here in the usa they will say the free market decides. well of course, anyone who can understand supply and demand sees this coming, so its a matter of inevitability and prudent planning. but of course, the oil company propaganda machines will inflate the lowest common denominator, the easily angry, the easily outraged, the low of iq, and we'll be stuck with no plan whatsoever, and lots of pain
well yes. but now you are teasing out different type of uneducated people. the actively ignorant, the dangerously ignorant, etc. but it is just pessimism to not realize the majority of people are uneducated, and capable and willing to be educated, if just communicated with in a respectful manner. yes, there will still remain the portion that cannot and will not be educated, and then other various nightmares like those actively spreading lies, half truths, superstitions, etc., whether out of genuine passion or genuine malicious deceit. this hardcore rump should not distract you. focus on those you can reach, ignore those you never can reach
because an autistic has no ability to socialize with others well or organize a coherent life strategy. meanwhile your average guy with charm and drive can take a bunch of autistic kids, and put them to some use in a coherent way they agree to, and are happy to do, whether by deceit or genuine sense of accomplishment, and actually derives some sort of beneficial arrangement, if only to the manipulator lording over his autistics
so autistics are not the morlocks in the analogy, as you might have presumed, the autistics are the eloi. two races of man: the high mechanical/ mathematical iq class, slaves to the high social iq class
communication is more important than intelligence
the guy who can articulate a common idea well, is going to go a lot further in this world than the guy who can articulate a great idea badly. in the social jungle that defines our lives, it is far more useful and important to manipulate and arrange the people around you than it is to manipulate and arrange numbers or shapes
communication is more important than intelligence. what makes homo sapiens so successful a species is not our ideas, but our ability to communicate our ideas to others
however, the essence of 1. respecting someone, regardless of their poor character hygiene, versus 2. only giving respect in a reciprocal arrangement, is that strategy #1 results in you passing through their life with no effect on them at all (and them no effect on you), while #2 has the possibility of educating them as to why they actually need to respect people. with the potential negative effect that since, yes, you are getting dirty in the mud with them, you may lose focus of who really is having an effect on whom
if you understand something about the psychology of people's attentions, then you can and should begin to understand how it is permanent, intractable, and just an unchanging facet of human nature. now what? laugh at it? scoff at it? get depressed? use it to tell yourself how superior you are?
analogy: car rides are far more dangerous than airplane flights. but the average person perceives the opposite. the psychological reason is the aspect of control, or the illusion of it. in an airplane, you are handing control of your life over to a pilot. a dedicated trained seasoned pilot with many safety and security protocols, but you are handing over control nonetheless. in a car, you have your hands on the steering wheel: you are in control. but this is an illusion, because you are on a road with hundreds of other people also driving, and texting, and applying makeup, and drunk, and they have power over your life by their actions behind the steering wheel. it doesn't matter how good a driver you are if one of the hundreds of assholes around you crosses over the yellow line
psychologically, it is about what you can perceive as finite and concrete (a tsunami) versus what you cannot perceive as limitless and never-ending (nuclear decay and radiation). perception, and control: more important to human psychology than other risk factors
so if you emphasize to someone what they can perceive, and what they can control, about nuclear radiation, you demystify it, you make it concrete, you make it within their grasp. and thus you reduce the fear and panic and hysteria
the issue is techies that do not respect the common man. instead of educating them, they laugh at them
for me, this means they have ceased to deserve my respect in return. my lack of respect is an effect of their lack of respect
it's like equating the robber shooting his gun with the home owner shooting back. they are both shooting guns, but one is doing it for good reason, in response, the other bad reasons, in aggression
my lack of respect is a response, for good reason. all you see is lack of respect, and not reason, nor context
Measured by sheer fury, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that damaged the reactors was mightier than millions of Hiroshima bombs. It shoved the northeastern coast of Japan eastward and unleashed a tsunami that wiped civilization from the coast. But explosive power comes and goes in an instant. It is something the brain can process.
