but in general people do a better job than anybody else looking after their own interests.
No. They don't. In fact, that's one of the most ridiculous assertions I've heard in some time.
Religion: 90% of the US population is either deluded or deceptive. Healthcare: 40% of the US population doesn't have any. Wars: We've recently been active on multiple fronts -- Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan -- not even one of them justifiable. Constitution: outright chaotic disobedience at the executive, congressional and judicial levels, not to mention a population that couldn't tell you what it is, by and large, or what it says. Equal rights: we just barely got rights for women and blacks, we're in the process of trying to convince the majority that gays deserve equal rights too, we still think we have the right to tell people polygamy isn't ok, not to mention states like Texas that are so backwards they outlaw sex toys, an entire country that outlaws personal choices like prostitution, etc. Prison: 30 million of our population are in prison, large numbers of them for having the temerity to think they should be able to decide what they can put into their own bodies, or choose what to do with them with a consenting, informed individual. Not to mention that when they get out, they'll be relegated to a permanent lower class that uses lifetime retribution and scarlet-lettering to lock them there, instead of even giving lip service to rehabilitation (assuming, of course, that you find the rare prisoner that actually needs rehabilitation, rather than then removal of ridiculous, antisocial, corporate dick-sucking law.)
People, in general, are fucking stupid. And they've elected fucking stupid representatives, and the only thing that has saved them from completely destroying themselves is the enormous inertia built into the system.
How can you say it won't work when we have not even scratched the surface of what crowd-sourced democracy could look like.
You really want to know? Ok, you have a brand new house. You need to wire it. You have two choices. You can hire some random person to do it, let's say a cook from McDonald's who knows absolutely nothing about electricity except that the light comes on when he flicks a switch, or you can hire an electrician, familiar with electricity, insulation, keeping wires away from the sides of walls, GFI's and why they are recommended (well, required, usually), that a secondary breaker box doesn't get wired to a common ground on the primary, that a back up generator needs an isolation arrangement to safeguard line workers (among other reasons) and all the myriad other things one actually needs to know to create a safe, functional wiring system in your home.
Which one are you going to pick? If you're even remotely sane, you'll pick the electrician. Even though the electrician is going to be (considerably) more expensive. And why? Because you don't want your house to burn down one night, or your child to be electrocuted, or the breakers to blow every time you try to make toast, or the powerline workers killed if you power up that generator on a night when the power fails. Just common sense, right?
Ok. Now, swing your focus on decision-making to direct democracy. What you have is a pool of voters -- decision makers -- who are decidedly light on expertise, but who are nonetheless on the hook financially. There are very few experts among them; but all votes are weighted equally. The immediate, unavoidable consequence of this is that any two uninformed individuals can outvote an expert; and so what we get is not the expert answer, but the self-interested one; in terms of your house wiring, the decision will typically go based upon how much it costs -- not on who knows what -- because the money comes from the voters in general, but the consequences are on you. Guess what? you just got the McDonald's guy to wire your house. Or worse, they may vote that you don't need wiring at all, because after all, your lack of lighting isn't going to affect them. (Remind you of anything? Health care arguments, perhaps?)
Democracy: where any two uninformed individuals outvote an expert, in an environment where experts are a rarity. Democratic republic: where any two uninformed congresscritters outvote an expert congresscritter, in an environment where experts are a rarity.
This is why we need a constitution, I hear someone cry. Well, yes, but if the constitution is created by direct democracy... you see the problem.
At some level, a meritocratic group -- people with real expertise -- has to step in and exert control. In the case of the USA, that was done through the constitution by some very well educated folks, but with the most unfortunate assumption that an oath would always be an oath, even to an oaf. Whoops.
Turns out, oaths don't mean anything in particular beyond a photo-op to our current crop of congresscritters, and consequently, our constitution isn't the absolute top level law it was designed to be... and we're all suffering because the courts and the executive and the congress have all stepped well beyond the bounds they were supposed to be explicitly limited to.
If we ever had the chance to do it over, I think that adding severe penalties for violation of that oath would be in order, so that the constitution itself had some teeth. But I don't think we're ever going to see that.
So anyway, we already know what democracy looks like. It looks like us. Which is to say, it's pretty badly broken.
The majority of people, in general, are not as stupid as you may think (usually only about a third of them).
