Something still doesn't seem quite right with what you're saying. Here are a few things that come to mind: 1. Maybe this isn't the case with food and shelter but maybe it is - prices are determined by the intersection of supply and demand. Prices cannot fall endlessly because supply cannot be infinite. What, in your opinion, is the "right" solution when the equilibrium price of food and shelter are above the maximum price that some can afford to pay for them?
2. The means of production, whether that is capital machinery, as it was in Marx's time, or a good education, is unaffordable to many. The increase in the price of the means and the slow growth of wealth of those on the "wrong" side of the knee of the wealth curve means that class is practically hereditary and NOT meritocratic. Even from a purely capitalistic perspective, this seems like a big problem because a large, uneducated underclass represents a lot of wasted potential.
3. Your position makes charity into a luxury good - that the wellbeing of the needy depends upon the whimsy of the wealthy. This leaves a person like me in a very difficult position. I practically feel forced "at gunpoint" NOT to be charitable. I'm comfortably middle class but I can afford few luxuries. If charity is treated as a luxury then I cannot act upon my best intentions. Paying the rent and buying groceries, after all, are NOT luxuries.
I still think that your line of reasoning discounts the "wants" of people in need. Markets express their wants through demand - specifically through demand in terms of offers of money. People who don't have money can't express their wants in a way that's meaningful to the market but that doesn't mean that they don't have real and justified wants. It's like the US economy's bogus unemployment numbers - people who have given up and stopped looking aren't counted as unemployed. Likewise, people who have little money and can't afford to buy up their quality of life aren't counted toward demand. Of course "the market" doesn't want quality nutrition for needful people. If the market is concerned about oil rigs and iPads, then those people can't even be considered PART of the market in any meaningful way.
I frequently feel more motivated by charity than by profit. I'm studying nutrition in hopes that I can contribute to the health and wellbeing of the class of society who can probably least afford to pay me for that specialized knowledge. Unless I want myself and my family to suffer from poverty ourselves, however, I also need to serve a less needful class of people who can pay for my services. This must necessarily deprive me of time that I could use to serve the needful.
It is this rift that causes me so much frustration. One way or the other, I can't devote as much time as I would like to serving the market I'd most like to serve. I could choose a low income and maybe that's the price of being charitable. Or I could serve wealthier clientele as a matter of necessity and serve my preferred clientele in whatever time I have remaining.
But by your definition above, my lack of profitability is proof that I wouldn't be devoting my resources to a meaningful pursuit and that seems like a very distasteful, social-Darwinism sort of conclusion.
I think that your comment highlights a key weakness of capitalism. In practice, government is not operated independently of business and the politicians in charge of regulating business (minimally, in the ideal case) are also trying to look out for their own best interests. I'd argue that in such a system, the only two negotiable instruments are, ultimately, money and power. Under such circumstances, corruption is inevitable. The wealthy and the influential will collude. leaving the middle and lower classes (those with minimal money and power) out of the conversation. They key question that capitalism must address, in my opinion, is how does a society prevent the wealthy and the influential from colluding, to the detriment of everybody else?
Political term limits might be one way to start. Restrictions on corporate political activism might be another. (I'm sorry; corporations are not people and should not enjoy "free speech" in the same manner as a human citizen.) Of course, either method could backfire. Term limits might induce politicians to grab what they can, while they can. Restrictions on corporate political activism might just drive it underground. I don't have a great answer to the problem but I think it's one to which a lot of attention should be devoted.
It's not as easy as that article makes out. Storing hydrogen is very hard. The molecules are so small that it will permeate through any reasonable container in a time frame comparable to the expected lifespan of a vehicle. Furthermore, as hydrogen gas permeates steel, it induces embrittlement of the metal, which makes the tank increasingly less suitable for containment in the event of an accident.
Your comment and others like it remind me of some wisdom gleaned from xkcd: "The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."
Right now, our grasp of space exploration is still quite limited. In my opinion, the state of space exploration today is to its potential as alchemy was to modern chemistry. Nonetheless, alchemy represented the first baby steps toward real chemistry. I think that a lot of people recognize this and look at space exploration with the same disdain that they would an institute of alchemy. They key difference is that we don't do alchemy anymore because we outgrew it as it evolved into modern chemistry. Space exploration hasn't evolved into something useful and profitable yet but if we don't keep at it, it never will. (Note, I'm NOT equating space exploration with the ability to merely put things into orbit.)
