Possibly. I suppose it depends on what you mean by "moral argument".
But what... are we forbidden from even entertaining moral arguments? And on what authority are you deciding that? Perhaps you should examine your underlying assumptions when making judgements about other people's arguments.
Please note that I said, "I think there's an argument to be made" and not "I'm about to tell you something absolutely unquestionably true." There's an argument to be made (really a few different arguments) that we should strive toward excellence. There's an argument to be made in favor of putting out the least effort to avoid trouble. There's even an argument that could be made for not doing anything at all, and just starving to death, but not one that I'd like much.
I'm presenting a worthwhile alternate view, not laying down gospel.
However the the starting point should to evaluate the outcome and then if the outcome is poor figure out why...
I suppose part of what I wanted to point out was, it's not just an issue of "poor outcomes". You could be really smart and talented, and still squeak by with a "good outcome" by throwing something together at the last minute. Still, it might be that if you'd given yourself enough time, you could have brought about an outstanding outcome.
And I wouldn't argue that we always need the most outstanding outcome possible, but I think there's an argument to be made that you shouldn't just muddle your way through life, doing the bare minimum to accomplish acceptable outcomes.
On a side note, as someone who used to be a habitual procrastinator, I've also found that it's typically less stressful to just get it done early. If you're only going to spend half your available time on a project, make it the first half. Then you can relax afterward without worry.
procrastination gets a whole lot of negative attention, sort of like being lefthanded once did, and that it is not generally helpful and may in fact be harmful.
I don't really buy the logic there. Just because two things get similarly negative attention doesn't make them the same sort of thing. I agree that we have unfortunate misunderstandings about procrastination, but I'm not sure I'd say it's the same sort of thing as being left-handed.
You know, I've thought for a while that procrastination has a little bit of an unfairly negative reputation. People treat procrastination as laziness, but in my experience, it's much more complicated than that.
I do agree that procrastination is often more about managing emotions than time. I don't know about the science from the article, but in my experience of my own procrastination and others', it tends to happen when there's some feeling of being overwhelmed. There's too much to do, there are two many things to think about, and so the procrastinator avoids dealing with it until they're forced to.
I also agree with you that it's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the procrastinator still completes their work on time. It can even be a good thing if, when confronted with a complex, difficult, or overwhelming problem, there's some level of procrastination. Stop, take a break, maybe focus on something else first. Not only can it be a coping mechanism, but it can be a good strategy. If you have a long-term problem without only bad options, and you let it sit for a while, a the situation may change and better solution might present itself. Or, even if nothing changes, it may be that giving yourself some time will allow your unconscious mind to turn the situation over a few times and think of a better solution. It may even just be that you're not in the right frame of mind to consider the issue right now, and considering it at a different time can let you deal with it in a better way.
So I don't think procrastinators are lazy or that they necessarily have a problem, but clearly it can turn into a problem. For one, procrastinators sometimes put things off too long, and the avoidance turns into hopelessness. They think, "I had 2 months to do this, and I've made no progress. Now the deadline is only a week away. If I couldn't make any progress in a month and a half, then what makes me think I could complete it in 1 week?" They give up and don't get things done.
That's an extreme case, but even in less extreme cases it can be a problem. You said, "Studies seem to indicate that a large fraction of the population 'procrastinates' while still successfully completing tasks." However, "completing the task" may not be the only measure worth considering. People are terrible at estimating how long tasks will take. If you get in the habit of putting things off until the last minute, and giving yourself just enough time to meet the deadline, you'll find you sometimes miss the deadline because you underestimated the amount of time that'd be needed. Or if you don't miss the deadline, you might cut corners to make the deadline on time. Or even if you don't explicitly "cut corners", very often having spare time at the end of a task allows you to be more careful, take your time, and refine your performance.
To give a more concrete example, if you have 2 months to write a paper, and you don't start it until the night before, you might not finish it in time because you needed a week to write it. If you start writing a week in advance, you might finish it, and it's fine. However, if you start writing immediately and finish it in a week, then you have an additional 7 weeks to proofread, edit, and revise the paper. So in that case, procrastination isn't exactly a problem, but it is still detrimental.
Still, not everything needs to be done perfectly, and sometimes the paper you wrote at the end of 1 week is good enough. Sometimes giving yourself a break is more important than making the paper as good as it could possibly be. And it's possible that letting the ideas roll around in the back of your mind for 7 weeks actually allowed you to write a better paper than you would have if you started work immediately.
I don't think there's a simple one-size-fits-all answer. Procrastination is often a problem, but often it's not, and I'm sure sometimes it's beneficial.
If you can use SMS as a recovery path when you lose your 2FA token, that means you don't need the 2FA token. You can just use SMS. Though that might sound handy, SMS is insecure.
It's the same basic problem with "security questions". A lot of services have the option where, if you forget your password, you can reset it with security questions. And then, they ask you security questions like, "What's your mother's maiden name?" That's information that isn't necessarily hard to find out these days. So now, instead of having to hack the site or guess someone's password, you can get unauthorized access to the account just by knowing the person's mother's maiden name.
"Security is only as strong as its weakest point." It's a bit of an oversimplification, but accurate enough. If, in the name of security, you make your default method of authentication so onerous that people need an easy and insecure backup method, then you've just undermined your own security.
I think if this had happened while I was in school, before school shootings were so common, it might have resulted in a visit to the principal's office, and maybe a couple of follow-ups with a school counselor to make sure everything was fine. If they want to be careful, maybe some kind of a mental evaluation is in order, or having police check to see whether he's known to have access to weapons.
Unless there's some other information we don't know, arresting him was the wrong move. There should have been some step to evaluate how dangerous he was, and only call the police if he's done something illegal.
My point wasn't to say that they were right to arrest him, but to say that society is fickle and stupid, and people are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
I started my post with the phrase, "I think the problem is..." The "problem" I was talking about was the overreaction of the administrators and law enforcement. However, part of the problem is the political pressures that our stupid fickle society puts on those administrators and law enforcement.
