That is cool! I'm sure that in the distant future when we get to actually explore these places (probes or human explorers), that we will find all sorts of nifty things... and probably discover all sorts of ways in which we are wrong:-) I wish I could see that future!
This is a great way of describing Scrum, but I would be more clear about the fact that Agile != Scrum. Agile is the abstract base class (or maybe even just an interface/protocol) described by the Agile Manifesto: http://www.agilemanifesto.org/ and Scrum is a subclass that implements/extends Agile.
That said, the yardstick analogy is great and I'm going to use that right away in a class I'm teaching about Scrum!
I agree that it is a long process... possibly centuries (although I hope just decades). I'm an optimist at heart! One quote that I have found particularly inspiring is:
"The betterment of the world can be accomplished through pure and goodly deeds, through commendable and seemly conduct."
To me, that means that all the people who are trying to improve the world (the environment, politics, community life, etc.), and even my own modest efforts, are having an effect.
In our culture, we are afraid of abuses.... legitimately! Having this information for sale can easily be used for such obvious purposes as rejecting a job candidate because their past salary is "too high". Stronger privacy protection is generally considered the antidote to such potential abuses. However, more and more regulation leads to greater and greater bureaucracy and therefore the cost of government increases.
Another solution is a longer-term solution and that is to address the underlying cultural assumptions and shift the world to a more positive outlook based on the idea of the inherent nobility of humans. Our bureaucracy has grown as we have moved away from a perspective on the noble human to the animal human with greed motivating our every move. In fact, this is a cultural choice, not a foregone conclusion.
At some point, I hope that we (culturally) will start responding to these sorts of crisis with a long-term view to improving humanity rather than reacting to the down-side.
I was wondering what axioms you hold to be true? Any rational system has a set of axioms that are the unprovable foundation of that rational system. What do you believe on faith?
Google has long been willing to compromise on their "do no evil" mantra and is probably under huge pressure from successful incumbent phone device manufacturers to create barriers to entry in the market. This is common with any market where goods or services start to become commoditized.
1) I agree with what you have said. I'm not sure if you followed my point, but you can think of it like DRM: content producers/distributors distrust their customers and that has the unintended consequence that their customers (due to the DRM anti-feature) look to other sources for their content, some illegal sources. The environment of distrust creates bad behavior.
2) I have three hobbies: robotics, coin collecting and making music. There is nothing inherently wrong with money or physical things or pasttimes. I didn't say there was. Materialism is a philosophy or culture of placing material things at the highest rank of importance and possibly even denying any other important things. American society is _not_ purely materialistic. For example, the importance of liberty in American society is non-materialistic. Nevertheless, my experience of the Bay Area/Silicon Valley is of an extreme of Materialism.
3) Toronto is also home to some of the largest refugee communities in the world and is incredibly diverse as a result. I'm not going to claim that Toronto is more or less harmonious/integrated than the area in California. What I _am_ saying is that there is a notable hypocrisy of an outwardly-seeming open, inclusive culture that tolerates some pretty extreme ghettoization. (White) people there seem very proud of their moral relativism, tolerance of diversity, etc. and yet that pride seems to ignore the social responsibility for some deep race-related problems. They may have their immediate causes based in bad government. But the root cause is clear to outsiders (including many of those who are refugees there, that I have spoken with): racism.
4) Moral bankruptcy? An environment of distrust, extreme materialism, and hypocrisy. But again, that wasn't my point. My point was that when you live there, the culture is so powerful that, for me at least, it became my culture even though I was fighting it. I only really realized how much it had effected me when I moved away. Moving back again, I was there for mercifully short periods of time and did not feel as deeply effected. I have discussed this effect with other outsiders and they have experienced similar things. Not only is the area morally bankrupt (which is different than saying any individual is so), but it is pervasive and persuasive.
I am financially successful. I have a very nice house, I have a successful business and I am not bitter about other people's success. I'm not (quite) a millionaire, but I'm in the top five percent of income earners in Canada, and probably top 1% in my city. However, my success is not solely based on pursuing material aspirations. I also try very hard to "do good" for it's own sake. I have been very poor (to the point of living on state assistance) and I have also been close to financial bankruptcy twice in my life. I _don't_ believe that my current success is solely due to my own hard work. There is a very good portion of luck and other good people thrown into the mix. I can clearly identify several points in the development of my career when the only reason I succeeded is because I made what seemed an arbitrary choice that happened to be "correct".
I agree that there are some people whose behavior is almost exclusively anti-social, or even could be called sociopaths. I believe that there is still the possibility of reform/redemption for these people, but I'm not an expert and so I would not claim to have a "solution". I have met one person that I think may legitimately be called a sociopath, but it was a long time ago. The experience was incredibly damaging to me in many ways and I am no longer in contact with that person.
I haven't reversed cause and effect. I have only observed that there is a negative feedback loop in the US that does not exist everywhere else (although I would guess it isn't exclusive to the US). Not only that, but I am not trying to say every individual behaves the same way or can be painted with the same brush. Certainly there are muggings, but I would hesitate to say that there are "muggers".
