It is just another sign of our society's moral decay.
Thank you, I needed a good laugh.
People on this website think learning and understanding about the world is a morally good thing. Some of us think it's the meaning of Life (not my life -- the existence of life at all).
Even some of us with that attitude are religious.
I guess you're from USA?
The rest of the industrialized world (and the US coasts) thinks of "flyower area" as large suburbs of Teheran.
Sorry for flaming when you made my day, but I want my/. trolling-free and I used my mod points recently...:-)
I gave no theory; I simply stated that the field of research that the parent was citing, and I have read much of it, is suspect.
All research is suspect -- and much will be modified by later findings. Of course. But there is a cottage industry of writers trying to suspect results that go against their ideologies...
Those writers are not interested in the research really, but changing the public's view (i.e. political posturing). A typical example was a PhD thesis at a local university about personality differences in girls with higher testosterone levels in uterus; after hearing stories about it, I had to check the PhD thesis and the critical articles, which where full of it.
I'm sorry if I misunderstood -- and you're not another one. Those idealists tend to outnumber their critics.
(And, no, I'm not a follower of any thesis -- I just dislike intellectual dishonesty. I'd even go so far to say that in US there seems to be even more crazies on the right than on the left.)
Believing in something without question just because some says so sounds a lot like religion to me.
Yesss... it is a statistical heuristic to think that in the commonly accepted view of e.g. evolution is more likely than some people claiming an inspiration from some ghods. (At least, unless you've studied evol algorithms or palaeontology, or something.)
The problem is, here too, that the creationists have a conspiracy theory -- all the researchers have to be idiots or in a conspiracy.
(-: Maybe the cognitive psychology researchers are controlled by CIA?:-)
I have no problem with people having different views than the accepted position of the researchers in a field. As long as (a) they understand the motivations for the the researchers to reach their position and (b) they can motivate why the common view among the researchers is wrong.
Except that most of the gender studies that have been carried out in the past were not built on the soundest foundation and often reported "findings" perfectly inline with what the researchers already believed in. [...} My experience is that "you can generally say" is synonymous with the expression "they say" which has all the verifiability of a granfaloon and only half of its value.
If you can show that, you will get tenure!:-)
Your thesis needs that the large majority of e.g. cognitive psychologists are idiots (and/or are in a conspiracy and lie).
Note that your theory is very similar to creationism (which needs to assume that, amongst other groups, paleontologists and biologists are in a conspiracy or idiots).
Idealists (marxism, diverse religions) have problems with part of personality and talents being built in. Without good support, it's just lysenkoism or creationism.
(I'm not discussing the article, which seems too make a chicken farm out of a feather. But there are good results supporting statistical variation in e.g. verbal and spatial talent between the sexes.)
I mean that you're promoting an ideal of 'wider dataset reachable from disagreement', while ignoring that this is in fact a bias.
Certainly, if it is a simple problem domain that we can have certain opinions on -- then agreement is good. But it is a boring discussion subject and it doesn't work like that in the real world outside e.g. math.
With groups of people in society, it is so complex and badly understood that we can't have any certain theories. We just don't know how people work. (Especially considered that people are partly "programmed" culturally, which means that how we function is changed at least every generation!)
Hence, all our opinions on the world are more or less wrong. And we need to have an open mind and continuously learn -- and be scared of too little disagreement.
Note that if we got a good theory of how people work in groups, people would learn it and change their behaviour. I read about an example from economics, where researchers waited with publishing their theory until after gathering more data -- because they knew the actors in the economy would update their behaviour after reading their work.
It means if you want to get away with propaganda - all you have to do is put it in your sig instead of in your post's body and it's considered taboo for anyone to question you on it.
Nitwit Moderators -- this was more "Interesting" than "Offtopic"!
I didn't understand what you meant, so I assume you misunderstood my comment.
I commented on "The most valuable condition [is] when two people agree with each other".
I disagreed. You learn less from people that agrees with you. (But you don't get that happy feeling of togetherness you get, sitting and confirming your opinions.)
Do you use some other definition of "agree" than "have the same opinions on a subject"? Never mind, this is not going anywhere.
The Jewish example was about Jewish' problems, so I can't see what communication have to do with it.
To joke about other's problems are, of course, more sensitive. But the attitude here is important. Maybe you could argue that, in my case...
(Other classics of the '80s:
How many Ethiopians can you fit into a shower stall? Can't be counted, since they keep slipping down the drain!
What do you call a blonde with coloured hair? AI!)
The most valuable condition on this planet today occurs when two people agree with each other.
What is to learn from that?