I've had that argument before, too. The counterargument could be that foreign workers enter into employment with American companies willingly because the American companies offer better wages/benefits than foreign companies. My bone with that line of thinking is that it doesn't account for the possibility that foreign companies exploit their workers a lot and American companies just exploit them less. Just because the poor guy caught in the middle has to choose between three evils (terrible work, bad work, and not putting food on the table) doesn't mean that he's NOT being exploited.
I agree that public parks are a much better solution than large yards. Part of the problem, however, is that when you're choosing a new home, access to public recreation can be just one of many factors to choose from. It might be more important to me to be close to public transportation, the grocery store, my children's school, my job, etc. Since Americans have previously NOT chosen to build spacious parks everywhere, that might leave me without adequate access. I might, however, be able to find a larger lot of land meeting my other criteria. It's not an ideal solution but the alternative is choosing a smaller lot and then immediately start rallying for land to be purchased or rededicated for a park. Even if that works, though, I wouldn't be able to enjoy a large, open space for a few years.
I could imagine a few hypothetical situations in which the government performing a profitable service is consistent with it being the government. Suppose that it can reasonably efficiently perform the service adjunctly to another service that it provides (one that isn't profitable.) The private sector would have to hire equivalent staff to perform the profitable service, which would counterbalance any efficiencies they might realize. Also, since the government requires funds to provide those unprofitable services, then government ownership of at least some profitable enterprises can offset the costs. "So would taxing private companies providing those same services!" you might object. The government can't tax those companies for 100% of their profits, though.
Actually, there's a subtle and funny reason why they CAN'T just print dollar bills. The laws regulation the printing of paper currency place limits on how much can be printed at once or something like that. There is no such limit on money minted as coins. Therefore, in order for this hack to work, the money MUST be minted as a coin because statutes presently don't allow for that much paper money to be printed.
That's some gallows humour, there. I can't bring myself to laugh. I live in Minnesota and for the last three weeks, that's exactly what we've been hearing from both our governor and leaders in the legislature about the government shutdown. The governor finally caved in yesterday but for three weeks, from both sides, "We've made a reasonable proposal but the other side is unwilling to compromise."
I've been a nuclear advocate for years but right now, I need some reassurance about the state of the art before I can bring myself to call nuclear "perfectly adequate" anymore. I am finding it increasingly difficult to contend with the following concerns: 1) The public and political will isn't there to deal with waste in a responsible way. We COULD build breeder reactors but we won't. We're using just a small fraction of the energy in the fuel and letting the remaining energy pose a public health hazard instead of using it to produce electricity. 2) Nuclear power plants don't seem as "fail safe" as we've been promised. I understand that the Japanese plants were NOT state of the art but there still appears to be problems with the model to me, highlighted by the failure of the plants in Japan. Namely, mechanical damage to the plant can result in the plant being unable to shut down safely. Perhaps this can be solved just by zoning plants more effectively. Nonetheless, this doesn't really fit my definition of "fail safe." 3) There are big problems with current energy generation methods. I don't dispute that. The model as a whole is unsustainable and could be doing irreparable harm to the environment. Considering concern #2, though, I no longer feel like the repercussions of a nuclear power plant failing can be ignored. The damage may be more localized but depending on the mode of failure, it could be equally irreparable. Parts of Fukushima Prefecture will be contaminated for a long time. I've seen estimates that at least in the vicinity of the plant, it may be uninhabitable for 20 years. (That doesn't mean the contamination will be gone in 20 years; just that it may drop to tolerable levels in 20 years time.)
This trend (and the trend of observing it) is older than 20 years. There was a book published in 1963 by Richard Hofstadter entitled, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life." He traces anti-intellectualism back to before the revolutionary war. He argues that the Evangelical movement rebelled against the more scholarly traditions of the Puritans and the Catholics, resulting in a faith-based preference for feeling and intuition over scholarship. Politics have emphasized this divide, promoting tension between populism and intellectualism.