Actually, what I am saying is not so foreign to the "Slashdot mind". I mentioned this in another part of this thread: Slashdotters commonly bring up the idea of DRM as an anti-feature on [software|music|movies] that perpetuates "pirating". In other words, the environment of distrust on the part of producers and distributors of digital content creates a higher likelihood of bad/illegal behavior on the part of potential users of that content. This is not so difficult an example for people in the US to understand because it is very specific and falls within the American cultural norms of rebellion against authority. The example that we started with, a street attack, is not so obvious because that environment of distrust is not as specific nor as directly connected to the behavior. Nevertheless, my observation is that _any_ environment of distrust breeds bad behavior, and any environment of trust encourages good behavior. The boundary conditions are what is interesting: in an environment of trust, if someone breaks that trust, how do people in the environment respond to that breech? Do they then start to distrust (and put in place policies, procedures, institutions, etc. that formalize that distrust)? Or do they continue to work within a culture of trust (and put in place all the things that can help to recover from the breech)?
Why didn't you defend yourself? And why score others who do?
I didn't defend myself because, fundamentally, it was not a developed habitual reaction. I can't claim that in the moment of attack I did a deep rational analysis of the situation. Instead, I simply lacked a defensive response habit and so I didn't defend myself. As it turns out, the situation defused itself and I lost nothing in the exchange. I believe that it was simply time passing that allowed the situation to become defused: the attacker lost energy. (I'm guessing there. I don't really know what was going on inside the person chemically, emotionally, etc.) I also want to point out that I am not naive enough to believe this would always "work". Certainly some attacks conclude with death, rape etc. even with passive response on the part of the attacked person.
And to repeat, I don't scorn others who do defend themselves. What I am concerned about is perhaps over-reaction or escalation. Honestly, I haven't thought it through to make _any_ generalizations and I suspect that I could only respond on a case-by-case basis to such things.
This complete debasement of the individual is incomprehensible to my American mind...
Actually, I feel that in America the individual is almost completely debased. Consumerism, culture of fear and distrust, breakdown of the extended family and the neighbourhood all lead to individuals behaving more like animals and less like noble, social beings. Individuals can certainly become excellent through their own hard work and choices, but there seems to be a real lack of recognition that "the individual is organic with their environment": there isn't simple first cause (individual merit) and then lots of effects (success in life). Instead, there are complex feedback systems where the environment limits, changes or empowers an individual and individuals make choices that in turn limit, change or expand their environment. Since the environment includes other people who are also making choices, we need to recognize both our liberty and our responsibility: through our choices, no matter how personal, we limit, change or empower other people.
:-) Thanks. I'm not just some pimply kid although regrettably I still get the occasional spot. I wish I had signed up for Slashdot just a bit earlier and hit that magic UID: 65536. Missed it by a few hundred. I'm in my early forties and been on Slashdot since the late 90's. My "Homepage" links to one of my businesses which is related to Agile training. Agile is one of those things that is compatible with my overall view of things: you can treat people like responsible adults and they will mostly rise to the occasion and behave that way! The ones that don't rise to the occasion may need remedial help or may be beyond help (in a given organization), but they will be relatively few and far between. As we like to say so often here on Slashdot about DRM: don't treat all your customers like criminals because that encourages people to behave like criminals. Instead, give them a reasonable option to do good and most people will take it!
My vacuous twaddle is just my own opinion. I may be wrong. I may have observed the wrong sample of reality to come up with my opinions. Sorry.
That said, my use of the word "soul" shouldn't be construed as some mystical mumbo-jumbo. I mean simply our seemingly unique human capacity to use reason to discover the nature of the universe... which capacity we frequently ignore as we become emotional about issues and circumstances. I'm not sure if you've read the book "The Black Swan" but it has a few great sections on common logical fallacies that are based in emotional mechanics of our brains. Very cool stuff. And yet we clearly are able to transcend that emotionality and move to rationality.
I just believe (again based on limited evidence) that most people choose moral relativism, capitalism, American culture etc. because it is emotionally easy, not because they have thought clearly and rationally about it.
Less abstractly, why do you find it noble to allow yourself and others to be victimized? Although I'm sincerely glad you're safe, a society that tolerates violence against innocents is no society at all.
I didn't use the word "noble" although I might have thought it:-) Actually, there is a mental perspective about our relationship with others that is implied by the word "victimized" that I'm not sure I agree with. Victimization is a perspective oriented in power relationships (you have a gun, I don't, => you have power over me and could potentially victimize me). Again, my point is not about a particular power dynamic, but instead about a cultural dynamic: that people who expect a thing of others often get that thing, and in America, an expectation of danger and distrust leads to those very things. It is inherent in so many parts of American life and culture that I can understand why it is hard to see if you are in the culture (and if you aren't, I'm surprised that you don't see it, but interested in what you _do_ see as the distinguishing features of American culture). For example, the fundamental structures of government with a "system of checks and balances" is founded on distrust... which is historically understandable given English colonialism. But that structure does not increase trust. Instead, it perpetuates distrust and, compared to what I have seen in other countries, that distrustful attitude is reflected throughout the culture at a higher level than in other cultures (particularly my native Canadian culture).
Where do you have "quality of life" without Life?
I probably wasn't clear enough... of _course_ you need life to have quality of life. But if we simply focus on the binary of life/not-life, we can miss building on that to get to quality of life. In Canada, to be specific, we also have the right to life, and liberty, but to security of the person (rather than property) (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms). As you can imagine, we take those rights seriously. However, the difference between a right to property and a right to security of the person has significant consequences in how as a society we treat those who are poor or needy. Security of the person is a quality of life right rather than an economic right.
a society that tolerates violence against innocents is no society at all
I agree. This is a bit like Asimov's laws of robotics. It makes sense that a society should not allow harm to come to innocents (what about the guilty?) So why does the society in the USA allow this to happen so often? In the name of freedom (e.g. an attempt to be free from taxes, or freedom of choice in health care) there is great injustice perpetuated against great numbers of citizens in the USA. And it's not just a "falling through the cracks" type of problem where a very small number of people are affected. I was flabbergasted when I learned how many people there are not protected by health insurance or are under-insured. In Canada, it would be very difficult to get away with a private health system because it would be challenged as violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: to security of person.