I prefer when people disagree with me -- and they reached those opinions not by religious/ideological ways but by careful reading and thinking. That gives me a chance to learn and maybe change my mind.
Prosperity does not give one the right to degrade another persons experience... Chernobyl is no laughing matter, even still to this day, for a lot of people.
You joke about things as a way to handle and relate to them. Look at the incredible Jewish humour traditions.
That said -- there are things I don't joke about, because it's a bit too close to friends. Like rape -- which can give mental problems. But it would feel like failure if I e.g. got cancer and failed to joke about it.
(This I should do Anon, but never mind. I'll stand up for this point.)
Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell and Einstein beleived in God. So do I.
And so did Hitler...:-)
Much fewer scientists are religious -- if you compare to the general population.
It's an old observation that if you cherrypick examples from a large data set, you can get good statistics for any thesis. Of course, that is the reason it is considered less than intellectually honest...
Besides, "religious" is hardly a good description of
Einstein. Also, Newton was a nut I wouldn't want to mention regarding anything but math... Ah never mind.
(The references are just Googles for things I read years ago and wanted pointers to. Original source is Nature.)
The reason is simple: Some people (like me) don't want realism.
I agree totally!
For an example of how boring reality is, look at how popular Counterstrike is.
Yes, CS is popular and it is quite realistic. But those qualities can't be connected!
Obviously, the realism is a disadvantage for CS -- consider that lots and lots of people work like animals to write very popular plugins so they can get some unrealistic effects in CS -- seeing through walls, radar screens with other players pinpointed, etc, etc.
ESR wasn't very smart. He shouldn't have publish this YET. Give them to IBM lawyers so they know what to look for and what they are fairly certain that they have it among their discovery material, THEN publish it.
Maybe the ones that found it and sent it on for publication was IBM lawyers?:-)
Hopefully if you are in science, you are doing what you do for reasons other than financial gain.
Don't worry. The newspapers don't write stories about dogs that bite men. So this is not common.
(-: But if the life of grad students are as bad as they seem, I think Coca Cola should hire the same ad agency that has sold the university sting! Could teach the Nigeria guys, too!:-)
This is obviously very "Funny" -- and not serious.
(Consider the distance Earth/Moon; to hit the Moon would be increadibly hard. I'm not going to discuss how little a simple asteroid is deflecting a friggin' moon!)
Besides, the plan is booring.
Much less aesthetical then using lots of cool nukes.
Also, we could send Mel Gibson to handhold the nukes, "Doctor Strangelove"-style! (Only thing better would be a "Braveheart" end...)
In 3 attempts I couldn't get you to discuss (much less acknowledge) the trivial observation that ad sellers have an interest in keeping ad buyers happy.
That is, if the ad sellers could influence the content of their media (what is written, what is reviewed, etc) they would earn money on it by keeping the ad buyers happy.
Not necessarily that they do that, but there is an obvious conflict of interests.
I guess that the problem could be my communication skills... anyway, I do agree, there just isn't anything coming out of this, though I will remember your answer to my third point for a long time!
Regarding point 1, I didn't want you to yet again claim that there is no influence of the content to get more advertising money.
I wanted you to acknowledge -- as a start -- that there is an obvious common interest between ad buyers/sellers to get magazine's contents to give a good light on the big advertisers. What ad buyers want is exposure -- if they get more in one place for their money they'll certainly be interested. And it is obviously in the sellers interest to make the buyers happy. Usually, the sell eyeballs as much as magazines.
It is quite obvious that you're not going to answer this obvious point seriously -- you instead disagree with something else (that ad buyers do get that influence).
Point 2 -- you can write investment tips for what you earn by helping Nigerians transfer money if you at the same time write the Nigerian letters are shams in other articles?
Point 3 you reiterated what I said exactly, but better written. But without discussion of my point -- "why didn't any article I saw discuss the total lack of credibility in the argument?" (And, yes, I do expect journalists to repeat something relevant to disprove a quote from a company that is doing an obvious dishonest argument.)
Now, I wouldn't get a job as a journalist so you might have totally misunderstand? But why didn't you ask for an explanation, then?
I think your way of not answering on this point should be in some book on political arguments. I get more impressed every time I read it. You really write well and give an impression that you've answered it fully with correct facts -- and ignore the main point!
I'm impressed. You don't exactly impress me as honest, but this is oriented to other people reading it, right? Never mind, I don't think I want to learn.
Point 4 -- ???
You misunderstood the point and thought it was about Xerox -- not about how the story was handled by journalists? (Why would I write that as an example?!?!)