I think you got your signals crossed and posted the wrong "conservative" rhetoric. The only "class" I was talking about was "everyone", and the only thing I was talking about protecting them from was fraud.
I'm not a lawyer, but my impression from the news stories I read was that they could just refuse to pay out your winnings if they suspected you of "cheating". And then I suppose you could sue them or something.
There is a very simple formula for getting and keeping a job. The formula works during all eras and in all cultures. It also works if you want to start your own business - simply substitute "customer" in place of "employer". This is the formula:
$(problems-you-solve) > $(problems-you-create)
Ok, so I have to stop you right there, because obviously this equation isn't right. Let's start with the simplest issue, and point out that you mention "customer" and "employer", but neither of those appear in your equation. So I'm going to assume you mean:
$(problems you solve for your employer) > $(problems you create for your employer)
Right? Ok, so onto the next problem. Some problems are bigger and more important than others, obviously, so it should be:
$(total value of problems you solve for your employer) > $(total value of problems you create for your employer)
And maybe that's what you meant all along. But that's still missing an important component, which is that your wage is also a cost to your employer. So really, it should look more like:
$(total value of problems you solve for your employer) > [$(total value of problems you create for your employer) + $(value of your wage to the employer)]
To be fair, maybe you were including the wage as a "problem you create", but I don't think it's quite fair to think of your wage as a "problem you create". Now we can start to delve into details that are a little less obvious. For example, your employer is a person, and as such, he's probably not making decisions purely logically, based on objective fact. Therefore, it's probably more accurate to say:
$(total value of problems you solve for your employer, as perceived by your employer) > [$(total value of problems you create for your employer, as perceived by your employer) + $(value of your wage to the employer, as perceived by your employer)]
Or I suppose to condense it a little:
{$(total value of problems you solve for your employer) > [$(total value of problems you create for your employer) + $(value of your wage to the employer)]} * (as perceived by your employer))
But also, your employer has a budget, so maybe:
if {[$(total value of problems you solve for your employer) > $(total value of problems you create for your employer) + $(value of your wage to the employer)] & (it fits into your employer's budget)} * (as perceived by your employer) then (You're employed)
I'm sure this could be expanded even further, and admittedly it's not as glib, but it's a lot more accurate.
Right, and you feel very strongly. But my point is, if they hadn't done anything and he shot up the school, you'd probably be saying, "Why didn't they do anything? These people should all lose their jobs over this!"
Maybe not literally you, but people who are right now making the same argument you are. And you can say, "Who cares what people say?" but I wouldn't want to be tried in the court of public opinion. I wouldn't want my fate decided by the political pressures brought to bear by sensationalized public outcry. I can understand how, in this case, arresting the kid might seem like "playing it safe".
From what I've heard of this story, I don't think it was the right call. But think I can understand how that call got made.
Obviously software doesn't follow the old rules of supply and demand. Going back to the invention of copyright, the idea was to allow authors to create artificial scarcity of something that could be easily replicated. It was to take a thing of virtually unlimited supply, and shoehorn it into the model of supply and demand.
And though it's not really a "software" problem, the copyright system stops working when the cost of replication goes from "extremely cheap" to "virtually free". We've tried to keep the shoehorn by inventing DRM and making new laws, but it's not really working.
Worse, it's detrimental to society. The indefinite extension of copyright, combined with DRM and incompatibilities, means that we're going to lose the history of our intellectual works. You can still look at a 500 year old painting or read a 500 year old book, but it's not clear whether you'll be able to try current software or play current video games 500 years from now. It's a problem that, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be a problem that people are considering when they create DRM or modify copyright law.
It's not that I didn't know there are actual malfunctions of slot machines. Still, the fact is that the slot machine can say that you've won money, and casinos can and will say, "Nope, that's a malfunction. We're not going to pay." And I don't think it's just for the clear computing error that you described, but I remember reading a story where the casino just said that the slot machine was paying out more often than it was supposed to, and they didn't know why, so they figured either the machine was broken or the player was cheating, so they refused to pay out.
And my whole point in bringing it up at all was, it's not as simple as, "if they have already taken the bet then they have to pay out." Under some circumstances, they take the bet, you win, and then they don't pay out. And it's not clear in advance what those circumstances are. The result is, you're playing a game rigged in your opponent's favor, and it's not even totally clear what the rules are.
I think the problem is, they arrested the guy and a lot of people are saying it's an overreaction, but if they hadn't done anything and he later shot up the school, some of those same people would have said, "Why didn't you do something when you found out he was playing that game?!"
Specifically, there's a tension created by the Republican rhetoric, and there's not a clear way to resolve it. On the one hand, they want to argue that the availability of guns isn't a contributing factor in school shootings, and that the responsibility falls entirely on law enforcement to identify and arrest the shooters. In other words, the problem isn't bad policy or bad guns, but bad people, and those people need to be locked up. On the other hand, they want to claim that they're libertarians who value freedom and personal choice, and that the government should not be involved in your life in any way unless you've committed a clear crime. The shooters often don't commit a clear crime until the actual shooting, even though they may have said or done some disturbing things. And so this sets up a conflict between the freedom to buy guns, and the freedom to think and speak as you choose.
The Republican resolution to these kinds of tensions often take the form of moral panic. They won't budge on gun control, and they don't want social reform or to provide mental health services, so they need to find some source of "evil". They imagine devil worshipers and perverts behind every corner, and look for reasons to blame social media or video games or sex or drugs or minorities. They deny the possibility that there could be problems with our own rules, culture, or way of life, and instead look for an assault from an outside evil, arguing that if that evil were simply removed or prohibited, everything would be fine.
They've already created the expectation that school shootings are caused by violent video games, so a violent AR game played in a school is guaranteed to cause concern. I wouldn't argue that arresting him was the right choice, but it makes sense that the social media post would cause some kind of response and intervention. I think if this had happened while I was in school, before school shootings were so common, it might have resulted in a visit to the principal's office, and maybe a couple of follow-ups with a school counselor to make sure everything was fine. If they want to be careful, maybe some kind of a mental evaluation is in order, or having police check to see whether he's known to have access to weapons.
