Readers should note that most economists would reject this claim out of hand.
Interesting, I learned that definition of wealth from an economist. Also, I have to disagree. Both wealth and value are important, where you seem to indicate that my first post indicated that they are exclusive concepts. My apologies if I misled the reader.
I'd say more, but I'm trying to say something that will elaborate my point rather than just keep reiterating what I already said.
Anyway, I suggest we go talk to economists and find out what they say about the matter. I'm guessing a lot just has to do with the words you use to describe things.
It is an interesting line of thought at any rate, and I admit my ideas aren't completely formed yet. But, I know there's a difference between "value" and "wealth" - even if I cannot articulate what that might be in a coherent manner.
Just so long as people remember that creating value is not the same thing as creating wealth, I'm all cool with this conversation.
"Value" is the worth people assign to things, and is how much people are willing to trade for something. Value can be in dollars, time, whatever - basically the value of something is the alternatives forgone for the thing.
"Wealth" is actually how much stuff there is around. Technically, the only things that increase wealth are manufacturing and agriculture. Everything else just moves that wealth around.
Incidentally, there is an interesting debate over if software increases wealth. I would argue no, because it just moves information around, and you have to do something physical with that information to create wealth. However, software does have value because of that fact. And that's why people will always be willing to pay for software - and entertainment.
So, you can't really "create" value, because it depends on people's opinions - it's completely subjective. I guess, to answer your question of how much value can Open Content create: More than zero, less than infinite, with 100% confidence.
Good lord, people! I think we should let IPs run out and let them become a "scarce" resource. People are wanting to network kitchen appliances? Refrigerators that can detect and tell you what you're missing? What ever happened to being able to look in the fridge and going, "oh, hey, I need milk" and writing yourself a list?
The trouble is, creating things in cyberspace costs nothing (sure, it takes time, and people spend $$ on it), but there is no change in wealth associated with increasing addressing space in this form (other than some companies get to charge you money to create new machines). It's not like land, which actually has a physical limit. People should be forced to prioritize things in their lives, and really understand what is important, and work for that. If we keep making it easier and easier for people to do things they don't need to be doing, just because they can, then I don't want to hear people complaning about terrorists, RFID, RIAA, or even SCO any more.
"If people are trying to grow food to eat and fend off wolves, they don't have time to hire lawyers." - I call 'em as I see 'em
Hrm. I was just thinking... when the cosmologists estimate the "age of the universe" and they say that the limit of what we can see is, oh, say 13 billion light years, do they account for the time it took for the source of said radiation to get out that far in the age of their universe? Since (supposedly) matter cannot travel anywhere near the speed of light, the universe must be several orders of magnitude older than the "oldest" light we can see, and the things we are "seeing" are really outside the edge of the visible universe.
The only other option that I can see is that people are playing some fun games with the age/size/etc. of the universe...
How on EARTH did this get a patent!?! Who can I call to get this revoked? Anyone know how you can file a complaint to the USPTO to tell them they're idiots for stuff like this? I mean, how many people use a flashlight (granted, not laser pointer) to dance with their cat? For how many years? This patent fails the "unobvious" clause instantly.
</rant>
... how if the gondola broke off in the handlers' hands, what odd person attaches expensive stuff to the envelope that isn't in the gondola? I hate when newspapers don't give adequate engineering details...
It's the age old dilemma - is OOP "better" than procedural? Is there something else "better" than both? It all boils down to a couple of things, nameley preference, ability to tolerate overhead, and reusability. Saying that OOP makes things "plug and play" is silly. I can just as easily create an object with a given interface and change the guts of how it works as call a procedural function with the same declaration but different guts in the definition. Just look at the old standard C libraries; #include is almost like including a class - you get lots of "member functions" for string manipulation but it's all procedural. One of the benefits of OOP over procedural is bundling data along with the functions, which is nice, but sometimes the overhead isn't worth it. I've been using C/C++ for something like 10 years now, and I actually *prefer* to code procedurally whenever possible.