(Sigh, I don't follow television enough, but I've heard lots of examples through the years when content of a channel was changed around to make advertisers happy. I guess any more discussion will be you refusing to answer my point 1 etc and demanding answers from me on this?)
1. Well, then, at last please acknowledge my point that there is a large and obvious common interest between ad buyers/sellers and getting the right content into magazines.
(-: I didn't intend to sound like Chomsky, btw...:-)
2. Let's take the article under discussion. There are lots of obvious problems with SCO's case (Novell claiming they are liars, the changing story, SCO claiming ownership of header files that are ANSI C standards(!), SCO promised a 100 days or so ago to start suing users in less than 90 days, etc, etc).
Realistically, even with the US' law courts seeming to be a bit of a dice game, SCO can't have much of a chance -- they would have presented a more consistent story from the beginning.
The author could as well discuss how to invest the money gained from helping rich Nigerians export money caught in a bank account by their father's death.
3. Microsoft went out a few months ago and claimed they were having security problems mainly because of Windows having the largest population and that making them the most tempting target. Any other O/S that was larger would have the same problem.
I didn't see journalists doing the trivial follow up question -- "But Apache has 2-3 times as large installed base as your web server, yet your web server gets many more attacks?" Or even mentioning the statistics of OpenBSD.
4. And one thing I've always wondered.
Apple bought (using stock) information from Xerox on the Star (which was based quite a lot on research, not all done in Xerox). Then Apple rebuilt the interface so much it was half Apple's work.
Then the Pepsi guy (whatever his name is) fouled up and signed a deal that allowed Msoft to sell Excel and Word on other platforms. M-soft used that to win in court and copied the whole GUI experience (including xeroxing Apple's APIs) -- without a license from Xerox.
That description is not controversial, but I've never seen an article discussing it. I've literally heard dozens of people claiming "Apple stole it from Xerox and Msoft also copied it". There is only one interested in that version of reality, which also happens to be a large ad buyer.
Advertisers have a large influence on the tone and content of television. This is well known. As you wrote:
post-September 11, advertisers were over-sensitive about associating their products with a show that didn't swallow all the rhetoric, that dared to ask important questions and, above all, state unpopular but honest truths.
Maybe you are right and e.g. the number of pro Microsoft opinions we've see out there are just because the people with certain views just happened to get those jobs. Lucky coincidence if you consider that getting the right content is worth lots of money to the rag...
I could take up examples, but again -- if I am totally wrong you would write exactly the same thing as if I'm totally right.
I wrote that you really can't write anything else.
It would be like asking a suspect if he commited a serious crime. The only reason to answer "yes" would be to cut a deal -- if he's obviously going to get judged guilty anyway.
You are right -- I don't deserve the Karma. My opinions are quite obvious. As most people working with computers for a long time, I could give a more examples of press behavior (e.g. ridiculously good treatment of Msoft during the trials).
I was probably modded up as a dislike of the original article, which failed to mention that, given all the negative stuff from Grokklaw, the SCO case doesn't look good.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you, I needed a good laugh.
People on this website think learning and understanding about the world is a morally good thing. Some of us think it's the meaning of Life (not my life -- the existence of life at all).
Even some of us with that attitude are religious.
I guess you're from USA?
The rest of the industrialized world (and the US coasts) thinks of "flyower area" as large suburbs of Teheran.
Sorry for flaming when you made my day, but I want my /. trolling-free and I used my mod points recently... :-)
All research is suspect -- and much will be modified by later findings. Of course. But there is a cottage industry of writers trying to suspect results that go against their ideologies...
Those writers are not interested in the research really, but changing the public's view (i.e. political posturing). A typical example was a PhD thesis at a local university about personality differences in girls with higher testosterone levels in uterus; after hearing stories about it, I had to check the PhD thesis and the critical articles, which where full of it.
I'm sorry if I misunderstood -- and you're not another one. Those idealists tend to outnumber their critics.
(And, no, I'm not a follower of any thesis -- I just dislike intellectual dishonesty. I'd even go so far to say that in US there seems to be even more crazies on the right than on the left.)
Yesss... it is a statistical heuristic to think that in the commonly accepted view of e.g. evolution is more likely than some people claiming an inspiration from some ghods. (At least, unless you've studied evol algorithms or palaeontology, or something.)The problem is, here too, that the creationists have a conspiracy theory -- all the researchers have to be idiots or in a conspiracy.
(-: Maybe the cognitive psychology researchers are controlled by CIA? :-)
I have no problem with people having different views than the accepted position of the researchers in a field. As long as (a) they understand the motivations for the the researchers to reach their position and (b) they can motivate why the common view among the researchers is wrong.