Let me introduce you to our friend, the IQ gaussian. It's a very interesting concept. A very large, statistically speaking, pool of individuals take a test designed, as best we can, to quantify intelligence as a single number called IQ, or "Intelligence Quotient."
The scores of everyone, graphed, always, and I mean always, come out as a bell curve, or Gaussian curve; then the scores are adjusted so that the value 100 is in the middle (at the peak) of the curve. Because of the nature of the curve, that puts about of the population in the middle, and the rest equally distributed to either side. You can then say, very accurately, that "more than half the population is IQ 100 or lower", or, equally true, "more than half the population is IQ 100 or higher. This makes IQ 100 a very useful point to consider when talking about how smart the general population is -- or isn't.
So we know how much of the population lies where in what turns out to be quite accurate detail. And, so what does it mean in the context of our current discussion?
Here's my suggestion: go out, and find yourself someone with an IQ of 100. There are multiple ways to do so, though it might take you a while because people can be cagey about their IQ scores, even when they know them, and psycho-babblers are cagey for legal and professional reasons. But seek, and eventually, ye shall find.
Now, make it a point to cultivate this person, and have yourself some (gently) directed conversations. Discuss math, science, religion, the constitution, politics in general, the republican and democratic and libertarian platforms; child raising, criminal policy (retribution or rehab? personal liberty or state-driven authoritarianism?) See what they thought of the school system, their family, immigration, basically try your best to explore their head. You're not looking (if you're smart) for their actual positions; you're looking for the quality of those positions.
When you've done a reasonable amount of this, all that remains is to see how sophisticated, intuitive, and mentally agile you perceive this person to be, to see how much critical thinking plays a role in their approach to the world -- and now you have a "marker" for where half -- well, more than half, really -- of the population lands, by *definition*, in terms of how smart they are, and this in turn may give you your first legitimate feel for whether you'd like direct democracy as it would actually turn out.
I find it explains a few other things as well, but as they say, that's an exercise for the student.
If Russia turns off the natural gas, German citizens will die from the cold by the thousands to hundreds of thousands.
Yes, exactly... or they will utilize blankets and jackets and those magical inventions called "socks" and "hats" and "gloves" and not die from the cold. But hey. Don't let the facts interfere with your hysteria.
Speaking only for myself (anecdote != data), +[name] is quite convenient -- much more so than a URL, standards or not -- and I suspect I'll have no trouble remembering it.
Just type: +Nintendo or +Pepsi into your browser's google search bar, or into google search directly. Takes you right to the page. Much easier than a URL. Once there, you are on the URL, so if you like, you can bookmark it.
Actually, they've gone one better. You want to see Pepsi's page on google? type in "+Pepsi" on Google's search page or in the Google search bar of your browser. There it is.
"abandon" should have been "abandoned"; and the last sentence should be "Anyone know any different? Is it actually permissible to have a pseudonym-based account on Google now?"
It looks, at least, like Google has abandon the "Real Name" policy. Looking at the Google+ Privacy Policy and Google TOS pages today, I could not find any mention of a real name requirement. Unless I missed something (possible), it looks like Google did the Right Thing after considerable pressure from the community at large:
Not sure I'm following you, but I have to say that thunderbolt is in no way a viable replacement for a Mac pro.
I run six monitors and four TB-class HDs; can you imagine the nest of cables and wall warts that would require if the expansion method available was thunderbolt, rather than four PCI slots and four hard drive caddies?
I'm *really* hoping the mac pro thing was just a rumor, because I'm not particularly looking forward to having to Hackintosh a machine together to get the performance and configuration I need. And if they make that impossible somehow, I'll have to consider moving to something more open, and at this juncture, Linux looks like the only game in town, unless someone starts an OSX clone project (lord, I wish they would!)
For the same reason variations on any theme exist -- some people prefer going other ways, using other tools, etc. But the invention of a machete doesn't mean that a sword won't still work for the same jobs.
For example, the most important OO techniques are trivial to implement in c: objects themselves and object methods are good examples of this. Many of the other things c++ brings are matters of discipline in c, such as private and public concepts; but these don't get in the way of functionality, they're primarily concepts that allow the compiler to do hand holding. c also consistently produces smaller, faster executables; this is probably more of a reflection on poor libraries that get folded into executables than it is the language itself, but at this point in the game, it's a fact regardless.
