Can you share a little more about how you got to the point where you could "be a little bit of an idiot like the rest" and not go batshit insane from the "small talk about nothing"?
I think this is probably different from person to person - in my case, I have always felt intensely (and unpleasantly) self-aware in social situations, and I was afraid of getting into a situation where I would embarass myself and look ridiculous. I think what changed it was mainly two things: I have observed many times that other people don't seem to mind looking a bit silly; they would use it to comical effect, which is something I can sympathise with. And I took a course in Chinese, where I was guaranteed to have to get into situations where I would try and fail in a small, controllable way, namely in things like speaking Chinese in front of the class; I found that this didn't actually feel as bad as I had feared.
So you could say that I sort of took a few, very small and fearful steps and grew bolder from there. A lot of social interaction is not about being intelligent and looking impressive, but goes on under the radar, while people are talking nonsense about something. Take a conversation about, say, football - something that is almost void of meaning to me. On the surface people may be talking about their team and whatever, but what they are really communicating on a deeper level is things like "You and I are on the same side, we are friends" etc. - and that is actually a very important thing for one's well-being.
I still can't take part in much small-talk, but what I do instead seems to work in a way: I admit to my ignorance about sports and try to ask questions, since most people love to explain. It is actually nice to listen to.
You have a problem with authority, Mr. Andersen. You believe you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously, you are mistaken.
No, I don't have problems with authority, but I do believe that respect and trust are earned - by being respectable and trustworthy. And, yes, I know I am special, this is not something I believe. I am different from most, and believe me, it is not something I generally cherish; it is a very mixed blessing.
I have no idea how you reached the conclusion that I think rules don't apply to me; if that was how I saw things, I wouldn't have cared enough to get depressed in the first place.
Everybody here is of course going to be all-out against this legislation, and probably quoting diverse bills of rights in the process. Many of the objections will be valid, at least to some degree, but these considerations would not be complete if one doesn't at least try to genuinely understand the other side of the argument.
There is no doubt that being distracted while driving is probably a major cause of accidents, that are sometimes serious. There is also little doubt that mobile devices with complex interfaces constitute a growing threat to people's concentration while driving. It seems to me, that there is a good case for doing something about it now - the question is what can one practically do? And that little word, "practically", is what makes is so difficult; it would be easy if they could simply ban the production and possession of any mobile device or something like that.
The only tool legislators have, really, is legislation, so they have to introduce a law. A law is useless if it can't be enforced, so it has to be simple enough for the average citizen to understand and for the police to enforce, and it mustn't generate huge amounts of court cases. So it seems that the law, as it has been introduced, is not really such a hare-brained scheme as some would argue; it isn't perfect and it won't be popular, but it isn't fair to dismiss it as idiotic either.
As far as I can see, it isn't actually unreasonable to make some rules for how people should behave when they are in control of a car; all you have to do to follow this one is to not use mobile devices that require you to take your attention away from driving. Can it really be true that people who are technologically minded, such as the readers of slashdot, can't think of ways to overcome this challenge?
Some phones already have some sort of speech control; it should be simple to make a Bluetooth device that could be mounted on the steering wheel and would allow yoy some control over mobile devices - it probably already exists. People should stop whining over how unfair the world is. If you believe that technological innovation is somehow going to save us from the impending doom of climate change, biosphere breakdown and resource shortage, finding a better way of interacting with a mobile or gps should be a small challenge.
This all sounds like a troll but it's more bitterness seeing complete idiots making 6 and 7 figure salaries while the "intelligent" folks are working as slaves.
How did it come to this?
I don't know, mate, but I do know the feeling.
I hit the low point some 4 years ago. , when it suddenly dawned on me that I tended to wake up in the morning thinking how much easier it would be just to give up; take an overdose of something pleasant and say goodbye. Except that you can't, really, when you have children adn a wife that love you - sometimes hope really is the worst thing.
Instead I started thinking about what it was that I hated about my job and my life, and what role I played in maintaining the status quo. Why didn't I have any friends at work? Well, to be honest, I was a grumpy git that never tried to fit in - I had all the right reasons, like I can't stand idiotic smalltalk about nothing, but the truth is that I was simply intolerant and fairly obnoxious. And why didn't I get any of the interesting projects with career potential? It's easy to see now, of course, that nobody wants to work with a contrary idiot, who seems to begrudge the very existence of his colleagues, but back then I didn't have the courage to admit it.