That's pretty cynical, and no, I'm not saying that "America is populated with people". In fact, I specifically said that as an outsider to that area I found _differences_ in how people behave that appeared to me to be based on a less idealistic moral standard and, not only that, with some good old philosophical/cultural hypocrisy thrown in... compared to other places I have lived/observed (e.g. the Canadian Prairies, the US East Coast, and Big Cities in China).
I have been attacked on the street, I did not protect myself, and the attack did not escalate to anyone's death.
Do I think poorly of those who have [protected themselves]? Not on the whole, but I can certainly imagine both situations where I would and would not think highly of the actions of those who protect themselves.
Actually, I don't believe _only_ in a right to life, liberty and property. I believe that those values are simply a reaction to some bad behaviour on the part of an empire that had grown complacent. They aren't bad values, but they aren't complete values and they _certainly_ shouldn't be primary values. Life is important. Quality of life is more important. Liberty is important. Responsibility is more important. Property is important. Enfranchisement is more important.
And, finally, I don't believe in "bad" people any more than I believe in "evil spirits". I think it is far to simplistic an attitude to think of anyone as "bad" or "good". Instead, I choose to give people my love and good faith, even when their actions don't seem to merit it. (BTW, I'm certainly not perfect at doing this and I do sometimes cut off my relationship with people that I think are harming me.)
The point of my original statement is, put another way, that if you act as if people are bad/dangerous/not-to-be-trusted, then they will be more likely to behave that way with you regardless of their behaviour with other people. If you have a whole culture that assumes people are bad/dangerous/not-to-be-trusted, then, in general, I believe/observe-anecdotally, that people will behave worse, more dangerously and in a less trustworthy way.
I'm also willing to be clear that this is just my opinion and based on my limited observation between four major cultures: Western Canadian, Bay Area, Eastern US and Large City Chinese. I'm not saying these things with any sort of scientific certainty nor even statistically significant certainty.
I moved there in 1997 to work for the Lighthouse Design division of Sun Microsystems (formerly the division did NeXT software). As a mid-size city kid from the Canadian prairies, I was immediately struck by, not just the moral bankruptcy, but what I felt was literally a soul-destroying culture. I left soon after and only returned a couple times, each time having that impression confirmed.
Here are some of the things I observed. Some are general to the United States and its form of capitalism, some (seem to be) specific to the Bay Area and Silicon Valley:
1. Culture of guns and violence. Simply a belief that enough other people are "bad" that you must protect yourself and it would be okay to kill someone else to do that. There are lots of places in the world where that belief is not pervasive and they seem to be nicer places to live. It's kinda like the justice system is supposed to work: it's fairer if you presume innocence and that actually encourages people to behave nicely whereas if you presume guilt, people will live up to that expectation.
2. Extreme Culture of Materialism. Money matters, and getting rich matters even more. The expression "F***-You Money" is a good indicator of this. I knew a few people who had their "F***-You Money" and they weren't enlightened... they were spoiled. It's like the "American Dream" taken to an unhealthy extreme. People were generally extremely busy and most friendly conversation was either about money, money other people make, technology, sex or drugs. Very little friendly conversation was about community, relationships, or the soul.
3. A Bizarre Hypocrisy around Tolerance/Inclusion. San Francisco, in particular, was bad for this; blind to its own racism yet so proud that it was inclusive and tolerant. If you know the area, I only need say "East Palo Alto" (it's been a few years so maybe it's gentrified now) and you should be able to figure out what I mean. We tolerate all religions, all philosophies, all genders, all types of cultures... except the black and spanish folks in our midst who only work menial or retail service jobs. The real problem is that most people there were completely blind to what was blindingly obvious to me as an outsider.
4. Pervasive, Persuasive Moral Bankruptcy. The longer I was there, the more I "got into" the culture. I've seen this happen to other friends from outside the area. It kills people's souls. Maybe not everyone... I'm sure there are some people who are shining examples of enlightenment... but I couldn't resist it, and I don't know anyone else who has (save one person). Of course, this is "normal" - we adjust to and eventually adopt the culture of our surroundings unless we actively work against it. I _was_ actively working against it and it still changed me to my own detriment.
I believe that the organizations that are there (Google, Facebook, etc.) are not "to blame" as they are just participating in the culture and trying to be successful in that culture. (Or to be more accurate, the people in those organizations are doing this.) But anyone who has an idealistic bone in them will quickly have it gellified and unconsciously begin to give up that idealism for the much more flexible moral relativism and then eventually the outlook that, heck, capitalism isn't so bad after all! not realizing that the ideology in that area is beyond capitalism: it's imperial corporatist capitalism that cares only for growth, and at any human cost (just so long as it doesn't harm the bottom line).
I just means that over a given distance (a megaparsec) if you measure that distance every second, it will seem to have grown larger (by 47.3 +/- 2.1 kilometers). In other words, expanding space means that distance itself is growing.
Now, being a cosmology noob myself, I still can't quite wrap my head around this idea: if we look at a much smaller scale, say one meter, what are we actually observing? In our own frame of reference, does this mean that if you removed a one meter ruler from the universe for a second and then brought it back it would be measured to be slightly less than one meter? Or does it mean that the fundamental fabric of the universe that reflects relationships and fundamental constants in physics are changing so that when you bring the meter ruler back into the universe it would "pop" out to the new length of a meter?