Anyway, c++ and objective c and c# and so forth are fine, if that's the way you roll (I write in the first two myself, as well as in c); but it is a serious mistake to presume that c is a "lesser" language. It isn't. It's lean and mean, but everything you need to do productive work is there.
Stick with the no evidence idea. all you have to do is ignore the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Ah. The OT and the NT. Two books, each filled with history on the one hand, for which we have ample contemporaneous evidence; and also well supplied with extraordinary, even magical events, for which we have zero contemporaneous evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As opposed to none, which is what actually exists.
See, here's the problem with books. Take Tom Clancy's "Jack Ryan" series (Hunt for Red October, etc.) In these books, we find the CIA, New York City, Aegis cruisers, the Soviet Union -- all valid historical touch-points. But, also in these books, we have John Ryan, a man who never existed. 2,000 years from now, who is to say what part is fiction and what part is not? Well, I'll tell you. First, they'll look at the historical points, and they'll find New York, they'll find Aegis cruisers, and so forth. And they'll go, "hey, look, it's historically accurate!"; but then they'll go hunting for Jack Ryan... and they won't find him. By scientific lights, this will make Jack Ryan dubious, at the very least; but religious types would go "no, look, the history is true, Ryan must be real as well!" Bottom line: The entire concept that because there is accurate history in a book, the rest must be true, is either bewilderment or deception.
and deny Jewish history.
I don't deny the Jews have a history. I simply require a higher standard of proof than "that rabbi told this rabbi who told my rabbi that magic happened once upon a time." Without such proof, the sensible conclusion is that the Jews have managed to get a bunch of fiction entangled with their history.
and deny the claims of men who died for their statements that they saw what they said they dud.(sic)
Ah, well, as to that. You remember the Heaven's Gate group? They believed that a UFO was following comet Hale-Bopp, and they committed suicide in order to be magically transported there. I don't have any trouble doubting these folks at all. But apparently, you want me to have trouble doubting people who died for the idea that there's some entity that will play soul-catcher for them if they obey his commandments. No, I'm afraid I find both stories on an equal playing field, that is to say, completely without merit of any kind. People do this, you know. They make up stories, and others believe them, and soon we have people offing themselves, or playing with snakes, or crafting dolls out of straw and sticking pins in them, or laying out cards to "tell the future"... it's a pernicious combination of gullibility, lack of critical thinking skills, and fear. I'm not prone to those things, though, so the only thing you can put in front of me to convince of magical events... is actual magical events.
One last thing. Religion has never produced a humanitarian advance from its "holy books." All "god" would have had to do was say (for instance) "wash your hands before putting them inside another's body, or wound." That would have saved uncounted numbers of women and children at birth. But no. Instead, it's "don't wear mixed fibers." Science, on the other (clean) hand, did produce that simple advice, just as soon as we got a hint of germ theory. You want "magic"? Consider the saving of all those women and children. That's pretty magical. And god didn't do it.
But... but... Radiation! an... an... Hiroshima and stuff! AN.... 3 Mile Island an... Chernobyl! Glowing in the Dark! (climbs back into car and zips off down freeway...)
It's sad to watch whole countries shoot themselves in the foot over hysteria and foolishness. But those are the times we live in: where most countries have adopted a system where any two idiots can outvote an expert, whether those people are rank and file (straight democracy), or holding elected office (republics and so on.) And all this in environments where experts are actually rare.
See, here's the problem with that. The ideas of god or no god, santa or no santa, unicorns or no unicorns is not some 50/50 odds thing. There is literally zero evidence of any of them. So on the one hand, we have an emerging scientific worldview that does a very good job of either accounting for things as they are, or tearing itself apart in very short order such that it can find a new explanation that fits the data, and on the other, we have a fairy story that fits no data at all.
Giving the truth/myth sides equal weight on these subjects, which are all identical in nature, is ludicrous, either the act of the deluded or the deceiver. When you have evidence for any of them, bring it forth, and that'd be of huge interest. Until then, it's just fairy stories, no matter how many people believe them.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, answer was directed to the comment below.
That's called a meritocracy, and I'd be all for it. Direct, internet-driven democracy -- no.