I didn't turn all that around in an instant, but I found that I could start out small, by standing up for myself on a few points. The thing is - I realised that a lot of the reason why I was that way was that I didn't have confidence in my own value. And how can others respect you if you don't respect yourself? Standing up for myself in small ways built up my self-confidence, which made me work to a better standard and it also helped others believe in me. I found the energy to be a little bit of an "idiot" like the rest and be more tolerant; now I am The Almighty UNIX Manager - in a small way - and the bosses actually talk to me with respect. It's not all wonderful, far from it, but I think I can see the light at the other end of the tunnel sometimes.
Of course this is just my story, but I think the morale is that it doesn't all have to be bad; if you find you are knee-deep in shit, bag it and sell manure.
Over the years my feelings at the sight of the manifestations of shameless, corporate greed have gone from outrage to anger, and has now reached the state of pure, unadulterated loathing. It really becomes harder and harder to see anything redeeming about it, whether it is the underhanded dealings from the entertainment industry and the RIAA, or the sick greed of the likes of the medicine and GMO industry. It doesn't to be that way, it really doesn't, and it will end, one way or another.
There is a growing tension between the magnitude of greed of the moneygrabbers and the very real needs of the rapidly growing class of the very poor in the world. Historically these tensions have always resulted in a breakdown of some sort; often a revolution, but one can still hope, I guess, that those in power will simply throw out the idea of patents altogether, or at least recreate the concept from scratch.
I am not against companies making a reasonable profit, but they already do that and more, so much more. I have long been convinced that private companies are not suited for handling important, public services - to which research and production of medicine belong, IMO. People's suffering should not be the object of profiteering.
There is no "normal" - everyone seems to have something. Developers (and geeks, in general) just wear it out there on their sleeve.
No, let's be realistic here. "Normal" is a valid, statistical term - it just means "average", more or less.
What I do agree with is that being normal is not all it is cracked up to be; most of the significant contributions to science (and indeed every other area) have come from people who were not normal in the objective sense. In fact, it has to be that way, since overachievers are by definition far away from the average.
Anything that requires determination and a very narrow focus will naturally attract people who love to spend a long time every day trying to tackle difficult, mental tasks. But if you spend most of your time absorbed in thought, then you are likely to be seen as weird, since what the average person likes most is to spend time interacting with other people.
When I look up Eric Lerner on Wikipedia, I can see that he is an activist who has been campaigning against things like the big bang - shouldn't this alone warn us to be bit skeptical? So why do we see this being taken serious again and again?
The fact that he has completed a scientific education is not in itself proof that he is right; there have been many brilliant scientists who have proposed theories that were later proven to be false - this is the way science works - but once a theory has been dismissed, it is time to move on and leave it behind. Perhaps the most well-known, and rather sad, example of this is Fred Hoyle, a brilliant cosmologist, who until his death clung on to his steady-state theory, while everybody else had accepted Einstein's theory as the best working model.
I've had the unfortunate pleasure of being sent to the main island a few times for work.
Wow, so you had a near-work experience? Did you see a bright white light and meet Jesus? But at least it was a pleasure, however unfortunate, and one's got to count one's blessings.
Seems to me that this would be the PERFECT person that would climb the corporate ladder.
Here is a short excerpt from Hervey Cleckley's "Mask of Sanity" - the case study of one "Max":
"After losing parole, he became constantly unruly in petty ways, often insulted the nurses and attendants, and several times egged on mildly psychotic patients to fight each other or to resist the personnel on the ward. On being questioned about this conduct by physicians, he glibly denied all and showed little concern at being accused."
Here, Max is seen displaying a number of the traits that you have quoted above; but I would not say that this sort of behavious would be likely to bring him upwards in the corporate world. At the end of the day, there is a number of factors that tend to make unreliable people unsuccessful - like, you can cheat a business partner once, or possibly twice, but at some point they will get tired of it. You may get away with theft or fraud for a long time, if you are very clever and very careful, but most psychopaths tend to be careless and simply go for the easy con-trick; and since they don't care much about being found out, they don't tend to learn from it either.
From the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology, the premier psychological dictionary of Britain
Since you quote a British work as well as the American checklist, I think you ought to be aware that the terms are used in slightly different ways in The US as compared to Europe.
However, before you dismiss a layman's views, perhaps you would benefit from reading at least some of the works of Robert Hare (who devised the checklist) and Hervey Cleckley; they give a number of interesting case studies of what can be considered typical behaviour for psychopaths.
Perhaps you have heard the saying "'tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt"?
You, sir, are either clueless or an authoritarian manipulator yourself.