That said, I think the goal of C/C++, for better or worse, is to be a "you can be high level or low level as you wish", which is why it's still my favorite language.
What I *really* want to see is a linker that will only link in the code you actually call so you don't have "dead" functions lying around in your executables! 200 kB "hello world" programs make me want to vomit! (I recall being able to do "hello world" in this in, let's see here, about 20 BYTES using MS-DOS Debug! There's coding efficiency for you!)
I would be quite remiss if I did not read well-considered responses to this discussion!
I think at this point I'll just summarize a bit for those who have been reading along, then make a few closing remarks.
This discussion originally began with a comment on "fixing the real problem" with terrorism and the like by "stopping those behaviors which foster hate to the point where voilence is exercised." This is, of course, the simple truth of the situation - if nobody has a reason to use violence, then they won't. (I'm granting here that 'delusions' and other similar things can be classified as 'reasons to use violence'. Although the merit of such a reason is perhaps in question, it is still a reason and thus the original statement still holds.)
The discussion then moved on to some of the possible causes for the most obvious reason for violence: hatred. It is my postulate that there are two types of hatred: hating something becuase it is wrong (which I called 'rational' hate) and then there is the hate which I believe is rooted in selfishness, which I called 'emotional' hate. In retrospect, 'selfish hate' would probably be a better term, and it is characterized by "I don't like that for some subjective reason, so I don't want it around". Hating tapioca pudding would fall into 'selfish' hate, although very rarely would anyone resort to violence over the existence of tapioca pudding.
KoalaBear33 pointed out that
I think capitalism, which is practiced in the vast majority of the planet, is reponsible for certain conditions that accentuate hate.
which is, of course, completely accurate. It does produce an environment in which we are encouraged to go after our subjective wants, and remove from our presence those things which we subjectively dislike. But, inherently, capitalism is subjective. I don't think there is much more to summarize on this topic, though there is more to talk about, especially the point about 'rational' hate being hating something which is 'wrong.' Basically the discussion there would be over what 'wrong' means. My argument is based on absolute right and wrong as opposed to subjective right and wrong. I cede that this is not a universal belief.
The other part of our discussion was on the nature of peace, and I think there is an agreement that there are several "levels" of peace. On the most relevant end of the spectrum is the "elimination of intentional violence by human to human". This is probably to what most people are referring when they say they want to work toward World Peace. On the extreme end of the spectrum there is the type of peace where there is no conflict in the world at all: no internal conflict over decisions to make, no conflict between humans and natural phenomena, no conflict at all. Although the fundamental peace sure does sound nice, it is most likely not a pragmatic endeavour to spend lots of effort trying to get to this unlikely situation. The "popular" view of peace, though, is more attainable, but in my opinion will probably have to be achieved at the expense of peace in the short term.
I think that sums up much of our discussion, and I know there is lots more to this topic; indeed it is one of the more fundamental issues of the human condition.
To sum up, I think this discussion is great, but I would also like to think of things that we can do to practically move toward peace. I don't mean things like legislating that "peace must happen" because that won't work any more than, well, redefining the meaning of the word 'purple'. Will things like giving people food, body armor, power plants, or things like that help? I am becoming more aware of issues like this and am more interested in things that can be done to help the situation in a physical, not merely philosophical, manner.
<sarcasm>
Call a meeting! Meetings are where the real work happens!
</sarcasm>
You hit on a lot of things about which I've been thinking recently. I was disuccsing this topic [peace] with a friend of mine last night, and I'm tending to agree with you on some points. A lot does depend on your definition of 'peace', and I admit my previous post takes an extremely literal point of view.
As far as hate not being bad, I can only conditionally agree with you. There are some instances where hate can be good - I'd call this "rational hate". However, as far as I can tell from my experiences, emotional hate is always bad.
