I'm sure since i'm replying to the main body of the article, this will never even be read, but here it goes
I'm an OSX & Firefox user. Under heavy use my macbook will have 3-5 tabbed browser windows each with 10-20 tabs each. On top of that, i'd be running adium, itunes, textmate with 3-4 projects open at once, preview w/ 4-12 documents open, a couple terminal windows open, and usually 4 finder windows open.
So, a whole lot, so probably upwards of 20 actual windows, and numerous tabs in a number of them.
You must have a bad case of time/perspective warp. The first patriot act was passed almost unanimously. It's hard to blame "the opposition" for anything when there was no opposition. Also, in this case, i assume you mean the Republican controlled House, Senate and Executive, which, being the complete majority in 2 of the 3 branches of our Federal Government, i can hardly fathom calling "opposition", since they in fact, dictate the entire course of our government, and have for the past 6 years.
But yes, by all means, criticize anybody who's "blam[ing] it on the opposition".
Do you have evidence that the Patriot Act actually improved anything? I don't.
Is there any evidence that there are fewer institutional barriers to cooperation and coordination? Because if the rest of the agencies effected by the Patriot Act were reorganized like FEMA was, i don't feel very confident that the changes made to the US government are of any use at all.
Also, there is a difference between policy consensus, and the reality of implementation. (for instance, integrating national crime databases, sounds like a great idea, but apparently this isn't an IT project the government could handle building)
Reauthorized means, passed through congress again.:P I think it's significant that congress was dumb enough to let it get by again without more of a fuss. But then, i suppose this isn't a subject that anybody could raise without getting tarred and feathered.
Psych 101? No, that was a small primer on evolutionary biology, with a side of law... we can move onto psychology next if you want, though.
I'm going to stereotype here, but it sounds like you've been reading too much Ayn Rand. How is helping a friend dig themselves out of any hole they've dug themselves into contrary to nature? What nature are you referring to? And why couldn't the death of a family member, or family illness, or any other myriad of possibilities cause them to slide into a counter-productive way of living? What about a guy who's wife dies, and he stops going out to do stuff with his friends, because he feels too distraught to go out and do things, so he stays in and plays WoW instead? Shouldn't somebody come drag him out of his house?
Spending too much time on WoW is exactly the same sort of thing as going out and getting blitzed at a bar too often, it may be fun while they're doing it, they may be think they're being social while they're doing it, but it can still be self-destructive, and they may not get that. And behavior that's fine for one person, may very well be self-destructive to another, so clear analogy to one's peers is not an adequate gauge of reasonable safety.
It's called no self control. That's it. Therefore, they are animals, sure, pity them.
And you can tell me that you always, constantly, always have self-control? You're never sleepy and not thinking clearly? You're never inebriated? You're never under the effects of sedatives? Or maybe something really stressful has happened, and you're wound a little too tight and start snapping at people?
It's not reasonable to expect people to be perfect rational actors. There's a reason why there's a cliche which goes "To err is human."
In situations like that, the problem doesn't get fixed until they recognize it and want to get out of it.
And you don't think that their friends can assist them in recognizing the problem, and perhaps reminding them of reasons why they might want to get out of the situation they're in?:)
You're suffering from a bad case of false dichotomy. It's not the case that people are either perfect rational actors, or irresponsible children who aren't capable of doing things on their own. Even responsible adults need help from other responsible adults.
And when they do finally get around to growing up, we shouldn't cheer them on. You don't reward someone for doing what they should be doing anyway. Otherwise why should any of us act like adults (other than not to be condescended to by the apologists), I mean we could all be children. I'm sure someone can make an excuse for why none of us have to grow up.
This is more poor reasoning. First off, no we couldn't all be children. Your slippery slope has serious problems. There are many reasons why people should act like adults, or want to act like adults (ironically, none of which you have actually stated, beyond your obviously incorrect "THEY WILL BE WEEDED FROM TEH GENE POOL" argument), which happen to also be the same reasons why society could never slide into a mass of children who don't want to do anything or be responsible for anything (although apparently, such people can manage to take over the entire government of the USA). Second off, why not cheer people on? Basic adequacy as a human being, is definitely not something that all people achieve, and frankly i'm happy when anybody reaches that point. But there's a difference between malicious behavior (taking advantage of others, screwing people over, etc), which should be decried, punished, and reviled, and having failed to realize your potential (which is something that can be corrected). Again, you're suffering from more false dichotomies.
Er... flamebait? I don't think that my post contained anything that's controversial in content (tagging is not a good descriptive statistical tool), and i don't think the rhetorical style i chose (while perhaps a bit too familiar) was insulting, or clearly spoiling for a fight. Complainging about this sort of tag pollution is directly analogous to google bombing, and my point is that nobody seemed to raise a furor about that.