With radiation, the terror lies in the abstraction. It kills incrementally — slowly, diffusely, invisibly. “Afterheat,” Robert Socolow, a Princeton University professor, called it in an essay for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “the fire that you can’t put out.”
Nuclear scientists speak in terms of half-life, the time it takes for random disintegrations to reduce a radioactive sample to half its size. Then a quarter, an eighth, a 16th — whether measured in microseconds or eons, the mathematical progression never ends.
When traces of radioactive iodine were found last week in the drinking water in Tokyo, officials expressed the danger in becquerels, the number of nuclear disintegrations per second: 210 per liter, safe for adults but high enough to warn that infants should not drink it. As the government began distributing bottled water, the level fell significantly but not the fear. As far away as California there was a run on fallout detectors.
As these hypothetical microthreats ate at the mind, rescue workers were piling up real bodies — 10,000 so far — killed by crushing waves or their aftereffects, deaths caused by gravity, not nuclear forces. These dead will be tabulated, mourned and eventually forgotten. The toll will converge on a finite number.
In Chernobyl, the site of the world’s previous big nuclear accident, the counting continues, like languid ticks from a Geiger counter. A United Nations study in 2005 concluded that about 50 people had been killed by the meltdown but that 4,000 would ultimately die from radiation-caused cancer — victims who do not know who they are. The most debilitating effect, one investigator said, has been “a paralyzing fatalism,” a malaise brought on by an alien presence that almost seems alive.
human psychology, smug techies. learn it, or be irrelevant
you don't cure techie jackasses of a bad attitude with a patient and courteous demeanour. they are blinded by smug self-satisfaction. you need to smack them in the face until they pay some fucking attention
i pointed out people with ego problems more interested at scoffing at the uneducated than educating them, and this yahoo replies by being exactly the sort of archetypical arrogant jackass i am talking about:
"The unwashed masses stop listening because they want to be scared."
oh, really? congratulations, you have an ego problem
being uneducated on nuclear power is not uncommon, it is normal. being ready and interested in being educated is not uncommon, it is normal. unfortunately, techies with ego problems, more interested in ridiculing and denigrating the common man, is also not uncommon, and i guess, "normal"
congratulations, you are a bigger part of the problem than the uneducated. because your attitude is caustic, wrong, and serves your stunted ego more than it serves the common good
i see someone with an attitude like yours, and i think less of you than i think of a scared uneducated person
what happened at fukushima might not be as horrible as the media portrays. however, you have to understand, when the general public sees this kind of accident and some techie starts scoffing and arrogantly laughing and proclaiming how insignicant this accident is THEY STOP LISTENING TO YOU
there is an educated person on a given subject matter, and an uneducated person. what does it take to turn the uneducated person educated? well, not the attitude you see on display in the post above
when the educated person acts like an arrogant ass, the uneducated people doesn't learn anything except that you have an ego problem. they immediately tune you out, and most importantly, they decide, without your input, that nuclear power is too dangerous and insist to their politicians that we don't use it. because no one educated them. they just scoffed at them
do you want nuclear power to be widely adopted? then impassionately and concisely summarize why things might not be as bas they seem to be to the average person. when they ask a stupid question, or display colossal ignorance on a subject matter, smile and educate them simply and succinctly. or laugh at them. and see nuclear power get mothballed everywhere
frankly, ego problems like on display in the comment board above are more irresponsible than an uneducated public. because they show that the educated are more interested in proclaiming their "superiority" (eg, their ego problems) than actually informing people
congratulations jackass: your attitude helps kill nuclear power
americans will find themselves enthusiastic about nuclear power
oh right, sorry, i forgot, for all of those in denial: cheap easy petroleum will last forever! there is no increasing worldwide demand! supply is not harder to dig up and process! yeah!
if google search is a dune buggy in a mad max movie, chrome is the leather clad hockey mask wearing psychopath in the gun turret, and android is that weird dude with the japanese mask suspended above his head snarling and leaping from one vehicle to the next. microsoft is tina turner. apple is mel gibson. do you understand yet?
