I think there is some confusion here about the types of assumptions used in economics. It's not that I can fault you for it - the origin of this debate stretches back to a philosophical disagreement between Aristotle and Plato, and very few economists, much less others, are even aware of it.
One type of assumption - or rather, abstraction - is where you assume that everything not specified is explicitly absent. This is the position you seem to implicitly hold, and which is widespread among economists (if they ever examine the underlying philosophy of the field, that is). The other type of abstraction is one where nothing is assumed about things that are left out of the abstraction. Fundamentally, the first type assumes that everything not included is specified as absent, whereas in the second, everything not included is absent from specification, and can take on any (arbitrary) values. The medieval Scholastics had a name for this distinction: they called the first type precisive, and the second non-precisive abstractions.
Though this sounds like a small distinction, it has very interesting implications for the development of a field and, curiously enough, even programming languages.
As you raised the question of economics, I'll include that as an example. There is an excellent paper by Roderick Long on precisely this topic: "Realism and Abstraction in Economics: Aristotle and Mises versus Friedman". One interesting consequence of using only non-precisive abstraction when building economic theory, and assuming that that which is not specified by the abstractions used is not absent, merely unknown, and that the theory should work irrespective of whatever that unknown happens to be, is that the theory always applies to reality, no matter how abstract it may become. Theories built on precisive abstractions have the problem that they apply to reality only in an unspecified way, and only when reality condescends to confirm in some degree to their assumptions. These theories are, needless to say, of much less analytical value, but often much easier to come up with.
I think, however, that for the Slashdot audience, a much better example would be the differences between programming languages based on this view of abstraction. Let's take the idea of class definition in C++/Java and Python.
In C++/Java, if the specification of a class does not include some attribute, it is impossible - without changing the specification - to add or define it later to an object of that class. The assumption is that everything that is not specified in the class definition is explicitly not there. This is analogous to precisive abstraction, because it is assumed that not specifying the presence of something is equivalent to specifying its absence. Python, on the other hand, has no such restriction; an attribute can be added to an object when and where needed, even if the class definition doesn't include it. Python assumes that things not included in the definition of a class are just unknown, not explicitly absent, which fits in with the Aristotelean idea of abstraction as being non-precisive.
Though there are partisans for both types of object systems, it has to be conceded that Python's object system is strictly more powerful/expressive than that of C++/Java, nor does it force the programmer to decide beforehand what to include in his abstractions, enabling a far more 'experimental' approach to development which is closer to how models and programs are actually developed. Though most programmers are not aware of it, design choices in programming languages usually have deep philosophical implications, and thus significant practical consequences.
Doesn't the 'selection effect' of who Google's 'People Operations' group hires as employees almost completely negate the validity of this survey? Allow me to elaborate:
Even though the employees of Google may value traits 'A, B, and C' over technical skills, isn't that possible only because everyone Google admits into the company as an employee has excellent technical skills to begin with? This allows the employees to take great technical skills for granted, because everyone has them, so these skills aren't thought of a differentiating factor any more. When comparing managers, both of whom are highly technically competent, you would as an employee focus on what differs between them, not what is the same. If both these managers are also tech gurus, you'll say that it is their other skills the make the difference; this this is perfectly correct, insofar as your peculiar environment (Google) is concerned. And so when you are surveyed for what makes a good manager (or when such data are collected or mined from other tools), technical competence doesn't show up as a major factor, because it is, within your sample, practically universal.
Another reason could be that technical competence's effect on managerial ability may not be linear, but a threshold. So having less than that threshold is a great handicap, but the difference, in managerial efficacy, of people who are just above it, comfortably above it, and very highly above it, isn't all that much; after you've reached the threshold, the marginal gains are minimal and decreasing, and other factors are much more important. If everyone in Google meets this threshold, it will obviously not show up as a factor in their analysis.
Of the two hypotheses presented above, I do not know whether either is true, or whether some combination thereof. But unless they are taken into consideration and ruled out, I would be wary of using that data in any organisation that is not Google. My personal experience and intuition suggests that some combination of them explains the results obtained at Google. In fact, I would surmise that, were Google employees made to work in other environment - or were a survey conducted in organisations which are not Google - with large and highly consequential differences between the technical skills of managers, the metric of technical competence would rise significantly in the rankings, if not to the top.
This is quite interesting.