May I suggest that you go and read some of the works of Dr Hare and Dr Hervey M. Cleckley; they contain a number of case studies that will show you what the typical psychopath is like. My 'definitions' are merely summaries of these descriptions.
Some companies do 'deliver value' by being downright nice and wonderful. The majority however, get ahead by being more ruthless than the others.
The fact that you have this impression does not in itself make it universally true. I suspect you get your impression of how companies are from the news about Enron-style scandals; but most companies are simply not like that. In fact, most companies are fairly small businesses that survive because they deliver a good service to their customers, no matter what you say. And most companies know that they have to treat their staff with a certain measure of respect and dignity in order to get the best out of them.
At least, that is my experience - if you have evidence to the contrary, please let us know.
I think this is a sort of in-joke; or at least I hope it is. I prefer to believe that no scientist would seriously consider this valid.
However, it does raise a couple of interesting points - one is the question of the nature of time; it has never been satisfyingly explained why time is the way it is (if it is). Why is it 1-dimensional and directed? To me, at least, it seems reasonable that the apparent direction of time is connected with the idea that cause comes before effect; so the idea of "effects from the future" would simply be absurd.
The other point is that science is not so much about seeking out the trust, but rather about eliminating un-truths, which is a slightly different enterprise.
It is true that Star Trek is an appalling load of nonse, when it comes to just about anything related to technology and science. Others with more knowledge about this have elaborated on this already.
But that is really beside the point - Star Trek is first and foremost a fairy tale, a story about magic vaguely disgused as 'Science Fiction', because at the time that was the mainstream in fantasy. To compare it to real SF, like 2001, is as reasonable as comparing it to "War and Peace" or "Oliver Twist". Star Trek is just an easily digested, light-hearted fantasy, and as such it works very well.
So, although the article doesn't state so, this is about yet another application of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - a principle that was inspired by the recognition that particles are also waves in some sense; the uncertainty arises because there is a limit to how much detail you can see when you observe by irradiating your target with particles of any given wave-length. IOW, it doesn't really say that "there is nothing to observe", but rather that there is a limit to the method of observation used.
This of course casts an entirely different light on the validity of absolute statements about the nature of the world on the very small scale; if one could find a method of observation, that wasn't subject to the limits in our current methods, we could improve significantly on Heisenberg's uncertainty. The very fact that QCD seems to work so well, suggests that there are details to be found beyond the 'Heisenberg limit'.
So, it is not entirely impossible that we will find a way round that one.
Firstly: I think this model, with 'sociopaths' on top and derogatory names all around, is a load of nonsense, really. A sociopath is what used to be called a psychopath in the not so old days; but since it turned out that the general public, helped by the entertainment industry, completely misunderstood what it was all about, the term 'sociopath' was coined instead. Now, of course, people use the term to try to sound as if they have a clue, which, alas, they still haven't - the author of the OP included.
So what is wrong with this description? Well, for one thing, psychopaths are not typically ambitious, target-seeking people; they are generally lacking in purpose and direction and their choices often seem random and trivial. They can land a top job only to throw it away a week later; they can steal an expensive item and almost give away on a whim to somebody in the pub - they seem to feel little in the way of regrets, remorse or empathy. This seems to be at the root of why psychopaths are unreliable and sometimes become serial killers - but it also makes it highly unlikely that they will be found at the top of any pyramid; IMO the most likely personality disorder to be found there is the one called narcissistic personality disorder, but that is only a layman's opinion.
The other problem I have with this sweeping description of companies is, that you are either 'sociopath', 'clueless' or 'loser'. While there are certainly some of those around in most companies, I don't think you see many successful businesses around if that was all there was to it; my personal experience from about 25 years as programmer and UNIX system manager is that most employees are 1) competent in their area, 2) want to do as good a job as they can, and 3) are not afraid of telling their managers that they disagree.
The real problem in many companies is, that there is an overweight of top-level managers with a background in sales or finances - too many MBAs and too few people with a genuine, technical background. This leads too often to a lack of appreciation of the very essential group of employees that go under the term 'engineers', and far too much focus on superficial sales-targets, that are often not realistic. And because the top-leaders don't understand why their targets are never met, they end up being timid and frustrated, which is then channeled into a climate of bullying and vengefulness.
I suppose it isn't all that strange that there has been such strong reactions; most men don't themselves feel that they look down on women, and it simply feels deeply unjust to be called "sexist". However, that doesn't in itself mean that one can't reasonably be described as a sexist - after all, just to pick the most extreme example, a rapist will also try to justify his actions with "But women like it" - clearly the perpetrator of a behaviour is not always the best judge of his/her own actions. (BTW, if you now feel extremely angry over my words, please read them again - I am not saying that being mildly sexist is the same as rape!)