I recently dropped a PS3 on my toe, broke the nail mostly off and broke the bone. Hurt like hell! I went to the hospital to have it looked at. The doctor gave me local freezing (which incidentally only affects pain receptors, not heat/cold receptors). He tore my nail the rest of the way off, dressed the wound. Then he gave me a prescription for pain killers. I asked him, "is the pain going to be any worse than what I originally felt when I dropped the PS3 on my foot?" He said it wouldn't be. I didn't fill the prescription.
(Wishing I had mod points for your post... I think it is incredibly insightful.)
I did some consulting work with a big mining company where drivers of 400 tonne trucks go for 12 hours shifts, safety is critical, and speed means dollars. One big problem they have is drivers falling asleep at the wheel. So what they had to do is make the roads NOT straight so that driving itself was interesting. There are no speed limits (that I know of) on the mine site because they want ore to be transported from shovels to processing hoppers as fast as possible.
That said, cell phone use is absolutely forbidden.
Keeping driving interesting is one of the most important ways to keep it safe. In my opinion, twisty roads and no speed limits are way better than banning cell phone use. If I'm on a twisty road, there's no way I'll use a cell phone. On the other hand, if I have hundreds of km of straight or gently curving highway, I _need_ something to keep me interested or else I'll fall asleep even if I'm not tired!!!
I wish I had mod points to mod you _way_ up!!! Agile requires significant changes in behaviour and is extremely hard to do properly... That said, the results even with that effort are truly worth it.
I didn't say they were unprofessional because they don't agree with me. In the organizations I work with, a quick poll shows that about 5% of developers have even tried TDD, etc. (That's a made-up statistic, by the way, but the order of magnitude is correct. I have actual data somewhere, but it's not handy since I'm in China with my office back in Canada.) I'm saying that there is a standard of conduct and results that most developers don't live up to (fact) and that if you look at other professions this lack of conduct and results would be considered unprofessional (my opinion, but shared by many others who are concerned about software engineering). I hope to be incendiary so that developers wake up from their status-quo sleep and realize that they can actually do great work instead of releasing S##T to users and businesses who hate them for it. There are enough people interested in doing this that I charge mid-four-figures per day for my services. I'm definitely not making stuff up.
Washing of hands is based on the scientific germ theory, which is backed by mountains of evidence.
You are right. I used an analogy. Although I can't claim that there is a scientific germ theory equivalent for the practices I listed, I can claim that I have mountains of evidence based on my own practice, the practice of my peers, and the converse, but the consequences of the lack of practice. At a broad level, this can be seen in the Standish Group's "Chaos Report" (e.g. from 2008) where Agile projects are more successful than all types of non-agile projects to a degree that has both business and statistical significance. This data does not get to the detail of specific Agile practices, but instead provides broad stroke confirmation of the experiment with Agile in many organizations.
Every buzzword you just listed is a mere whim. A preference. A particular style that works for some teams, and not others, mostly for mysterious and unknown reasons.
What you just said basically amounts to some priest admonishing a fellow man of the cloth for not properly anointing the bust of Christ with scented oil. He's doing it wrong, doesn't he know?
I like your analogy, but like mine it does not constitute proof either way.
I've seen these software development fads come and go, and without exception they fail at being scientific, they fail at consistently achieving their goals, and eventually get replaced with a shiny new method which is just as un-scientific.
Okay, enough waffle, let me give you a concrete example: test-driven development. Sure, it sounds great. You write tests, they pass, and if you break something then the test will tell you. Except that it's not so simple:
I'm glad you picked this example because it is concrete and I can rebut most of your points:
- You can't predict unexpected problems. - Expected problems aren't really problems, are they?
TDD doesn't claim to predict unexpected problems... rather it claims to prevent unexpected problems. TDD is not the same as unit testing. TDD is writing failing tests first then only building the absolute minimum amount of code to make the tests pass, then refactoring to clean up the code, then making sure all your tests still pass, and only then checking in your code and moving on. This means that full TDD results in 100% passing unit tests with full code coverage at all times.
- Tests can give a false sense of security by reporting 100% success despite the prolific presence of bugs not tested for. This can result in major scheduling issues when the software fails unexpectedly.
It is true that some bugs can still creep in even if every line of code is test driven as there can be unexpected interactions. This is why you also need ATDD, CI and Pair Programming. These practices are a system and while they have some value in isolation, their full value is only realized if all are done.
- It is impossible to write quick & simple tests for a HUGE range of things one would most want to test for: ACID compliance, memory leaking, safe multi-threading, security, etc... Some of these things just have to be done exactly right the first time, like a maths proof.
I have written TDD code which had ACID compliance (two-phase commits, journalling, high-availability including resistant to server failure), safe multi-threading (and admittedly this was challenging to use TDD for, but I did it), security (actually not that challenging for certain levels of security, but I am not an encryption expert so that dimension of security I don't have personal experience with). For me, the proof that your statement is incorrect is simply that I have seen these things done with a net positive impact on quality _and_ schedule.
- Tests take time to write. In many cases, doubling the amount of code writ
Slashdot Mirror
That is cool! I'm sure that in the distant future when we get to actually explore these places (probes or human explorers), that we will find all sorts of nifty things... and probably discover all sorts of ways in which we are wrong :-) I wish I could see that future!
I'm curious: what are the likely elements and molecules that would cause the blue reflection?