I had heard of the concept in Muslim law - that the fact that a person is a Muslim gives him quasi-legal authority to act as police, courts, and executioner. I don't know the case-specific details (IIRC, they vary from law to law, and the individual authority granted therein), but I'm familiar with the attitude.
Could you provide some reference for the idea in Hindu law?
If the university is treating students as children it's probably because, on average, they are.
If this is the way they are treated, how will they ever grow up?
The correct way for them to treat these kids is first of all to make it clear that this point marks a discontinuity in their education - earlier, the system was responsible. Now, as a student, you are. Give them both freedom and responsibility. Let them face the consequences of their actions. Maybe they will crash and burn - in the first semester. After that, they're damn well going to start studying and start attending, because then they'll know what happens if they don't.
You obviously have no teaching experience yourself, especially if you are teaching something as dry as computer science or mathematics..When you have a large amount of work to get through, it is not easy to make it exciting.
I must say one thing about this - isn't it assumed that by the time you hit university, you actually want to be there? That the people who come to get the Computer Science or Mathematics degree are the ones who are interested in the subject matter, and excited by the subject, to begin with?
This view may sound rather naive in this day and age, when real education has been replaced with job training, but isn't the solution to this to make the system better, not to cave in further?
As far as I am aware, the Tirupati temple in India is the wealthiest religious organisation in the world, in terms of disposable income. The Vatican is the richest in assets, but most of these assets aren't liquid, and most are immensely difficult, if not outright impossible, to liquidate.
What we are talking of here are two closely related problems.
The first is the perception of what constitutes an "alpha male" in common culture. Today, a person who doesn't give a crap about anything important, has a callous attitude towards all values, does not care for the values of the past (irrespective of their merit) and delights in their violation, and acts extremely impulsively without thought for the future is called an "alpha male". It just so happens that that overlaps to a very large extent with the sporting subculture's perception in wider society. Now, given this stereotype, and the fact that fitting into it requires no intellectual capacity whatsoever, it is but a natural consequence that those lacking such capacity, but having the physical strength (or whatever other attribute) necessary to join this club, will feel tempted to join. The sad part is that the culture covers up the negative side of this - it is portrayed in only positive terms. Because of this imbalance of perception, a lot of people's lives are unnecessarily ruined when they cannot make it in what is essentially a winner-take-all contest, and because they have not made any backup plans (because the idea that the consequences of failure may be so severe is not portrayed in the culture at all).
The second is the culture's lack of recognition of the proper place of sport, specially professional, made-for-mass-consumption, ultra-competitive sport, in human society and human life. What we have lost sight of is that these things only exist for our - or society's - amusement. Professional sportsmen exist, and can exist, because we as a society have decided that they amuse us sufficiently to warrant the expense we bear on their account. If we decided that sports were no longer amusing to us, and stopped watching, then the supply of money would dry up, and sport would return to being a community affair instead of being a nationwide obsession. It is necessary for all to acknowledge that the proper place of sport and sportsmen is as our amusement - the amusement of the people who do productive work - and that their existence depends on our munificence. Once this realisation dawns, and the proper perspective is regained, the skewed image we have of the alpha male will fade away on its own.
This is far worse than normal infringement, because when I infringe copyright, I'm honest about it, and so are millions of others. We know what we're doing, and we don't try to cover it up. We give credit to the creator.
These entities, on the other hand (the example in the FA, the plagiarism of the Wiki by The Times of India, and many others) are worse - they do not even acknowledge the source. They do not give the creator due credit. Not only do they infringe copyright and break the law, they also try to pass off others' work as their own - something that file-sharers and other "personal use" infringers do not do. Not only that, they actually profit from it - which is precisely what copyright law was originally supposed to prevent.
In fact, given this context, the state should come down much harder on these entities than on simple "personal use" infringers, because the prevention of such abuses is the very purpose of copyright law in the first place.
The formal stratification is a thing of the past, but its after-effects continue to be seen, as you mention.
A bit of the background about the Indian school system. If you've passed the 4th standard, it means that you're functionally literate and numerate. If you've passed the 10th standard, it means that your (basic) education is complete. And when you do the +2 (pass the 12th standard) in either Science, Commerce, or the Humanities/Arts, it means that you now know the fundamentals of those subjects, and are prepared for a college education in that stream.