Oh, quit being such a stodgy whiner. Tagging systems aren't replacements for top-down ontologies, and shouldn't be used as such. The source of the information isn't trustworthy or comprehensive, i don't see why the existence of a tagging system shouldn't change the information it seeks to describe. So you're shooting for a moving target, so what? Tagging/user keywords are an imprecise science, at best, and a dark art at worst.
But then i suppose you think google bombing is a dumb idea too. (even if it's useless, it's kind of amusing, and does in fact indicate what some people think, even if they put it out there consciously).
I'm whiny??? Me? The one who can think for herself, solve her own problems herself acheived true adulthood (without the need fo some parent replacement watching over my shoulder). So the wienies out there that can't get their crap together are not whiny? I'M not the whiny one, and I'm not going to sit and watch over some supposed adults shoulder and tell them when they are "taking things too far". If that's what they want to do, then that's what they want to do.
Who's asking you to sit over anybody's shoulder? More to the point, what bearing does anybody else's whinyness have any bearing on how whiny you are? I don't feel like you've grasped what we're discussing here. Feeling concern, or wishing for the well-being of others, say your friends, is not something that i'd want to forego, i don't know about you.
Responsibility for those around me only extends to my children who can't be responsible for themselves. I'm not here to mommy my friends. I'm here to be there for them when they need a friend or have fun with them. If they can't figure out how to live their life correctly, I've made the wrong friends. And since all of MY friends don't have that trouble, then I don't have to play mommy to them. I mean, I don't know about you, but my friends are not animals. They are all capable of rational thought and able to use that ability to make decisions for their own lives.
I said i would feel sorry for your friends under the conditions you have just outlined, and so i do. I am sorry that you have such a shallow, superficial view of friendship. The notion that you only pick friends who are successful is trully a depressing thing to admit, and worse yet, the implication that you'd ditch people you know if they fall on hard times is pretty pathetic. It really does make me feel sad.
Again, it is clear from your Social Darwinist description of how you think life should be that you do not have a competent (or even rudamentary) understanding of evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, or even the basics of law, or public policy. Having a miserable awful life does not preclude an individual from having offspring. Furthermore having a miserable awful life does not preclude an individual from making their offspring's life and upbringing awful and miserable. So, i can only come to the conclusion that you have a very naive and ill-conceived notion of what a functioning family or society is. You also have failed to grasp the concept of impared judgement, whereby even otherwise functioning adults are either incapable of making rational judgments, or make judgements that they would otherwise not make. The assumption that people are perfectly rational is naive, not borne out by fact, and frankly rather dangerous. Respecting the autonomy of individuals is one thing, assuming that people always make perfect judgement is a wholly different basket of fruit. Finally, suicide, murder, sterilization will not remove "stupidity" (and i'd love to see someone attempt a rigorous objective definition of that) from whatever misguided notion you associate with "the gene pool". The only thing that removes genes from the human gene pool are wide scale genocide, and/or disease, and even then, humans are so plentiful and varied, its likely even then, that the human species isn't losing all that much genetic diversity. Again, i'm sorry, but you're simply incorrect.
I hope some day you stop being a fair-weather friend and can grow some empathy and understanding for other human beings. (really, i'm not trolling, i really sincerely hope that some day, you can look at what you've written above, and realize that it was foolish of you to believe them. Even if it's not a whole-sale revision, there are ways to preserve what you hold to be important without relying on junk science, poor argumentation, and misunderstandings of what human life should be like.)
The problem with the Forbes article that i have is that its propagandistic. They pejoratively refer to Stallman (i would also add that it's unnecessary, but that's implied by the fact that they're being pejorative) in a number of ways, calling him anti-capitalist, anarchic, claiming that he believes people should give away patents & copyrights, that the FSF is an "outfit" and a "radical group", that GPLv3 is an "attack", that he's on a "socialist crusade". And that's only the first 3rd of the article. The problem is that these are all misrepresentations of stallman, his positions, the positions of the FSF, what the purpose of GPL is, and by association, anybody who uses the GPLs.
Journalistic hack-jobs like this, regardless of how right or wrong Stallman is (i still don't like GPLv3 as far as i've seen), have an overall chilling effect. They are clearly designed to bias people, who are not already well versed in the details and players involved in the situations being reported upon. And when you're dealing with such a technical issue, there are a lot of unacquainted, and unaware people. They're called businessmen. And thus, we all have a problem. Even if we don't think of ourselves as directly linked w/ Stallman
First, language is not immutable, meanings change, grow, shrink. Second, a person's intent never extends to the full consequences of an issue. This is why we have a judicial system in the first place. If things were simple (i.e. there weren't fuzzy or complicated cases that defy easy categorization), we could simply write laws and everything would fall neatly into the buckets we'd carved out. Also, Stallman isn't a lawyer, although his intent is well and good, does he really understand what the consequences of his intent are? Should we have to shoe-horn previously decided case law into the framework of Stallman's intent?