Here is an article I wrote a few years about about this. Probably helpful: http://www.agileadvice.com/2012/01/08/scrumxplean/seven-options-for-handling-interruptions-in-scrum-and-other-agile-methods/
This is a great way of describing Scrum, but I would be more clear about the fact that Agile != Scrum. Agile is the abstract base class (or maybe even just an interface/protocol) described by the Agile Manifesto: http://www.agilemanifesto.org/ and Scrum is a subclass that implements/extends Agile.
That said, the yardstick analogy is great and I'm going to use that right away in a class I'm teaching about Scrum!
Thanks!
PS. BSP below...
I agree that it is a long process... possibly centuries (although I hope just decades). I'm an optimist at heart! One quote that I have found particularly inspiring is:
"The betterment of the world can be accomplished through pure and goodly deeds, through commendable and seemly conduct."
To me, that means that all the people who are trying to improve the world (the environment, politics, community life, etc.), and even my own modest efforts, are having an effect.
In our culture, we are afraid of abuses.... legitimately! Having this information for sale can easily be used for such obvious purposes as rejecting a job candidate because their past salary is "too high". Stronger privacy protection is generally considered the antidote to such potential abuses. However, more and more regulation leads to greater and greater bureaucracy and therefore the cost of government increases.
Another solution is a longer-term solution and that is to address the underlying cultural assumptions and shift the world to a more positive outlook based on the idea of the inherent nobility of humans. Our bureaucracy has grown as we have moved away from a perspective on the noble human to the animal human with greed motivating our every move. In fact, this is a cultural choice, not a foregone conclusion.
At some point, I hope that we (culturally) will start responding to these sorts of crisis with a long-term view to improving humanity rather than reacting to the down-side.
I was wondering what axioms you hold to be true? Any rational system has a set of axioms that are the unprovable foundation of that rational system. What do you believe on faith?
Google has long been willing to compromise on their "do no evil" mantra and is probably under huge pressure from successful incumbent phone device manufacturers to create barriers to entry in the market. This is common with any market where goods or services start to become commoditized.
http://www.davidbrin.com/transparency.html
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
1) I agree with what you have said. I'm not sure if you followed my point, but you can think of it like DRM: content producers/distributors distrust their customers and that has the unintended consequence that their customers (due to the DRM anti-feature) look to other sources for their content, some illegal sources. The environment of distrust creates bad behavior.
2) I have three hobbies: robotics, coin collecting and making music. There is nothing inherently wrong with money or physical things or pasttimes. I didn't say there was. Materialism is a philosophy or culture of placing material things at the highest rank of importance and possibly even denying any other important things. American society is _not_ purely materialistic. For example, the importance of liberty in American society is non-materialistic. Nevertheless, my experience of the Bay Area/Silicon Valley is of an extreme of Materialism.
3) Toronto is also home to some of the largest refugee communities in the world and is incredibly diverse as a result. I'm not going to claim that Toronto is more or less harmonious/integrated than the area in California. What I _am_ saying is that there is a notable hypocrisy of an outwardly-seeming open, inclusive culture that tolerates some pretty extreme ghettoization. (White) people there seem very proud of their moral relativism, tolerance of diversity, etc. and yet that pride seems to ignore the social responsibility for some deep race-related problems. They may have their immediate causes based in bad government. But the root cause is clear to outsiders (including many of those who are refugees there, that I have spoken with): racism.
4) Moral bankruptcy? An environment of distrust, extreme materialism, and hypocrisy. But again, that wasn't my point. My point was that when you live there, the culture is so powerful that, for me at least, it became my culture even though I was fighting it. I only really realized how much it had effected me when I moved away. Moving back again, I was there for mercifully short periods of time and did not feel as deeply effected. I have discussed this effect with other outsiders and they have experienced similar things. Not only is the area morally bankrupt (which is different than saying any individual is so), but it is pervasive and persuasive.
I am financially successful. I have a very nice house, I have a successful business and I am not bitter about other people's success. I'm not (quite) a millionaire, but I'm in the top five percent of income earners in Canada, and probably top 1% in my city. However, my success is not solely based on pursuing material aspirations. I also try very hard to "do good" for it's own sake. I have been very poor (to the point of living on state assistance) and I have also been close to financial bankruptcy twice in my life. I _don't_ believe that my current success is solely due to my own hard work. There is a very good portion of luck and other good people thrown into the mix. I can clearly identify several points in the development of my career when the only reason I succeeded is because I made what seemed an arbitrary choice that happened to be "correct".
Doesn't suck to be me :-)
I agree that there are some people whose behavior is almost exclusively anti-social, or even could be called sociopaths. I believe that there is still the possibility of reform/redemption for these people, but I'm not an expert and so I would not claim to have a "solution". I have met one person that I think may legitimately be called a sociopath, but it was a long time ago. The experience was incredibly damaging to me in many ways and I am no longer in contact with that person.
I haven't reversed cause and effect. I have only observed that there is a negative feedback loop in the US that does not exist everywhere else (although I would guess it isn't exclusive to the US). Not only that, but I am not trying to say every individual behaves the same way or can be painted with the same brush. Certainly there are muggings, but I would hesitate to say that there are "muggers".