This is around the time where the problem occurs: the number of seats available in all the good or decent engineering or medical (or even law and commerce) colleges put together is an order of magnitude smaller than the number of applicants. So - and right now I'm confining myself to my field, engineering - you have things like the IIT-JEE test, where you have more than 150,000 students competing for 3,000 seats, or the AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Examination), where you have 850,000 people competing for the top 10,000 to 50,000 spots. A difference of a single mark can change your rank by a few hundred, sometimes a thousand.
So it's not much of a surprise that the people who do make it to the better colleges through these examinations are the best - it's simply because there are just so many to choose from that the examination is more about eliminating people than letting them in. It has more to do with the system being overloaded than with stratification.
The consequence, of course, is the same - to an outside observer, it will look as if we're deliberately identifying the best students and investing all our resources in them. In reality, we're investing all our resources pretty much equally, but there still has to be some way of selecting the top ten or fifty thousand out of 850,000 test-takers countrywide, because that's the maximum the system can actually provide for.
Another problem is the difference between the private and public sectors. Schooling is pretty much open for anyone, to conduct as a business, if they so wish. You only need an affiliation with a state board, or the Central Board, which is quite doable as long as you actually provide an education - they have a list of pre-requisites. You can set the fees, you can select whom you want to take in or kick out, and there is no affirmative action required at the school level.
At the college level, however, the government keeps very tight control. Fee structures, syllabi, student intake, what percentage of seats must be reserved for affirmative action candidates, irrespective of their merit or actual ability to cope with the course (right now, it's 50% of all seats north India, 70% in the state of Tamil Nadu), everything is under the government's control. So it doesn't attract investment, like schooling does, and thus doesn't grow. And that's why we have this problem of 850,000 people applying for 25,000 seats.
When the author mentions the "extreme Hindu group", he misquotes its name as the "Vishnu Hindu Parishad". It's correct name is the "Vishwa Hindu Parishad".
Also, as far as I am aware, it has not asked for the ethnic cleansing of anybody, though many of its members are of a very extreme bent, and may well hold such opinions.
Thirdly, they have also not, to my knowledge, ever acted to block any piece of scientific research. It's an organisation concerned mostly with the social aspects of religion, and they don't bother with what goes on in the laboratories.
Probably the only thing they care about in regard to science and research is that we have bigger and better nukes than the Pakistanis.
I'm sorry to say this, but this is complete, total rubbish, probably born of ignorance.
If you knew ANYTHING about the societies which were (they aren't now) run on a system of caste organisation, you would know that the monkhood is open to everyone.
In India, in all Indic-influenced countries, one of the things that a monk undergoes is the renunciation of his ties with the world, including his birth, his caste, and his society. He is a free spirit. There is a saying, "Never seek the source of a sannyasi or a river." This basically means that once a person is a renunciate, that's it, you don't bother what he was before his new life, the old self is dead. This is the position taken by everyone, from the ultra-orthodox to the most liberal, and is the way things have been done for millennia.
A part of renunciation includes conducting a full and proper funeral for the "old self", where all links to the past are cut. It is a difficult thing to do or undergo, but once it is done, that's it, it's over. You have no caste, no gender, no ties with the world, no regard for the taboos of your society, and no fear of the power structures within it.
As for the allegation that monks do not do their duty to society - isn't it the exact opposite that is happening here? Aren't the monks acting as a rallying point for the protests?
I apologise if this sounds insensitive, but people in IT usually aren't supposed to cry, they're supposed to go out there and do whatever it takes to fix the problem. Crying, though useful to women as a release of emotion, and a way to let go of frustration, does not solve anything. It also projects vulnerability, which other people will exploit. It is sad for many women that this has to be the state of affairs, but that is how it is, and it would be better to accept it.
Indians are usually far more sanitation conscious than is made out. The problem is a lack of proper facilities, due to the inefficient government monopoly on all services of this nature, not the tendencies of the people themselves.
For instance, bathing was a regular part of the common man's daily routine for known Indian history. In the great city of Vijayanagar (destroyed by Muslim invaders in the year 1565), there were adequate sanitation facilities for every citizen to have a bath. Hell, even the cities of the Indus/Saraswati valley civilisation (c. 3300-1700 BC, flourished 2600-1900 BCE) had an elaborate system of baths and underground drainage.
..... how much double standards have come to dominate our discourse.
Let me elaborate.