Regardless of whether Stallman or other's think he's leading us into the bright new future, there's all this legacy baggage out in the real world that needs to be squared properly. And that's what judges are supposed to do.
what a whiny and unpragmatic point of view. What i am talking about is taking care of you and yours. I'm not telling you to tell random strangers to get off WoW, especially since you are very likely not going to be aware of what the content of a stranger's life is. I'm talking about alerting people you know and care about to potentially destructive behavior.
This is about taking responsibility for yourself, and the responsibilities you have to the people who are around you. Reasonable people rely on their friends for good advice, because reasonable people understand the fact that they are not perfect and not always correct. Sometimes you need those around you to tell you to shape up. That is something you should be able to expect from and do for your friends. If you are not willing, then i feel very bad for you and the people you know.
Also, Darwinism has nothing to do with this. Whether you ruin your life through spending too much time on WoW is not a selective pressure, since first, you can meet girls online, and second, there are so many other conflated factors in human reproduction in the modern day. You may be alluding to Social Darwinism which, in fact, has next to nothing to do with Darwin. I believe in evolution through natural selection. However, unlike social darwinists, and their tarted-up social theory, which served to prop up the eugenics movement and the Nazi Final Solution (yay godwin!), i believe in Science.
Nonsense. The "don't mess with my decisions" economically are libertarian, and the "don't mess with my decisions" on social issues are liberal in the USA (odd but oh well). Libertarianism is divided in half in American politics, and the "not my problem" mentality is not a Libertarian idea. It is an idea usually borne out of some combination of ignorance, a lack of empathy, or a lack of foresight, none of which have anything to do with nihilism (e.g. nothing matters).
My original point is that political divisions are stupid. The idea that companies make engineering decisions about their products that effect their customers lives is not a liberal idea or a conservative idea. The idea that they should keep that fact in mind is not a liberal or conservative idea. It is about the choices they make on a daily basis, and what they care about. People who deride courses of behavior because they're a "conservative" or "liberal" idea are doing themselves and everyone around them a serious disfavor.
I'm sorry, but that seems like a really warped perspective on reality. Companies should recall their products if there is the real possibility that people are going to die (that is what a voluntary product recall is). I would hazard a guess that a lot of families regardless of whether they are the potential recipients of settlements would probably want a company to recall a product which caused the death of their loved one, so that nobody else might die because of the product.
And if you really want to call a product recall as a punishment, it's punishment for a critically and fatally flawed product design or implimentation. I don't think people should be concerned about the damage to a company responsible for messing up that badly. Again, lets think about the responsibility that companies have.
rather than "educate users"? These are two very different proposals. One comes across at the typical democrat/liberal/nanny-state (you started it) "protect everyone from every conceivable potential harm, no matter the cost and no matter how probable that outcome is" and the other (your proposal) is a moderately reasonable suggestion.
Well, if you're the same AC that i responded to above, my point was actually more to make fun of trying to cast this into terms that sound political. If you read my other comments hanging off my original comment (what i assume you're referring to as the GP), i do abstractly make reference to reengineering systems, but honestly i don't know if that's the appropriate thing to do with this specific case. These are all tools for changing the behavior of people. Education is absolutely vital, no matter what the course of action you take is.
But i'd also ask you whether you think that corporations have responsibility to their users? For instance, continuing with the addiction analogy, are cigarette manufacturers responsible for the continued use of nicotine addicts? Certainly there are a lot of courts where both juries and judges believe that to be the case. I'd at least make the case that companies should at least make some effort to ensure that their products don't expose users to undue risk, all other things being equal (i.e. just do your due diligence, i don't expect people to anticipate all problems with their products, since they can't predict the future, but once they're brought up it'd be nice if people actually evaluated how hard they'd be to impliment).
Of course, it's always amusing when a liberal/busybody/ninny comes out for "personal responsibility" while denigrating the republican/libertiarian/conservative POV.
And i find it extremely ironic that republican/libertiarian/conservative perspectives so often ignore what i take to be issues of their personal responsibility (i.e. personal environmental conservation/over-consumption)!:)
Well, that's an interesting point of discussion. I don't envision making broad proclamations as to how all of society should live their lives. What i believe is phrased hypothetically, if you are at risk for escapism, or depression (which are often related), or ADD, or any of these things which you can feed using games, you should be aware of the possibility your behavior getting out of control (i.e. getting in the way of doing the things you need to survive, like paying rent, or doing your taxes, or being present in your children's lives). And the people who should be informing you of the consequeces of your behavior, are the people who you effect on a daily basis. If you're having a negative impact on their lives, and you have any sympathy for other people, i'd hope that would make you reevaluate what's going on in your life, unless you're having a really rough time (serious depression for example).