Actually, what I am saying is not so foreign to the "Slashdot mind". I mentioned this in another part of this thread: Slashdotters commonly bring up the idea of DRM as an anti-feature on [software|music|movies] that perpetuates "pirating". In other words, the environment of distrust on the part of producers and distributors of digital content creates a higher likelihood of bad/illegal behavior on the part of potential users of that content. This is not so difficult an example for people in the US to understand because it is very specific and falls within the American cultural norms of rebellion against authority. The example that we started with, a street attack, is not so obvious because that environment of distrust is not as specific nor as directly connected to the behavior. Nevertheless, my observation is that _any_ environment of distrust breeds bad behavior, and any environment of trust encourages good behavior. The boundary conditions are what is interesting: in an environment of trust, if someone breaks that trust, how do people in the environment respond to that breech? Do they then start to distrust (and put in place policies, procedures, institutions, etc. that formalize that distrust)? Or do they continue to work within a culture of trust (and put in place all the things that can help to recover from the breech)?
Why didn't you defend yourself? And why score others who do?
I didn't defend myself because, fundamentally, it was not a developed habitual reaction. I can't claim that in the moment of attack I did a deep rational analysis of the situation. Instead, I simply lacked a defensive response habit and so I didn't defend myself. As it turns out, the situation defused itself and I lost nothing in the exchange. I believe that it was simply time passing that allowed the situation to become defused: the attacker lost energy. (I'm guessing there. I don't really know what was going on inside the person chemically, emotionally, etc.) I also want to point out that I am not naive enough to believe this would always "work". Certainly some attacks conclude with death, rape etc. even with passive response on the part of the attacked person.
And to repeat, I don't scorn others who do defend themselves. What I am concerned about is perhaps over-reaction or escalation. Honestly, I haven't thought it through to make _any_ generalizations and I suspect that I could only respond on a case-by-case basis to such things.
This complete debasement of the individual is incomprehensible to my American mind...
Actually, I feel that in America the individual is almost completely debased. Consumerism, culture of fear and distrust, breakdown of the extended family and the neighbourhood all lead to individuals behaving more like animals and less like noble, social beings. Individuals can certainly become excellent through their own hard work and choices, but there seems to be a real lack of recognition that "the individual is organic with their environment": there isn't simple first cause (individual merit) and then lots of effects (success in life). Instead, there are complex feedback systems where the environment limits, changes or empowers an individual and individuals make choices that in turn limit, change or expand their environment. Since the environment includes other people who are also making choices, we need to recognize both our liberty and our responsibility: through our choices, no matter how personal, we limit, change or empower other people.
"violence," and not "harm"
Hm
:-) Thanks. I'm not just some pimply kid although regrettably I still get the occasional spot. I wish I had signed up for Slashdot just a bit earlier and hit that magic UID: 65536. Missed it by a few hundred. I'm in my early forties and been on Slashdot since the late 90's. My "Homepage" links to one of my businesses which is related to Agile training. Agile is one of those things that is compatible with my overall view of things: you can treat people like responsible adults and they will mostly rise to the occasion and behave that way! The ones that don't rise to the occasion may need remedial help or may be beyond help (in a given organization), but they will be relatively few and far between. As we like to say so often here on Slashdot about DRM: don't treat all your customers like criminals because that encourages people to behave like criminals. Instead, give them a reasonable option to do good and most people will take it!
Please mod parent up!!!
(and I wish that I had said it!!!)
My vacuous twaddle is just my own opinion. I may be wrong. I may have observed the wrong sample of reality to come up with my opinions. Sorry.
That said, my use of the word "soul" shouldn't be construed as some mystical mumbo-jumbo. I mean simply our seemingly unique human capacity to use reason to discover the nature of the universe... which capacity we frequently ignore as we become emotional about issues and circumstances. I'm not sure if you've read the book "The Black Swan" but it has a few great sections on common logical fallacies that are based in emotional mechanics of our brains. Very cool stuff. And yet we clearly are able to transcend that emotionality and move to rationality.
I just believe (again based on limited evidence) that most people choose moral relativism, capitalism, American culture etc. because it is emotionally easy, not because they have thought clearly and rationally about it.
Less abstractly, why do you find it noble to allow yourself and others to be victimized? Although I'm sincerely glad you're safe, a society that tolerates violence against innocents is no society at all.
I didn't use the word "noble" although I might have thought it :-) Actually, there is a mental perspective about our relationship with others that is implied by the word "victimized" that I'm not sure I agree with. Victimization is a perspective oriented in power relationships (you have a gun, I don't, => you have power over me and could potentially victimize me). Again, my point is not about a particular power dynamic, but instead about a cultural dynamic: that people who expect a thing of others often get that thing, and in America, an expectation of danger and distrust leads to those very things. It is inherent in so many parts of American life and culture that I can understand why it is hard to see if you are in the culture (and if you aren't, I'm surprised that you don't see it, but interested in what you _do_ see as the distinguishing features of American culture). For example, the fundamental structures of government with a "system of checks and balances" is founded on distrust... which is historically understandable given English colonialism. But that structure does not increase trust. Instead, it perpetuates distrust and, compared to what I have seen in other countries, that distrustful attitude is reflected throughout the culture at a higher level than in other cultures (particularly my native Canadian culture).
Where do you have "quality of life" without Life?