I think the right attitude, if one sincerely doesn't want to be sexist, is to say "I don't intend to be sexist - if you think I am, please explain to me how".
All this goes for other kinds of bigotry as well; as the British National Party would say - "We are not racists, we just can't stand ". Bigotry is easy - one could almost say natural - and until we live in a better world, it is something we actively need to learn to avoid, every day of our lives.
What leaves me slighty skeptic about this are the following considerations:
1. Previous high temperature superconductors have all operated below 110K, approx, the record being 138K; with a critical temperature of 254K we are talking a jump of some 140 degrees.
2. The site, www.superconductors.org, seems strangely anonymous for a scientific news medium; no affiliations, no references, nothing.
3. We haven't heard anything from anywhere else. If this was real, it would have been all over the national and international news media; we would see Nobel prizes pouring in, ecstatic world leaders dancing in the streets etc. Obama has been remarkably calm, as far as I can tell, so unless he is one cool dude, he is not ecstatic.
Well, I have heard about 128 bit computing since I was a wee bairn and 16 bits was something you only had in your wet dreams; it has somehow failed to materialise in the market. It is probably because it is quite hard to imagine that the benefits would justfy the not insignificant complexity; even now, when we talk about "64 bit" architecture, when you read it carefully, it isn't actually quite 64 bits, as in "64 bit instruction and data buses", so I imagine this development is still some way off.
Also, we have seen that 64 bit programs don't normally run much faster than 32 bit ones.
Why is this news? Some bloke at Microsoft has made a circular version of the periodic table in, presumably, Windows-colours. I can't imagine that a great deal of thought or effort has gone into doing this, and none of it adds anything to our understanding of anything. It does, of course, generate a bit of attention around Microsoft, which is all the purpose there is to publishing this nonsense.
Economic growth means growth in the value that we all extract from our economic activity
But where does the value come from? Ultimately from the efforts somebody puts in to them - ie. the use of limited resources. "Doing more with fewer resources" only means shifting the focus to using some other resources instead - if not oil, then wind or sunlight, with potentially harmful consequences for the environment. Of course, one can say that life itself is not sustainable in the log (very long) run; but if we contemplate what stable ecosystems there are in the world, we will see that they are stable because averaged over time, there are only very few changes in population sizes - ie. effectively zero growth.
Well let's see now. We have fiat currency instead of representative currency (an example of which is the gold standard). Furthermore, the way fractional reserve banking in general and the Federal Reserve in particular is set up, there is always more debt built into the system than there are dollars in circulation. That's because debt is attached to money the moment it is created; i.e. for every X dollars in circulation there is always X+Y debt. This system is just not sustainable. How could it ever do anything but ultimately fail? Who are these people who expected it to be a paragon of stability and sustainability?
Interesting thought - I think I agree (if I have understood what you are saying correctly). But isn't indebtedness at the very basis of Capitalism, at least as we know it? To me at least, it seems that "growth" is the central theme in Capitalism, and the idea that one can somehow "create wealth" is put forward as a fundamental truth; but it always presupposes the existence of unlimited resources that we can "borrow" from. I say "borrow" because these resources are in reality not unlimited, but have been laid down by natural processes over a long time - at some point they will run out, and we will have to "pay back" our debt, in a sense. Future generations will have to pay for our lack of concern.
Capitalism as it is known now, will never be sustainable, because sustainable means, in the long run, zero growth.
The last time I looked in a dictionary, "or" was no closer to "while" than "and".
Perhaps you need another dictionary, or maybe you should look more carefully. According to Wiktionary:
While and whilst are conjunctions whose primary meaning is "during the time that"
IOW, it means (or implies) "at the same time as"; thus, "I text while I am driving" means "I text and drive at the same time". To most users of the English language, the sentence "I text or drive at the same time" doesn't make much meaning. Ergo, "while" has a good deal to do with "and", and not so much with "or"; some would even say that they are functionally equivalent.
The BBC reports on people using aluminum oxide in their paint to block Wi-Fi signals...
This is not likely, considering that BBC is British; "aluminum" is an element that only exists in America, where everything is different - in UK we use something called "aluminium"; please note the "i", the difference is crucial. Oh, and don't forget the smilie::-) - this was a classical piece of humour (again, note the "u"...)
Slashdot Mirror
Also, I like the quote you ended with. Do you mind if I use that?