Good grief. Are you completely ignorant of the world around you? Read this. And keep in mind it's just the low hanging fruit.
No. They don't. In fact, that's one of the most ridiculous assertions I've heard in some time.
Religion: 90% of the US population is either deluded or deceptive. Healthcare: 40% of the US population doesn't have any. Wars: We've recently been active on multiple fronts -- Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan -- not even one of them justifiable. Constitution: outright chaotic disobedience at the executive, congressional and judicial levels, not to mention a population that couldn't tell you what it is, by and large, or what it says. Equal rights: we just barely got rights for women and blacks, we're in the process of trying to convince the majority that gays deserve equal rights too, we still think we have the right to tell people polygamy isn't ok, not to mention states like Texas that are so backwards they outlaw sex toys, an entire country that outlaws personal choices like prostitution, etc. Prison: 30 million of our population are in prison, large numbers of them for having the temerity to think they should be able to decide what they can put into their own bodies, or choose what to do with them with a consenting, informed individual. Not to mention that when they get out, they'll be relegated to a permanent lower class that uses lifetime retribution and scarlet-lettering to lock them there, instead of even giving lip service to rehabilitation (assuming, of course, that you find the rare prisoner that actually needs rehabilitation, rather than then removal of ridiculous, antisocial, corporate dick-sucking law.)
People, in general, are fucking stupid. And they've elected fucking stupid representatives, and the only thing that has saved them from completely destroying themselves is the enormous inertia built into the system.
Concept: paragraphs
Testing. Just like a driver's license.
+1000 Internets to you
You really want to know? Ok, you have a brand new house. You need to wire it. You have two choices. You can hire some random person to do it, let's say a cook from McDonald's who knows absolutely nothing about electricity except that the light comes on when he flicks a switch, or you can hire an electrician, familiar with electricity, insulation, keeping wires away from the sides of walls, GFI's and why they are recommended (well, required, usually), that a secondary breaker box doesn't get wired to a common ground on the primary, that a back up generator needs an isolation arrangement to safeguard line workers (among other reasons) and all the myriad other things one actually needs to know to create a safe, functional wiring system in your home.
Which one are you going to pick? If you're even remotely sane, you'll pick the electrician. Even though the electrician is going to be (considerably) more expensive. And why? Because you don't want your house to burn down one night, or your child to be electrocuted, or the breakers to blow every time you try to make toast, or the powerline workers killed if you power up that generator on a night when the power fails. Just common sense, right?
Ok. Now, swing your focus on decision-making to direct democracy. What you have is a pool of voters -- decision makers -- who are decidedly light on expertise, but who are nonetheless on the hook financially. There are very few experts among them; but all votes are weighted equally. The immediate, unavoidable consequence of this is that any two uninformed individuals can outvote an expert; and so what we get is not the expert answer, but the self-interested one; in terms of your house wiring, the decision will typically go based upon how much it costs -- not on who knows what -- because the money comes from the voters in general, but the consequences are on you. Guess what? you just got the McDonald's guy to wire your house. Or worse, they may vote that you don't need wiring at all, because after all, your lack of lighting isn't going to affect them. (Remind you of anything? Health care arguments, perhaps?)
Democracy: where any two uninformed individuals outvote an expert, in an environment where experts are a rarity. Democratic republic: where any two uninformed congresscritters outvote an expert congresscritter, in an environment where experts are a rarity.
This is why we need a constitution, I hear someone cry. Well, yes, but if the constitution is created by direct democracy... you see the problem.
At some level, a meritocratic group -- people with real expertise -- has to step in and exert control. In the case of the USA, that was done through the constitution by some very well educated folks, but with the most unfortunate assumption that an oath would always be an oath, even to an oaf. Whoops.
Turns out, oaths don't mean anything in particular beyond a photo-op to our current crop of congresscritters, and consequently, our constitution isn't the absolute top level law it was designed to be... and we're all suffering because the courts and the executive and the congress have all stepped well beyond the bounds they were supposed to be explicitly limited to.
If we ever had the chance to do it over, I think that adding severe penalties for violation of that oath would be in order, so that the constitution itself had some teeth. But I don't think we're ever going to see that.
So anyway, we already know what democracy looks like. It looks like us. Which is to say, it's pretty badly broken.