They cannot disqualify players for winning too much - if they have already taken the bet then they have to pay out.
I don't know about this new bookmaking venture, but I've read that it's a thing in casinos in general that they can confiscate your winnings. I'm not a lawyer, but I've read news stories about people winning at slot machines, and casinos claiming it was a malfunction and refusing to pay out. I've read stories of people getting accused of counting cards in blackjack, and the casino takes them aside, confiscates their winnings, and says, "Don't come back."
However, there is nothing wrong with them refusing to take new bets from them in the future provided that they are open and clear about their terms which must include a "if you win too much we will refuse all future bets" so that it makes it even clearer that gambling is never going to make you money.
Yeah, I suppose my overall point is that it's not necessarily as simple as, "The casino and gambler both entered into is knowingly, so it's all fair and there's no problem. As you acknowledge, the odds are always rigged in their favor, and whether or not people know it, they don't necessarily understand it. To some extent, casinos profit by providing various forms of entertainment, including games that involve gambling. But then, to a large extent, they make their money off of addiction and ignorance. They're a big company that spends money on hiring experts to tell them how best to take advantage of people, to manipulate them, to prey on their emotions, and to appeal to their addictions. They spend a lot of money on advertising that promises a fair opportunity to strike it rich. They pay engineers to make sure the games won't pay out, and the lawyers to avoid paying the winners when the games do pay out.
So my point is, given the nature of that relationship and the imbalance of power, I think it's reasonable to say, "There should be rules about what casinos can and can't do, with a mind toward limiting the extent that they can take advantage." You offer one idea, and I think it's a good one, which is to make sure their advertising, marketing, posted rules, and everything else are very clear about what their terms are, and what kind of business they are. Make sure you tell the customers: This is for entertainment purposes only. The odds are intentionally stacked against you. If you win more than you lose, we'll cut you off and may confiscate your winnings.
Casinos are big businesses with a lot of resources to put into creating a contrived situation to their advantage, as well as manipulating people. They choose the games. They set the process. They have every opportunity to rig the odds in their favor already. It's not a symmetrical relationship.
They're even allowed to present themselves as though players have a real shot at winning. So should they also be allowed to disqualify players for winning too much? It seems to slant things even more in their favor. No one is forcing them into this business. No one is making them run blackjack tables. If it won't be profitable enough to run this bookkeeping operation straight, without additional manipulation, then maybe they just shouldn't do it. But once they offer a game, they should be forced to adhere to the rules of their own game that they set.
Eh... I don't object to them providing firefighters, law enforcement, or other similar groups some kind of special consideration. Like if they find some way to prioritize those people when things are jammed up, that seems fine and reasonable.
But I think this event just highlights the fact that cell carriers and ISPs run their businesses as though they're providing entertainment services. They don't seem to recognize that they're providing vital telecommunication infrastructure. So often, the Internet gets treated like, "Oh that's just how people access Facebook and Netflix."
Well... If you want to get all technical and debate it, the term "provocateur" is sometimes used to describe people who are somewhat innocuous. For example, I've heard people say that Kanye West is a provocateur, in the sense that he does provocative things. Then there's the term "agent provocateur", which would be somewhat apt, but arguably describes a subset of "spies".
That is, the term "spy" is sometimes used generally to indicate anyone involved in intelligence, espionage, or some kind of adversarial covert action. Acting as an agent provocateur, falling under that umbrella of covert action, would classify you as an example of spycraft, i.e. all agent provocateurs are spies, but not all spies are agent provocateurs.
On the other hand, I could see an argument that calling someone a "spy" implies that their primary goal is "to spy", in the sense of covertly gathering information. The primary goal of these "Russian trolls" isn't to gather information, but to spread misinformation and influence political groups. I can see that argument, but I don't find it convincing. The Russian government had trained agents infiltrate American society in order to gather information, spread misinformation, and engage in a covert influence campaign. I think if you surveyed English people to ask what the name for such a person is, I think most would say "spy". The fact that their infiltration took place online shouldn't change that.
I agree that part of the problem is education. On the other hand, I don't think that quite covers the problem.
For one, there are highly educated people who fall for really stupid scams. We could look at adding something to our education system to help people recognize scams, propaganda, etc. It wouldn't be a bad idea, but I don't think that really covers it either. I honestly think that part of the problem is, propaganda has taken on an unhealthy role in our everyday society already, leaving us open to propaganda from other, more malicious sources.
We're being inundated with advertising all the time, so much so that there's an ongoing arms race between people trying to block advertising and advertisers trying to bypass the blocks. You put in spam filters and popup blockers, and they find ways around them. You insist on watching TV shows without advertising, and they put more resources into product placement. Propaganda has always been a part of politics, but it's become more omnipresent and shameless. Campaigning basically starts immediately after the previous election.
People have taken the brainwashing techniques used by cults, refined them, and turned the on society at large. What's worse than that, we've gotten used to it. It's just a normal part of your life now. This is water. You're swimming in it.
And though some people will stop listening to me when I seem to voice a political view, I'm going to say that a special measure of blame falls on Bill Clinton, who really took propaganda to a new level and challenged what the meaning of the word "is" is.
And then some serious blame falls on the Republican party. A group of them, arguably with good intentions, decided to use propaganda to stoke and harness the blind, ignorant rage of white supremacists and theocrats. They courted them, brought them into the party, and used propaganda to get these people to support the Republican cause, even against their own self-interest. They probably thought they were being philosopher kings, telling noble lies for the greater good. But those lies took root, and those ideologies took over.
And so I've gone on my nice little rant, but I had a point when I started: Education alone won't fix this problem. It's a bigger problem than that. If you want a real solution, we're going to address our cultural problems, and find ways to push naked propaganda out of the mainstream.