Sorry, I forgot to answer this one - of course you can :-) I'm glad you like it.
Can you share a little more about how you got to the point where you could "be a little bit of an idiot like the rest" and not go batshit insane from the "small talk about nothing"?
I think this is probably different from person to person - in my case, I have always felt intensely (and unpleasantly) self-aware in social situations, and I was afraid of getting into a situation where I would embarass myself and look ridiculous. I think what changed it was mainly two things: I have observed many times that other people don't seem to mind looking a bit silly; they would use it to comical effect, which is something I can sympathise with. And I took a course in Chinese, where I was guaranteed to have to get into situations where I would try and fail in a small, controllable way, namely in things like speaking Chinese in front of the class; I found that this didn't actually feel as bad as I had feared.
So you could say that I sort of took a few, very small and fearful steps and grew bolder from there. A lot of social interaction is not about being intelligent and looking impressive, but goes on under the radar, while people are talking nonsense about something. Take a conversation about, say, football - something that is almost void of meaning to me. On the surface people may be talking about their team and whatever, but what they are really communicating on a deeper level is things like "You and I are on the same side, we are friends" etc. - and that is actually a very important thing for one's well-being.
I still can't take part in much small-talk, but what I do instead seems to work in a way: I admit to my ignorance about sports and try to ask questions, since most people love to explain. It is actually nice to listen to.
You have a problem with authority, Mr. Andersen. You believe you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously, you are mistaken.
No, I don't have problems with authority, but I do believe that respect and trust are earned - by being respectable and trustworthy. And, yes, I know I am special, this is not something I believe. I am different from most, and believe me, it is not something I generally cherish; it is a very mixed blessing.
I have no idea how you reached the conclusion that I think rules don't apply to me; if that was how I saw things, I wouldn't have cared enough to get depressed in the first place.
Everybody here is of course going to be all-out against this legislation, and probably quoting diverse bills of rights in the process. Many of the objections will be valid, at least to some degree, but these considerations would not be complete if one doesn't at least try to genuinely understand the other side of the argument.
There is no doubt that being distracted while driving is probably a major cause of accidents, that are sometimes serious. There is also little doubt that mobile devices with complex interfaces constitute a growing threat to people's concentration while driving. It seems to me, that there is a good case for doing something about it now - the question is what can one practically do? And that little word, "practically", is what makes is so difficult; it would be easy if they could simply ban the production and possession of any mobile device or something like that.
The only tool legislators have, really, is legislation, so they have to introduce a law. A law is useless if it can't be enforced, so it has to be simple enough for the average citizen to understand and for the police to enforce, and it mustn't generate huge amounts of court cases. So it seems that the law, as it has been introduced, is not really such a hare-brained scheme as some would argue; it isn't perfect and it won't be popular, but it isn't fair to dismiss it as idiotic either.
As far as I can see, it isn't actually unreasonable to make some rules for how people should behave when they are in control of a car; all you have to do to follow this one is to not use mobile devices that require you to take your attention away from driving. Can it really be true that people who are technologically minded, such as the readers of slashdot, can't think of ways to overcome this challenge?
Some phones already have some sort of speech control; it should be simple to make a Bluetooth device that could be mounted on the steering wheel and would allow yoy some control over mobile devices - it probably already exists. People should stop whining over how unfair the world is. If you believe that technological innovation is somehow going to save us from the impending doom of climate change, biosphere breakdown and resource shortage, finding a better way of interacting with a mobile or gps should be a small challenge.
This all sounds like a troll but it's more bitterness seeing complete idiots making 6 and 7 figure salaries while the "intelligent" folks are working as slaves.
How did it come to this?
I don't know, mate, but I do know the feeling.
I hit the low point some 4 years ago. , when it suddenly dawned on me that I tended to wake up in the morning thinking how much easier it would be just to give up; take an overdose of something pleasant and say goodbye. Except that you can't, really, when you have children adn a wife that love you - sometimes hope really is the worst thing.
Instead I started thinking about what it was that I hated about my job and my life, and what role I played in maintaining the status quo. Why didn't I have any friends at work? Well, to be honest, I was a grumpy git that never tried to fit in - I had all the right reasons, like I can't stand idiotic smalltalk about nothing, but the truth is that I was simply intolerant and fairly obnoxious. And why didn't I get any of the interesting projects with career potential? It's easy to see now, of course, that nobody wants to work with a contrary idiot, who seems to begrudge the very existence of his colleagues, but back then I didn't have the courage to admit it.