I probably wasn't clear enough... of _course_ you need life to have quality of life. But if we simply focus on the binary of life/not-life, we can miss building on that to get to quality of life. In Canada, to be specific, we also have the right to life, and liberty, but to security of the person (rather than property) (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms). As you can imagine, we take those rights seriously. However, the difference between a right to property and a right to security of the person has significant consequences in how as a society we treat those who are poor or needy. Security of the person is a quality of life right rather than an economic right.
a society that tolerates violence against innocents is no society at all
I agree. This is a bit like Asimov's laws of robotics. It makes sense that a society should not allow harm to come to innocents (what about the guilty?) So why does the society in the USA allow this to happen so often? In the name of freedom (e.g. an attempt to be free from taxes, or freedom of choice in health care) there is great injustice perpetuated against great numbers of citizens in the USA. And it's not just a "falling through the cracks" type of problem where a very small number of people are affected. I was flabbergasted when I learned how many people there are not protected by health insurance or are under-insured. In Canada, it would be very difficult to get away with a private health system because it would be challenged as violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: to security of person.
That's pretty cynical, and no, I'm not saying that "America is populated with people". In fact, I specifically said that as an outsider to that area I found _differences_ in how people behave that appeared to me to be based on a less idealistic moral standard and, not only that, with some good old philosophical/cultural hypocrisy thrown in... compared to other places I have lived/observed (e.g. the Canadian Prairies, the US East Coast, and Big Cities in China).
I have been attacked on the street, I did not protect myself, and the attack did not escalate to anyone's death.
Do I think poorly of those who have [protected themselves]? Not on the whole, but I can certainly imagine both situations where I would and would not think highly of the actions of those who protect themselves.
Actually, I don't believe _only_ in a right to life, liberty and property. I believe that those values are simply a reaction to some bad behaviour on the part of an empire that had grown complacent. They aren't bad values, but they aren't complete values and they _certainly_ shouldn't be primary values. Life is important. Quality of life is more important. Liberty is important. Responsibility is more important. Property is important. Enfranchisement is more important.
And, finally, I don't believe in "bad" people any more than I believe in "evil spirits". I think it is far to simplistic an attitude to think of anyone as "bad" or "good". Instead, I choose to give people my love and good faith, even when their actions don't seem to merit it. (BTW, I'm certainly not perfect at doing this and I do sometimes cut off my relationship with people that I think are harming me.)
The point of my original statement is, put another way, that if you act as if people are bad/dangerous/not-to-be-trusted, then they will be more likely to behave that way with you regardless of their behaviour with other people. If you have a whole culture that assumes people are bad/dangerous/not-to-be-trusted, then, in general, I believe/observe-anecdotally, that people will behave worse, more dangerously and in a less trustworthy way.
I'm also willing to be clear that this is just my opinion and based on my limited observation between four major cultures: Western Canadian, Bay Area, Eastern US and Large City Chinese. I'm not saying these things with any sort of scientific certainty nor even statistically significant certainty.
I moved there in 1997 to work for the Lighthouse Design division of Sun Microsystems (formerly the division did NeXT software). As a mid-size city kid from the Canadian prairies, I was immediately struck by, not just the moral bankruptcy, but what I felt was literally a soul-destroying culture. I left soon after and only returned a couple times, each time having that impression confirmed.
Here are some of the things I observed. Some are general to the United States and its form of capitalism, some (seem to be) specific to the Bay Area and Silicon Valley:
1. Culture of guns and violence. Simply a belief that enough other people are "bad" that you must protect yourself and it would be okay to kill someone else to do that. There are lots of places in the world where that belief is not pervasive and they seem to be nicer places to live. It's kinda like the justice system is supposed to work: it's fairer if you presume innocence and that actually encourages people to behave nicely whereas if you presume guilt, people will live up to that expectation.
2. Extreme Culture of Materialism. Money matters, and getting rich matters even more. The expression "F***-You Money" is a good indicator of this. I knew a few people who had their "F***-You Money" and they weren't enlightened... they were spoiled. It's like the "American Dream" taken to an unhealthy extreme. People were generally extremely busy and most friendly conversation was either about money, money other people make, technology, sex or drugs. Very little friendly conversation was about community, relationships, or the soul.
3. A Bizarre Hypocrisy around Tolerance/Inclusion. San Francisco, in particular, was bad for this; blind to its own racism yet so proud that it was inclusive and tolerant. If you know the area, I only need say "East Palo Alto" (it's been a few years so maybe it's gentrified now) and you should be able to figure out what I mean. We tolerate all religions, all philosophies, all genders, all types of cultures... except the black and spanish folks in our midst who only work menial or retail service jobs. The real problem is that most people there were completely blind to what was blindingly obvious to me as an outsider.
4. Pervasive, Persuasive Moral Bankruptcy. The longer I was there, the more I "got into" the culture. I've seen this happen to other friends from outside the area. It kills people's souls. Maybe not everyone... I'm sure there are some people who are shining examples of enlightenment... but I couldn't resist it, and I don't know anyone else who has (save one person). Of course, this is "normal" - we adjust to and eventually adopt the culture of our surroundings unless we actively work against it. I _was_ actively working against it and it still changed me to my own detriment.
I believe that the organizations that are there (Google, Facebook, etc.) are not "to blame" as they are just participating in the culture and trying to be successful in that culture. (Or to be more accurate, the people in those organizations are doing this.) But anyone who has an idealistic bone in them will quickly have it gellified and unconsciously begin to give up that idealism for the much more flexible moral relativism and then eventually the outlook that, heck, capitalism isn't so bad after all! not realizing that the ideology in that area is beyond capitalism: it's imperial corporatist capitalism that cares only for growth, and at any human cost (just so long as it doesn't harm the bottom line).
I just means that over a given distance (a megaparsec) if you measure that distance every second, it will seem to have grown larger (by 47.3 +/- 2.1 kilometers). In other words, expanding space means that distance itself is growing.