As for 'amount of damage' caused which you mentioned, I think that is a better goal; much more objective than the vague "we want peace!" Reducing physical damage is nice and objective, and I can actually see those results. Of course, this whole thing leads into the philosophical debate on the question "Are pain and destruction inherently bad?" (and if so, why?)
I could go on to lots of interesting side points on this; for instance, even if we stop people from shooting each other, etc., then do you count the world as being at peace or not considering the presence of massively destructive phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and the like? On one sense you could say that the planet itself is "not at peace". However, most people don't consider natural cataclysms as non-peaceful events, yet they are typically more destructive than we usually acknowledge. So then, obviously, there is something beyond an event or action being 'destructive and painful' that makes it opposed to peace. The answer to what that 'something beyond' is I leave as an excercise to the reader.
Incidentally, I think that hate is too strong a word for the things you describe in the broad sense. And the instances you describe don't point at hate as a root cause, they point at selfishness - why would a competitor "hate" their competition? Because they want to win for themselves (incidentally, if you had no competitors, could you be declared the best at something?), which goes back to my selfishness argument.
At any rate, I'll end here for fear of going on for too long as I am wont....
An open, friendly society breeds safety simply by virtue of not pissing so many people off to the point where they want to do unsafe things. On the other hand, greed, power-lust and secrecy just breeds more conflict. With less secrecy, greed and power-lust become a lot more difficult to hide, and therefore more difficult to perpetrate. This information, as well as so much more, should be out in the open.
Well, I'm not so sure about that. I'm with the others that note that there is no way to please all the people. It does raise the question, however, of what really makes peace? Is it even possible to have peace? When all it takes is one person to do something that upsets someone else to "wreck" peace, peace is a difficult thing to attain.
It does sound nice, though, a society where people aren't irritated - but how do you not irritate people? First off, I think you need to get people in a mindset of understanding what it means to be content, and what they really need to get by in life.
Peace starts with being content with what you have, not the other way around. Greed, secrecy, and power-lust are simply symptoms of discontent, which is rooted in selfishness. If you can figure out how to eliminate selfishness from society, then my hat's off to you.
All right, I know I'm rehashing some things, but it's fun to think about this stuff. The articles assumptions are wrong, of course. Namely the whole conservation of momentum thing. You know, no biggie. But just to show the fun power of momentum, here's a reveiw of two-body collisions for our "solar sails can't work" friends:
Assume we have inertias, m1 and m2. m1 starts with velocity v1 and mass two starts with no velocity. m1 ends with velocity v1' and m2 ends with velocity v2 (these will be 1-dimensional vector quantities for this discussion).
Simply put, you don't get much kinetic energy recovery by blasting low-inertia particles at particles with lots of inertia. Does this mean solar sails won't work? No, it just means it's not very energy efficient (still 100% momentum efficient though!)
Elastic Collisions: kinetic energy in = kinetic energy out
This is some fun stuff: Elastically slamming a particle into something with much larger inertia(m1 really fun is that if you slam a large-inertia object into a small-inertia one (m1 >> m2) then m1 basically keeps its velocity but you shoot m2 off in the same direction at twice the initial velocity! (Can we say "slingshot effect", students?)
Scientist A: "So, if we slam the Earth into our spaceship, it we can get it going really fast, right?"
Scientist B: "Nah, let's use Jupiter instead!"
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting, I learned that definition of wealth from an economist. Also, I have to disagree. Both wealth and value are important, where you seem to indicate that my first post indicated that they are exclusive concepts. My apologies if I misled the reader.
I'd say more, but I'm trying to say something that will elaborate my point rather than just keep reiterating what I already said.
Anyway, I suggest we go talk to economists and find out what they say about the matter. I'm guessing a lot just has to do with the words you use to describe things.
It is an interesting line of thought at any rate, and I admit my ideas aren't completely formed yet. But, I know there's a difference between "value" and "wealth" - even if I cannot articulate what that might be in a coherent manner.
