motorcycle drivers are probably the most polite people out there. Right... until you get to the whole "engine that's louder than my car's horn, creating an obvious safety hazard, and they're damn proud of it" thing. Oh, it's safe in terms of "letting me know you're there". It's not safe in terms of "drown out the ambulance's siren on an emergency trip, or my horn when I'm trying to warn another driver about a danger (other than the motorcyclist); or all the false alerts it creates".
(To clarify, obviously not all motorcycles are like this.)
The handling of students' SSNs is truly appalling. What bothers me most about it is hearing, so often in the news about how "omg, organization X did Y with SSN records!! What a horrible violation of these (adult) people's privacy!" and then realizing: "Wait... that's exactly what my school does with our SSNs, and no one gives a damn!"
Y would be:
-requiring students to publicly turn stuff in with their ID (equal to SSN) on the cover (still going on as of '04) -having a list somewhere in the classroom where students' names would be listed with their SSNs -other stuff I didn't even notice until some editorialist moaned about how outrageous that is
skeptic: "Okay, yes, your result *is* consistent with your theory, and it certainly would rule some other theories, but it fails to rule out the likely possibilities of this, this, and this, for which we would need this kind of test..." pseudo-skeptic: "OHH!!! OH!!! LOOK AT THIS!!! Omg!!! I found a minor imperfection in your experiment!!! YES!!!!!!!!! haha! Now I can ignore the entire thing and keep my current feel-good beliefs! (Phew! That was close!)"
(And in a separate topic, the Joshua Bell violin thing, I found quite a few pseudo-skeptics by that definition...)
If you actually read the summary, you see that it's not asking about the *general* concept of skepticism we normally refer to with the term, but the ability to look at a design and jump to its nonobvious shortcomings.
The examples I gave are indicative of the ability to do exactly this, though it does involve more than simply reading design specs. (but also involves a lot *less* than general consumer research)
1) The MacBook: everyone praises it as an example of good interface design. However, when I used to it, I did something very improbable: my exact combination of uses aligned just right, so that the aggregate experience was bad. Everyone else would have experienced only one of those at most, but I, without trying, discovered lots of them.
2) On the gel, I noticed something that should have been obvious to its designers, but wasn't.
3) Most people would simply not have noticed the design difference between the cars. In fact, most people I explained this to don't even understand how the "must turn on headlights to see instrumentation at night" even functions as a safety feature! So, no, I disagree that people would have noticed the kinds of problems that i do.
Now, how exactly do you believe I learned this ability? Why is it that I pick statistically improbably product use combinations that reveal several design flaws, when others don't? I want to hear a hypothesis. What different experiences with the world around me would lead me to gravitate toward uses that amplify the noticeabiliy of poor design?
Okay, I'll bite. How does skepticism being an innate skill follow from you having it? Because I was never taught anything like this skill I have, and it generalizes very well across different contexts, and I never once consciously developed it.
Now, it's my turn to bite: did you check the headlight/instrumentation connection at nighttime before you bought your car? Did you drive it into a dark room and check that before you drove off with it? No, because you genuinely cannot think of EVERYTHING that could go wrong.
Did I check everything that I *thought of* as being important before buying? Yes. But it's the things one generally doesn't think to check that are the problem, and it is those things that I gravitate toward.
Fortunately, I notice (usually) that the headlights are off. Others aren't so lucky. It's not my fault the car maker doesn't understand basic safety design.
Actually, the handwash gel was a sample pack someone gave to me. But to the general point, yes, finding those things at that stage is still a skill, it just means I'm applying it in the wrong case, and I should be actually testing the products directly for those companies. The flaws that I find are things that people *just don't realize* are within the possible set of things that can go wrong, which is why they don't get fixed before release. Somebody that can naturally find such things, thus has a skill.
Who would have thought that you have to test drive a car at night in addition to day to notice the headlight thing? What review of the car would have pointed that out?
Your argument is like asking if there will be any unexpected problems.
It's an innate skill. I know, because I have it. Whenever I use a product, I gravitate immediately to its design flaws, because they are invariably the first thing I try to do with it.