Okay, we can consider price as the example. If I'm willing to pay as $3 for a loaf of bread and the seller is willing to accept as little as $2.50 for it, then there's 50 cents of grey area in there for us to negotiate over. If I were being REALLY idealistic, I'd say that we both reveal that information and then agree on $2.75 as the final price because we want to be fair to one another. Alternately, I offer $2.50 at first; the seller requests $3.00 at first, and we negotiate toward $2.75.
I am, however, willing to pay $3 for the bread. I don't think it's being "taken advantage of" if I offer $3 and end up paying it. So what if the guy selling the bread makes 50 cents that he didn't really expect to make? So what if I could have had a share of that 50 cents? If I have set my boundaries such that paying $3 for a loaf of bread allows me to be content with my purchase, then I have no reason for complaint. In my opinion, this is a fundamental flaw in what I consider to be the typical free market. People allow their utility, wellbeing, happiness, etc. to be predicated on their ability to capture that grey area.
Put another way, I don't think it's reasonable to choose to be happy because I saved a quarter on a loaf of bread and merely indifferent about getting a loaf of bread at my threshold price. I think it's more reasonable to choose to be happy about enjoying my bread that I paid a fair price for rather than fretting over how much less I could have paid for that bread.
Speaking idealistically, if your ultimate fallback position in all negotiations represents the boundaries with which you would be content, then does it really matter whether somebody else has gobbled up all of the grey area? I appreciate that some aspects of human nature drive us to acquire more than we really need. On the other hand, that drive is responsible for a lot of conflict and can't really be considered a trustworthy guideline for long-term peace. If we want to promote stable, consensual peace, then I think we need to rethink our strategy.
I'm mostly getting this from reading other comments in this thread but I think that what you're saying is incorrect. Here's why: The Higgs Boson has never been detected; it is merely predicted by the Standard Model. The Standard Model also predicts that the electron is NOT perfectly symmetrical, albeit at a scale 11 orders of magnitude smaller than what this experiment measured. If the electron IS perfectly symmetrical, then the Standard Model is incorrect and will require revision. In doing so, perhaps the Higgs Boson would fall out or some other explanation for mass may arise. I'm certainly not good enough at physics to suggest how the model would have to change. All I'm really saying is that if a symmetrical electron could falsify the Standard Model, then it's circular to suggest that because of the Standard Model, we know a priori that the electron is divisible.
I disagree with your assertion that "it is entirely possible to report simply the known facts." Facts require context. "A man was shot and killed today" could describe a murder, an execution, or an accident. For a story like that, maybe it's easy to provide the context in which to interpret the facts. For a story about politics, where complex motivations may be involved, the choice of which other facts are part of the context and which aren't becomes part of the bias.
I can only assume that griefing has crossed their minds and they have some mechanism of coping with it. I am extremely excited about this game but when I read the bit about events scaling... "To help ensure there is always enough for everyone to do, our events dynamically scale, so the more players who show up and participate in the event, the more enemies show up to fight them. If a bunch of players leave the event, it will dynamically scale back down so it can be completed by the people who are still there playing it."...I grow concerned. They're talking about how they've solved the problem of kill-stealing but is PvP interaction enabled in public areas? If ten people are "participating" in an event but two or three of them are attacking the other players, that's a problem. Heck, if ten people are participating and two or three are just hanging around doing nothing to make the event scale harder for the remaining players, that's a problem. I can only hope and trust that this possibility is obvious enough that there was some consideration of it in the development of these interactions.
I've tried keeping my notes on a computer and it doesn't work as well for me. The operation that you describe as "laying them out in a logical manner" works best for me when I'm writing my notes by hand. Obviously, some memory of the content or its structure is required to make effective use of the notes and that memory doesn't take root as well when I type, rather than write my notes.
I'm much the same way but I compensate readily by taking good notes. The guy in the article talks about how computers, books, etc. have mitigated the need for natural memory. Certainly, that's the case for me but I don't perceive a "bad memory" as a hindrance. I see it as an opportunity to make the most of the tools at my disposal. I may have to retrace my steps but they're really well-documented steps. At work, in particular, I date- and time-stamp every phone call that I get. If somebody calls back a few days later and says they talked to me "on Tuesday," I just flip back to Tuesday in my notebook and my information is complete. I'd like to think that this means that I'm not wasting brainpower on memorization and can dedicate it instead to analysis and intuition. Anecdotally, my critical and analytical functions are much better than my memory.
