No, the problem with LTCM was that they were playing spread arbitrage, a game similar to picking up money in front of a moving bulldozer. Every type of trading can be classified as a bet that some quantity will become larger or smaller. Traders who buy on dips are betting that the difference between the clearing price and the average price will get smaller. Arbitrageurs like LTCM bet that the difference in price between two similar instruments will become smaller. Even in a perfectly liquid world, the difference can only go to zero but it's unbounded in the other direction. Mandelbrot expressed this concept by saying that price changes have infinite variance. What that means in practical terms is that there is no limit to how far prices can deviate from what some model predicts, in other words, infinite risk and finite reward. Eventually, the bulldozer runs over this sort of model. Of course it's also possible to make money from such events as well. You just have to take the position opposite the arbitrageurs and dip buyers.
"Technical analysis of markets is a waste of time."
When you made this comment, were you aware that people apply technical analysis to problems other than forecasting market direction?
What Mandelbrot is suggesting is not the development of a predictive model for entry and exit of positions. Rather, he's suggesting a better model for evaluating the risk in a portfolio once the positions have already been established by whatever means the investor is using. Since risk in this context refers to the risk of unfavorable trade outcomes and trade outcome most definitely *is* a function of price, ((selling price - buying price) * shares transacted), technical methods are applicable.
"When a pattern is found, it is exploited by many, which changes whatever "meaning" the pattern had before."
Your second point is considerably closer to the mark. Any sort of pattern like "if the market closes on a high and it's Thursday..." is unlikely to be of any practical use. However, this doesn't mean all technical analysis is useless. Every trader has to decide whether to be long, short or out, when to get in, when to close the trade and how many shares to transact. Totally disregarding prices while making these decisions is reckless, at best. The alternative is to take price information into account when making these decisions which is, by definition, technical analysis.
As far as "exploited by many" is concerned, it can depend a lot on the payoff structure for the pattern. A pattern that wins every time will quickly be assimilated into common practice but a pattern that is psychologically difficult to trade will remain profitable for much longer. For example all of these patterns have the common trait of having been profitable for decades despite being public knowledge for most of that time. The reason why is that they result in winning trades only about a third of the time, making them emotionally stressful to use, keeping people away. Nevertheless, they make money because the average win is far larger than the average loss.
Besides all that, even if there were a holy grail of technical analysis, most people wouldn't use it. They'd insist that it was just an illusion, so the irony is that skepticism toward technical methods would prevent that holy grail from being crowded out, causing it to last longer than it would in a truly efficient market.
They had a say and chose to remain silent. Democracy unfortunately presupposes a populace which is both informed and willing to participate in government. Under such conditions, the CEA, DMCA, PATRIOT ACT, Echelon, etc, would not be the problems they are. Trite and cliche as it may sound, the answer here is the ballot box, and talking with real life friends who may not be privy to the same issues as the/. crowd.
Have you ever chosen not to accept campaign donations from any corporation, group, or individual because you felt that they harbored agendas which were at odds with the interests of voters in your district?
You are officially an employee of the voters in your district, however you receive a far greater amount of money from campaign donors. Describe your present efforts to correct this conflict of interest.
You have consisently voted against tax cut legislation. As a result, voters have to curtail their personal spending to a level which leaves a remainder adequate to cover their tax obligations. Why should the residents of your district vote for someone who would pass a financial burden on to them, rather than work to decrease the costs of maintaining the programs that their tax dollars are spent on?
You currently have made no opposition to the present policy of incarcerating persons in posession of marijuana. If this policy were enforced consistently, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and other members of your party would have been ineligible for public office due to criminal records. Describe what you believe the benefits of this outcome would have been.
Someone didn't think this through. It's only a matter of time before someone points out that taxpayers are being made to pay for a pr0n delivery service. Between setting up filters or just ignoring the complaints of the far right or selling the wire to a private corp, I can see where this is going.
Yeah, let's all make comments insulting the healthy based on the fit=stupid stereotype. That will make us feel better about our potbellies, yeah, that's the ticket.
