No, because there are economically very successful people from these lower classes who also exert themselves and create businesses, etc., yet do not change their diets and lifestyle. Also, social mobility isn't as common as you might think. (And "self-motivation" and "ambition" aren't straightforward either; what they mean, and where they come from, has a lot to do with socioeconomic and cultural origins as well.)
Most of the people in the upper-middle class started off there, and absorbed its values and ethos.
You may want to look at the realities of social mobility, as well. The wikipedia article on social mobility is a good place to start. This article is helpful, as well.
Although data is not the plural of anecdote, I have to note that most of the few people I know who did rise in social status are actually in poorer physical shape than the people who were already there: they have less spare time, work under more stress, and have poorer lifestyle habits, even though they are hard-working and ambitious.
The gender is determined by the sperm, but which sperm is allowed to germinate the ovum is determined by a range of factors. On a cellular level, it's a battlefield in there.
Not directed at you per se, in as much as I agree with your observation for a subset of middle-class professional men, but: any generalizations that don't take social stratification and cultural variation into account are less than useless.
What is attractive in a culture is usually tied to what is possible for high-status people to achieve.
As obesity dominates the lower-classes, thinner body types will continue to define beauty. Working- and lower-class people in the US have diets dominated by heavy starches, red meat, high fructose corn syrup, and heavy food additives. The middle and upper classes, especially on the coasts, have diets dominated by fresh vegetables and seafood, and usually can afford the time and energy to go to the gym, etc. As long as body-types line up along class lines in that fashion, thin (and fit) will be in.
Most artists today aren't very interested in "the beautiful" (which is a concern of the decorative.) And they might well find the Large Hadron Collider compelling in its own way, albeit in the context of a critical reflection on the relationships between science, knowledge and culture.
I've been an OLPC skeptic from the beginning: it is a poor value option for the markets to which it is being directed (where the money could be spent more effectively just by paying for teachers), there are better options for less money (see the PlayPower project) and it is really about a very old model of aid, in which rich countries treat poor countries as little siblings receiving hand-me-downs rather than understanding their distinctive social dynamics. The PlayPower project also gives more opportunities to local economies to actually produce the hardware and software involved, something else relatively ignored by OLPC.
OLPC was crippled by hubris from its inception. I wouldn't blame its problems on Sugar.
Re:I go on geek vacations
on
The Geek Atlas
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· Score: 1
I have a job that I love and identify with, but when I travel and during my leisure time, etc., I still feel it is important to explore other aspects of life. Overspecialization is really a kind of inhibition based on fear of the unknown and the different, and it leads to a kind of diminishment of the self. I still think it is wiser to cultivate all aspects of yourself - the aesthetic, the athletic, the emotional, as well as the intellectual - and to explore facets of the world the do not resemble that of your day-to-day life whatsoever.
Look at the parent post, in which I was responding to "pollution credits" in general. CO2 is not toxic, but it is still "pollution" in the sense that it is an emission produced by human industrial (and other) activity that has a significant effect on the environment when it reaches a certain scale.
There are also many things that we need in small quantities (magnesium, potassium) that would be pollutants if released in the wrong place at the wrong scale, too.
Evolution acts on - or rather, through - genes, behaviors and niches, not species or individuals. If my nieces and nephews prospers because of something that's in my genes, and I don't reproduce, then my parents' genes have done better by producing me than they would have if they didn't. Think how few ants and bees reproduce, yet how successful they are as species.
We do have to "make do with less." That's what putting a price on a previously unpriced externality means.
The question is: who has to make do with less, and less of what? Less medical care? Fewer vacations? Smaller homes? Cheaper food? Fewer updates of a wardrobe? And what mechanism are you going to come up with to determine what gets cut out?
The big problem is that our entire system is based on the assumption of economic growth which drives employment, and for most people, that means using more resources. That creates a culture of disposal goods, of compulsive consumption of things that aren't necessary, and an industry - advertising - that keeps people invested in it. Transitioning to a society and an economy that is "steady state," that can provide employment without increasing the rate of resource exhaustion, is ultimately a political process.