"Value" is the worth people assign to things, and is how much people are willing to trade for something. Value can be in dollars, time, whatever - basically the value of something is the alternatives forgone for the thing.
"Wealth" is actually how much stuff there is around. Technically, the only things that increase wealth are manufacturing and agriculture. Everything else just moves that wealth around.
Incidentally, there is an interesting debate over if software increases wealth. I would argue no, because it just moves information around, and you have to do something physical with that information to create wealth. However, software does have value because of that fact. And that's why people will always be willing to pay for software - and entertainment.
So, you can't really "create" value, because it depends on people's opinions - it's completely subjective. I guess, to answer your question of how much value can Open Content create: More than zero, less than infinite, with 100% confidence.
Good lord, people! I think we should let IPs run out and let them become a "scarce" resource. People are wanting to network kitchen appliances? Refrigerators that can detect and tell you what you're missing? What ever happened to being able to look in the fridge and going, "oh, hey, I need milk" and writing yourself a list?
The trouble is, creating things in cyberspace costs nothing (sure, it takes time, and people spend $$ on it), but there is no change in wealth associated with increasing addressing space in this form (other than some companies get to charge you money to create new machines). It's not like land, which actually has a physical limit. People should be forced to prioritize things in their lives, and really understand what is important, and work for that. If we keep making it easier and easier for people to do things they don't need to be doing, just because they can, then I don't want to hear people complaning about terrorists, RFID, RIAA, or even SCO any more.
"If people are trying to grow food to eat and fend off wolves, they don't have time to hire lawyers." - I call 'em as I see 'em
The only other option that I can see is that people are playing some fun games with the age/size/etc. of the universe...
How on EARTH did this get a patent!?! Who can I call to get this revoked? Anyone know how you can file a complaint to the USPTO to tell them they're idiots for stuff like this? I mean, how many people use a flashlight (granted, not laser pointer) to dance with their cat? For how many years? This patent fails the "unobvious" clause instantly.
</rant>
... how if the gondola broke off in the handlers' hands, what odd person attaches expensive stuff to the envelope that isn't in the gondola? I hate when newspapers don't give adequate engineering details...
That said, I think the goal of C/C++, for better or worse, is to be a "you can be high level or low level as you wish", which is why it's still my favorite language.
What I *really* want to see is a linker that will only link in the code you actually call so you don't have "dead" functions lying around in your executables! 200 kB "hello world" programs make me want to vomit! (I recall being able to do "hello world" in this in, let's see here, about 20 BYTES using MS-DOS Debug! There's coding efficiency for you!)
I think at this point I'll just summarize a bit for those who have been reading along, then make a few closing remarks.
This discussion originally began with a comment on "fixing the real problem" with terrorism and the like by "stopping those behaviors which foster hate to the point where voilence is exercised." This is, of course, the simple truth of the situation - if nobody has a reason to use violence, then they won't. (I'm granting here that 'delusions' and other similar things can be classified as 'reasons to use violence'. Although the merit of such a reason is perhaps in question, it is still a reason and thus the original statement still holds.)
The discussion then moved on to some of the possible causes for the most obvious reason for violence: hatred. It is my postulate that there are two types of hatred: hating something becuase it is wrong (which I called 'rational' hate) and then there is the hate which I believe is rooted in selfishness, which I called 'emotional' hate. In retrospect, 'selfish hate' would probably be a better term, and it is characterized by "I don't like that for some subjective reason, so I don't want it around". Hating tapioca pudding would fall into 'selfish' hate, although very rarely would anyone resort to violence over the existence of tapioca pudding.