The "real deal" of boot camp is harder, especially emotionally. Nobody wants to get sent home form boot camp and tell their family they were too fat for military service. With a program like this guy was in, you can just say the instructor was a prick. But boot camp can't compare to active duty. I've done more demanding stuff on active duty than I ever had to in basic.
Anyway, I totally agree that everyone needs to get out and exercise. I wear enough rank that my present job consists of deskwork and bureaucratic battles, but I still make a point of pushing myself in my physical training. Hard physical exercise isn't really physical at all. It's a test of the mind. If I skip physical training for around a week, I notice changes in my mind. When I train regularly, my mind can focus better, think faster, stay awake longer, the whole works.
I hope you're kidding! In a co-op system, each program monopolizes all the resources of the machine until it voluntarily gives up control. If the instruction to return control to other processes is preceded by instructions which could result in an infinite loop or wait state, the machine is then inaccessible. Situations like this exist in preemptive systems as minor annoyances. For example, if you ssh from and openBSD machine to a sshd server and then pull the network cable from the sshd server, the tty on the openBSD machine will stop responding to input. Since the BSD kernel is preemptive, you can switch tty's and just kill the process of the frozen tty. In a coop setup, the key sequence to switch virtual consoles would be ignored and you'd have to reboot the machine.
"Happy soldiers are better soldiers. The idea that enforced misery makes better soldiers has historically been a popular one in a lot of armies, but every time the US military has come up against one of those armies, we've beaten the hell out of them (e.g., the Iraqis. The Iraqi POW's I took care of lived better under our care than they ever had in their own army in peacetime. Probably one reason they were so eager to surrender.)"
This is one way to look at it, and historically it's been true. Incidentally, it's the only example I know of where my own theory is at a loss.
When I was in PME, I observed to my instructor that in every war in recorded history, the victorious side was the one whose uniforms were the simplest. The American revolution, WWI, WWII, the Falklands, the Boer War, etc stand out in particular as examples, but your comment about the war in 1991 makes me wonder if better rations aren't the real key to success in battle.
The only thing that matters is what people actually do, not what they are supposed to do. Most of us here aren't military so understanding the context may be difficult. In combat, the boss isn't always around to say "No, legal wouldn't like that," either because he's busy, hiding, or incapacitated. If circumstances presented themselves where a soldier had no means to defend himself or accomplish a vital part of a mission other than by using an "unlwaful" weapon, he's going to do it and there will be no one around to stop him.
the answer to your question though is that the groups you mention don't feel the need to form a racist counterculture in response to a racist culture. they prefer to just be economically succesful. as soon as they form a whiteboy hating counterculture, they WILL have tv shows which cater to it.
i know how serfs, plebians, etc were treated. it turns my guts. that doesn't change the historical record. we can give everyone a chance, but to presume that everyone is equal is self deception to placate the conscience. imagine if a nation made it a matter of policy to require sacrifice of purchasing power (money) from the more capable to the less capable. doesn't make sense, does it? now think about the same question in terms of political power (voting rights given to lower class numerically larger than the more educated). same deal
It's not in the power of our government, or any other agency to mandate and enforce a viewpoint, even one as sensible as "Stop worshipping money."
Regardless, it's not money worship that has reduced our democracy to the mess it is now. It's laziness and disinterest. People generally don't want to take the time to understand political issues. Most don't care, and the ones that do are concerned only with the issues they hear in the news. Do you recall any discussion of relations with China, our military objectives in Saudi Arabia, or the "war" on drugs in the last presidential debates? No, because these topics are complex and emotionally difficult for most voters . Perhaps if Seventeen magazine changed its title to "One year shy of voting age," this problem would become more apparrent to the general public. The issues which do get mention in every political campaign all can be distilled to "What do you propose to give me?" Whether it be giving out medicare, social security, school vouchers, a tax refund, etc, it's all about the government giving .
If the intended audience of political campaigning truly worshipped money they would be at least slightly familiar with scarcity theory and realize that giving cannot exist without givers. Unfortunately, most people seem to deify, if not worship, government and believe it can create something from nothing. Perhaps they believe that it's the Bureau of Engraving and Printing rather than taxation that backs up social security checks.