We call these particular people pushing the anti-vaxx bullshit "Russian trolls" because of the tools they happen to use, but if you look at what they're actually *doing*, it'd be more accurate to call them "Russian propagandists".
I've been arguing for months that we should be calling them "Russian spies". To call them "trolls" implies that they're just being a bit pesky, and it's all in good fun. I agree that "propagandists" is more accurate, but it doesn't capture the fact that it's a foreign government doing this out of malicious intent, and for their own strategic advantage. They're spies, and they're doing a good job infiltrating our telecommunications and public discourse.
There's a relatively non-obvious problem with your suggestion: Truths and falsehoods often don't have the same quality of information.
To give a really simple example, consider these two statements:
1) Joe tells you that he has invented a perpetual motion machine.
2) Ed tells you that Joe almost certainly has not invented a perpetual motion machine.
This is already simple, and I picked a topic so that you would already know that Joe is lying (or is wrong), and Ed is correct. What's more, this is an example that should be relatively easy to test and verify, so there's not a lot of ambiguity. Still, a lot of people will probably believe Joe, even in the face of evidence against it.
But now ignore the subject matter for a second and think about the rest of the sentence. In this example, Joe claims [A] is true, and Ed claims that [A] is "almost certainly" false. That's because Joe, in the act of lying, is free to make statements with total certainty. Ed, in telling the authentic truth, has to admit that his knowledge is incomplete. Until Ed gathers more information about Joe's claim, he can't tell you what the machine is actually doing, does not have a physical model for the machines operation, and so on a certain level, has to concede a level of uncertainty.
In addition, Joe is telling you something you want to believe, it's exciting. It opens possibilities. In a lie, Joe is free to construct his statement to tell you things you want to hear, and to engage you in whatever way is advantageous to him. Ed, on the other hand, it telling you something boring and disappointing, and it closes off possibilities. Because he's telling the truth, the kind of engagement that he can offer is limited by the reality of the subject he's trying to convey.
I'm not an experts-- and there are experts in this kind of thing-- but I think it's pretty clear when you think about it that you can't get people to believe something simply by presenting them with true information, even from an abundance of sources. Often enough, people choose to believe falsehoods because they're comforting, easy, pleasant, or exciting.
It also makes a lot of sense when you think about your suggestion. You're asking, "Why not create a bot army that argues for the truth?" But there are already plenty of people posting the truth. You don't need a bot army to push the idea that people should vaccinate their children, because you already have an army of smart, responsible, informed people who are pushing that viewpoint, but it's still failing to convince the anti-vaxxers.
It's not because there isn't enough information or that there aren't enough voices, but that "vaccines caused my child's illness" is a story that people like. It lets them off the hook for any responsibility for their child's illness. It puts the blame on something that seems small and easy to avoid. If it's genetic, you don't really have control over that, and it feels like it's your fault for having shitty genes. If it's pollution, then you have to figure out who to blame and how to stop pollution. If it's a vaccine... well, you never liked bringing your kids in for vaccines anyway.
It is *also* true that certain character flaws will lead to one being a failure.... So, a fat person may be fat because of their combination of metabolism and gut bacteria and so on. Such that when they eat a normal and reasonable amount of food, and even get some exercise, they stay fat. That happens. But it *also* happens that some people just over-indulge in unhealthy food and they don't exercise at all.
I think that it's unfortunately more complicated than that.
Because first, if people are just indulging, it raises the question, why are they indulging? If it's just a character flaw, why do they have that character flaw? Really, there are only a few possibilities.
One is biology. Whether it's genetic or developmental, biology can contribute in all kinds of way. Maybe they're indulging because their brain chemistry at that moment is disposing them toward impulsive or self-gratifying actions. Or it could be environmental, e.g. your Italian grandmother makes big pasta dishes and pressures you to eat the whole thing. Another factor may be educational, that you weren't taught well enough about proper nutrition.
My point is just to say, even if there are some people who indulge, I don't think it's because they just magically have "bad character" that results from neither nature nor nurture. It's not like fat people just have inferior souls, and they need a magical substance called "willpower" to eat properly.
I think the argument would be, the problem isn't the existence of app stores, but tying the app store to a hardware platform so that other app stores can't compete. I remember reading a while back that Valve was pretty upset with Microsoft when they introduced the "Microsoft Store". Valve makes a lot of its money from Steam on Windows, and Microsoft has pushed developers toward using the Microsoft Store instead, and have threatened to lock Valve out.
That assumes that the purpose is to prevent the recipient from having continued access to the information. Like, "I'm going to send confidential information to Joe, but after 30 seconds, I want the information completely destroyed and wiped from Joe's memory so that Joe can't access it anymore."
I think the purpose is instead, "I want to send Joe some confidential information, and I might expect that he'll file the information away someplace for his own use, but I don't want it to be in his inbox 3 years from now when he falls prey to a phishing attack and his email is compromised."
Cut the force-installed game apps in Win10 and stop pretending I'm going to give you $1200 to run office for 10 years when we paid about $150/seat for Office 2003 in 2003 and used it until 2014.
To be honest, this isn't quite the part that bothers me. You get an always-up-to-date copy of Office that can be installed on up to five computers, plus some online storage. The licensing is also easier to manage and track. I'm kind of ok with it.
However, it's a little frustrating that for all that money that's gone into Microsoft licenses, there's been very little improvement over the past 20 years. Same with Windows. If Windows 7 was still on sale, and supported by the latest hardware, I'd have stuck with it over Windows 10. I don't want advertising or forced upgrades built into the OS. I still think it's fairly absurd that Microsoft performed product activation in the OS, meaning that they can just refuse to reactivate it and then you won't be able to reinstall the OS even on the original hardware.