I didn't turn all that around in an instant, but I found that I could start out small, by standing up for myself on a few points. The thing is - I realised that a lot of the reason why I was that way was that I didn't have confidence in my own value. And how can others respect you if you don't respect yourself? Standing up for myself in small ways built up my self-confidence, which made me work to a better standard and it also helped others believe in me. I found the energy to be a little bit of an "idiot" like the rest and be more tolerant; now I am The Almighty UNIX Manager - in a small way - and the bosses actually talk to me with respect. It's not all wonderful, far from it, but I think I can see the light at the other end of the tunnel sometimes.
Of course this is just my story, but I think the morale is that it doesn't all have to be bad; if you find you are knee-deep in shit, bag it and sell manure.
Over the years my feelings at the sight of the manifestations of shameless, corporate greed have gone from outrage to anger, and has now reached the state of pure, unadulterated loathing. It really becomes harder and harder to see anything redeeming about it, whether it is the underhanded dealings from the entertainment industry and the RIAA, or the sick greed of the likes of the medicine and GMO industry. It doesn't to be that way, it really doesn't, and it will end, one way or another.
There is a growing tension between the magnitude of greed of the moneygrabbers and the very real needs of the rapidly growing class of the very poor in the world. Historically these tensions have always resulted in a breakdown of some sort; often a revolution, but one can still hope, I guess, that those in power will simply throw out the idea of patents altogether, or at least recreate the concept from scratch.
I am not against companies making a reasonable profit, but they already do that and more, so much more. I have long been convinced that private companies are not suited for handling important, public services - to which research and production of medicine belong, IMO. People's suffering should not be the object of profiteering.
There is no "normal" - everyone seems to have something. Developers (and geeks, in general) just wear it out there on their sleeve.
No, let's be realistic here. "Normal" is a valid, statistical term - it just means "average", more or less.
What I do agree with is that being normal is not all it is cracked up to be; most of the significant contributions to science (and indeed every other area) have come from people who were not normal in the objective sense. In fact, it has to be that way, since overachievers are by definition far away from the average.
Anything that requires determination and a very narrow focus will naturally attract people who love to spend a long time every day trying to tackle difficult, mental tasks. But if you spend most of your time absorbed in thought, then you are likely to be seen as weird, since what the average person likes most is to spend time interacting with other people.
When I look up Eric Lerner on Wikipedia, I can see that he is an activist who has been campaigning against things like the big bang - shouldn't this alone warn us to be bit skeptical? So why do we see this being taken serious again and again?
The fact that he has completed a scientific education is not in itself proof that he is right; there have been many brilliant scientists who have proposed theories that were later proven to be false - this is the way science works - but once a theory has been dismissed, it is time to move on and leave it behind. Perhaps the most well-known, and rather sad, example of this is Fred Hoyle, a brilliant cosmologist, who until his death clung on to his steady-state theory, while everybody else had accepted Einstein's theory as the best working model.
I've had the unfortunate pleasure of being sent to the main island a few times for work.
Wow, so you had a near-work experience? Did you see a bright white light and meet Jesus? But at least it was a pleasure, however unfortunate, and one's got to count one's blessings.
Seems to me that this would be the PERFECT person that would climb the corporate ladder.
Here is a short excerpt from Hervey Cleckley's "Mask of Sanity" - the case study of one "Max":
"After losing parole, he became constantly unruly in petty ways, often insulted the nurses and attendants, and several times egged on mildly psychotic patients to fight each other or to resist the personnel on the ward. On being questioned about this conduct by physicians, he glibly denied all and showed little concern at being accused."
Here, Max is seen displaying a number of the traits that you have quoted above; but I would not say that this sort of behavious would be likely to bring him upwards in the corporate world. At the end of the day, there is a number of factors that tend to make unreliable people unsuccessful - like, you can cheat a business partner once, or possibly twice, but at some point they will get tired of it. You may get away with theft or fraud for a long time, if you are very clever and very careful, but most psychopaths tend to be careless and simply go for the easy con-trick; and since they don't care much about being found out, they don't tend to learn from it either.
From the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology, the premier psychological dictionary of Britain
Since you quote a British work as well as the American checklist, I think you ought to be aware that the terms are used in slightly different ways in The US as compared to Europe.
However, before you dismiss a layman's views, perhaps you would benefit from reading at least some of the works of Robert Hare (who devised the checklist) and Hervey Cleckley; they give a number of interesting case studies of what can be considered typical behaviour for psychopaths.
Perhaps you have heard the saying "'tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt"?
Certainly; I have never heard it put better.
You, sir, are either clueless or an authoritarian manipulator yourself.