This lack of knowledge and concern is the core of the problem w/ democracy, the need (and lack) of a competent voting body. The framers of the US figured on a stable aristocracy made up of the electoral college and congress. Whether this worked as planned could be the subject of many debates. Today however, we're seeing the outgrowth of what Americans truly worship, and it isn't money. It's equality. All men are presumably created equal but it's now practically against the law to allow this the be simply a starting point. As emotionally repugnant as it is to most of us, myself included at times, a society as a whole cannot succeed without an underclass which has no political power. Nearly every great accomplishment in the written history of the world has come form such a society, and the stricter this stratification, the more impressive its accomplishments. Compare Rome before AD200 with what is now Germany of the same time period or the difference between Egypt in the time of the pharaohs with what is Algeria today in that period. Look at the Incans and the peoples living in North America contemporarily. Even in the present day, we can see a difference between nations where nearly everyone receives post-secondary education and those where only a select few do so. Equality is a sweet poison. Unfortunately our equality addiction has left us in a position where our most successful politicians are those who have learned to appeal to our least educated and this is best accomplished through expensive advertising which requires hefty monetary support.
It makes me sick in my gut to come to terms with it, but the promises of universal suffrage are lies.
I'm not picking you out, Klowner. You're just one of many who point out that a large number of geeks are without partners, and modded up as INSIGHTFUL! Funny, sure, but not insightful. Perhaps all the moderators are unhappily single and think there is some insight in pointing single-ness out as a social epidemic. Time to get real.
Klowner, if I have touched a nerve here, I apologize. Visit the url by my name. It'll make you feel better.
I label the group which reproduces after the age of 30 to gradually eliminate genes which result in death or infertility prior to 30.
Also you're saying all the cheerleaders and jocks are stupid, or all of the geeks aren't horny, and none of them are stupid, and that none of them are going to act upon their desires to mate? Its a difficult conclusion to draw.
If you substitute more than half for all and less than half for none, you much better describe what I meant. This is all that's required for natural selection over a long enough period of time.
The sum total of what I said was that there are two primary social classes in modern day Western culture. People generally tend to share genetic material within their own social class. Because the rate of genetic sharing between social classes is marginal compared to genetic sharing within social classes, natural selection of certain genes within one class may not occur in another.
Actually, you could make a case based on this that the human race is reproducing in such ways as to cause a genetic split. The "horny/stupid/jock" gene pool will increase in size much faster, but those that put off reproduction in favor of education, career, what have you will tend to reproduce with others who do the same. This second group will experience effects of late in life reproduction such as a postponed age of menarche (making the off spring even less likely to become jocks or cheerleader types) and a longer lifespan. Similarly, the "horny/stupid/jock" group will have earlier onset of puberty and aging. In the end though, this would depend on thousands of years of a society with a social structure similar to our own which I am too timid to predict one way or the other.
Lizz Winstead and a Silicon Valley computer scientist, critic (read: eviscerette)
Are you morally opposed to the use of the word critique or something?
No, yes, in the order your phrased your question. I guess the joke was too subtle. Hint: I replaced eviscerate with eviscerette not for reasons relating to gender but rather because the male equivalent is spelled the same as the transitive verb.
There is a very obvious line where "free speech" is no longer important. When you are actively inciting people to violence against each other, it becomes criminal.
Two words: "wartime propaganda".
If that's not inciting people to violence against each other, I don't know what is
You know better than this, I hope. When a state produces war propaganda it is (should be) because a state places the well being of its citizens above the well being of noncitiznes. When some segment of those noncitizens poses a threat to citizens, the state is forced to take some sort of action, sometimes involving violence.
A private individual does not have the same responsibilities as the state and doesn't necessarily share an interest in the well being of its citizens. When an individual incites people to violence which would be detrimental to the citezens of a state, the state is responsible to deter such behavior. If a private citizen were to encourage people to violence against you, I'm sure this would become quite clear.
Your statement is akin to a man criticising his own umbrella for not keeping dry those who would attempt to destroy it.