For all the money Microsoft has collected on Windows and Office, and given the lack of meaningful changes, they should be absolutely flawless works of engineering. They should be fast, bug-free, and completely reliable. The only usability annoyances should be those that are completely unavoidable. However, it seems that instead of investing in improving their products, Microsoft has put all their resourced behind leveraging their existing products to push you to use their other products. Outlook has been improved by including a button to an Office 365 app store. Windows has been improved by pre-installing a copy of OneDrive that won't actually uninstall without a registry hack.
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Why not? Isn't that a moral argument?
Possibly. I suppose it depends on what you mean by "moral argument".
But what... are we forbidden from even entertaining moral arguments? And on what authority are you deciding that? Perhaps you should examine your underlying assumptions when making judgements about other people's arguments.
Please note that I said, "I think there's an argument to be made" and not "I'm about to tell you something absolutely unquestionably true." There's an argument to be made (really a few different arguments) that we should strive toward excellence. There's an argument to be made in favor of putting out the least effort to avoid trouble. There's even an argument that could be made for not doing anything at all, and just starving to death, but not one that I'd like much.
I'm presenting a worthwhile alternate view, not laying down gospel.
However the the starting point should to evaluate the outcome and then if the outcome is poor figure out why...
I suppose part of what I wanted to point out was, it's not just an issue of "poor outcomes". You could be really smart and talented, and still squeak by with a "good outcome" by throwing something together at the last minute. Still, it might be that if you'd given yourself enough time, you could have brought about an outstanding outcome.
And I wouldn't argue that we always need the most outstanding outcome possible, but I think there's an argument to be made that you shouldn't just muddle your way through life, doing the bare minimum to accomplish acceptable outcomes.
On a side note, as someone who used to be a habitual procrastinator, I've also found that it's typically less stressful to just get it done early. If you're only going to spend half your available time on a project, make it the first half. Then you can relax afterward without worry.
procrastination gets a whole lot of negative attention, sort of like being lefthanded once did, and that it is not generally helpful and may in fact be harmful.
I don't really buy the logic there. Just because two things get similarly negative attention doesn't make them the same sort of thing. I agree that we have unfortunate misunderstandings about procrastination, but I'm not sure I'd say it's the same sort of thing as being left-handed.
You know, I've thought for a while that procrastination has a little bit of an unfairly negative reputation. People treat procrastination as laziness, but in my experience, it's much more complicated than that.
I do agree that procrastination is often more about managing emotions than time. I don't know about the science from the article, but in my experience of my own procrastination and others', it tends to happen when there's some feeling of being overwhelmed. There's too much to do, there are two many things to think about, and so the procrastinator avoids dealing with it until they're forced to.
I also agree with you that it's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the procrastinator still completes their work on time. It can even be a good thing if, when confronted with a complex, difficult, or overwhelming problem, there's some level of procrastination. Stop, take a break, maybe focus on something else first. Not only can it be a coping mechanism, but it can be a good strategy. If you have a long-term problem without only bad options, and you let it sit for a while, a the situation may change and better solution might present itself. Or, even if nothing changes, it may be that giving yourself some time will allow your unconscious mind to turn the situation over a few times and think of a better solution. It may even just be that you're not in the right frame of mind to consider the issue right now, and considering it at a different time can let you deal with it in a better way.
So I don't think procrastinators are lazy or that they necessarily have a problem, but clearly it can turn into a problem. For one, procrastinators sometimes put things off too long, and the avoidance turns into hopelessness. They think, "I had 2 months to do this, and I've made no progress. Now the deadline is only a week away. If I couldn't make any progress in a month and a half, then what makes me think I could complete it in 1 week?" They give up and don't get things done.
That's an extreme case, but even in less extreme cases it can be a problem. You said, "Studies seem to indicate that a large fraction of the population 'procrastinates' while still successfully completing tasks." However, "completing the task" may not be the only measure worth considering. People are terrible at estimating how long tasks will take. If you get in the habit of putting things off until the last minute, and giving yourself just enough time to meet the deadline, you'll find you sometimes miss the deadline because you underestimated the amount of time that'd be needed. Or if you don't miss the deadline, you might cut corners to make the deadline on time. Or even if you don't explicitly "cut corners", very often having spare time at the end of a task allows you to be more careful, take your time, and refine your performance.
To give a more concrete example, if you have 2 months to write a paper, and you don't start it until the night before, you might not finish it in time because you needed a week to write it. If you start writing a week in advance, you might finish it, and it's fine. However, if you start writing immediately and finish it in a week, then you have an additional 7 weeks to proofread, edit, and revise the paper. So in that case, procrastination isn't exactly a problem, but it is still detrimental.
Still, not everything needs to be done perfectly, and sometimes the paper you wrote at the end of 1 week is good enough. Sometimes giving yourself a break is more important than making the paper as good as it could possibly be. And it's possible that letting the ideas roll around in the back of your mind for 7 weeks actually allowed you to write a better paper than you would have if you started work immediately.
I don't think there's a simple one-size-fits-all answer. Procrastination is often a problem, but often it's not, and I'm sure sometimes it's beneficial.
Ok, here's the problem with that:
If you can use SMS as a recovery path when you lose your 2FA token, that means you don't need the 2FA token. You can just use SMS. Though that might sound handy, SMS is insecure.
It's the same basic problem with "security questions". A lot of services have the option where, if you forget your password, you can reset it with security questions. And then, they ask you security questions like, "What's your mother's maiden name?" That's information that isn't necessarily hard to find out these days. So now, instead of having to hack the site or guess someone's password, you can get unauthorized access to the account just by knowing the person's mother's maiden name.
"Security is only as strong as its weakest point." It's a bit of an oversimplification, but accurate enough. If, in the name of security, you make your default method of authentication so onerous that people need an easy and insecure backup method, then you've just undermined your own security.
As I said:
I think if this had happened while I was in school, before school shootings were so common, it might have resulted in a visit to the principal's office, and maybe a couple of follow-ups with a school counselor to make sure everything was fine. If they want to be careful, maybe some kind of a mental evaluation is in order, or having police check to see whether he's known to have access to weapons.