-When I bought a MacBook, my immediate impression was that it had poor interface design because the first things I tried to do on it, were the things that had unfixed (or rationalized as not worth fixing) issues: taking multiple stills from a video, uploading pictures to photobucket, editing PhotoBooth pictures in iPhoto, being stuck on a window in Mail, and others.
-When I used a sample of handwash gel, the first thing I noticed when using it was that you have to spill it if you want to use it.
-After I bought a car, I noticed that you almost don't notice if you have your headlights off at night, because all necessary instrumentation lights up, unlike my previous one, where you can't see anything on the dash at night until you turn them on.
I could go on.
All I would say to engineers and designers is: PLEASE, just use your product once! Most of the stuff I use seems like it hasn't even gone through this.
Yes, darn that Ron Paul for not advocating that the federal government override the homosexual conduct laws in Saudi Arabia.
Wait, wait, before you mod me down, there's a point here. You have to look at *why* Paul supports laws like that. It's not because he wants to ban homosexuality, but because he wants to enforce a strict federalism: the states get to determine their own laws, with federal authority on very little. The theory is that the best long-term approach to ensuring freedom is *not* to have uniformity of laws, but to make it easy for people to "hop borders" to live in a jurisdiction with laws more to their liking. And to do that, you'd want to restrict what laws the central government can override, even when you don't like the laws it wants to override.
In other words, just as disliking laws against homosexuality does not suffice as a reason to intervene in Saudi Arabia, it doesn't suffice to "intervene" in Texas.
I by and large favor federalism over "intervene to stop anti-libertarian laws". The reason is that my vision of libertarianism not "It would be AWESOME if EVERYONE were allowed to do this list of things..." but rather, "I genuinely don't know what the best set of laws is, so I'd prefer to allow individuals the most power to switch between and form breakaway governments to test whose political theory is the right one." That means favoring less government within a jurisdiction, but it also means *dis*favoring central jurisdictions from overriding the laws of subjurisdictions.
So, in summary, there *is* recourse -- the fact that decentralization makes it hard for any one government to get too oppressive with its laws. Is it easier to flee your state or your country?
For background, here's a blog post from a libertarian arguing the federalist position.
Similar problem here. Time Warner Cable claimed I was late on a bill (true, it turns out) and so they called me and asked me to pay immediately. First, I thought, "Okay, they're not stupid enough to have a policy expecting customers to give out their CC info to someone claiming to be from TW. They just want my verbal authorization to bill a number I already gave them."
Then it turns out the guy did want my CC number. When I pointed out that I have no way of knowing that this is really TW or a scammer, so the best I can do is acknowledge his notice and check my own online account, he responded, and I'm not making this up, "Yes, I understand. But I can GUARANTEE YOU that this really is Time Warner."
I replied, "No, you can't." and hung up.
Then of course, after I paid, they tried the same thing then realized mid-call I had paid it.
You know, since you mention it, someone once told me that (paraphrasing), "Just as religions tell you not to do fun stuff because it will take you out of their grasp, governments ban drugs because if you had easy access to them, it would be so much easier to see why you don't need [most of] government." (that is, it would raise your awareness of your oppression)
I dismissed him as a crackpot, but then I realized I couldn't find any actual counterevidence. For example, if drugs were merely bad because of the harm they might unleash on third parties, why not set up special "drug bars" that are scrupulously controlled so as to make sure no one leaves while dangerous? You could get a lot of free tax money. And why the pressure to destroy any information stating positive effects?
Way off topic at this point, don't know if you're still following, but:
If some young looking kid shows me a texas license and has no twang, he/she is not likely to get in. Huh? Aren't you worried about false negatives on this one? e.g. texans who grew up with foreign parents?
I'm a very special case on this one. I've lived in Texas all my life, but people adamantly refuse to believe I'm from Texas (most common guess is Germany!). I think it's because while growing up, a lot of the Texas-specific forms of speech sounded ugly to me (compared to TV, and compared to my mom who is from Connecticut) so I made a deliberate choice to avoid it, eventually accumulating in near-accentless speech (unless I just get lazy).
So if I looked to be anywhere 18-24, and showed you my license, that wouldn't be good enough? Or maybe you'd quiz me on Texas knowledge?
Well, as long as "source" in this context means "ly gay scoutmasters" or "minds about religion". Otherwise, I'm not sure.