I don't doubt it. There is a difference between watching tv and watching a tv show. When a person decides to watch a tv show, that's 30 minutes to an hour that the person has planned. When a person sits down to watch tv and channel surfs all afternoon, that's a period of time the person has made the choice to forego planning of one's activities in deference to programming schedulers.
Sure all technology, in fact all activities that some people like more than others have the potential to draw us apart. Television however, is just not the same because it can ONLY draw people apart from one another. When I was in my teens I used to spend long, long periods of time playing my guitars, tinkering with amps, etc. That was time I could have spent with my friends and family so I, not with each other suppose you could call that me being isolated by my hobby. However the same hobby also gave me the chance to connect with other people by playing in bands and performing for audiences. The same could be said of computers. Sure, a few hours spent browsing the www are a few hours that a person could be spending with other people, but computers and technology also bring people together in user groups and technology clubs. Television is the exception. Have you ever heard of TV clubs? Remote control users groups? No, and you won't because television viewing is not something people can learn more about from a club. People cannot channel surf cooperativley the same way they could work on a programming project together. TV is inherently an isolating and non-interactive technology.
we get addicted to connecting with our gadgets, not with each other
The difference is that we actually "connect" with certain types of gadgets. The type of person who likes to tinker with kernel source or build electronics projects in the garage or just play tetris all day long may well display what could be called an addiction. But these types of activities are addisting because they stimulate the person who engages in them. Generally, I'd call the desire to be stimulated a healthy one.
Television is the only addictive technology I know of that has all the charasteristics of a depressant, or a numbing agent.There is hardly any interaction or connection between the viewer and the tv like there is between a person with a soldering iron and a do-it-yourself oscilloscope kit or what have you. When people choose to watch tv for hours on end, they are chosing to experience effects not at all unlike the use of a depressant drug, lulling their minds away from reality. Is it really so healthy for a person to want that? I'd have to say no.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the problem with LTCM was that they were playing spread arbitrage, a game similar to picking up money in front of a moving bulldozer. Every type of trading can be classified as a bet that some quantity will become larger or smaller. Traders who buy on dips are betting that the difference between the clearing price and the average price will get smaller. Arbitrageurs like LTCM bet that the difference in price between two similar instruments will become smaller. Even in a perfectly liquid world, the difference can only go to zero but it's unbounded in the other direction. Mandelbrot expressed this concept by saying that price changes have infinite variance. What that means in practical terms is that there is no limit to how far prices can deviate from what some model predicts, in other words, infinite risk and finite reward. Eventually, the bulldozer runs over this sort of model. Of course it's also possible to make money from such events as well. You just have to take the position opposite the arbitrageurs and dip buyers.
"Technical analysis of markets is a waste of time."
When you made this comment, were you aware that people apply technical analysis to problems other than forecasting market direction?
What Mandelbrot is suggesting is not the development of a predictive model for entry and exit of positions. Rather, he's suggesting a better model for evaluating the risk in a portfolio once the positions have already been established by whatever means the investor is using. Since risk in this context refers to the risk of unfavorable trade outcomes and trade outcome most definitely *is* a function of price, ((selling price - buying price) * shares transacted), technical methods are applicable.
"When a pattern is found, it is exploited by many, which changes whatever "meaning" the pattern had before."
Your second point is considerably closer to the mark. Any sort of pattern like "if the market closes on a high and it's Thursday..." is unlikely to be of any practical use. However, this doesn't mean all technical analysis is useless. Every trader has to decide whether to be long, short or out, when to get in, when to close the trade and how many shares to transact. Totally disregarding prices while making these decisions is reckless, at best. The alternative is to take price information into account when making these decisions which is, by definition, technical analysis.
As far as "exploited by many" is concerned, it can depend a lot on the payoff structure for the pattern. A pattern that wins every time will quickly be assimilated into common practice but a pattern that is psychologically difficult to trade will remain profitable for much longer. For example all of these patterns have the common trait of having been profitable for decades despite being public knowledge for most of that time. The reason why is that they result in winning trades only about a third of the time, making them emotionally stressful to use, keeping people away. Nevertheless, they make money because the average win is far larger than the average loss.