i can't call you a murderer, that's slander. i can't yell fire in a crowded theater and claim free speech. and i sure as heck can't just shrug my shoulders when a drunk using this app drives head on into a family in an SUV. you don't get to claim the high moral ground by selectively ignoring other valid moral considerations. its about balance, not adhering to one idea and taking it to the furthest extremes: EVERYTHING has its limits. being a fundamentalist on any single issue is a failed way of thinking. every concept you can think of, has its limits
so how is balanced restored? people howl, government steps in, and all google is doing in the long run is inviting legislators to get involved in the app approval process. and then people will grumble about government regulations. well, now you know why there are government regulations
people can't apparently govern themselves on their own: too many fundamentalists, taking things too far on stand alone crank concerns, beyond the realm of common sense
obviously, this app should be banned. if you really have to wonder why, consider yourself amongst the fundamentalist idiots of the world. "free speech no matter what!" pfffffffft
yes, that was a time when there was slavery, children were married at 13, people were lynched by angry mobs based on rumors, etc. a more brutal time. which is of course exactly what your ideology is all about: moving backwards to a less civilized more brutal past that is behind us. the right in the usa will not be happy until we are like somalia: no taxes there! no meddling government! tea party utopia!
there's lots of anecdotes in this world that may not be 100% historically accurate, but teach valuable moral lessons. in fact, there are outright fictions that teach valuable moral lessons. "A Christmas Carol" has a lot of relevance to this particular thread, but there's no such things as ghosts. The idea that what I am saying is disproved because an anecdote I allude to might not actually be 100% historically accurate is just a form of social autism on your part, for not understanding the value of stories in teaching human beings morality
agreed. communism fails because it believes altruism trumps all. but why work when i am guaranteed the same as the guy who busts his ass? likewise, free market fundamentalism fails because it believes selfishness trumps all. why give back to the society that made my riches possible when everything i have is because of me and me alone? and thus society gets poorer and creates less riches which you partake less of yourself
the truth of course, is balance: capitalism with social safety nets. but some asshole believe that just modest social safety nets is some unstoppable slippery slope into north korea style communism. what moronic hysteria, or clever faux news style corporate propaganda. because why should corporations taxes to support the well being of their workers? it hurts the bottom line. whipping them harder and lying to them seems to work
you're talking about children. in most moralities, we understand that children aren't completely culpable for what they say and do
the parents share the blame. and how did the parents get like that? because they were dumb kids once to
we all start at dumb kids. unless you intervene, it's dumb kids in an endless cycle forever. what is the cost of intervention? what is the cost of not intervening at all? compare those two costs, to society, and to you, in insidious quality of life ways, not just direct financial ways, and you can see my point
You really don't get it do you? China and India are not that different from the USA in terms of classism. Of course, it suits your simplistic ideology to imagine everyone in the USA is middle class and they only have themselves to blame. Your free market fundamentalist nonsense only works in a world where everyone starts with the same resources, and no one cheats. Of course, no world is like this, so you need social safety nets. Which are cheaper than the systemic societal rot that costs you in more insidious ways if there are no social safety nets. But that's too complicated a realization for you, apparently. Free market fairy solves all problems.
You sound like Marie Antoinette, "Let them eat cake": there are no deep systemic problems. Good for you Marie. Must be nice being dumb and blind as to the reality of the country you live in right outside your door: "everyone starts with the same resources so you only have yourself to blame if you fail." What ignorance.
no, the saying is if you give a man a fish he'll eat for a day, but if you threaten to feed the man to the fishes, he'll stop complaining about his empty stomach and get back to work
what are you saying exactly: trash the system or fix the system? i say fix it: insist on financial accountability. what we spend better show results in terms of an educated youth
if you say trash it, what will work for those without financial means? magic free market fairy will fix everything and make everything ok?
