $100 month less on your mortgage. Obviously this is only for new houses and retrofitted houses, but it would become more common over time to not have garages.
To contrast the fact you don't own your car, now you can change what type of car you want to drive each day. Drive a minivan when hauling the kids, a fuel efficient mini-car when commuting to work, and a sports car on the weekends (prices for certain cars will likely vary by day for this very reason).
source
Why such animosity? You obviously will be able to own your own car if you want to. It may be more expensive to own a car, or especially to find a house that hasn't converted their garage to other living space, but you can still own one. Why do you care so much if 90% of people find they don't need to own a car anymore? Are you upset that no one owns their own horse anymore, and that it is more expensive now to own one than it was is 1850?
I wonder about uber driverless. Without a person, what prevents people from trashing the car?
The increased use of surveillance, both inside the car and on our streets.
*That's* the real end of college: the value derived isn't worth the pricetag any longer.
That will be the real end of college, or at least college as we know it, but it not likely to be soon. College is simply still too good of an investment for most people. The differences in earnings between college graduates and high school graduates are staggering, and in today's economy the gap is growing. I believe this gap has more to do with HR screening policies than the actual education given, but that is irrelevant when making the decision of whether to go to college.
The purpose of a university degree is to learn to learn
This statement gets thrown around a lot when discussing college, but I just don't see how it holds up. It is very rare for an undergraduate to do any significant research, so most of the learning comes from assignments and probably a little group work. Assignments usually just teach that all the answers you need to solve any problem can be found in the 1-3 books provided by the school. Usually you are even told which chapter has the answers, since that is the chapter you are currently studying. Group work teaches that the few talented kids should be careful not to delegate important work to their teammates, and most kids learn they can lean on the talented kids to do most of the work. One could say this helps teach delegation, but I have delegated in college and in the workplace and they are not comparable experiences.
There are plenty of students who take initiative to do research and get more from their professors. They are by far the exception to the rule. And almost always they are the students who already learned how to learn before they entered college.
Everyone I've ever known that described a college degree as 'a piece of paper' was bitter about it it some way - either their family or personal situation had not allowed them to go, maybe they'd been denied a job opportunity without it, maybe they'd flunked out.
And mostly everyone I've ever known who hold college degrees in high regard are not that good at much of anything.
I have a Masters degree with a near 4.0 GPA in my junior/senior undergrad years and my graduate years (don't ask about fresh/soph, I was still growing up). And all of that means basically shit. My degrees are pieces of paper, although they are pieces of paper which for some reason hold clout with VP and C-level executives. That is why I got them after all. And while it is impossible to know which if any jobs I have gotten or which salary negotiations have been enhanced based on these degrees, I feel the cost was worth it.
The main cost of the degrees was not the dollars spent on them, it was the opportunity costs from spending time in class and doing assignments instead of learning more useful information at a more rapid pace. But I have no regrets (I spent a great deal of my free time learning that other information anyway). It is important to take the world for what it is instead of what you wish it would be, and in this world many important people see great value in these pieces of paper.
Perhaps if I had gone to MIT or Stanford I would have a higher opinion of a college education, but that I can never know. (not that my program wasn't highly rated, just not a top 10 school in my field)
One of the few things I learned in college was how to learn things. Today I could teach myself almost anything. I know how to assemble the resources, how to study them, how to test my understanding.
Freshman me would not have a clue how to do this.
If you learned that in college you are among an elite few college graduates. Even above average college graduates rarely have these abilities unless they already had them before entering college. You seem to describe someone with ten years of experience working in a challenging environment with quality mentors, not a graduating college senior. That isn't to say it is important for most people to get 16 years of education instead of just 12. But most people I have worked with become useful and resourceful in their early 30's, not at the age of 22.