Besides all that, even if there were a holy grail of technical analysis, most people wouldn't use it. They'd insist that it was just an illusion, so the irony is that skepticism toward technical methods would prevent that holy grail from being crowded out, causing it to last longer than it would in a truly efficient market.
It matters to me.
They had a say and chose to remain silent. Democracy unfortunately presupposes a populace which is both informed and willing to participate in government. Under such conditions, the CEA, DMCA, PATRIOT ACT, Echelon, etc, would not be the problems they are. Trite and cliche as it may sound, the answer here is the ballot box, and talking with real life friends who may not be privy to the same issues as the /. crowd.
Take your pick:
Have you ever chosen not to accept campaign donations from any corporation, group, or individual because you felt that they harbored agendas which were at odds with the interests of voters in your district?
You are officially an employee of the voters in your district, however you receive a far greater amount of money from campaign donors. Describe your present efforts to correct this conflict of interest.
You have consisently voted against tax cut legislation. As a result, voters have to curtail their personal spending to a level which leaves a remainder adequate to cover their tax obligations. Why should the residents of your district vote for someone who would pass a financial burden on to them, rather than work to decrease the costs of maintaining the programs that their tax dollars are spent on?
You currently have made no opposition to the present policy of incarcerating persons in posession of marijuana. If this policy were enforced consistently, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and other members of your party would have been ineligible for public office due to criminal records. Describe what you believe the benefits of this outcome would have been.
Ya know barbarian originally meant someone with a beard. Seems the stereotype outlived any semblance of truth.
Someone didn't think this through. It's only a matter of time before someone points out that taxpayers are being made to pay for a pr0n delivery service. Between setting up filters or just ignoring the complaints of the far right or selling the wire to a private corp, I can see where this is going.
Yeah, let's all make comments insulting the healthy based on the fit=stupid stereotype. That will make us feel better about our potbellies, yeah, that's the ticket.
The "real deal" of boot camp is harder, especially emotionally. Nobody wants to get sent home form boot camp and tell their family they were too fat for military service. With a program like this guy was in, you can just say the instructor was a prick. But boot camp can't compare to active duty. I've done more demanding stuff on active duty than I ever had to in basic.
Anyway, I totally agree that everyone needs to get out and exercise. I wear enough rank that my present job consists of deskwork and bureaucratic battles, but I still make a point of pushing myself in my physical training. Hard physical exercise isn't really physical at all. It's a test of the mind. If I skip physical training for around a week, I notice changes in my mind. When I train regularly, my mind can focus better, think faster, stay awake longer, the whole works.
I hope you're kidding! In a co-op system, each program monopolizes all the resources of the machine until it voluntarily gives up control. If the instruction to return control to other processes is preceded by instructions which could result in an infinite loop or wait state, the machine is then inaccessible. Situations like this exist in preemptive systems as minor annoyances. For example, if you ssh from and openBSD machine to a sshd server and then pull the network cable from the sshd server, the tty on the openBSD machine will stop responding to input. Since the BSD kernel is preemptive, you can switch tty's and just kill the process of the frozen tty. In a coop setup, the key sequence to switch virtual consoles would be ignored and you'd have to reboot the machine.
just so you know, it's Theo deRaadt
"Happy soldiers are better soldiers. The idea that enforced misery makes better soldiers has historically been a popular one in a lot of armies, but every time the US military has come up against one of those armies, we've beaten the hell out of them (e.g., the Iraqis. The Iraqi POW's I took care of lived better under our care than they ever had in their own army in peacetime. Probably one reason they were so eager to surrender.)"
This is one way to look at it, and historically it's been true. Incidentally, it's the only example I know of where my own theory is at a loss.
When I was in PME, I observed to my instructor that in every war in recorded history, the victorious side was the one whose uniforms were the simplest. The American revolution, WWI, WWII, the Falklands, the Boer War, etc stand out in particular as examples, but your comment about the war in 1991 makes me wonder if better rations aren't the real key to success in battle.