Let me introduce you to our friend, the IQ gaussian. It's a very interesting concept. A very large, statistically speaking, pool of individuals take a test designed, as best we can, to quantify intelligence as a single number called IQ, or "Intelligence Quotient."
The scores of everyone, graphed, always, and I mean always, come out as a bell curve, or Gaussian curve; then the scores are adjusted so that the value 100 is in the middle (at the peak) of the curve. Because of the nature of the curve, that puts about of the population in the middle, and the rest equally distributed to either side. You can then say, very accurately, that "more than half the population is IQ 100 or lower", or, equally true, "more than half the population is IQ 100 or higher. This makes IQ 100 a very useful point to consider when talking about how smart the general population is -- or isn't.
So we know how much of the population lies where in what turns out to be quite accurate detail. And, so what does it mean in the context of our current discussion?
Here's my suggestion: go out, and find yourself someone with an IQ of 100. There are multiple ways to do so, though it might take you a while because people can be cagey about their IQ scores, even when they know them, and psycho-babblers are cagey for legal and professional reasons. But seek, and eventually, ye shall find.
Now, make it a point to cultivate this person, and have yourself some (gently) directed conversations. Discuss math, science, religion, the constitution, politics in general, the republican and democratic and libertarian platforms; child raising, criminal policy (retribution or rehab? personal liberty or state-driven authoritarianism?) See what they thought of the school system, their family, immigration, basically try your best to explore their head. You're not looking (if you're smart) for their actual positions; you're looking for the quality of those positions.
When you've done a reasonable amount of this, all that remains is to see how sophisticated, intuitive, and mentally agile you perceive this person to be, to see how much critical thinking plays a role in their approach to the world -- and now you have a "marker" for where half -- well, more than half, really -- of the population lands, by *definition*, in terms of how smart they are, and this in turn may give you your first legitimate feel for whether you'd like direct democracy as it would actually turn out.
I find it explains a few other things as well, but as they say, that's an exercise for the student.
Lynx? Lynx ??? Dude... shoot yourself.
Yes, exactly... or they will utilize blankets and jackets and those magical inventions called "socks" and "hats" and "gloves" and not die from the cold. But hey. Don't let the facts interfere with your hysteria.
Speaking only for myself (anecdote != data), +[name] is quite convenient -- much more so than a URL, standards or not -- and I suspect I'll have no trouble remembering it.
Just type: +Nintendo or +Pepsi into your browser's google search bar, or into google search directly. Takes you right to the page. Much easier than a URL. Once there, you are on the URL, so if you like, you can bookmark it.
What are those limits? More to the point, where are they? They aren't on the TOS page, at least I didn't see anything like that.
Actually, they've gone one better. You want to see Pepsi's page on google? type in "+Pepsi" on Google's search page or in the Google search bar of your browser. There it is.
Couple of typos, sorry:
"abandon" should have been "abandoned"; and the last sentence should be "Anyone know any different? Is it actually permissible to have a pseudonym-based account on Google now?"
It looks, at least, like Google has abandon the "Real Name" policy. Looking at the Google+ Privacy Policy and Google TOS pages today, I could not find any mention of a real name requirement. Unless I missed something (possible), it looks like Google did the Right Thing after considerable pressure from the community at large:
Anyone know any different? Is it actually permissible to have a pseudonym-based account on Google now?
Not sure I'm following you, but I have to say that thunderbolt is in no way a viable replacement for a Mac pro.
I run six monitors and four TB-class HDs; can you imagine the nest of cables and wall warts that would require if the expansion method available was thunderbolt, rather than four PCI slots and four hard drive caddies?
I'm *really* hoping the mac pro thing was just a rumor, because I'm not particularly looking forward to having to Hackintosh a machine together to get the performance and configuration I need. And if they make that impossible somehow, I'll have to consider moving to something more open, and at this juncture, Linux looks like the only game in town, unless someone starts an OSX clone project (lord, I wish they would!)
For the same reason variations on any theme exist -- some people prefer going other ways, using other tools, etc. But the invention of a machete doesn't mean that a sword won't still work for the same jobs.
For example, the most important OO techniques are trivial to implement in c: objects themselves and object methods are good examples of this. Many of the other things c++ brings are matters of discipline in c, such as private and public concepts; but these don't get in the way of functionality, they're primarily concepts that allow the compiler to do hand holding. c also consistently produces smaller, faster executables; this is probably more of a reflection on poor libraries that get folded into executables than it is the language itself, but at this point in the game, it's a fact regardless.