You can bet i'd express my opinion if my fiancee began eschewing the time we spend together for WoW:) And i'd like to think that, you know, since she likes me, she'd listen, and not be pissed off. On the other hand, if she was depressed, avoiding work, and spending all her time on WoW, and was blowing off my attempts to point out how i was worried about her, then i might try something more drastic, but i'd argue that's my perogative as her significant other (and if she thinks that i'm out of line, then she can make me not her significant other). People have responsibilities to other people (i hope people can at least agree on that). Whether the courses of action they take properly serve those responsibilities is a different issue.
Well, i think that side-steps the issue, and several of the posts i made below this one also address the fundamental problem here. When you're talking about the potential for abuse, one exemplar can reveal the problem in a system (Based on the material facts of the case), the fact that there are exemplars which function normally don't address the problematic cases. Now the next argument is one about whether or not the problematic cases are widespread, and i'd punt and say, why not err on the side of caution, and address the full issue (keeping in mind, that i respect the fine line between being concerned about the few, and fear-mongering and trying to push an ideological agenda [i.e. Jack Thompson]).
So yeah, bad things happen, good things happen. But just cause there are good things, doesn't mean we shouldn't try and make the bad things go away, right? (and here we get to the cost/benefit analysis thing i mention below) Or at the very least, can i'd like to see an argument why the bad things aren't something that are worth addressing (for which i got a "hey it's not my problem" below, which i found very unsatisfying).
You are partially correct. The particular value of an organization's political stridency is only somewhat relevant (republicans are going to freak about some issues democrats wouldn't freak out at, and visa versa), the quesiton is what is the absolute value of their stridency. I don't trust WorldNewsDaily, and i don't trust People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The validity of the claim isn't determined by the source, but, the likelihood that a particular group is just spreading FUD is definitely effected by the group's history and agenda.
Hmm, perhaps i'm being inappropriately snarky. Obviously i think cost/benefit analyses should be taken into account when deciding what course a project or a policy should take. That said, i don't think that medicine or psychology should be controlled wholly by a tyranny of the majority. You're right that there isn't enough data to indicate how widespread or how damaging escapist behavior online is, but even hypothetically speaking, it seems silly to write off the problem, just by saying "yeah, well there are people out there who aren't effected by WoW!". That's not very reassuring to me:)
Great, way to haul out a republican/libertiarian/conservative knee-jerk. Go you! You can meaninglessly repeat what other people have told you!
Also, who are you to tell somebody what to do with their life?
I'm not telling anybody how to live their lives. But, i think that people should be aware of the consequences of their behavior, and i don't think that a lot of people think through their actions, or, particularly in the case of addictive behaviors, the risk of certain behaviors snowballing out of control. And while that may sound like a slippery slope while we're talking about people in such a blandly general way, this is an issue about individual people. If your friend has blown you off every friday for three weeks so he can go level, i'd be slightly concerned. There is in fact a difference between telling people how to live their life, and making sure that they are aware of the potential consequences of their actions.
That is unless you think that doctors are unduly burdening their patients, when the tell them to eat more healthily or they're going to have a heart attack. (or better yet, that alcoholism runs in their family and that drinking alcohol is a really bad idea for them)
Honestly no, it wasn't as badly anecdotal. You're right that it certainly wasn't an objective account, but at least the first essay did make reference to other people, as well as being a personal account. The references to the effects of WoW on other people were obviously shaded through the author's point of view, but at least he gave some account.
That's like asking, "shouldn't we focus on the problem area without worrying how much of the population they actually represent?"
Yes and we shouldn't bother doing surgery on brain tumor victims, because they're such a small percentage of the population.
If there are avoidable hazards, or you can engineer a system to reduce known risks, shouldn't you?
I mean, i'd like to think that most people find it despicable when car manufacturers decide that it's cheaper simply to pay off litigants who've had family members die due to manufacturer error, rather than recall and fix all of their errors. You can bet that surviving family members think it's awful.
Well, yes short of that, things become more complicated. The problem with this rebuttal is that it's only anecdotal. If you're a high function person who can prioritize well, and can pull themselves away from distractions to get work done, then yeah, you can dump your spare time into WoW and not be worse off for it. I'm betting that doesn't describe too many of MMO players. That's why the analogy to addiction has been made to video game usage. Not all people are the same, and some are going to be have their functionality as a person effected disproportionately from other people. And again, i'd bet that there are more people pissing away their lives on WoW than their are people who can just hop on and off (alternatively, who cares about the people who are perfectly functional on and off WoW, shouldn't we be worrying about the people pissing their lives away, since they're the ones in trouble?).
Not if he is talking about existing guilds. It could be that there were guilds started before his which all folded, leaving his the oldest (functioning) guilds.
not that i'm going to put words in the dude's mouth.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure since i'm replying to the main body of the article, this will never even be read, but here it goes
I'm an OSX & Firefox user. Under heavy use my macbook will have 3-5 tabbed browser windows each with 10-20 tabs each. On top of that, i'd be running adium, itunes, textmate with 3-4 projects open at once, preview w/ 4-12 documents open, a couple terminal windows open, and usually 4 finder windows open.