One reason that software is, IMO, important, is it because it is a cultural activity that is relatively light on resources. A videogame provides hours of stimulation and entertainment - and hundreds, or thousands, of hours of employment - while consuming very few resources on the margin. The more we can virtualize production and consumption, the more we can absorb the need for economic growth with relatively little resource depletion.
The problem with a lot of the Austrian and other free-market and classical economists, is that they are focused on measures that simply don't take these kinds of major externalities into account - which is why they are so vocal in declaring that they don't exist.
It is based on a finite resource created by consensus: the amount of pollution that a society is willing to put up with.
All property is based on consensus at some point: intellectual property, real property (which, of course, was irrelevant to hunter/gatherer and nomadic societies), currency, etc. All those forms a property are also enforced by one mechanism or another. Land is "scarce" only because there is a social fiat which forbids me from using or traversing land I don't own.
The word "censorship" - or the idea behind it - appeared neither in my post nor the original article. Both are written to adults to get them to think about their own behavior and how we should manage our own emotional and ethical landscapes.
Censorship becomes less of an issue when people are able to have conversations about the ethical heft of the media they are consuming, about the cultural effects of it, and so forth. Right now, there is no law forbidding Hollywood from making another "Birth of a Nation," yet generally we don't really have to worry about that happening. When you try to shut down a conversation by invoking the idea of censorship rather than deal with the issues at hand, you perversely prove the point of the censors: that people are too simple-minded and incapable of true reflection to be allowed to manage their own media consumption.
That's an easy thing to say. But to do that, you have to limit the child to being on the computer only to that length of time you are willing to do nothing else but supervise them. Half-an-hour a day? 15 minutes? Assuming that you're also using your free time with your child to read with them, help them with homework, and otherwise hang out.
12 years old, IMO, is borderline. I would start to allow some unsupervised online time at that point. My primary concerns, in any case, wouldn't be about identity theft and network compromise: it would be the physical and emotional safety of my child.
Representations mean something. If you know someone that is always playing "Virtual KKK," running around lynching black men and burning crosses in a virtual setting, are you going to say, "oh, he's not a racist, those aren't real people?" No, you're going to make a connection between the representation of a thing and the thing itself.
While the re-enactment of a murder isn't the same as a murder, no one is saying that it is. What they are saying is that indulgence in the first desensitizes us from our horror about the second. I think it's generally true (and by no means limited to games, either.) Games and media affect the emotions: they can teach, they can inspire, they can create fear and suspense, they can produce empathy. Why do you think they are incapable of also reducing empathy?
I don't think the analogy is very good. MMO subscriptions are a service, not a membership, and if you see what people were getting suspended for (with reviews that would take weeks, and then sometimes end in account termination, and other times end in nothing) - without any real participatory process - it is a real problem.
There is nothing natural about cows. They have been bred to be unsuitable for any niche with predators in it; no gene-line descending from the current livestock breeds would have much of a chance of finding a natural niche.
However, it is true that grass-fed, open-range cattle are not only healthier, but more environmentally sustainable. In fact, it may be the least destructive form of food-production there is: it's less destructive than crop-planting.
Your analysis of the origins of inner-city poverty in the collapse of the manufacturing sector are pretty much dead-on, and I'm impressed by the clarity of your narrative; where you (as a paleocon) and me (as a neo-Marxian) would disagree is that you believed that the old, protectionist system would be viable in the long term, and I do not: I think that free trade was inevitable, and that even without out, you eventually get into a crisis that makes the system break down. (If there's upward mobility, capital will insist on immigration or other tactics to keep labor costs low.)
Slashdot Mirror
No, because there are economically very successful people from these lower classes who also exert themselves and create businesses, etc., yet do not change their diets and lifestyle. Also, social mobility isn't as common as you might think. (And "self-motivation" and "ambition" aren't straightforward either; what they mean, and where they come from, has a lot to do with socioeconomic and cultural origins as well.)