Disclaimer: Correlation does not imply causation and I am only one point of data. My analytical function might remain just as strong as it is now if I were to fully develop my memory. Or perhaps it would be even stronger for having moved memory from a high-latency format like my notebook into my brain. Or perhaps having a busy, analytical brain causes poor memory, rather than the other way around. Or perhaps the two functions are completely unrelated. I'm no neurobiologist. I just happen to enjoy the philosophy of "how thinking works."
I was simply trying to draw an analogy, as was Wittgenstein. Of course Watson's "diagram" is more complicated than that. The fact remains that Watson's algorithm consists of some analog to consciously consulting a table of data. Wittgenstein tries to examine that transition from consulting tables to just knowing and to consider why we consider these to be two distinct modes of thought.
What you're saying reminds me of some of the work of the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He focused primarily on the interplay between language and thought. In "The Brown Book," he describes a series of language games. For example, consider a man who can identify building materials because he has a diagram that has pictures next to the written words "brick," "plank," and "peg." (That might be where Watson is right now.) How does that situation differ from a man who has memorized the diagram but still mentally calls it to mind when asked to identify a brick, plank, or peg? How is it different from a man who does not consciously imagine the diagram at all? Intuitively, there appears to be an important difference that is difficult to pin down between interpreting a word based on a rule and interpreting it "cognitively." Of course, Wittgenstein gets too deep for me pretty frequently. This game repeats itself endlessly as you drill down into any given example. How is it, for example, that the man identifies the sound of the word "brick" with the word "brick" written on his diagram?
In insulators, there are no energy states that involve conductive electrons. In conductors, all of the energy states involve conductive electrons. In semiconductors, electrons normally reside in a nonconductive state but you can inject some energy and the electrons will be raised to a conductive state. The amount of energy required to raise the electrons to a conductive state is that semiconductor's gap.
It would probably make beef more expensive. I imagine that's a good thing, though. By most estimates, even if human beings are going to eat meat, citizens of the USA eat too much of it. An increase in the price of meat might help to moderate the American diet to something more suitable for a healthy human being.
Slashdot Mirror
Something still doesn't seem quite right with what you're saying. Here are a few things that come to mind:
1. Maybe this isn't the case with food and shelter but maybe it is - prices are determined by the intersection of supply and demand. Prices cannot fall endlessly because supply cannot be infinite. What, in your opinion, is the "right" solution when the equilibrium price of food and shelter are above the maximum price that some can afford to pay for them?
2. The means of production, whether that is capital machinery, as it was in Marx's time, or a good education, is unaffordable to many. The increase in the price of the means and the slow growth of wealth of those on the "wrong" side of the knee of the wealth curve means that class is practically hereditary and NOT meritocratic. Even from a purely capitalistic perspective, this seems like a big problem because a large, uneducated underclass represents a lot of wasted potential.
3. Your position makes charity into a luxury good - that the wellbeing of the needy depends upon the whimsy of the wealthy. This leaves a person like me in a very difficult position. I practically feel forced "at gunpoint" NOT to be charitable. I'm comfortably middle class but I can afford few luxuries. If charity is treated as a luxury then I cannot act upon my best intentions. Paying the rent and buying groceries, after all, are NOT luxuries.
I still think that your line of reasoning discounts the "wants" of people in need. Markets express their wants through demand - specifically through demand in terms of offers of money. People who don't have money can't express their wants in a way that's meaningful to the market but that doesn't mean that they don't have real and justified wants. It's like the US economy's bogus unemployment numbers - people who have given up and stopped looking aren't counted as unemployed. Likewise, people who have little money and can't afford to buy up their quality of life aren't counted toward demand. Of course "the market" doesn't want quality nutrition for needful people. If the market is concerned about oil rigs and iPads, then those people can't even be considered PART of the market in any meaningful way.
I frequently feel more motivated by charity than by profit. I'm studying nutrition in hopes that I can contribute to the health and wellbeing of the class of society who can probably least afford to pay me for that specialized knowledge. Unless I want myself and my family to suffer from poverty ourselves, however, I also need to serve a less needful class of people who can pay for my services. This must necessarily deprive me of time that I could use to serve the needful.