Re:This is how economics is supposed to work!
on
The SUV Is Dethroned
·
· Score: 1
Absolutely agree. Except I would add:
*Actually apply the proceeds to the damages they're intended to fix. *Once the taxes are in place, shut the hell up about what choices people make about cars or energy use. =-)
Re:This is how economics is supposed to work!
on
The SUV Is Dethroned
·
· Score: 1
I don't hate SUVs, but I do hate when people feel smart for, and get modded up for, posting this cliche.
SUVs do not cause environmental/oil dependence externalities. OIL USE causes externalities. You shouldn't care whether the oil burning comes from one place or another. Yes, SUVs use it at a higher rate, but by demonizing them *for that higher rate* you're implicitly making a an efficiency judgment (about how much value created, in whose mind, justifies how much oil externality) that you simply cannot be qualified to make. It makes no more sense to criticize the "negative externalities" of SUVs, than it does to criticize the "negative externalities" of cooking food at 170 F rather than 160 F. (Yes, it uses more energy, but is it worth it in terms of lower germ risk and tastier food?)
To the extent that oil use does genuinely cause unjust, negative externalities (and those very same people that selectively invoke externality theory just long enough to get them a semi-justified gripe about SUVs, invariably overestimate the magnitude), the solution is a tax that captures that externality, and then apply it to undoing the damage. (The opposite error is to forget about the second part there and see the tax as free money.) But, once that policy's in place, and people are only doing the things that are still worthwhile, even incorporating the negative externality, what do you care if they use so much?
You're making it too complicated. We should just use our existing state-of-the-art AI, and have it probe the networks and have it destroy any hint of the attacks. It'll squash these hackers like a bug!
ooooooooh, wine quality, now that's a scientific measure!
No wait, that would technically be, n-th-hand, un-cross-examinable, long-ago accounts of wine quality! I think we're getting into psychic medium-level reliability here;-P
Slashdot Mirror
(To clarify, obviously not all motorcycles are like this.)
The handling of students' SSNs is truly appalling. What bothers me most about it is hearing, so often in the news about how "omg, organization X did Y with SSN records!! What a horrible violation of these (adult) people's privacy!" and then realizing: "Wait ... that's exactly what my school does with our SSNs, and no one gives a damn!"
Y would be:
-requiring students to publicly turn stuff in with their ID (equal to SSN) on the cover (still going on as of '04)
-having a list somewhere in the classroom where students' names would be listed with their SSNs
-other stuff I didn't even notice until some editorialist moaned about how outrageous that is
Ceci n'est pas une site d'web.
Why was AC modded funny? It's true: screenshots can be forged, we used to do that on game websites to screw over people we didn't like. Though I guess
a) The "last modified" being very different from the time of receipt/reading
b) the fact that other recipients (if there are any)
would help establish authenticity.
Here's my way of separating them:
skeptic: "Okay, yes, your result *is* consistent with your theory, and it certainly would rule some other theories, but it fails to rule out the likely possibilities of this, this, and this, for which we would need this kind of test..."
pseudo-skeptic: "OHH!!! OH!!! LOOK AT THIS!!! Omg!!! I found a minor imperfection in your experiment!!! YES!!!!!!!!! haha! Now I can ignore the entire thing and keep my current feel-good beliefs! (Phew! That was close!)"
(And in a separate topic, the Joshua Bell violin thing, I found quite a few pseudo-skeptics by that definition...)
I see no evidence of "reading comprehension". How would I know you read it?
Alright, looks like we got a slow one today.
If you actually read the summary, you see that it's not asking about the *general* concept of skepticism we normally refer to with the term, but the ability to look at a design and jump to its nonobvious shortcomings.
The examples I gave are indicative of the ability to do exactly this, though it does involve more than simply reading design specs. (but also involves a lot *less* than general consumer research)
1) The MacBook: everyone praises it as an example of good interface design. However, when I used to it, I did something very improbable: my exact combination of uses aligned just right, so that the aggregate experience was bad. Everyone else would have experienced only one of those at most, but I, without trying, discovered lots of them.
2) On the gel, I noticed something that should have been obvious to its designers, but wasn't.