we're talking about the poor, who don't necessarily have the means, and children, who don't have the foresight of an adult. of course, in your shallow empty view of the world, the poor must have done something to deserve their lot in life, and their children deserve to suffer for the crimes of their parents, or grandparents, and never rise above their means. you aren't really worrying about lazy drug addicted trust fund kids rising or sinking on their merits, are you? your ideology not only supports, it enforces and breeds a class-riddled society. you're just too ignorant to see it
all forms of fundamentalism, whether religion or of any other ideology, creates suffering in this world. consider yourself amongst the blind, and ignorant fundamentalists of the world with your take on education, or healthcare, and the the free market. again, ironically, you need an education
Slashdot Mirror
here in the usa they will say the free market decides. well of course, anyone who can understand supply and demand sees this coming, so its a matter of inevitability and prudent planning. but of course, the oil company propaganda machines will inflate the lowest common denominator, the easily angry, the easily outraged, the low of iq, and we'll be stuck with no plan whatsoever, and lots of pain
well yes. but now you are teasing out different type of uneducated people. the actively ignorant, the dangerously ignorant, etc. but it is just pessimism to not realize the majority of people are uneducated, and capable and willing to be educated, if just communicated with in a respectful manner. yes, there will still remain the portion that cannot and will not be educated, and then other various nightmares like those actively spreading lies, half truths, superstitions, etc., whether out of genuine passion or genuine malicious deceit. this hardcore rump should not distract you. focus on those you can reach, ignore those you never can reach
because an autistic has no ability to socialize with others well or organize a coherent life strategy. meanwhile your average guy with charm and drive can take a bunch of autistic kids, and put them to some use in a coherent way they agree to, and are happy to do, whether by deceit or genuine sense of accomplishment, and actually derives some sort of beneficial arrangement, if only to the manipulator lording over his autistics
so autistics are not the morlocks in the analogy, as you might have presumed, the autistics are the eloi. two races of man: the high mechanical/ mathematical iq class, slaves to the high social iq class
communication is more important than intelligence
the guy who can articulate a common idea well, is going to go a lot further in this world than the guy who can articulate a great idea badly. in the social jungle that defines our lives, it is far more useful and important to manipulate and arrange the people around you than it is to manipulate and arrange numbers or shapes
communication is more important than intelligence. what makes homo sapiens so successful a species is not our ideas, but our ability to communicate our ideas to others
however, the essence of 1. respecting someone, regardless of their poor character hygiene, versus 2. only giving respect in a reciprocal arrangement, is that strategy #1 results in you passing through their life with no effect on them at all (and them no effect on you), while #2 has the possibility of educating them as to why they actually need to respect people. with the potential negative effect that since, yes, you are getting dirty in the mud with them, you may lose focus of who really is having an effect on whom
if you understand something about the psychology of people's attentions, then you can and should begin to understand how it is permanent, intractable, and just an unchanging facet of human nature. now what? laugh at it? scoff at it? get depressed? use it to tell yourself how superior you are?
analogy: car rides are far more dangerous than airplane flights. but the average person perceives the opposite. the psychological reason is the aspect of control, or the illusion of it. in an airplane, you are handing control of your life over to a pilot. a dedicated trained seasoned pilot with many safety and security protocols, but you are handing over control nonetheless. in a car, you have your hands on the steering wheel: you are in control. but this is an illusion, because you are on a road with hundreds of other people also driving, and texting, and applying makeup, and drunk, and they have power over your life by their actions behind the steering wheel. it doesn't matter how good a driver you are if one of the hundreds of assholes around you crosses over the yellow line
psychologically, it is about what you can perceive as finite and concrete (a tsunami) versus what you cannot perceive as limitless and never-ending (nuclear decay and radiation). perception, and control: more important to human psychology than other risk factors
so if you emphasize to someone what they can perceive, and what they can control, about nuclear radiation, you demystify it, you make it concrete, you make it within their grasp. and thus you reduce the fear and panic and hysteria
the issue is techies that do not respect the common man. instead of educating them, they laugh at them
for me, this means they have ceased to deserve my respect in return. my lack of respect is an effect of their lack of respect
it's like equating the robber shooting his gun with the home owner shooting back. they are both shooting guns, but one is doing it for good reason, in response, the other bad reasons, in aggression
my lack of respect is a response, for good reason. all you see is lack of respect, and not reason, nor context
you don't understand human psychology
here's a guide to help you get started as to how and why you are so out of touch with the subject matter:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/weekinreview/27johnson.html
human psychology, smug techies. learn it, or be irrelevant
you don't cure techie jackasses of a bad attitude with a patient and courteous demeanour. they are blinded by smug self-satisfaction. you need to smack them in the face until they pay some fucking attention
i pointed out people with ego problems more interested at scoffing at the uneducated than educating them, and this yahoo replies by being exactly the sort of archetypical arrogant jackass i am talking about:
"The unwashed masses stop listening because they want to be scared."