It is this rift that causes me so much frustration. One way or the other, I can't devote as much time as I would like to serving the market I'd most like to serve. I could choose a low income and maybe that's the price of being charitable. Or I could serve wealthier clientele as a matter of necessity and serve my preferred clientele in whatever time I have remaining.
But by your definition above, my lack of profitability is proof that I wouldn't be devoting my resources to a meaningful pursuit and that seems like a very distasteful, social-Darwinism sort of conclusion.
I think that your comment highlights a key weakness of capitalism. In practice, government is not operated independently of business and the politicians in charge of regulating business (minimally, in the ideal case) are also trying to look out for their own best interests. I'd argue that in such a system, the only two negotiable instruments are, ultimately, money and power. Under such circumstances, corruption is inevitable. The wealthy and the influential will collude. leaving the middle and lower classes (those with minimal money and power) out of the conversation. They key question that capitalism must address, in my opinion, is how does a society prevent the wealthy and the influential from colluding, to the detriment of everybody else?
Political term limits might be one way to start. Restrictions on corporate political activism might be another. (I'm sorry; corporations are not people and should not enjoy "free speech" in the same manner as a human citizen.) Of course, either method could backfire. Term limits might induce politicians to grab what they can, while they can. Restrictions on corporate political activism might just drive it underground. I don't have a great answer to the problem but I think it's one to which a lot of attention should be devoted.
It's not as easy as that article makes out. Storing hydrogen is very hard. The molecules are so small that it will permeate through any reasonable container in a time frame comparable to the expected lifespan of a vehicle. Furthermore, as hydrogen gas permeates steel, it induces embrittlement of the metal, which makes the tank increasingly less suitable for containment in the event of an accident.
Your comment and others like it remind me of some wisdom gleaned from xkcd:
"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."
Right now, our grasp of space exploration is still quite limited. In my opinion, the state of space exploration today is to its potential as alchemy was to modern chemistry. Nonetheless, alchemy represented the first baby steps toward real chemistry. I think that a lot of people recognize this and look at space exploration with the same disdain that they would an institute of alchemy. They key difference is that we don't do alchemy anymore because we outgrew it as it evolved into modern chemistry. Space exploration hasn't evolved into something useful and profitable yet but if we don't keep at it, it never will. (Note, I'm NOT equating space exploration with the ability to merely put things into orbit.)
I've had that argument before, too. The counterargument could be that foreign workers enter into employment with American companies willingly because the American companies offer better wages/benefits than foreign companies. My bone with that line of thinking is that it doesn't account for the possibility that foreign companies exploit their workers a lot and American companies just exploit them less. Just because the poor guy caught in the middle has to choose between three evils (terrible work, bad work, and not putting food on the table) doesn't mean that he's NOT being exploited.
I agree that public parks are a much better solution than large yards. Part of the problem, however, is that when you're choosing a new home, access to public recreation can be just one of many factors to choose from. It might be more important to me to be close to public transportation, the grocery store, my children's school, my job, etc. Since Americans have previously NOT chosen to build spacious parks everywhere, that might leave me without adequate access. I might, however, be able to find a larger lot of land meeting my other criteria. It's not an ideal solution but the alternative is choosing a smaller lot and then immediately start rallying for land to be purchased or rededicated for a park. Even if that works, though, I wouldn't be able to enjoy a large, open space for a few years.
That's from an episode of the Upright Citizens' Brigade, isn't it?
I could imagine a few hypothetical situations in which the government performing a profitable service is consistent with it being the government. Suppose that it can reasonably efficiently perform the service adjunctly to another service that it provides (one that isn't profitable.) The private sector would have to hire equivalent staff to perform the profitable service, which would counterbalance any efficiencies they might realize. Also, since the government requires funds to provide those unprofitable services, then government ownership of at least some profitable enterprises can offset the costs. "So would taxing private companies providing those same services!" you might object. The government can't tax those companies for 100% of their profits, though.
Actually, there's a subtle and funny reason why they CAN'T just print dollar bills. The laws regulation the printing of paper currency place limits on how much can be printed at once or something like that. There is no such limit on money minted as coins. Therefore, in order for this hack to work, the money MUST be minted as a coin because statutes presently don't allow for that much paper money to be printed.