So, a whole lot, so probably upwards of 20 actual windows, and numerous tabs in a number of them.
You must have a bad case of time/perspective warp. The first patriot act was passed almost unanimously. It's hard to blame "the opposition" for anything when there was no opposition. Also, in this case, i assume you mean the Republican controlled House, Senate and Executive, which, being the complete majority in 2 of the 3 branches of our Federal Government, i can hardly fathom calling "opposition", since they in fact, dictate the entire course of our government, and have for the past 6 years.
But yes, by all means, criticize anybody who's "blam[ing] it on the opposition".
Do you have evidence that the Patriot Act actually improved anything? I don't.
Is there any evidence that there are fewer institutional barriers to cooperation and coordination? Because if the rest of the agencies effected by the Patriot Act were reorganized like FEMA was, i don't feel very confident that the changes made to the US government are of any use at all.
Also, there is a difference between policy consensus, and the reality of implementation. (for instance, integrating national crime databases, sounds like a great idea, but apparently this isn't an IT project the government could handle building)
Reauthorized means, passed through congress again. :P I think it's significant that congress was dumb enough to let it get by again without more of a fuss. But then, i suppose this isn't a subject that anybody could raise without getting tarred and feathered.
Psych 101? No, that was a small primer on evolutionary biology, with a side of law... we can move onto psychology next if you want, though.
:)
I'm going to stereotype here, but it sounds like you've been reading too much Ayn Rand. How is helping a friend dig themselves out of any hole they've dug themselves into contrary to nature? What nature are you referring to? And why couldn't the death of a family member, or family illness, or any other myriad of possibilities cause them to slide into a counter-productive way of living? What about a guy who's wife dies, and he stops going out to do stuff with his friends, because he feels too distraught to go out and do things, so he stays in and plays WoW instead? Shouldn't somebody come drag him out of his house?
Spending too much time on WoW is exactly the same sort of thing as going out and getting blitzed at a bar too often, it may be fun while they're doing it, they may be think they're being social while they're doing it, but it can still be self-destructive, and they may not get that. And behavior that's fine for one person, may very well be self-destructive to another, so clear analogy to one's peers is not an adequate gauge of reasonable safety.
It's called no self control. That's it. Therefore, they are animals, sure, pity them.
And you can tell me that you always, constantly, always have self-control? You're never sleepy and not thinking clearly? You're never inebriated? You're never under the effects of sedatives? Or maybe something really stressful has happened, and you're wound a little too tight and start snapping at people?
It's not reasonable to expect people to be perfect rational actors. There's a reason why there's a cliche which goes "To err is human."
In situations like that, the problem doesn't get fixed until they recognize it and want to get out of it.
And you don't think that their friends can assist them in recognizing the problem, and perhaps reminding them of reasons why they might want to get out of the situation they're in?
You're suffering from a bad case of false dichotomy. It's not the case that people are either perfect rational actors, or irresponsible children who aren't capable of doing things on their own. Even responsible adults need help from other responsible adults.
And when they do finally get around to growing up, we shouldn't cheer them on. You don't reward someone for doing what they should be doing anyway. Otherwise why should any of us act like adults (other than not to be condescended to by the apologists), I mean we could all be children. I'm sure someone can make an excuse for why none of us have to grow up.
This is more poor reasoning. First off, no we couldn't all be children. Your slippery slope has serious problems. There are many reasons why people should act like adults, or want to act like adults (ironically, none of which you have actually stated, beyond your obviously incorrect "THEY WILL BE WEEDED FROM TEH GENE POOL" argument), which happen to also be the same reasons why society could never slide into a mass of children who don't want to do anything or be responsible for anything (although apparently, such people can manage to take over the entire government of the USA). Second off, why not cheer people on? Basic adequacy as a human being, is definitely not something that all people achieve, and frankly i'm happy when anybody reaches that point. But there's a difference between malicious behavior (taking advantage of others, screwing people over, etc), which should be decried, punished, and reviled, and having failed to realize your potential (which is something that can be corrected). Again, you're suffering from more false dichotomies.
Er... flamebait? I don't think that my post contained anything that's controversial in content (tagging is not a good descriptive statistical tool), and i don't think the rhetorical style i chose (while perhaps a bit too familiar) was insulting, or clearly spoiling for a fight. Complainging about this sort of tag pollution is directly analogous to google bombing, and my point is that nobody seemed to raise a furor about that.
Oh, quit being such a stodgy whiner. Tagging systems aren't replacements for top-down ontologies, and shouldn't be used as such. The source of the information isn't trustworthy or comprehensive, i don't see why the existence of a tagging system shouldn't change the information it seeks to describe. So you're shooting for a moving target, so what? Tagging/user keywords are an imprecise science, at best, and a dark art at worst.