oh, really? congratulations, you have an ego problem
being uneducated on nuclear power is not uncommon, it is normal. being ready and interested in being educated is not uncommon, it is normal. unfortunately, techies with ego problems, more interested in ridiculing and denigrating the common man, is also not uncommon, and i guess, "normal"
congratulations, you are a bigger part of the problem than the uneducated. because your attitude is caustic, wrong, and serves your stunted ego more than it serves the common good
i see someone with an attitude like yours, and i think less of you than i think of a scared uneducated person
what happened at fukushima might not be as horrible as the media portrays. however, you have to understand, when the general public sees this kind of accident and some techie starts scoffing and arrogantly laughing and proclaiming how insignicant this accident is THEY STOP LISTENING TO YOU
there is an educated person on a given subject matter, and an uneducated person. what does it take to turn the uneducated person educated? well, not the attitude you see on display in the post above
when the educated person acts like an arrogant ass, the uneducated people doesn't learn anything except that you have an ego problem. they immediately tune you out, and most importantly, they decide, without your input, that nuclear power is too dangerous and insist to their politicians that we don't use it. because no one educated them. they just scoffed at them
do you want nuclear power to be widely adopted? then impassionately and concisely summarize why things might not be as bas they seem to be to the average person. when they ask a stupid question, or display colossal ignorance on a subject matter, smile and educate them simply and succinctly. or laugh at them. and see nuclear power get mothballed everywhere
frankly, ego problems like on display in the comment board above are more irresponsible than an uneducated public. because they show that the educated are more interested in proclaiming their "superiority" (eg, their ego problems) than actually informing people
congratulations jackass: your attitude helps kill nuclear power
americans will find themselves enthusiastic about nuclear power
oh right, sorry, i forgot, for all of those in denial: cheap easy petroleum will last forever! there is no increasing worldwide demand! supply is not harder to dig up and process! yeah!
pfffffft
if google search is a dune buggy in a mad max movie, chrome is the leather clad hockey mask wearing psychopath in the gun turret, and android is that weird dude with the japanese mask suspended above his head snarling and leaping from one vehicle to the next. microsoft is tina turner. apple is mel gibson. do you understand yet?
but some marketing pr rep for a galaxy tab competitor got a shallow smear astroturfed onto slashdot
isn't advertising grand?
i would say that its just another cynical data point of a large multinational putting profit over morality
however, with the recent cert hack, you have to wonder if there isn't a bigger story here
i can't call you a murderer, that's slander. i can't yell fire in a crowded theater and claim free speech. and i sure as heck can't just shrug my shoulders when a drunk using this app drives head on into a family in an SUV. you don't get to claim the high moral ground by selectively ignoring other valid moral considerations. its about balance, not adhering to one idea and taking it to the furthest extremes: EVERYTHING has its limits. being a fundamentalist on any single issue is a failed way of thinking. every concept you can think of, has its limits
so how is balanced restored? people howl, government steps in, and all google is doing in the long run is inviting legislators to get involved in the app approval process. and then people will grumble about government regulations. well, now you know why there are government regulations
people can't apparently govern themselves on their own: too many fundamentalists, taking things too far on stand alone crank concerns, beyond the realm of common sense
obviously, this app should be banned. if you really have to wonder why, consider yourself amongst the fundamentalist idiots of the world. "free speech no matter what!" pfffffffft
yes, that was a time when there was slavery, children were married at 13, people were lynched by angry mobs based on rumors, etc. a more brutal time. which is of course exactly what your ideology is all about: moving backwards to a less civilized more brutal past that is behind us. the right in the usa will not be happy until we are like somalia: no taxes there! no meddling government! tea party utopia!