That's some gallows humour, there. I can't bring myself to laugh. I live in Minnesota and for the last three weeks, that's exactly what we've been hearing from both our governor and leaders in the legislature about the government shutdown. The governor finally caved in yesterday but for three weeks, from both sides, "We've made a reasonable proposal but the other side is unwilling to compromise."
I've been a nuclear advocate for years but right now, I need some reassurance about the state of the art before I can bring myself to call nuclear "perfectly adequate" anymore. I am finding it increasingly difficult to contend with the following concerns:
1) The public and political will isn't there to deal with waste in a responsible way. We COULD build breeder reactors but we won't. We're using just a small fraction of the energy in the fuel and letting the remaining energy pose a public health hazard instead of using it to produce electricity.
2) Nuclear power plants don't seem as "fail safe" as we've been promised. I understand that the Japanese plants were NOT state of the art but there still appears to be problems with the model to me, highlighted by the failure of the plants in Japan. Namely, mechanical damage to the plant can result in the plant being unable to shut down safely. Perhaps this can be solved just by zoning plants more effectively. Nonetheless, this doesn't really fit my definition of "fail safe."
3) There are big problems with current energy generation methods. I don't dispute that. The model as a whole is unsustainable and could be doing irreparable harm to the environment. Considering concern #2, though, I no longer feel like the repercussions of a nuclear power plant failing can be ignored. The damage may be more localized but depending on the mode of failure, it could be equally irreparable. Parts of Fukushima Prefecture will be contaminated for a long time. I've seen estimates that at least in the vicinity of the plant, it may be uninhabitable for 20 years. (That doesn't mean the contamination will be gone in 20 years; just that it may drop to tolerable levels in 20 years time.)
This trend (and the trend of observing it) is older than 20 years. There was a book published in 1963 by Richard Hofstadter entitled, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life." He traces anti-intellectualism back to before the revolutionary war. He argues that the Evangelical movement rebelled against the more scholarly traditions of the Puritans and the Catholics, resulting in a faith-based preference for feeling and intuition over scholarship. Politics have emphasized this divide, promoting tension between populism and intellectualism.
Okay, we can consider price as the example. If I'm willing to pay as $3 for a loaf of bread and the seller is willing to accept as little as $2.50 for it, then there's 50 cents of grey area in there for us to negotiate over. If I were being REALLY idealistic, I'd say that we both reveal that information and then agree on $2.75 as the final price because we want to be fair to one another. Alternately, I offer $2.50 at first; the seller requests $3.00 at first, and we negotiate toward $2.75.
I am, however, willing to pay $3 for the bread. I don't think it's being "taken advantage of" if I offer $3 and end up paying it. So what if the guy selling the bread makes 50 cents that he didn't really expect to make? So what if I could have had a share of that 50 cents? If I have set my boundaries such that paying $3 for a loaf of bread allows me to be content with my purchase, then I have no reason for complaint. In my opinion, this is a fundamental flaw in what I consider to be the typical free market. People allow their utility, wellbeing, happiness, etc. to be predicated on their ability to capture that grey area.
Put another way, I don't think it's reasonable to choose to be happy because I saved a quarter on a loaf of bread and merely indifferent about getting a loaf of bread at my threshold price. I think it's more reasonable to choose to be happy about enjoying my bread that I paid a fair price for rather than fretting over how much less I could have paid for that bread.
Speaking idealistically, if your ultimate fallback position in all negotiations represents the boundaries with which you would be content, then does it really matter whether somebody else has gobbled up all of the grey area? I appreciate that some aspects of human nature drive us to acquire more than we really need. On the other hand, that drive is responsible for a lot of conflict and can't really be considered a trustworthy guideline for long-term peace. If we want to promote stable, consensual peace, then I think we need to rethink our strategy.
I'm mostly getting this from reading other comments in this thread but I think that what you're saying is incorrect. Here's why:
The Higgs Boson has never been detected; it is merely predicted by the Standard Model.
The Standard Model also predicts that the electron is NOT perfectly symmetrical, albeit at a scale 11 orders of magnitude smaller than what this experiment measured.
If the electron IS perfectly symmetrical, then the Standard Model is incorrect and will require revision. In doing so, perhaps the Higgs Boson would fall out or some other explanation for mass may arise. I'm certainly not good enough at physics to suggest how the model would have to change. All I'm really saying is that if a symmetrical electron could falsify the Standard Model, then it's circular to suggest that because of the Standard Model, we know a priori that the electron is divisible.