Most of the people in the upper-middle class started off there, and absorbed its values and ethos.
You may want to look at the realities of social mobility, as well. The wikipedia article on social mobility is a good place to start. This article is helpful, as well.
Although data is not the plural of anecdote, I have to note that most of the few people I know who did rise in social status are actually in poorer physical shape than the people who were already there: they have less spare time, work under more stress, and have poorer lifestyle habits, even though they are hard-working and ambitious.
The gender is determined by the sperm, but which sperm is allowed to germinate the ovum is determined by a range of factors. On a cellular level, it's a battlefield in there.
Not directed at you per se, in as much as I agree with your observation for a subset of middle-class professional men, but: any generalizations that don't take social stratification and cultural variation into account are less than useless.
What is attractive in a culture is usually tied to what is possible for high-status people to achieve.
As obesity dominates the lower-classes, thinner body types will continue to define beauty. Working- and lower-class people in the US have diets dominated by heavy starches, red meat, high fructose corn syrup, and heavy food additives. The middle and upper classes, especially on the coasts, have diets dominated by fresh vegetables and seafood, and usually can afford the time and energy to go to the gym, etc. As long as body-types line up along class lines in that fashion, thin (and fit) will be in.
You went to Berkeley?
I still get misty-eyed when I look at my old copy of SICP. It looks like they're phasing it out at MIT.
Most artists today aren't very interested in "the beautiful" (which is a concern of the decorative.) And they might well find the Large Hadron Collider compelling in its own way, albeit in the context of a critical reflection on the relationships between science, knowledge and culture.
I've been an OLPC skeptic from the beginning: it is a poor value option for the markets to which it is being directed (where the money could be spent more effectively just by paying for teachers), there are better options for less money (see the PlayPower project) and it is really about a very old model of aid, in which rich countries treat poor countries as little siblings receiving hand-me-downs rather than understanding their distinctive social dynamics. The PlayPower project also gives more opportunities to local economies to actually produce the hardware and software involved, something else relatively ignored by OLPC.
OLPC was crippled by hubris from its inception. I wouldn't blame its problems on Sugar.
I have a job that I love and identify with, but when I travel and during my leisure time, etc., I still feel it is important to explore other aspects of life. Overspecialization is really a kind of inhibition based on fear of the unknown and the different, and it leads to a kind of diminishment of the self. I still think it is wiser to cultivate all aspects of yourself - the aesthetic, the athletic, the emotional, as well as the intellectual - and to explore facets of the world the do not resemble that of your day-to-day life whatsoever.
The free market in action! The invisible hand!
I've just found out: over $20 million.
I wonder: how much money has been spent on Duke Nuke'm Forever?
You're talking to a roomful of programmers. For them, the data is just there, like ether. No one actually creates it or anything!
Seriously, if this project is about an interface to all public expenditure in the US, 18 mil is a low-ball.
Look at the parent post, in which I was responding to "pollution credits" in general. CO2 is not toxic, but it is still "pollution" in the sense that it is an emission produced by human industrial (and other) activity that has a significant effect on the environment when it reaches a certain scale.
There are also many things that we need in small quantities (magnesium, potassium) that would be pollutants if released in the wrong place at the wrong scale, too.
Evolution acts on - or rather, through - genes, behaviors and niches, not species or individuals. If my nieces and nephews prospers because of something that's in my genes, and I don't reproduce, then my parents' genes have done better by producing me than they would have if they didn't. Think how few ants and bees reproduce, yet how successful they are as species.
Academic citation guidelines allow you to cite paragraph numbers instead of page numbers.
We do have to "make do with less." That's what putting a price on a previously unpriced externality means.
The question is: who has to make do with less, and less of what? Less medical care? Fewer vacations? Smaller homes? Cheaper food? Fewer updates of a wardrobe? And what mechanism are you going to come up with to determine what gets cut out?