Anyway, c++ and objective c and c# and so forth are fine, if that's the way you roll (I write in the first two myself, as well as in c); but it is a serious mistake to presume that c is a "lesser" language. It isn't. It's lean and mean, but everything you need to do productive work is there.
C is lovely for complex work. Have no idea where such a claim would come from. Perhaps from someone who isn't very good a programming in C.
Ah. The OT and the NT. Two books, each filled with history on the one hand, for which we have ample contemporaneous evidence; and also well supplied with extraordinary, even magical events, for which we have zero contemporaneous evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As opposed to none, which is what actually exists.
See, here's the problem with books. Take Tom Clancy's "Jack Ryan" series (Hunt for Red October, etc.) In these books, we find the CIA, New York City, Aegis cruisers, the Soviet Union -- all valid historical touch-points. But, also in these books, we have John Ryan, a man who never existed. 2,000 years from now, who is to say what part is fiction and what part is not? Well, I'll tell you. First, they'll look at the historical points, and they'll find New York, they'll find Aegis cruisers, and so forth. And they'll go, "hey, look, it's historically accurate!"; but then they'll go hunting for Jack Ryan... and they won't find him. By scientific lights, this will make Jack Ryan dubious, at the very least; but religious types would go "no, look, the history is true, Ryan must be real as well!" Bottom line: The entire concept that because there is accurate history in a book, the rest must be true, is either bewilderment or deception.
I don't deny the Jews have a history. I simply require a higher standard of proof than "that rabbi told this rabbi who told my rabbi that magic happened once upon a time." Without such proof, the sensible conclusion is that the Jews have managed to get a bunch of fiction entangled with their history.
Ah, well, as to that. You remember the Heaven's Gate group? They believed that a UFO was following comet Hale-Bopp, and they committed suicide in order to be magically transported there. I don't have any trouble doubting these folks at all. But apparently, you want me to have trouble doubting people who died for the idea that there's some entity that will play soul-catcher for them if they obey his commandments. No, I'm afraid I find both stories on an equal playing field, that is to say, completely without merit of any kind. People do this, you know. They make up stories, and others believe them, and soon we have people offing themselves, or playing with snakes, or crafting dolls out of straw and sticking pins in them, or laying out cards to "tell the future"... it's a pernicious combination of gullibility, lack of critical thinking skills, and fear. I'm not prone to those things, though, so the only thing you can put in front of me to convince of magical events... is actual magical events.
One last thing. Religion has never produced a humanitarian advance from its "holy books." All "god" would have had to do was say (for instance) "wash your hands before putting them inside another's body, or wound." That would have saved uncounted numbers of women and children at birth. But no. Instead, it's "don't wear mixed fibers." Science, on the other (clean) hand, did produce that simple advice, just as soon as we got a hint of germ theory. You want "magic"? Consider the saving of all those women and children. That's pretty magical. And god didn't do it.
But... but... Radiation! an... an... Hiroshima and stuff! AN.... 3 Mile Island an... Chernobyl! Glowing in the Dark! (climbs back into car and zips off down freeway...)
What? You would Denigrate our Great Political Process, Suh? Why, I oughta... That is To Say... if I were a Younger Man, Suh...
It's sad to watch whole countries shoot themselves in the foot over hysteria and foolishness. But those are the times we live in: where most countries have adopted a system where any two idiots can outvote an expert, whether those people are rank and file (straight democracy), or holding elected office (republics and so on.) And all this in environments where experts are actually rare.
See, here's the problem with that. The ideas of god or no god, santa or no santa, unicorns or no unicorns is not some 50/50 odds thing. There is literally zero evidence of any of them. So on the one hand, we have an emerging scientific worldview that does a very good job of either accounting for things as they are, or tearing itself apart in very short order such that it can find a new explanation that fits the data, and on the other, we have a fairy story that fits no data at all.
Giving the truth/myth sides equal weight on these subjects, which are all identical in nature, is ludicrous, either the act of the deluded or the deceiver. When you have evidence for any of them, bring it forth, and that'd be of huge interest. Until then, it's just fairy stories, no matter how many people believe them.