there's lots of anecdotes in this world that may not be 100% historically accurate, but teach valuable moral lessons. in fact, there are outright fictions that teach valuable moral lessons. "A Christmas Carol" has a lot of relevance to this particular thread, but there's no such things as ghosts. The idea that what I am saying is disproved because an anecdote I allude to might not actually be 100% historically accurate is just a form of social autism on your part, for not understanding the value of stories in teaching human beings morality
(cue the french revolution, and marie antoinette before the guillotine looking dumbfounded)
agreed. communism fails because it believes altruism trumps all. but why work when i am guaranteed the same as the guy who busts his ass? likewise, free market fundamentalism fails because it believes selfishness trumps all. why give back to the society that made my riches possible when everything i have is because of me and me alone? and thus society gets poorer and creates less riches which you partake less of yourself
the truth of course, is balance: capitalism with social safety nets. but some asshole believe that just modest social safety nets is some unstoppable slippery slope into north korea style communism. what moronic hysteria, or clever faux news style corporate propaganda. because why should corporations taxes to support the well being of their workers? it hurts the bottom line. whipping them harder and lying to them seems to work
you're talking about children. in most moralities, we understand that children aren't completely culpable for what they say and do
the parents share the blame. and how did the parents get like that? because they were dumb kids once to
we all start at dumb kids. unless you intervene, it's dumb kids in an endless cycle forever. what is the cost of intervention? what is the cost of not intervening at all? compare those two costs, to society, and to you, in insidious quality of life ways, not just direct financial ways, and you can see my point
You really don't get it do you? China and India are not that different from the USA in terms of classism. Of course, it suits your simplistic ideology to imagine everyone in the USA is middle class and they only have themselves to blame. Your free market fundamentalist nonsense only works in a world where everyone starts with the same resources, and no one cheats. Of course, no world is like this, so you need social safety nets. Which are cheaper than the systemic societal rot that costs you in more insidious ways if there are no social safety nets. But that's too complicated a realization for you, apparently. Free market fairy solves all problems.
You sound like Marie Antoinette, "Let them eat cake": there are no deep systemic problems. Good for you Marie. Must be nice being dumb and blind as to the reality of the country you live in right outside your door: "everyone starts with the same resources so you only have yourself to blame if you fail." What ignorance.
no, the saying is if you give a man a fish he'll eat for a day, but if you threaten to feed the man to the fishes, he'll stop complaining about his empty stomach and get back to work
what are you saying exactly: trash the system or fix the system? i say fix it: insist on financial accountability. what we spend better show results in terms of an educated youth
if you say trash it, what will work for those without financial means? magic free market fairy will fix everything and make everything ok?
we're talking about the poor, who don't necessarily have the means, and children, who don't have the foresight of an adult. of course, in your shallow empty view of the world, the poor must have done something to deserve their lot in life, and their children deserve to suffer for the crimes of their parents, or grandparents, and never rise above their means. you aren't really worrying about lazy drug addicted trust fund kids rising or sinking on their merits, are you? your ideology not only supports, it enforces and breeds a class-riddled society. you're just too ignorant to see it
all forms of fundamentalism, whether religion or of any other ideology, creates suffering in this world. consider yourself amongst the blind, and ignorant fundamentalists of the world with your take on education, or healthcare, and the the free market. again, ironically, you need an education
Editors, can we get a story about the $75 trillion P2P lawsuit soon plz? ...Oh, I'm sorry. dupe comment.
The comment I was responding to was too long so I didn't bother reading it.