But then i suppose you think google bombing is a dumb idea too. (even if it's useless, it's kind of amusing, and does in fact indicate what some people think, even if they put it out there consciously).
I'm whiny??? Me? The one who can think for herself, solve her own problems herself acheived true adulthood (without the need fo some parent replacement watching over my shoulder). So the wienies out there that can't get their crap together are not whiny? I'M not the whiny one, and I'm not going to sit and watch over some supposed adults shoulder and tell them when they are "taking things too far". If that's what they want to do, then that's what they want to do.
Who's asking you to sit over anybody's shoulder? More to the point, what bearing does anybody else's whinyness have any bearing on how whiny you are? I don't feel like you've grasped what we're discussing here. Feeling concern, or wishing for the well-being of others, say your friends, is not something that i'd want to forego, i don't know about you.
Responsibility for those around me only extends to my children who can't be responsible for themselves. I'm not here to mommy my friends. I'm here to be there for them when they need a friend or have fun with them. If they can't figure out how to live their life correctly, I've made the wrong friends. And since all of MY friends don't have that trouble, then I don't have to play mommy to them. I mean, I don't know about you, but my friends are not animals. They are all capable of rational thought and able to use that ability to make decisions for their own lives.
I said i would feel sorry for your friends under the conditions you have just outlined, and so i do. I am sorry that you have such a shallow, superficial view of friendship. The notion that you only pick friends who are successful is trully a depressing thing to admit, and worse yet, the implication that you'd ditch people you know if they fall on hard times is pretty pathetic. It really does make me feel sad.
Again, it is clear from your Social Darwinist description of how you think life should be that you do not have a competent (or even rudamentary) understanding of evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, or even the basics of law, or public policy. Having a miserable awful life does not preclude an individual from having offspring. Furthermore having a miserable awful life does not preclude an individual from making their offspring's life and upbringing awful and miserable. So, i can only come to the conclusion that you have a very naive and ill-conceived notion of what a functioning family or society is. You also have failed to grasp the concept of impared judgement, whereby even otherwise functioning adults are either incapable of making rational judgments, or make judgements that they would otherwise not make. The assumption that people are perfectly rational is naive, not borne out by fact, and frankly rather dangerous. Respecting the autonomy of individuals is one thing, assuming that people always make perfect judgement is a wholly different basket of fruit. Finally, suicide, murder, sterilization will not remove "stupidity" (and i'd love to see someone attempt a rigorous objective definition of that) from whatever misguided notion you associate with "the gene pool". The only thing that removes genes from the human gene pool are wide scale genocide, and/or disease, and even then, humans are so plentiful and varied, its likely even then, that the human species isn't losing all that much genetic diversity. Again, i'm sorry, but you're simply incorrect.
I hope some day you stop being a fair-weather friend and can grow some empathy and understanding for other human beings. (really, i'm not trolling, i really sincerely hope that some day, you can look at what you've written above, and realize that it was foolish of you to believe them. Even if it's not a whole-sale revision, there are ways to preserve what you hold to be important without relying on junk science, poor argumentation, and misunderstandings of what human life should be like.)
The problem with the Forbes article that i have is that its propagandistic. They pejoratively refer to Stallman (i would also add that it's unnecessary, but that's implied by the fact that they're being pejorative) in a number of ways, calling him anti-capitalist, anarchic, claiming that he believes people should give away patents & copyrights, that the FSF is an "outfit" and a "radical group", that GPLv3 is an "attack", that he's on a "socialist crusade". And that's only the first 3rd of the article. The problem is that these are all misrepresentations of stallman, his positions, the positions of the FSF, what the purpose of GPL is, and by association, anybody who uses the GPLs.
Journalistic hack-jobs like this, regardless of how right or wrong Stallman is (i still don't like GPLv3 as far as i've seen), have an overall chilling effect. They are clearly designed to bias people, who are not already well versed in the details and players involved in the situations being reported upon. And when you're dealing with such a technical issue, there are a lot of unacquainted, and unaware people. They're called businessmen. And thus, we all have a problem. Even if we don't think of ourselves as directly linked w/ Stallman
First, language is not immutable, meanings change, grow, shrink. Second, a person's intent never extends to the full consequences of an issue. This is why we have a judicial system in the first place. If things were simple (i.e. there weren't fuzzy or complicated cases that defy easy categorization), we could simply write laws and everything would fall neatly into the buckets we'd carved out. Also, Stallman isn't a lawyer, although his intent is well and good, does he really understand what the consequences of his intent are? Should we have to shoe-horn previously decided case law into the framework of Stallman's intent?