May I suggest that you go and read some of the works of Dr Hare and Dr Hervey M. Cleckley; they contain a number of case studies that will show you what the typical psychopath is like. My 'definitions' are merely summaries of these descriptions.
Some companies do 'deliver value' by being downright nice and wonderful. The majority however, get ahead by being more ruthless than the others.
The fact that you have this impression does not in itself make it universally true. I suspect you get your impression of how companies are from the news about Enron-style scandals; but most companies are simply not like that. In fact, most companies are fairly small businesses that survive because they deliver a good service to their customers, no matter what you say. And most companies know that they have to treat their staff with a certain measure of respect and dignity in order to get the best out of them.
At least, that is my experience - if you have evidence to the contrary, please let us know.
I think this is a sort of in-joke; or at least I hope it is. I prefer to believe that no scientist would seriously consider this valid.
However, it does raise a couple of interesting points - one is the question of the nature of time; it has never been satisfyingly explained why time is the way it is (if it is). Why is it 1-dimensional and directed? To me, at least, it seems reasonable that the apparent direction of time is connected with the idea that cause comes before effect; so the idea of "effects from the future" would simply be absurd.
The other point is that science is not so much about seeking out the trust, but rather about eliminating un-truths, which is a slightly different enterprise.
It is true that Star Trek is an appalling load of nonse, when it comes to just about anything related to technology and science. Others with more knowledge about this have elaborated on this already.
But that is really beside the point - Star Trek is first and foremost a fairy tale, a story about magic vaguely disgused as 'Science Fiction', because at the time that was the mainstream in fantasy. To compare it to real SF, like 2001, is as reasonable as comparing it to "War and Peace" or "Oliver Twist". Star Trek is just an easily digested, light-hearted fantasy, and as such it works very well.
So, although the article doesn't state so, this is about yet another application of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - a principle that was inspired by the recognition that particles are also waves in some sense; the uncertainty arises because there is a limit to how much detail you can see when you observe by irradiating your target with particles of any given wave-length. IOW, it doesn't really say that "there is nothing to observe", but rather that there is a limit to the method of observation used.
This of course casts an entirely different light on the validity of absolute statements about the nature of the world on the very small scale; if one could find a method of observation, that wasn't subject to the limits in our current methods, we could improve significantly on Heisenberg's uncertainty. The very fact that QCD seems to work so well, suggests that there are details to be found beyond the 'Heisenberg limit'.
So, it is not entirely impossible that we will find a way round that one.
Firstly: I think this model, with 'sociopaths' on top and derogatory names all around, is a load of nonsense, really. A sociopath is what used to be called a psychopath in the not so old days; but since it turned out that the general public, helped by the entertainment industry, completely misunderstood what it was all about, the term 'sociopath' was coined instead. Now, of course, people use the term to try to sound as if they have a clue, which, alas, they still haven't - the author of the OP included.
So what is wrong with this description? Well, for one thing, psychopaths are not typically ambitious, target-seeking people; they are generally lacking in purpose and direction and their choices often seem random and trivial. They can land a top job only to throw it away a week later; they can steal an expensive item and almost give away on a whim to somebody in the pub - they seem to feel little in the way of regrets, remorse or empathy. This seems to be at the root of why psychopaths are unreliable and sometimes become serial killers - but it also makes it highly unlikely that they will be found at the top of any pyramid; IMO the most likely personality disorder to be found there is the one called narcissistic personality disorder, but that is only a layman's opinion.
The other problem I have with this sweeping description of companies is, that you are either 'sociopath', 'clueless' or 'loser'. While there are certainly some of those around in most companies, I don't think you see many successful businesses around if that was all there was to it; my personal experience from about 25 years as programmer and UNIX system manager is that most employees are 1) competent in their area, 2) want to do as good a job as they can, and 3) are not afraid of telling their managers that they disagree.
The real problem in many companies is, that there is an overweight of top-level managers with a background in sales or finances - too many MBAs and too few people with a genuine, technical background. This leads too often to a lack of appreciation of the very essential group of employees that go under the term 'engineers', and far too much focus on superficial sales-targets, that are often not realistic. And because the top-leaders don't understand why their targets are never met, they end up being timid and frustrated, which is then channeled into a climate of bullying and vengefulness.
I suppose it isn't all that strange that there has been such strong reactions; most men don't themselves feel that they look down on women, and it simply feels deeply unjust to be called "sexist". However, that doesn't in itself mean that one can't reasonably be described as a sexist - after all, just to pick the most extreme example, a rapist will also try to justify his actions with "But women like it" - clearly the perpetrator of a behaviour is not always the best judge of his/her own actions. (BTW, if you now feel extremely angry over my words, please read them again - I am not saying that being mildly sexist is the same as rape!)