The big problem is that our entire system is based on the assumption of economic growth which drives employment, and for most people, that means using more resources. That creates a culture of disposal goods, of compulsive consumption of things that aren't necessary, and an industry - advertising - that keeps people invested in it. Transitioning to a society and an economy that is "steady state," that can provide employment without increasing the rate of resource exhaustion, is ultimately a political process.
One reason that software is, IMO, important, is it because it is a cultural activity that is relatively light on resources. A videogame provides hours of stimulation and entertainment - and hundreds, or thousands, of hours of employment - while consuming very few resources on the margin. The more we can virtualize production and consumption, the more we can absorb the need for economic growth with relatively little resource depletion.
The problem with a lot of the Austrian and other free-market and classical economists, is that they are focused on measures that simply don't take these kinds of major externalities into account - which is why they are so vocal in declaring that they don't exist.
It is based on a finite resource created by consensus: the amount of pollution that a society is willing to put up with.
All property is based on consensus at some point: intellectual property, real property (which, of course, was irrelevant to hunter/gatherer and nomadic societies), currency, etc. All those forms a property are also enforced by one mechanism or another. Land is "scarce" only because there is a social fiat which forbids me from using or traversing land I don't own.
The word "censorship" - or the idea behind it - appeared neither in my post nor the original article. Both are written to adults to get them to think about their own behavior and how we should manage our own emotional and ethical landscapes.
Censorship becomes less of an issue when people are able to have conversations about the ethical heft of the media they are consuming, about the cultural effects of it, and so forth. Right now, there is no law forbidding Hollywood from making another "Birth of a Nation," yet generally we don't really have to worry about that happening. When you try to shut down a conversation by invoking the idea of censorship rather than deal with the issues at hand, you perversely prove the point of the censors: that people are too simple-minded and incapable of true reflection to be allowed to manage their own media consumption.
That's an easy thing to say. But to do that, you have to limit the child to being on the computer only to that length of time you are willing to do nothing else but supervise them. Half-an-hour a day? 15 minutes? Assuming that you're also using your free time with your child to read with them, help them with homework, and otherwise hang out.
12 years old, IMO, is borderline. I would start to allow some unsupervised online time at that point. My primary concerns, in any case, wouldn't be about identity theft and network compromise: it would be the physical and emotional safety of my child.
Representations mean something. If you know someone that is always playing "Virtual KKK," running around lynching black men and burning crosses in a virtual setting, are you going to say, "oh, he's not a racist, those aren't real people?" No, you're going to make a connection between the representation of a thing and the thing itself.
While the re-enactment of a murder isn't the same as a murder, no one is saying that it is. What they are saying is that indulgence in the first desensitizes us from our horror about the second. I think it's generally true (and by no means limited to games, either.) Games and media affect the emotions: they can teach, they can inspire, they can create fear and suspense, they can produce empathy. Why do you think they are incapable of also reducing empathy?
Assuming makes an ass out of U and Ming. As in, The Merciless.
Don't make an ass of Ming.
I don't think the analogy is very good. MMO subscriptions are a service, not a membership, and if you see what people were getting suspended for (with reviews that would take weeks, and then sometimes end in account termination, and other times end in nothing) - without any real participatory process - it is a real problem.
I think complaint #5 has traction...
There is nothing natural about cows. They have been bred to be unsuitable for any niche with predators in it; no gene-line descending from the current livestock breeds would have much of a chance of finding a natural niche.
However, it is true that grass-fed, open-range cattle are not only healthier, but more environmentally sustainable. In fact, it may be the least destructive form of food-production there is: it's less destructive than crop-planting.
Your analysis of the origins of inner-city poverty in the collapse of the manufacturing sector are pretty much dead-on, and I'm impressed by the clarity of your narrative; where you (as a paleocon) and me (as a neo-Marxian) would disagree is that you believed that the old, protectionist system would be viable in the long term, and I do not: I think that free trade was inevitable, and that even without out, you eventually get into a crisis that makes the system break down. (If there's upward mobility, capital will insist on immigration or other tactics to keep labor costs low.)