Regardless of whether Stallman or other's think he's leading us into the bright new future, there's all this legacy baggage out in the real world that needs to be squared properly. And that's what judges are supposed to do.
what a whiny and unpragmatic point of view. What i am talking about is taking care of you and yours. I'm not telling you to tell random strangers to get off WoW, especially since you are very likely not going to be aware of what the content of a stranger's life is. I'm talking about alerting people you know and care about to potentially destructive behavior.
This is about taking responsibility for yourself, and the responsibilities you have to the people who are around you. Reasonable people rely on their friends for good advice, because reasonable people understand the fact that they are not perfect and not always correct. Sometimes you need those around you to tell you to shape up. That is something you should be able to expect from and do for your friends. If you are not willing, then i feel very bad for you and the people you know.
Also, Darwinism has nothing to do with this. Whether you ruin your life through spending too much time on WoW is not a selective pressure, since first, you can meet girls online, and second, there are so many other conflated factors in human reproduction in the modern day. You may be alluding to Social Darwinism which, in fact, has next to nothing to do with Darwin. I believe in evolution through natural selection. However, unlike social darwinists, and their tarted-up social theory, which served to prop up the eugenics movement and the Nazi Final Solution (yay godwin!), i believe in Science.
Nonsense. The "don't mess with my decisions" economically are libertarian, and the "don't mess with my decisions" on social issues are liberal in the USA (odd but oh well). Libertarianism is divided in half in American politics, and the "not my problem" mentality is not a Libertarian idea. It is an idea usually borne out of some combination of ignorance, a lack of empathy, or a lack of foresight, none of which have anything to do with nihilism (e.g. nothing matters).
My original point is that political divisions are stupid. The idea that companies make engineering decisions about their products that effect their customers lives is not a liberal idea or a conservative idea. The idea that they should keep that fact in mind is not a liberal or conservative idea. It is about the choices they make on a daily basis, and what they care about. People who deride courses of behavior because they're a "conservative" or "liberal" idea are doing themselves and everyone around them a serious disfavor.
I'm sorry, but that seems like a really warped perspective on reality. Companies should recall their products if there is the real possibility that people are going to die (that is what a voluntary product recall is). I would hazard a guess that a lot of families regardless of whether they are the potential recipients of settlements would probably want a company to recall a product which caused the death of their loved one, so that nobody else might die because of the product.
And if you really want to call a product recall as a punishment, it's punishment for a critically and fatally flawed product design or implimentation. I don't think people should be concerned about the damage to a company responsible for messing up that badly. Again, lets think about the responsibility that companies have.
rather than "educate users"? These are two very different proposals. One comes across at the typical democrat/liberal/nanny-state (you started it) "protect everyone from every conceivable potential harm, no matter the cost and no matter how probable that outcome is" and the other (your proposal) is a moderately reasonable suggestion.
:)
Well, if you're the same AC that i responded to above, my point was actually more to make fun of trying to cast this into terms that sound political. If you read my other comments hanging off my original comment (what i assume you're referring to as the GP), i do abstractly make reference to reengineering systems, but honestly i don't know if that's the appropriate thing to do with this specific case. These are all tools for changing the behavior of people. Education is absolutely vital, no matter what the course of action you take is.
But i'd also ask you whether you think that corporations have responsibility to their users? For instance, continuing with the addiction analogy, are cigarette manufacturers responsible for the continued use of nicotine addicts? Certainly there are a lot of courts where both juries and judges believe that to be the case. I'd at least make the case that companies should at least make some effort to ensure that their products don't expose users to undue risk, all other things being equal (i.e. just do your due diligence, i don't expect people to anticipate all problems with their products, since they can't predict the future, but once they're brought up it'd be nice if people actually evaluated how hard they'd be to impliment).
Of course, it's always amusing when a liberal/busybody/ninny comes out for "personal responsibility" while denigrating the republican/libertiarian/conservative POV.
And i find it extremely ironic that republican/libertiarian/conservative perspectives so often ignore what i take to be issues of their personal responsibility (i.e. personal environmental conservation/over-consumption)!
Well, that's an interesting point of discussion. I don't envision making broad proclamations as to how all of society should live their lives. What i believe is phrased hypothetically, if you are at risk for escapism, or depression (which are often related), or ADD, or any of these things which you can feed using games, you should be aware of the possibility your behavior getting out of control (i.e. getting in the way of doing the things you need to survive, like paying rent, or doing your taxes, or being present in your children's lives). And the people who should be informing you of the consequeces of your behavior, are the people who you effect on a daily basis. If you're having a negative impact on their lives, and you have any sympathy for other people, i'd hope that would make you reevaluate what's going on in your life, unless you're having a really rough time (serious depression for example).
:) And i'd like to think that, you know, since she likes me, she'd listen, and not be pissed off. On the other hand, if she was depressed, avoiding work, and spending all her time on WoW, and was blowing off my attempts to point out how i was worried about her, then i might try something more drastic, but i'd argue that's my perogative as her significant other (and if she thinks that i'm out of line, then she can make me not her significant other). People have responsibilities to other people (i hope people can at least agree on that). Whether the courses of action they take properly serve those responsibilities is a different issue.