I think the right attitude, if one sincerely doesn't want to be sexist, is to say "I don't intend to be sexist - if you think I am, please explain to me how".
All this goes for other kinds of bigotry as well; as the British National Party would say - "We are not racists, we just can't stand ". Bigotry is easy - one could almost say natural - and until we live in a better world, it is something we actively need to learn to avoid, every day of our lives.
What leaves me slighty skeptic about this are the following considerations:
1. Previous high temperature superconductors have all operated below 110K, approx, the record being 138K; with a critical temperature of 254K we are talking a jump of some 140 degrees.
2. The site, www.superconductors.org, seems strangely anonymous for a scientific news medium; no affiliations, no references, nothing.
3. We haven't heard anything from anywhere else. If this was real, it would have been all over the national and international news media; we would see Nobel prizes pouring in, ecstatic world leaders dancing in the streets etc. Obama has been remarkably calm, as far as I can tell, so unless he is one cool dude, he is not ecstatic.
All in all, I don't think this is credible.
Well, I have heard about 128 bit computing since I was a wee bairn and 16 bits was something you only had in your wet dreams; it has somehow failed to materialise in the market. It is probably because it is quite hard to imagine that the benefits would justfy the not insignificant complexity; even now, when we talk about "64 bit" architecture, when you read it carefully, it isn't actually quite 64 bits, as in "64 bit instruction and data buses", so I imagine this development is still some way off.
Also, we have seen that 64 bit programs don't normally run much faster than 32 bit ones.
Why is this news? Some bloke at Microsoft has made a circular version of the periodic table in, presumably, Windows-colours. I can't imagine that a great deal of thought or effort has gone into doing this, and none of it adds anything to our understanding of anything. It does, of course, generate a bit of attention around Microsoft, which is all the purpose there is to publishing this nonsense.
Economic growth means growth in the value that we all extract from our economic activity
But where does the value come from? Ultimately from the efforts somebody puts in to them - ie. the use of limited resources. "Doing more with fewer resources" only means shifting the focus to using some other resources instead - if not oil, then wind or sunlight, with potentially harmful consequences for the environment. Of course, one can say that life itself is not sustainable in the log (very long) run; but if we contemplate what stable ecosystems there are in the world, we will see that they are stable because averaged over time, there are only very few changes in population sizes - ie. effectively zero growth.
Well let's see now. We have fiat currency instead of representative currency (an example of which is the gold standard). Furthermore, the way fractional reserve banking in general and the Federal Reserve in particular is set up, there is always more debt built into the system than there are dollars in circulation. That's because debt is attached to money the moment it is created; i.e. for every X dollars in circulation there is always X+Y debt. This system is just not sustainable. How could it ever do anything but ultimately fail? Who are these people who expected it to be a paragon of stability and sustainability?
Interesting thought - I think I agree (if I have understood what you are saying correctly). But isn't indebtedness at the very basis of Capitalism, at least as we know it? To me at least, it seems that "growth" is the central theme in Capitalism, and the idea that one can somehow "create wealth" is put forward as a fundamental truth; but it always presupposes the existence of unlimited resources that we can "borrow" from. I say "borrow" because these resources are in reality not unlimited, but have been laid down by natural processes over a long time - at some point they will run out, and we will have to "pay back" our debt, in a sense. Future generations will have to pay for our lack of concern.
Capitalism as it is known now, will never be sustainable, because sustainable means, in the long run, zero growth.
The last time I looked in a dictionary, "or" was no closer to "while" than "and".
Perhaps you need another dictionary, or maybe you should look more carefully. According to Wiktionary:
While and whilst are conjunctions whose primary meaning is "during the time that"
IOW, it means (or implies) "at the same time as"; thus, "I text while I am driving" means "I text and drive at the same time". To most users of the English language, the sentence "I text or drive at the same time" doesn't make much meaning. Ergo, "while" has a good deal to do with "and", and not so much with "or"; some would even say that they are functionally equivalent.
The BBC reports on people using aluminum oxide in their paint to block Wi-Fi signals...
This is not likely, considering that BBC is British; "aluminum" is an element that only exists in America, where everything is different - in UK we use something called "aluminium"; please note the "i", the difference is crucial. Oh, and don't forget the smilie: :-) - this was a classical piece of humour (again, note the "u" ...)