If you can show that, you will get tenure! :-)
Your thesis needs that the large majority of e.g. cognitive psychologists are idiots (and/or are in a conspiracy and lie).
Note that your theory is very similar to creationism (which needs to assume that, amongst other groups, paleontologists and biologists are in a conspiracy or idiots).
Idealists (marxism, diverse religions) have problems with part of personality and talents being built in. Without good support, it's just lysenkoism or creationism.
(I'm not discussing the article, which seems too make a chicken farm out of a feather. But there are good results supporting statistical variation in e.g. verbal and spatial talent between the sexes.)
With groups of people in society, it is so complex and badly understood that we can't have any certain theories. We just don't know how people work. (Especially considered that people are partly "programmed" culturally, which means that how we function is changed at least every generation!)
Hence, all our opinions on the world are more or less wrong. And we need to have an open mind and continuously learn -- and be scared of too little disagreement.
Note that if we got a good theory of how people work in groups, people would learn it and change their behaviour. I read about an example from economics, where researchers waited with publishing their theory until after gathering more data -- because they knew the actors in the economy would update their behaviour after reading their work.
Nitwit Moderators -- this was more "Interesting" than "Offtopic"!
I commented on "The most valuable condition [is] when two people agree with each other".
I disagreed. You learn less from people that agrees with you. (But you don't get that happy feeling of togetherness you get, sitting and confirming your opinions.)
Do you use some other definition of "agree" than "have the same opinions on a subject"? Never mind, this is not going anywhere.
I didn't write "first line of repair". Or only.
The Jewish example was about Jewish' problems, so I can't see what communication have to do with it.
To joke about other's problems are, of course, more sensitive. But the attitude here is important. Maybe you could argue that, in my case...
(Other classics of the '80s:
How many Ethiopians can you fit into a shower stall? Can't be counted, since they keep slipping down the drain!
What do you call a blonde with coloured hair? AI!)
What is to learn from that?
I prefer when people disagree with me -- and they reached those opinions not by religious/ideological ways but by careful reading and thinking. That gives me a chance to learn and maybe change my mind.
You joke about things as a way to handle and relate to them. Look at the incredible Jewish humour traditions.
That said -- there are things I don't joke about, because it's a bit too close to friends. Like rape -- which can give mental problems. But it would feel like failure if I e.g. got cancer and failed to joke about it.
(This I should do Anon, but never mind. I'll stand up for this point.)
Q:How do you recognize a Swedish child born 9 months after Chernobyl?
A:Look for the blonde eyes and blue hair!
(-: I'm allowed to joke with stuffed shirt Swede, since I'm Swedish too, but not blonde... :-)
Much fewer scientists are religious -- if you compare to the general population.
It's an old observation that if you cherrypick examples from a large data set, you can get good statistics for any thesis. Of course, that is the reason it is considered less than intellectually honest...
Besides, "religious" is hardly a good description of Einstein. Also, Newton was a nut I wouldn't want to mention regarding anything but math... Ah never mind.
(The references are just Googles for things I read years ago and wanted pointers to. Original source is Nature.)
(-: I did have this sig before writing this. :-)
For an example of how boring reality is, look at how popular Counterstrike is.
Yes, CS is popular and it is quite realistic. But those qualities can't be connected!
Obviously, the realism is a disadvantage for CS -- consider that lots and lots of people work like animals to write very popular plugins so they can get some unrealistic effects in CS -- seeing through walls, radar screens with other players pinpointed, etc, etc.
Half a ":-)" here.
Vote Cthulhu for President!
It's an order of magnitude since humanity's natural number base is octal.
No, it's not 10. Look at your hand -- the thumb is there for carry-bits when adding.
(Old PDP10 joke from before my time.)
Don't worry. The newspapers don't write stories about dogs that bite men. So this is not common.
(-: But if the life of grad students are as bad as they seem, I think Coca Cola should hire the same ad agency that has sold the university sting! Could teach the Nigeria guys, too! :-)
(Consider the distance Earth/Moon; to hit the Moon would be increadibly hard. I'm not going to discuss how little a simple asteroid is deflecting a friggin' moon!)
Besides, the plan is booring.
Much less aesthetical then using lots of cool nukes.
Also, we could send Mel Gibson to handhold the nukes, "Doctor Strangelove"-style! (Only thing better would be a "Braveheart" end...)
That is, if the ad sellers could influence the content of their media (what is written, what is reviewed, etc) they would earn money on it by keeping the ad buyers happy.