Unless there's some other information we don't know, arresting him was the wrong move. There should have been some step to evaluate how dangerous he was, and only call the police if he's done something illegal.
My point wasn't to say that they were right to arrest him, but to say that society is fickle and stupid, and people are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
I started my post with the phrase, "I think the problem is..." The "problem" I was talking about was the overreaction of the administrators and law enforcement. However, part of the problem is the political pressures that our stupid fickle society puts on those administrators and law enforcement.
I think you got your signals crossed and posted the wrong "conservative" rhetoric. The only "class" I was talking about was "everyone", and the only thing I was talking about protecting them from was fraud.
I'm not a lawyer, but my impression from the news stories I read was that they could just refuse to pay out your winnings if they suspected you of "cheating". And then I suppose you could sue them or something.
There is a very simple formula for getting and keeping a job. The formula works during all eras and in all cultures. It also works if you want to start your own business - simply substitute "customer" in place of "employer". This is the formula:
Ok, so I have to stop you right there, because obviously this equation isn't right. Let's start with the simplest issue, and point out that you mention "customer" and "employer", but neither of those appear in your equation. So I'm going to assume you mean:
Right? Ok, so onto the next problem. Some problems are bigger and more important than others, obviously, so it should be:
And maybe that's what you meant all along. But that's still missing an important component, which is that your wage is also a cost to your employer. So really, it should look more like:
To be fair, maybe you were including the wage as a "problem you create", but I don't think it's quite fair to think of your wage as a "problem you create". Now we can start to delve into details that are a little less obvious. For example, your employer is a person, and as such, he's probably not making decisions purely logically, based on objective fact. Therefore, it's probably more accurate to say:
Or I suppose to condense it a little:
But also, your employer has a budget, so maybe:
I'm sure this could be expanded even further, and admittedly it's not as glib, but it's a lot more accurate.
Right, and you feel very strongly. But my point is, if they hadn't done anything and he shot up the school, you'd probably be saying, "Why didn't they do anything? These people should all lose their jobs over this!"
Maybe not literally you, but people who are right now making the same argument you are. And you can say, "Who cares what people say?" but I wouldn't want to be tried in the court of public opinion. I wouldn't want my fate decided by the political pressures brought to bear by sensationalized public outcry. I can understand how, in this case, arresting the kid might seem like "playing it safe".
From what I've heard of this story, I don't think it was the right call. But think I can understand how that call got made.
Obviously software doesn't follow the old rules of supply and demand. Going back to the invention of copyright, the idea was to allow authors to create artificial scarcity of something that could be easily replicated. It was to take a thing of virtually unlimited supply, and shoehorn it into the model of supply and demand.
And though it's not really a "software" problem, the copyright system stops working when the cost of replication goes from "extremely cheap" to "virtually free". We've tried to keep the shoehorn by inventing DRM and making new laws, but it's not really working.
Worse, it's detrimental to society. The indefinite extension of copyright, combined with DRM and incompatibilities, means that we're going to lose the history of our intellectual works. You can still look at a 500 year old painting or read a 500 year old book, but it's not clear whether you'll be able to try current software or play current video games 500 years from now. It's a problem that, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be a problem that people are considering when they create DRM or modify copyright law.
There is one clear answer to minimizing the carnage: stop glorifying the actors in the mainstream media.
And how are you going to stop it? There goes freedom of the press.
It's not that I didn't know there are actual malfunctions of slot machines. Still, the fact is that the slot machine can say that you've won money, and casinos can and will say, "Nope, that's a malfunction. We're not going to pay." And I don't think it's just for the clear computing error that you described, but I remember reading a story where the casino just said that the slot machine was paying out more often than it was supposed to, and they didn't know why, so they figured either the machine was broken or the player was cheating, so they refused to pay out.
And my whole point in bringing it up at all was, it's not as simple as, "if they have already taken the bet then they have to pay out." Under some circumstances, they take the bet, you win, and then they don't pay out. And it's not clear in advance what those circumstances are. The result is, you're playing a game rigged in your opponent's favor, and it's not even totally clear what the rules are.
I think the problem is, they arrested the guy and a lot of people are saying it's an overreaction, but if they hadn't done anything and he later shot up the school, some of those same people would have said, "Why didn't you do something when you found out he was playing that game?!"
Specifically, there's a tension created by the Republican rhetoric, and there's not a clear way to resolve it. On the one hand, they want to argue that the availability of guns isn't a contributing factor in school shootings, and that the responsibility falls entirely on law enforcement to identify and arrest the shooters. In other words, the problem isn't bad policy or bad guns, but bad people, and those people need to be locked up. On the other hand, they want to claim that they're libertarians who value freedom and personal choice, and that the government should not be involved in your life in any way unless you've committed a clear crime. The shooters often don't commit a clear crime until the actual shooting, even though they may have said or done some disturbing things. And so this sets up a conflict between the freedom to buy guns, and the freedom to think and speak as you choose.
The Republican resolution to these kinds of tensions often take the form of moral panic. They won't budge on gun control, and they don't want social reform or to provide mental health services, so they need to find some source of "evil". They imagine devil worshipers and perverts behind every corner, and look for reasons to blame social media or video games or sex or drugs or minorities. They deny the possibility that there could be problems with our own rules, culture, or way of life, and instead look for an assault from an outside evil, arguing that if that evil were simply removed or prohibited, everything would be fine.
They've already created the expectation that school shootings are caused by violent video games, so a violent AR game played in a school is guaranteed to cause concern. I wouldn't argue that arresting him was the right choice, but it makes sense that the social media post would cause some kind of response and intervention. I think if this had happened while I was in school, before school shootings were so common, it might have resulted in a visit to the principal's office, and maybe a couple of follow-ups with a school counselor to make sure everything was fine. If they want to be careful, maybe some kind of a mental evaluation is in order, or having police check to see whether he's known to have access to weapons.
They cannot disqualify players for winning too much - if they have already taken the bet then they have to pay out.