You can bet i'd express my opinion if my fiancee began eschewing the time we spend together for WoW
Well, i think that side-steps the issue, and several of the posts i made below this one also address the fundamental problem here. When you're talking about the potential for abuse, one exemplar can reveal the problem in a system (Based on the material facts of the case), the fact that there are exemplars which function normally don't address the problematic cases. Now the next argument is one about whether or not the problematic cases are widespread, and i'd punt and say, why not err on the side of caution, and address the full issue (keeping in mind, that i respect the fine line between being concerned about the few, and fear-mongering and trying to push an ideological agenda [i.e. Jack Thompson]).
So yeah, bad things happen, good things happen. But just cause there are good things, doesn't mean we shouldn't try and make the bad things go away, right? (and here we get to the cost/benefit analysis thing i mention below) Or at the very least, can i'd like to see an argument why the bad things aren't something that are worth addressing (for which i got a "hey it's not my problem" below, which i found very unsatisfying).
You are partially correct. The particular value of an organization's political stridency is only somewhat relevant (republicans are going to freak about some issues democrats wouldn't freak out at, and visa versa), the quesiton is what is the absolute value of their stridency. I don't trust WorldNewsDaily, and i don't trust People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The validity of the claim isn't determined by the source, but, the likelihood that a particular group is just spreading FUD is definitely effected by the group's history and agenda.
Hmm, perhaps i'm being inappropriately snarky. Obviously i think cost/benefit analyses should be taken into account when deciding what course a project or a policy should take. That said, i don't think that medicine or psychology should be controlled wholly by a tyranny of the majority. You're right that there isn't enough data to indicate how widespread or how damaging escapist behavior online is, but even hypothetically speaking, it seems silly to write off the problem, just by saying "yeah, well there are people out there who aren't effected by WoW!". That's not very reassuring to me :)
Nope, not my problem.
Great, way to haul out a republican/libertiarian/conservative knee-jerk. Go you! You can meaninglessly repeat what other people have told you!
Also, who are you to tell somebody what to do with their life?
I'm not telling anybody how to live their lives. But, i think that people should be aware of the consequences of their behavior, and i don't think that a lot of people think through their actions, or, particularly in the case of addictive behaviors, the risk of certain behaviors snowballing out of control. And while that may sound like a slippery slope while we're talking about people in such a blandly general way, this is an issue about individual people. If your friend has blown you off every friday for three weeks so he can go level, i'd be slightly concerned. There is in fact a difference between telling people how to live their life, and making sure that they are aware of the potential consequences of their actions.
That is unless you think that doctors are unduly burdening their patients, when the tell them to eat more healthily or they're going to have a heart attack. (or better yet, that alcoholism runs in their family and that drinking alcohol is a really bad idea for them)
Honestly no, it wasn't as badly anecdotal. You're right that it certainly wasn't an objective account, but at least the first essay did make reference to other people, as well as being a personal account. The references to the effects of WoW on other people were obviously shaded through the author's point of view, but at least he gave some account.
That's like asking, "shouldn't we focus on the problem area without worrying how much of the population they actually represent?"
Yes and we shouldn't bother doing surgery on brain tumor victims, because they're such a small percentage of the population.
If there are avoidable hazards, or you can engineer a system to reduce known risks, shouldn't you?
I mean, i'd like to think that most people find it despicable when car manufacturers decide that it's cheaper simply to pay off litigants who've had family members die due to manufacturer error, rather than recall and fix all of their errors. You can bet that surviving family members think it's awful.
The day people woke up and realized that you could "add value" to products :P
Or maybe the day that people decided higher education was an asset towards climbing out of destitution, and misery?
Well, yes short of that, things become more complicated. The problem with this rebuttal is that it's only anecdotal. If you're a high function person who can prioritize well, and can pull themselves away from distractions to get work done, then yeah, you can dump your spare time into WoW and not be worse off for it. I'm betting that doesn't describe too many of MMO players. That's why the analogy to addiction has been made to video game usage. Not all people are the same, and some are going to be have their functionality as a person effected disproportionately from other people. And again, i'd bet that there are more people pissing away their lives on WoW than their are people who can just hop on and off (alternatively, who cares about the people who are perfectly functional on and off WoW, shouldn't we be worrying about the people pissing their lives away, since they're the ones in trouble?).
RTFA, and get some contextual scoping people! The author doesn't claim his guild is the oldest in -all- existence, it's the oldest ON HIS SERVER.
Quoth the raven:
The guild Mr. Yeager got me into and with which I became an officer is the oldest and largest on the server I played on.
Not if he is talking about existing guilds. It could be that there were guilds started before his which all folded, leaving his the oldest (functioning) guilds.
not that i'm going to put words in the dude's mouth.