Not necessarily that they do that, but there is an obvious conflict of interests.
I guess that the problem could be my communication skills... anyway, I do agree, there just isn't anything coming out of this, though I will remember your answer to my third point for a long time!
As I started with, it is meaningless to discuss things that people would never admit -- if true.
The only thing you can measure is how honest their discussion methods are.
I wanted you to acknowledge -- as a start -- that there is an obvious common interest between ad buyers/sellers to get magazine's contents to give a good light on the big advertisers. What ad buyers want is exposure -- if they get more in one place for their money they'll certainly be interested. And it is obviously in the sellers interest to make the buyers happy. Usually, the sell eyeballs as much as magazines.
It is quite obvious that you're not going to answer this obvious point seriously -- you instead disagree with something else (that ad buyers do get that influence).
Point 2 -- you can write investment tips for what you earn by helping Nigerians transfer money if you at the same time write the Nigerian letters are shams in other articles?
Point 3 you reiterated what I said exactly, but better written. But without discussion of my point -- "why didn't any article I saw discuss the total lack of credibility in the argument?" (And, yes, I do expect journalists to repeat something relevant to disprove a quote from a company that is doing an obvious dishonest argument.)
Now, I wouldn't get a job as a journalist so you might have totally misunderstand? But why didn't you ask for an explanation, then?
I think your way of not answering on this point should be in some book on political arguments. I get more impressed every time I read it. You really write well and give an impression that you've answered it fully with correct facts -- and ignore the main point!
I'm impressed. You don't exactly impress me as honest, but this is oriented to other people reading it, right? Never mind, I don't think I want to learn.
Point 4 -- ???
You misunderstood the point and thought it was about Xerox -- not about how the story was handled by journalists? (Why would I write that as an example?!?!)
(Sigh, I don't follow television enough, but I've heard lots of examples through the years when content of a channel was changed around to make advertisers happy. I guess any more discussion will be you refusing to answer my point 1 etc and demanding answers from me on this?)
(-: I didn't intend to sound like Chomsky, btw... :-)
2. Let's take the article under discussion. There are lots of obvious problems with SCO's case (Novell claiming they are liars, the changing story, SCO claiming ownership of header files that are ANSI C standards(!), SCO promised a 100 days or so ago to start suing users in less than 90 days, etc, etc).
Realistically, even with the US' law courts seeming to be a bit of a dice game, SCO can't have much of a chance -- they would have presented a more consistent story from the beginning.
The author could as well discuss how to invest the money gained from helping rich Nigerians export money caught in a bank account by their father's death.
3. Microsoft went out a few months ago and claimed they were having security problems mainly because of Windows having the largest population and that making them the most tempting target. Any other O/S that was larger would have the same problem.
I didn't see journalists doing the trivial follow up question -- "But Apache has 2-3 times as large installed base as your web server, yet your web server gets many more attacks?" Or even mentioning the statistics of OpenBSD.
4. And one thing I've always wondered.
Apple bought (using stock) information from Xerox on the Star (which was based quite a lot on research, not all done in Xerox). Then Apple rebuilt the interface so much it was half Apple's work.
Then the Pepsi guy (whatever his name is) fouled up and signed a deal that allowed Msoft to sell Excel and Word on other platforms. M-soft used that to win in court and copied the whole GUI experience (including xeroxing Apple's APIs) -- without a license from Xerox.
That description is not controversial, but I've never seen an article discussing it. I've literally heard dozens of people claiming "Apple stole it from Xerox and Msoft also copied it". There is only one interested in that version of reality, which also happens to be a large ad buyer.
Maybe you are right and e.g. the number of pro Microsoft opinions we've see out there are just because the people with certain views just happened to get those jobs. Lucky coincidence if you consider that getting the right content is worth lots of money to the rag...
I could take up examples, but again -- if I am totally wrong you would write exactly the same thing as if I'm totally right.
I commented on this, which is an Anon post.
Did you make a mistake or did I misunderstand you?
I wrote that you really can't write anything else.
It would be like asking a suspect if he commited a serious crime. The only reason to answer "yes" would be to cut a deal -- if he's obviously going to get judged guilty anyway.
You are right -- I don't deserve the Karma. My opinions are quite obvious. As most people working with computers for a long time, I could give a more examples of press behavior (e.g. ridiculously good treatment of Msoft during the trials).
I was probably modded up as a dislike of the original article, which failed to mention that, given all the negative stuff from Grokklaw, the SCO case doesn't look good.
Thanks for trying.
You could maybe write me off as too cynical.