I don't know about this new bookmaking venture, but I've read that it's a thing in casinos in general that they can confiscate your winnings. I'm not a lawyer, but I've read news stories about people winning at slot machines, and casinos claiming it was a malfunction and refusing to pay out. I've read stories of people getting accused of counting cards in blackjack, and the casino takes them aside, confiscates their winnings, and says, "Don't come back."
However, there is nothing wrong with them refusing to take new bets from them in the future provided that they are open and clear about their terms which must include a "if you win too much we will refuse all future bets" so that it makes it even clearer that gambling is never going to make you money.
Yeah, I suppose my overall point is that it's not necessarily as simple as, "The casino and gambler both entered into is knowingly, so it's all fair and there's no problem. As you acknowledge, the odds are always rigged in their favor, and whether or not people know it, they don't necessarily understand it. To some extent, casinos profit by providing various forms of entertainment, including games that involve gambling. But then, to a large extent, they make their money off of addiction and ignorance. They're a big company that spends money on hiring experts to tell them how best to take advantage of people, to manipulate them, to prey on their emotions, and to appeal to their addictions. They spend a lot of money on advertising that promises a fair opportunity to strike it rich. They pay engineers to make sure the games won't pay out, and the lawyers to avoid paying the winners when the games do pay out.
So my point is, given the nature of that relationship and the imbalance of power, I think it's reasonable to say, "There should be rules about what casinos can and can't do, with a mind toward limiting the extent that they can take advantage." You offer one idea, and I think it's a good one, which is to make sure their advertising, marketing, posted rules, and everything else are very clear about what their terms are, and what kind of business they are. Make sure you tell the customers: This is for entertainment purposes only. The odds are intentionally stacked against you. If you win more than you lose, we'll cut you off and may confiscate your winnings.
Well, I could see an argument...
Casinos are big businesses with a lot of resources to put into creating a contrived situation to their advantage, as well as manipulating people. They choose the games. They set the process. They have every opportunity to rig the odds in their favor already. It's not a symmetrical relationship.
They're even allowed to present themselves as though players have a real shot at winning. So should they also be allowed to disqualify players for winning too much? It seems to slant things even more in their favor. No one is forcing them into this business. No one is making them run blackjack tables. If it won't be profitable enough to run this bookkeeping operation straight, without additional manipulation, then maybe they just shouldn't do it. But once they offer a game, they should be forced to adhere to the rules of their own game that they set.
Eh... I don't object to them providing firefighters, law enforcement, or other similar groups some kind of special consideration. Like if they find some way to prioritize those people when things are jammed up, that seems fine and reasonable.
But I think this event just highlights the fact that cell carriers and ISPs run their businesses as though they're providing entertainment services. They don't seem to recognize that they're providing vital telecommunication infrastructure. So often, the Internet gets treated like, "Oh that's just how people access Facebook and Netflix."
Well... If you want to get all technical and debate it, the term "provocateur" is sometimes used to describe people who are somewhat innocuous. For example, I've heard people say that Kanye West is a provocateur, in the sense that he does provocative things. Then there's the term "agent provocateur", which would be somewhat apt, but arguably describes a subset of "spies".
That is, the term "spy" is sometimes used generally to indicate anyone involved in intelligence, espionage, or some kind of adversarial covert action. Acting as an agent provocateur, falling under that umbrella of covert action, would classify you as an example of spycraft, i.e. all agent provocateurs are spies, but not all spies are agent provocateurs.
On the other hand, I could see an argument that calling someone a "spy" implies that their primary goal is "to spy", in the sense of covertly gathering information. The primary goal of these "Russian trolls" isn't to gather information, but to spread misinformation and influence political groups. I can see that argument, but I don't find it convincing. The Russian government had trained agents infiltrate American society in order to gather information, spread misinformation, and engage in a covert influence campaign. I think if you surveyed English people to ask what the name for such a person is, I think most would say "spy". The fact that their infiltration took place online shouldn't change that.
I agree that part of the problem is education. On the other hand, I don't think that quite covers the problem.
For one, there are highly educated people who fall for really stupid scams. We could look at adding something to our education system to help people recognize scams, propaganda, etc. It wouldn't be a bad idea, but I don't think that really covers it either. I honestly think that part of the problem is, propaganda has taken on an unhealthy role in our everyday society already, leaving us open to propaganda from other, more malicious sources.
We're being inundated with advertising all the time, so much so that there's an ongoing arms race between people trying to block advertising and advertisers trying to bypass the blocks. You put in spam filters and popup blockers, and they find ways around them. You insist on watching TV shows without advertising, and they put more resources into product placement. Propaganda has always been a part of politics, but it's become more omnipresent and shameless. Campaigning basically starts immediately after the previous election.
People have taken the brainwashing techniques used by cults, refined them, and turned the on society at large. What's worse than that, we've gotten used to it. It's just a normal part of your life now. This is water. You're swimming in it.
And though some people will stop listening to me when I seem to voice a political view, I'm going to say that a special measure of blame falls on Bill Clinton, who really took propaganda to a new level and challenged what the meaning of the word "is" is.
And then some serious blame falls on the Republican party. A group of them, arguably with good intentions, decided to use propaganda to stoke and harness the blind, ignorant rage of white supremacists and theocrats. They courted them, brought them into the party, and used propaganda to get these people to support the Republican cause, even against their own self-interest. They probably thought they were being philosopher kings, telling noble lies for the greater good. But those lies took root, and those ideologies took over.
And so I've gone on my nice little rant, but I had a point when I started: Education alone won't fix this problem. It's a bigger problem than that. If you want a real solution, we're going to address our cultural problems, and find ways to push naked propaganda out of the mainstream.
Maybe because it's a bad joke, and not a good one.
We call these particular people pushing the anti-vaxx bullshit "Russian trolls" because of the tools they happen to use, but if you look at what they're actually *doing*, it'd be more accurate to call them "Russian propagandists".