3) Most people would simply not have noticed the design difference between the cars. In fact, most people I explained this to don't even understand how the "must turn on headlights to see instrumentation at night" even functions as a safety feature! So, no, I disagree that people would have noticed the kinds of problems that i do.
Now, how exactly do you believe I learned this ability? Why is it that I pick statistically improbably product use combinations that reveal several design flaws, when others don't? I want to hear a hypothesis. What different experiences with the world around me would lead me to gravitate toward uses that amplify the noticeabiliy of poor design?
Now, it's my turn to bite: did you check the headlight/instrumentation connection at nighttime before you bought your car? Did you drive it into a dark room and check that before you drove off with it? No, because you genuinely cannot think of EVERYTHING that could go wrong.
Did I check everything that I *thought of* as being important before buying? Yes. But it's the things one generally doesn't think to check that are the problem, and it is those things that I gravitate toward.
Fortunately, I notice (usually) that the headlights are off. Others aren't so lucky. It's not my fault the car maker doesn't understand basic safety design.
Actually, the handwash gel was a sample pack someone gave to me. But to the general point, yes, finding those things at that stage is still a skill, it just means I'm applying it in the wrong case, and I should be actually testing the products directly for those companies. The flaws that I find are things that people *just don't realize* are within the possible set of things that can go wrong, which is why they don't get fixed before release. Somebody that can naturally find such things, thus has a skill.
Who would have thought that you have to test drive a car at night in addition to day to notice the headlight thing? What review of the car would have pointed that out?
Your argument is like asking if there will be any unexpected problems.
It's an innate skill. I know, because I have it. Whenever I use a product, I gravitate immediately to its design flaws, because they are invariably the first thing I try to do with it.
-When I bought a MacBook, my immediate impression was that it had poor interface design because the first things I tried to do on it, were the things that had unfixed (or rationalized as not worth fixing) issues: taking multiple stills from a video, uploading pictures to photobucket, editing PhotoBooth pictures in iPhoto, being stuck on a window in Mail, and others.
-When I used a sample of handwash gel, the first thing I noticed when using it was that you have to spill it if you want to use it.
-After I bought a car, I noticed that you almost don't notice if you have your headlights off at night, because all necessary instrumentation lights up, unlike my previous one, where you can't see anything on the dash at night until you turn them on.
I could go on.
All I would say to engineers and designers is: PLEASE, just use your product once! Most of the stuff I use seems like it hasn't even gone through this.
Apologies in advance, but your post reminds me of Richard Stallman's famous pro-spam email, which went something like:
:-P
"As long as you don't have a long header, go ahead and spam.
By the way, if you ever start an internet dating service, let me know."
Don't mean offense, just amused by the parallels
or better computers that permit the development of better computers...
Which already is happening.
Yes, darn that Ron Paul for not advocating that the federal government override the homosexual conduct laws in Saudi Arabia.
..." but rather, "I genuinely don't know what the best set of laws is, so I'd prefer to allow individuals the most power to switch between and form breakaway governments to test whose political theory is the right one." That means favoring less government within a jurisdiction, but it also means *dis*favoring central jurisdictions from overriding the laws of subjurisdictions.
Wait, wait, before you mod me down, there's a point here. You have to look at *why* Paul supports laws like that. It's not because he wants to ban homosexuality, but because he wants to enforce a strict federalism: the states get to determine their own laws, with federal authority on very little. The theory is that the best long-term approach to ensuring freedom is *not* to have uniformity of laws, but to make it easy for people to "hop borders" to live in a jurisdiction with laws more to their liking. And to do that, you'd want to restrict what laws the central government can override, even when you don't like the laws it wants to override.
In other words, just as disliking laws against homosexuality does not suffice as a reason to intervene in Saudi Arabia, it doesn't suffice to "intervene" in Texas.
I by and large favor federalism over "intervene to stop anti-libertarian laws". The reason is that my vision of libertarianism not "It would be AWESOME if EVERYONE were allowed to do this list of things
So, in summary, there *is* recourse -- the fact that decentralization makes it hard for any one government to get too oppressive with its laws. Is it easier to flee your state or your country?
For background, here's a blog post from a libertarian arguing the federalist position.