KoalaBear33 pointed out that
which is, of course, completely accurate. It does produce an environment in which we are encouraged to go after our subjective wants, and remove from our presence those things which we subjectively dislike. But, inherently, capitalism is subjective. I don't think there is much more to summarize on this topic, though there is more to talk about, especially the point about 'rational' hate being hating something which is 'wrong.' Basically the discussion there would be over what 'wrong' means. My argument is based on absolute right and wrong as opposed to subjective right and wrong. I cede that this is not a universal belief.The other part of our discussion was on the nature of peace, and I think there is an agreement that there are several "levels" of peace. On the most relevant end of the spectrum is the "elimination of intentional violence by human to human". This is probably to what most people are referring when they say they want to work toward World Peace. On the extreme end of the spectrum there is the type of peace where there is no conflict in the world at all: no internal conflict over decisions to make, no conflict between humans and natural phenomena, no conflict at all. Although the fundamental peace sure does sound nice, it is most likely not a pragmatic endeavour to spend lots of effort trying to get to this unlikely situation. The "popular" view of peace, though, is more attainable, but in my opinion will probably have to be achieved at the expense of peace in the short term.
I think that sums up much of our discussion, and I know there is lots more to this topic; indeed it is one of the more fundamental issues of the human condition.
To sum up, I think this discussion is great, but I would also like to think of things that we can do to practically move toward peace. I don't mean things like legislating that "peace must happen" because that won't work any more than, well, redefining the meaning of the word 'purple'. Will things like giving people food, body armor, power plants, or things like that help? I am becoming more aware of issues like this and am more interested in things that can be done to help the situation in a physical, not merely philosophical, manner.
<sarcasm>
Call a meeting! Meetings are where the real work happens!
</sarcasm>
As far as hate not being bad, I can only conditionally agree with you. There are some instances where hate can be good - I'd call this "rational hate". However, as far as I can tell from my experiences, emotional hate is always bad.
As for 'amount of damage' caused which you mentioned, I think that is a better goal; much more objective than the vague "we want peace!" Reducing physical damage is nice and objective, and I can actually see those results. Of course, this whole thing leads into the philosophical debate on the question "Are pain and destruction inherently bad?" (and if so, why?)
I could go on to lots of interesting side points on this; for instance, even if we stop people from shooting each other, etc., then do you count the world as being at peace or not considering the presence of massively destructive phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and the like? On one sense you could say that the planet itself is "not at peace". However, most people don't consider natural cataclysms as non-peaceful events, yet they are typically more destructive than we usually acknowledge. So then, obviously, there is something beyond an event or action being 'destructive and painful' that makes it opposed to peace. The answer to what that 'something beyond' is I leave as an excercise to the reader.
Incidentally, I think that hate is too strong a word for the things you describe in the broad sense. And the instances you describe don't point at hate as a root cause, they point at selfishness - why would a competitor "hate" their competition? Because they want to win for themselves (incidentally, if you had no competitors, could you be declared the best at something?), which goes back to my selfishness argument.
At any rate, I'll end here for fear of going on for too long as I am wont....
Well, I'm not so sure about that. I'm with the others that note that there is no way to please all the people. It does raise the question, however, of what really makes peace? Is it even possible to have peace? When all it takes is one person to do something that upsets someone else to "wreck" peace, peace is a difficult thing to attain.
It does sound nice, though, a society where people aren't irritated - but how do you not irritate people? First off, I think you need to get people in a mindset of understanding what it means to be content, and what they really need to get by in life.
Peace starts with being content with what you have, not the other way around. Greed, secrecy, and power-lust are simply symptoms of discontent, which is rooted in selfishness. If you can figure out how to eliminate selfishness from society, then my hat's off to you.
Assume we have inertias, m1 and m2. m1 starts with velocity v1 and mass two starts with no velocity. m1 ends with velocity v1' and m2 ends with velocity v2 (these will be 1-dimensional vector quantities for this discussion).
Inelastic Collisions: v1' = v2
Elastic Collisions: kinetic energy in = kinetic energy out
Scientist A: "So, if we slam the Earth into our spaceship, it we can get it going really fast, right?"Scientist B: "Nah, let's use Jupiter instead!"