I disagree with your assertion that "it is entirely possible to report simply the known facts." Facts require context. "A man was shot and killed today" could describe a murder, an execution, or an accident. For a story like that, maybe it's easy to provide the context in which to interpret the facts. For a story about politics, where complex motivations may be involved, the choice of which other facts are part of the context and which aren't becomes part of the bias.
I can only assume that griefing has crossed their minds and they have some mechanism of coping with it. I am extremely excited about this game but when I read the bit about events scaling... ...I grow concerned. They're talking about how they've solved the problem of kill-stealing but is PvP interaction enabled in public areas? If ten people are "participating" in an event but two or three of them are attacking the other players, that's a problem. Heck, if ten people are participating and two or three are just hanging around doing nothing to make the event scale harder for the remaining players, that's a problem. I can only hope and trust that this possibility is obvious enough that there was some consideration of it in the development of these interactions.
"To help ensure there is always enough for everyone to do, our events dynamically scale, so the more players who show up and participate in the event, the more enemies show up to fight them. If a bunch of players leave the event, it will dynamically scale back down so it can be completed by the people who are still there playing it."
I've tried keeping my notes on a computer and it doesn't work as well for me. The operation that you describe as "laying them out in a logical manner" works best for me when I'm writing my notes by hand. Obviously, some memory of the content or its structure is required to make effective use of the notes and that memory doesn't take root as well when I type, rather than write my notes.
I'm much the same way but I compensate readily by taking good notes. The guy in the article talks about how computers, books, etc. have mitigated the need for natural memory. Certainly, that's the case for me but I don't perceive a "bad memory" as a hindrance. I see it as an opportunity to make the most of the tools at my disposal. I may have to retrace my steps but they're really well-documented steps. At work, in particular, I date- and time-stamp every phone call that I get. If somebody calls back a few days later and says they talked to me "on Tuesday," I just flip back to Tuesday in my notebook and my information is complete. I'd like to think that this means that I'm not wasting brainpower on memorization and can dedicate it instead to analysis and intuition. Anecdotally, my critical and analytical functions are much better than my memory.
Disclaimer: Correlation does not imply causation and I am only one point of data. My analytical function might remain just as strong as it is now if I were to fully develop my memory. Or perhaps it would be even stronger for having moved memory from a high-latency format like my notebook into my brain. Or perhaps having a busy, analytical brain causes poor memory, rather than the other way around. Or perhaps the two functions are completely unrelated. I'm no neurobiologist. I just happen to enjoy the philosophy of "how thinking works."
I was simply trying to draw an analogy, as was Wittgenstein. Of course Watson's "diagram" is more complicated than that. The fact remains that Watson's algorithm consists of some analog to consciously consulting a table of data. Wittgenstein tries to examine that transition from consulting tables to just knowing and to consider why we consider these to be two distinct modes of thought.
What you're saying reminds me of some of the work of the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He focused primarily on the interplay between language and thought. In "The Brown Book," he describes a series of language games. For example, consider a man who can identify building materials because he has a diagram that has pictures next to the written words "brick," "plank," and "peg." (That might be where Watson is right now.) How does that situation differ from a man who has memorized the diagram but still mentally calls it to mind when asked to identify a brick, plank, or peg? How is it different from a man who does not consciously imagine the diagram at all? Intuitively, there appears to be an important difference that is difficult to pin down between interpreting a word based on a rule and interpreting it "cognitively."
Of course, Wittgenstein gets too deep for me pretty frequently. This game repeats itself endlessly as you drill down into any given example. How is it, for example, that the man identifies the sound of the word "brick" with the word "brick" written on his diagram?
In insulators, there are no energy states that involve conductive electrons. In conductors, all of the energy states involve conductive electrons. In semiconductors, electrons normally reside in a nonconductive state but you can inject some energy and the electrons will be raised to a conductive state. The amount of energy required to raise the electrons to a conductive state is that semiconductor's gap.
It would probably make beef more expensive. I imagine that's a good thing, though. By most estimates, even if human beings are going to eat meat, citizens of the USA eat too much of it. An increase in the price of meat might help to moderate the American diet to something more suitable for a healthy human being.