I've been arguing for months that we should be calling them "Russian spies". To call them "trolls" implies that they're just being a bit pesky, and it's all in good fun. I agree that "propagandists" is more accurate, but it doesn't capture the fact that it's a foreign government doing this out of malicious intent, and for their own strategic advantage. They're spies, and they're doing a good job infiltrating our telecommunications and public discourse.
There's a relatively non-obvious problem with your suggestion: Truths and falsehoods often don't have the same quality of information.
To give a really simple example, consider these two statements:
1) Joe tells you that he has invented a perpetual motion machine.
2) Ed tells you that Joe almost certainly has not invented a perpetual motion machine.
This is already simple, and I picked a topic so that you would already know that Joe is lying (or is wrong), and Ed is correct. What's more, this is an example that should be relatively easy to test and verify, so there's not a lot of ambiguity. Still, a lot of people will probably believe Joe, even in the face of evidence against it.
But now ignore the subject matter for a second and think about the rest of the sentence. In this example, Joe claims [A] is true, and Ed claims that [A] is "almost certainly" false. That's because Joe, in the act of lying, is free to make statements with total certainty. Ed, in telling the authentic truth, has to admit that his knowledge is incomplete. Until Ed gathers more information about Joe's claim, he can't tell you what the machine is actually doing, does not have a physical model for the machines operation, and so on a certain level, has to concede a level of uncertainty.
In addition, Joe is telling you something you want to believe, it's exciting. It opens possibilities. In a lie, Joe is free to construct his statement to tell you things you want to hear, and to engage you in whatever way is advantageous to him. Ed, on the other hand, it telling you something boring and disappointing, and it closes off possibilities. Because he's telling the truth, the kind of engagement that he can offer is limited by the reality of the subject he's trying to convey.
I'm not an experts-- and there are experts in this kind of thing-- but I think it's pretty clear when you think about it that you can't get people to believe something simply by presenting them with true information, even from an abundance of sources. Often enough, people choose to believe falsehoods because they're comforting, easy, pleasant, or exciting.
It also makes a lot of sense when you think about your suggestion. You're asking, "Why not create a bot army that argues for the truth?" But there are already plenty of people posting the truth. You don't need a bot army to push the idea that people should vaccinate their children, because you already have an army of smart, responsible, informed people who are pushing that viewpoint, but it's still failing to convince the anti-vaxxers.
It's not because there isn't enough information or that there aren't enough voices, but that "vaccines caused my child's illness" is a story that people like. It lets them off the hook for any responsibility for their child's illness. It puts the blame on something that seems small and easy to avoid. If it's genetic, you don't really have control over that, and it feels like it's your fault for having shitty genes. If it's pollution, then you have to figure out who to blame and how to stop pollution. If it's a vaccine... well, you never liked bringing your kids in for vaccines anyway.
It is *also* true that certain character flaws will lead to one being a failure.... So, a fat person may be fat because of their combination of metabolism and gut bacteria and so on. Such that when they eat a normal and reasonable amount of food, and even get some exercise, they stay fat. That happens. But it *also* happens that some people just over-indulge in unhealthy food and they don't exercise at all.
I think that it's unfortunately more complicated than that.
Because first, if people are just indulging, it raises the question, why are they indulging? If it's just a character flaw, why do they have that character flaw? Really, there are only a few possibilities.
One is biology. Whether it's genetic or developmental, biology can contribute in all kinds of way. Maybe they're indulging because their brain chemistry at that moment is disposing them toward impulsive or self-gratifying actions. Or it could be environmental, e.g. your Italian grandmother makes big pasta dishes and pressures you to eat the whole thing. Another factor may be educational, that you weren't taught well enough about proper nutrition.
My point is just to say, even if there are some people who indulge, I don't think it's because they just magically have "bad character" that results from neither nature nor nurture. It's not like fat people just have inferior souls, and they need a magical substance called "willpower" to eat properly.
It might be connected to this.
I think the argument would be, the problem isn't the existence of app stores, but tying the app store to a hardware platform so that other app stores can't compete. I remember reading a while back that Valve was pretty upset with Microsoft when they introduced the "Microsoft Store". Valve makes a lot of its money from Steam on Windows, and Microsoft has pushed developers toward using the Microsoft Store instead, and have threatened to lock Valve out.
That assumes that the purpose is to prevent the recipient from having continued access to the information. Like, "I'm going to send confidential information to Joe, but after 30 seconds, I want the information completely destroyed and wiped from Joe's memory so that Joe can't access it anymore."
I think the purpose is instead, "I want to send Joe some confidential information, and I might expect that he'll file the information away someplace for his own use, but I don't want it to be in his inbox 3 years from now when he falls prey to a phishing attack and his email is compromised."
Cut the force-installed game apps in Win10 and stop pretending I'm going to give you $1200 to run office for 10 years when we paid about $150/seat for Office 2003 in 2003 and used it until 2014.
To be honest, this isn't quite the part that bothers me. You get an always-up-to-date copy of Office that can be installed on up to five computers, plus some online storage. The licensing is also easier to manage and track. I'm kind of ok with it.
However, it's a little frustrating that for all that money that's gone into Microsoft licenses, there's been very little improvement over the past 20 years. Same with Windows. If Windows 7 was still on sale, and supported by the latest hardware, I'd have stuck with it over Windows 10. I don't want advertising or forced upgrades built into the OS. I still think it's fairly absurd that Microsoft performed product activation in the OS, meaning that they can just refuse to reactivate it and then you won't be able to reinstall the OS even on the original hardware.
For all the money Microsoft has collected on Windows and Office, and given the lack of meaningful changes, they should be absolutely flawless works of engineering. They should be fast, bug-free, and completely reliable. The only usability annoyances should be those that are completely unavoidable. However, it seems that instead of investing in improving their products, Microsoft has put all their resourced behind leveraging their existing products to push you to use their other products. Outlook has been improved by including a button to an Office 365 app store. Windows has been improved by pre-installing a copy of OneDrive that won't actually uninstall without a registry hack.