How about Spam in Object-Oriented Graphics Engines?
"Parents! Don't let your kids buy GTA V, its graphics include SPOOGE!"
"Okay Mr. Thompson, it's time for your meds."
(Alright, alright, kind of strained)
Similar problem here. Time Warner Cable claimed I was late on a bill (true, it turns out) and so they called me and asked me to pay immediately. First, I thought, "Okay, they're not stupid enough to have a policy expecting customers to give out their CC info to someone claiming to be from TW. They just want my verbal authorization to bill a number I already gave them."
Then it turns out the guy did want my CC number. When I pointed out that I have no way of knowing that this is really TW or a scammer, so the best I can do is acknowledge his notice and check my own online account, he responded, and I'm not making this up, "Yes, I understand. But I can GUARANTEE YOU that this really is Time Warner."
I replied, "No, you can't." and hung up.
Then of course, after I paid, they tried the same thing then realized mid-call I had paid it.
You know, since you mention it, someone once told me that (paraphrasing), "Just as religions tell you not to do fun stuff because it will take you out of their grasp, governments ban drugs because if you had easy access to them, it would be so much easier to see why you don't need [most of] government." (that is, it would raise your awareness of your oppression)
I dismissed him as a crackpot, but then I realized I couldn't find any actual counterevidence. For example, if drugs were merely bad because of the harm they might unleash on third parties, why not set up special "drug bars" that are scrupulously controlled so as to make sure no one leaves while dangerous? You could get a lot of free tax money. And why the pressure to destroy any information stating positive effects?
I'm a very special case on this one. I've lived in Texas all my life, but people adamantly refuse to believe I'm from Texas (most common guess is Germany!). I think it's because while growing up, a lot of the Texas-specific forms of speech sounded ugly to me (compared to TV, and compared to my mom who is from Connecticut) so I made a deliberate choice to avoid it, eventually accumulating in near-accentless speech (unless I just get lazy).
So if I looked to be anywhere 18-24, and showed you my license, that wouldn't be good enough? Or maybe you'd quiz me on Texas knowledge?
Could someone please compute:
P(molests underage boys | identifies as gay)
--over--
P(molests underage boys | identifies as straight)
And while you're at it, could you compute:
P("homosexual" has actual meaning | "homosexual" does not refer to men who like boys)?
That's correct.
Well, as long as "source" in this context means "ly gay scoutmasters" or "minds about religion". Otherwise, I'm not sure.
Absolutely agree. Except I would add:
*Actually apply the proceeds to the damages they're intended to fix.
*Once the taxes are in place, shut the hell up about what choices people make about cars or energy use. =-)
I don't hate SUVs, but I do hate when people feel smart for, and get modded up for, posting this cliche.
SUVs do not cause environmental/oil dependence externalities. OIL USE causes externalities. You shouldn't care whether the oil burning comes from one place or another. Yes, SUVs use it at a higher rate, but by demonizing them *for that higher rate* you're implicitly making a an efficiency judgment (about how much value created, in whose mind, justifies how much oil externality) that you simply cannot be qualified to make. It makes no more sense to criticize the "negative externalities" of SUVs, than it does to criticize the "negative externalities" of cooking food at 170 F rather than 160 F. (Yes, it uses more energy, but is it worth it in terms of lower germ risk and tastier food?)
To the extent that oil use does genuinely cause unjust, negative externalities (and those very same people that selectively invoke externality theory just long enough to get them a semi-justified gripe about SUVs, invariably overestimate the magnitude), the solution is a tax that captures that externality, and then apply it to undoing the damage. (The opposite error is to forget about the second part there and see the tax as free money.) But, once that policy's in place, and people are only doing the things that are still worthwhile, even incorporating the negative externality, what do you care if they use so much?
by "so on and so forth", you of course mean a pony, right?
You're making it too complicated. We should just use our existing state-of-the-art AI, and have it probe the networks and have it destroy any hint of the attacks. It'll squash these hackers like a bug!
ooooooooh, wine quality, now that's a scientific measure!
;-P
No wait, that would technically be, n-th-hand, un-cross-examinable, long-ago accounts of wine quality! I think we're getting into psychic medium-level reliability here
Two steps ahead of you.