The only thing that matters is what people actually do, not what they are supposed to do. Most of us here aren't military so understanding the context may be difficult. In combat, the boss isn't always around to say "No, legal wouldn't like that," either because he's busy, hiding, or incapacitated. If circumstances presented themselves where a soldier had no means to defend himself or accomplish a vital part of a mission other than by using an "unlwaful" weapon, he's going to do it and there will be no one around to stop him.
this is funny. get it, a joke.
the answer to your question though is that the groups you mention don't feel the need to form a racist counterculture in response to a racist culture. they prefer to just be economically succesful. as soon as they form a whiteboy hating counterculture, they WILL have tv shows which cater to it.
i know how serfs, plebians, etc were treated. it turns my guts. that doesn't change the historical record. we can give everyone a chance, but to presume that everyone is equal is self deception to placate the conscience. imagine if a nation made it a matter of policy to require sacrifice of purchasing power (money) from the more capable to the less capable. doesn't make sense, does it? now think about the same question in terms of political power (voting rights given to lower class numerically larger than the more educated). same deal
It's not in the power of our government, or any other agency to mandate and enforce a viewpoint, even one as sensible as "Stop worshipping money."
Regardless, it's not money worship that has reduced our democracy to the mess it is now. It's laziness and disinterest. People generally don't want to take the time to understand political issues. Most don't care, and the ones that do are concerned only with the issues they hear in the news. Do you recall any discussion of relations with China, our military objectives in Saudi Arabia, or the "war" on drugs in the last presidential debates? No, because these topics are complex and emotionally difficult for most voters . Perhaps if Seventeen magazine changed its title to "One year shy of voting age," this problem would become more apparrent to the general public. The issues which do get mention in every political campaign all can be distilled to "What do you propose to give me?" Whether it be giving out medicare, social security, school vouchers, a tax refund, etc, it's all about the government giving .
If the intended audience of political campaigning truly worshipped money they would be at least slightly familiar with scarcity theory and realize that giving cannot exist without givers. Unfortunately, most people seem to deify, if not worship, government and believe it can create something from nothing. Perhaps they believe that it's the Bureau of Engraving and Printing rather than taxation that backs up social security checks.
This lack of knowledge and concern is the core of the problem w/ democracy, the need (and lack) of a competent voting body. The framers of the US figured on a stable aristocracy made up of the electoral college and congress. Whether this worked as planned could be the subject of many debates. Today however, we're seeing the outgrowth of what Americans truly worship, and it isn't money. It's equality. All men are presumably created equal but it's now practically against the law to allow this the be simply a starting point. As emotionally repugnant as it is to most of us, myself included at times, a society as a whole cannot succeed without an underclass which has no political power. Nearly every great accomplishment in the written history of the world has come form such a society, and the stricter this stratification, the more impressive its accomplishments. Compare Rome before AD200 with what is now Germany of the same time period or the difference between Egypt in the time of the pharaohs with what is Algeria today in that period. Look at the Incans and the peoples living in North America contemporarily. Even in the present day, we can see a difference between nations where nearly everyone receives post-secondary education and those where only a select few do so. Equality is a sweet poison. Unfortunately our equality addiction has left us in a position where our most successful politicians are those who have learned to appeal to our least educated and this is best accomplished through expensive advertising which requires hefty monetary support.
It makes me sick in my gut to come to terms with it, but the promises of universal suffrage are lies.
I'm not picking you out, Klowner. You're just one of many who point out that a large number of geeks are without partners, and modded up as INSIGHTFUL! Funny, sure, but not insightful. Perhaps all the moderators are unhappily single and think there is some insight in pointing single-ness out as a social epidemic. Time to get real.
Klowner, if I have touched a nerve here, I apologize. Visit the url by my name. It'll make you feel better.
the "longer lifespan" logic.
I label the group which reproduces after the age of 30 to gradually eliminate genes which result in death or infertility prior to 30.
Also you're saying all the cheerleaders and jocks are stupid, or all of the geeks aren't horny, and none of them are stupid, and that none of them are going to act upon their desires to mate? Its a difficult conclusion to draw.
If you substitute more than half for all and less than half for none, you much better describe what I meant. This is all that's required for natural selection over a long enough period of time.