Now, being a cosmology noob myself, I still can't quite wrap my head around this idea: if we look at a much smaller scale, say one meter, what are we actually observing? In our own frame of reference, does this mean that if you removed a one meter ruler from the universe for a second and then brought it back it would be measured to be slightly less than one meter? Or does it mean that the fundamental fabric of the universe that reflects relationships and fundamental constants in physics are changing so that when you bring the meter ruler back into the universe it would "pop" out to the new length of a meter?
I know that it relates to red shift... gack.
I recently dropped a PS3 on my toe, broke the nail mostly off and broke the bone. Hurt like hell! I went to the hospital to have it looked at. The doctor gave me local freezing (which incidentally only affects pain receptors, not heat/cold receptors). He tore my nail the rest of the way off, dressed the wound. Then he gave me a prescription for pain killers. I asked him, "is the pain going to be any worse than what I originally felt when I dropped the PS3 on my foot?" He said it wouldn't be. I didn't fill the prescription.
(Wishing I had mod points for your post... I think it is incredibly insightful.)
I did some consulting work with a big mining company where drivers of 400 tonne trucks go for 12 hours shifts, safety is critical, and speed means dollars. One big problem they have is drivers falling asleep at the wheel. So what they had to do is make the roads NOT straight so that driving itself was interesting. There are no speed limits (that I know of) on the mine site because they want ore to be transported from shovels to processing hoppers as fast as possible.
That said, cell phone use is absolutely forbidden.
Keeping driving interesting is one of the most important ways to keep it safe. In my opinion, twisty roads and no speed limits are way better than banning cell phone use. If I'm on a twisty road, there's no way I'll use a cell phone. On the other hand, if I have hundreds of km of straight or gently curving highway, I _need_ something to keep me interested or else I'll fall asleep even if I'm not tired!!!
I wish I had mod points to mod you _way_ up!!! Agile requires significant changes in behaviour and is extremely hard to do properly... That said, the results even with that effort are truly worth it.
I didn't say they were unprofessional because they don't agree with me. In the organizations I work with, a quick poll shows that about 5% of developers have even tried TDD, etc. (That's a made-up statistic, by the way, but the order of magnitude is correct. I have actual data somewhere, but it's not handy since I'm in China with my office back in Canada.) I'm saying that there is a standard of conduct and results that most developers don't live up to (fact) and that if you look at other professions this lack of conduct and results would be considered unprofessional (my opinion, but shared by many others who are concerned about software engineering). I hope to be incendiary so that developers wake up from their status-quo sleep and realize that they can actually do great work instead of releasing S##T to users and businesses who hate them for it. There are enough people interested in doing this that I charge mid-four-figures per day for my services. I'm definitely not making stuff up.
Washing of hands is based on the scientific germ theory, which is backed by mountains of evidence.
You are right. I used an analogy. Although I can't claim that there is a scientific germ theory equivalent for the practices I listed, I can claim that I have mountains of evidence based on my own practice, the practice of my peers, and the converse, but the consequences of the lack of practice. At a broad level, this can be seen in the Standish Group's "Chaos Report" (e.g. from 2008) where Agile projects are more successful than all types of non-agile projects to a degree that has both business and statistical significance. This data does not get to the detail of specific Agile practices, but instead provides broad stroke confirmation of the experiment with Agile in many organizations.
Every buzzword you just listed is a mere whim. A preference. A particular style that works for some teams, and not others, mostly for mysterious and unknown reasons.
What you just said basically amounts to some priest admonishing a fellow man of the cloth for not properly anointing the bust of Christ with scented oil. He's doing it wrong, doesn't he know?
I like your analogy, but like mine it does not constitute proof either way.
I've seen these software development fads come and go, and without exception they fail at being scientific, they fail at consistently achieving their goals, and eventually get replaced with a shiny new method which is just as un-scientific.
Okay, enough waffle, let me give you a concrete example: test-driven development. Sure, it sounds great. You write tests, they pass, and if you break something then the test will tell you. Except that it's not so simple:
I'm glad you picked this example because it is concrete and I can rebut most of your points:
- You can't predict unexpected problems.
- Expected problems aren't really problems, are they?
TDD doesn't claim to predict unexpected problems... rather it claims to prevent unexpected problems. TDD is not the same as unit testing. TDD is writing failing tests first then only building the absolute minimum amount of code to make the tests pass, then refactoring to clean up the code, then making sure all your tests still pass, and only then checking in your code and moving on. This means that full TDD results in 100% passing unit tests with full code coverage at all times.
- Tests can give a false sense of security by reporting 100% success despite the prolific presence of bugs not tested for. This can result in major scheduling issues when the software fails unexpectedly.
It is true that some bugs can still creep in even if every line of code is test driven as there can be unexpected interactions. This is why you also need ATDD, CI and Pair Programming. These practices are a system and while they have some value in isolation, their full value is only realized if all are done.
- It is impossible to write quick & simple tests for a HUGE range of things one would most want to test for: ACID compliance, memory leaking, safe multi-threading, security, etc... Some of these things just have to be done exactly right the first time, like a maths proof.
I have written TDD code which had ACID compliance (two-phase commits, journalling, high-availability including resistant to server failure), safe multi-threading (and admittedly this was challenging to use TDD for, but I did it), security (actually not that challenging for certain levels of security, but I am not an encryption expert so that dimension of security I don't have personal experience with). For me, the proof that your statement is incorrect is simply that I have seen these things done with a net positive impact on quality _and_ schedule.
- Tests take time to write. In many cases, doubling the amount of code writ