I agree. I've made a few Slashdot posts that were contrary to the majority view, but meant in good faith and with the goal of advancing the discussion, which ended being modded as Trolls. Fortunately this happens to me rarely, suggesting that only a small fraction of moderators
My experience on BoingBoing was much worse. There, even after having a discussion with admins about why I made my comment, they still labelled me a troll and banned me on the site. I think any fair-minded person would have judged me to be not trolling - as far as I can tell that administrator's definition of troll included views that he/she didn't agree with.
It is a common problem with absolutists. They think everything is binary when it's nested case statements with table-driven variables.
It's a problem wth all absolutists?;)
Re:This is not evidence; this highly simplified mo
on
The Benefits of Inequality
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I was about to write the same thing (sorry, no points to mod you up).
About the strongest claims from evolutionary sociologists / psychologists / etc. that I'm willing to entertain are of the form "We can see how X could have led to an evolutionary benefit when we assume their world operated like Y. So, if the world really did operate like Y, then maybe evolutionary pressures were a reason X was true." Modulo the plausibility of X and Y having been actually true for a significant fraction of the population being discussed.
I've sometimes wondered if I'm being too hard on those academics because I don't fully understand their claims, or because they know stuff that I don't. But I find it completely plausible that their community is simply engaged in a huge group-think circle-jerk.
The only thing that the government has going for it is the possibility of doing good.
Agreed. And the NSA, CIA, DHS, and President are doing their best to eliminate that reason.
Plus, having worked for the DoD for a number of years, I must add that working for Congress is like working for a schizophrenic two year old who has a temper tantrum in between each bowl movement.
I'd rather Google come in and bust the telecom monopoly in my home town where I have a choice between Verizon FiOS and Comcast Xfinity... if you want to call that a choice. The lesser of the evils is Verizon FiOS. At least the FiOS is truly fiber optic!
That sounds great, but what happens when Google obtains monopoly status in your area?
Agreed. Assembly is just a scripting language for microprocessors. C is just a scripting language for the compiler back-end. The OP did a terrible job of making his case.
Yea, but if thou dost upgrade birds + rats + sheep to their second levels, another tile appears in between all of them (I forget what it's called).
Anyway, that tile will occasionally lead to spontaneous animal-to-human infections, which gives you another crack at Greenland. At least with bacteria, iirc.
In all seriousness.... what kind of society have we become when we sue over something so meaningless?
Well, we'd be a society that has a problem with outright fraud, for one.
On the other hand, we're already a society that allows torture, dictators, and general lawlessness. We allow the murder of innocent babies, engagement in non-defensive wars, and for children to get lost in foster care systems. We allow bankers to lie to investors about mortgage quality without going to jail, while penny-ante thieves get jailed for years. We let drunk drivers drive and kill again, and again, and again, and again.
So honestly, I really don't think us allowing a frivolous (in your opinion) lawsuit go forward is a sea-change in the quality of our nation.
The entire point of a university degree is to give you a guided tour of your ignorance.
I heartily disagree. The "point" of a degree is subjective. Each student can have a different reason for pursuing a degree, each professor a different reason for teaching, each parent a different reason for paying for it, etc.
So any argument premised on there being just one "point" for a degree seems flawed from the start.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. I've made a few Slashdot posts that were contrary to the majority view, but meant in good faith and with the goal of advancing the discussion, which ended being modded as Trolls. Fortunately this happens to me rarely, suggesting that only a small fraction of moderators
My experience on BoingBoing was much worse. There, even after having a discussion with admins about why I made my comment, they still labelled me a troll and banned me on the site. I think any fair-minded person would have judged me to be not trolling - as far as I can tell that administrator's definition of troll included views that he/she didn't agree with.
So you're saying that the only engineers worth their salt are females? That's insanely sexist.
It's a problem wth all absolutists? ;)
I was about to write the same thing (sorry, no points to mod you up).
About the strongest claims from evolutionary sociologists / psychologists / etc. that I'm willing to entertain are of the form "We can see how X could have led to an evolutionary benefit when we assume their world operated like Y. So, if the world really did operate like Y, then maybe evolutionary pressures were a reason X was true." Modulo the plausibility of X and Y having been actually true for a significant fraction of the population being discussed.
I've sometimes wondered if I'm being too hard on those academics because I don't fully understand their claims, or because they know stuff that I don't. But I find it completely plausible that their community is simply engaged in a huge group-think circle-jerk.
Agreed. And the NSA, CIA, DHS, and President are doing their best to eliminate that reason.
Plus, having worked for the DoD for a number of years, I must add that working for Congress is like working for a schizophrenic two year old who has a temper tantrum in between each bowl movement.
this won't do well in primate/human safety trials.
I'd rather Google come in and bust the telecom monopoly in my home town where I have a choice between Verizon FiOS and Comcast Xfinity ... if you want to call that a choice. The lesser of the evils is Verizon FiOS. At least the FiOS is truly fiber optic!
That sounds great, but what happens when Google obtains monopoly status in your area?
Or at least I assume so, given how much this would benefit the NSA.
Maybe it's time to reanimate Al Gore?
The only NSA employee I'd trust is John Casey.
Agreed. Assembly is just a scripting language for microprocessors. C is just a scripting language for the compiler back-end. The OP did a terrible job of making his case.
Yea, but if thou dost upgrade birds + rats + sheep to their second levels, another tile appears in between all of them (I forget what it's called).
Anyway, that tile will occasionally lead to spontaneous animal-to-human infections, which gives you another crack at Greenland. At least with bacteria, iirc.
This makes me want to move to Madagascar before they lock down their borders.
Screw that. I'm going to Greenland, and dreaming of large women.
It will be interesting to see if the F35 arrives at all.
Yep, NodeJS has pretty much taken over as the go-to language in enterprise development now.
Yes, but does it shard? Is it NoSQL? NoSQL is faster. NoSQL shards.
Am I the only one who views these things differently after playing a few hours of Plague, Inc?
In all seriousness.... what kind of society have we become when we sue over something so meaningless?
Well, we'd be a society that has a problem with outright fraud, for one.
On the other hand, we're already a society that allows torture, dictators, and general lawlessness. We allow the murder of innocent babies, engagement in non-defensive wars, and for children to get lost in foster care systems. We allow bankers to lie to investors about mortgage quality without going to jail, while penny-ante thieves get jailed for years. We let drunk drivers drive and kill again, and again, and again, and again.
So honestly, I really don't think us allowing a frivolous (in your opinion) lawsuit go forward is a sea-change in the quality of our nation.
Heh, I'm in Cambridge too. You should yell "argumentum ab auctoritate" really loudly and I'll see if I can spot you :)
I heartily disagree. The "point" of a degree is subjective. Each student can have a different reason for pursuing a degree, each professor a different reason for teaching, each parent a different reason for paying for it, etc.
So any argument premised on there being just one "point" for a degree seems flawed from the start.
You know what? I'm not going to take seriously a post, from someone I've never met, who calls MIT professors collectively "idiots".
I can't do it alone. That's why I said "by which I mean you." Standing alone gets you arrested and forgotten about. Not interested.
Agreed. But you emphasized the word "I" rather than "we". Which made it sound like you were specifically excluding yourself from the call to arms.
Funny, I thought you were going to say "... by which I mean I ."
The NSA is not above the local law.
That's like saying sex doesn't make babies because there was that one time in college where you did it without a condom and she didn't get pregnant.
Torture is also against our laws too, but apparently that doesn't concern the CIA.
Yeah, my apologies. Somehow I actually only saw the first line of your post.