The sum total of what I said was that there are two primary social classes in modern day Western culture. People generally tend to share genetic material within their own social class. Because the rate of genetic sharing between social classes is marginal compared to genetic sharing within social classes, natural selection of certain genes within one class may not occur in another.
Actually, you could make a case based on this that the human race is reproducing in such ways as to cause a genetic split. The "horny/stupid/jock" gene pool will increase in size much faster, but those that put off reproduction in favor of education, career, what have you will tend to reproduce with others who do the same. This second group will experience effects of late in life reproduction such as a postponed age of menarche (making the off spring even less likely to become jocks or cheerleader types) and a longer lifespan. Similarly, the "horny/stupid/jock" group will have earlier onset of puberty and aging. In the end though, this would depend on thousands of years of a society with a social structure similar to our own which I am too timid to predict one way or the other.
Lizz Winstead and a Silicon Valley computer scientist, critic (read: eviscerette)
Are you morally opposed to the use of the word critique or something?
No, yes, in the order your phrased your question. I guess the joke was too subtle. Hint: I replaced eviscerate with eviscerette not for reasons relating to gender but rather because the male equivalent is spelled the same as the transitive verb.
There is a very obvious line where "free speech" is no longer important. When you are actively inciting people to violence against each other, it becomes criminal.
Two words: "wartime propaganda".
If that's not inciting people to violence against each other, I don't know what is
You know better than this, I hope. When a state produces war propaganda it is (should be) because a state places the well being of its citizens above the well being of noncitiznes. When some segment of those noncitizens poses a threat to citizens, the state is forced to take some sort of action, sometimes involving violence.
A private individual does not have the same responsibilities as the state and doesn't necessarily share an interest in the well being of its citizens. When an individual incites people to violence which would be detrimental to the citezens of a state, the state is responsible to deter such behavior. If a private citizen were to encourage people to violence against you , I'm sure this would become quite clear.
Your statement is akin to a man criticising his own umbrella for not keeping dry those who would attempt to destroy it.
Lizz Winstead and a Silicon Valley computer scientist, critique (read: eviscerate)
Lizz Winstead and a Silicon Valley computer scientist, critic (read: eviscerette)
I don't doubt it. There is a difference between watching tv and watching a tv show. When a person decides to watch a tv show, that's 30 minutes to an hour that the person has planned. When a person sits down to watch tv and channel surfs all afternoon, that's a period of time the person has made the choice to forego planning of one's activities in deference to programming schedulers.
Sure all technology, in fact all activities that some people like more than others have the potential to draw us apart. Television however, is just not the same because it can ONLY draw people apart from one another. When I was in my teens I used to spend long, long periods of time playing my guitars, tinkering with amps, etc. That was time I could have spent with my friends and family so I, not with each other suppose you could call that me being isolated by my hobby. However the same hobby also gave me the chance to connect with other people by playing in bands and performing for audiences. The same could be said of computers. Sure, a few hours spent browsing the www are a few hours that a person could be spending with other people, but computers and technology also bring people together in user groups and technology clubs. Television is the exception. Have you ever heard of TV clubs? Remote control users groups? No, and you won't because television viewing is not something people can learn more about from a club. People cannot channel surf cooperativley the same way they could work on a programming project together. TV is inherently an isolating and non-interactive technology.
we get addicted to connecting with our gadgets, not with each other
The difference is that we actually "connect" with certain types of gadgets. The type of person who likes to tinker with kernel source or build electronics projects in the garage or just play tetris all day long may well display what could be called an addiction. But these types of activities are addisting because they stimulate the person who engages in them. Generally, I'd call the desire to be stimulated a healthy one.
Television is the only addictive technology I know of that has all the charasteristics of a depressant, or a numbing agent.There is hardly any interaction or connection between the viewer and the tv like there is between a person with a soldering iron and a do-it-yourself oscilloscope kit or what have you. When people choose to watch tv for hours on end, they are chosing to experience effects not at all unlike the use of a depressant drug, lulling their minds away from reality. Is it really so healthy for a person to want that? I'd have to say no.