Imagine for a minute if a successful male role model had written a book explicitly for boys, in the tradition of the classical textbooks on engineering/science/mathematics, and emphasised rigour, and used examples exclusively applicable to males, using language which boys would be comfortable with (but girls would probably not). Imagine he used the default (i.e., masculine) pronoun throughout, so as to make it easier for boys to identify with any example given. Imagine that he completely ignored all the usual PC-language nonsense which the "progressive" crowd in educational circles is so fond of nowadays, and used a no-bullshit, call-a-spade-a-spade approach which boys can usually instantly grok, and are more comfortable with. Further, he would have tried to make mathematics more "manly" by making short work of the idea that boys who like mathematics are "nerds" or other social outcasts, and by identifying it with masculinity throughout the ages. Imagine he tried to bring out the kick-ass-ness of many male mathematicians throughout history, while implicitly linking their masculinity with both their mathematics and their kick-ass-ness - showing it as a complementary triad.
Now imagine that this book had succeeded - imagine it managed to convince a large number of boys to actually learn and like mathematics, and also proved to be something which sparked off a mini-revolution in schools across the country (extremely unlikely, I know, but please bear with me for a moment). Imagine it set off a pro-mathematics trend, or managed to correct the more pernicious effects of the anti-rigour and in general anti-intellectual atmosphere found in many schools today, with special reference to the subjects of mathematics and science.
What would have been the reaction?
Most probably, irrespective of the merits of the book itself, and the work it may have done it get a large number of boys interested in mathematics, it would have been denounced as social commentators, feminists, assorted people from the left, maybe a few from the right, and educationists, as discriminatory, sexist, and insensitive, with probably the "racist" epithet hurled in for good measure.
However, when a feminine role model does it, this thought does not even occur to us. We take it for granted that special books by females for females are, in some mysterious and unquestionable fashion, immune to criticisms which would be levelled against any male who did the corresponding thing for his gender.
This is not to suggest that we should criticise this author. To the contrary, in fact - she has taken efforts to rectify what she sees as a larger cultural problem. She must be applauded for that.
However, the point is that, the same way we applaud her, we must also applaud the hypothetical male author outlined above, for both are working towards a noble goal - that of education - in the way they think they can contribute the most. That is more than can be said for the vast majority.
By ignoring the differences between the genders, we do society and the individuals in it, through the medium of our education policies, a great disservice. By non-judgementally accepting the differences, and optimising our education systems to take them into account, with differently structured books for girls and boys in junior and middle school is the need is felt for such, we can improve education for everyone, instead of making attempts to forcefully fit it into out pet ideological framework.
Denying the reality of the differences between the genders because it does not fit in with our political worldview is, IMHO, as irrational as denying that some scientific fact because it does not fit in with our religious worldview.
More generally, while speaking of mathematics, it is my opinion that teaching it in a rigorous but intuitive manner is an absolute
... that at least you have a free-market system that works. I'm sure that, given time, this problem will resolve itself, one way or another. The market corrects itself. I just wish we had something like this here.
Think, for a moment, of what we have to face. The top engineering examination is the IIT Joint Entrance Examination, which is the only way to gain entry into the Indian Institutes of Technology. Every year, around 1,50,000 people appear for the IIT entrance examination, straight out of high school. That was the number last time. This time, I think it's much higher. Around 4500 get selected. Everyone else to told to go screw themselves. That means that only three percent of people who appear get in.
The next big examination is the AIEEE - the All India Engineering Entrance Examination. In this system, there are a number of colleges which choose to give admission based on performance in this exam. Here, around 8,50,000 people appeared last year. Out of that, only the top 50,000 are called for "counseling" - they are the only ones who have a chance at getting a place in a college. Out of those, only the ones getting into the top five thousand get the first tier colleges and universities. That works out to about 0.588% of all people who appear. But it usually works out for people with ranks up to 25,000 - they get into a good enough place. That's 2.94% of the total who appear.
The next level are the state examinations. Through them, you can get admitted into the colleges affiliated with the local state governments. In states with good colleges, this works out for the top five to ten percent of people in the state.
If you don't get in through any of these channels, then your only option is to pay huge amounts of money to a college of your choice so that you may be included in the "discretionary" admissions that they allow.
It's not difficult to understand, economically - the government controls who and what constitutes a university and a college. It also fixes the fees of all of them. Further, it also controls admission criterion - who will get in, what the admission policies will be, and every other little detail. Now, by forcing colleges to charge students less than what it costs them to run the place, and making the deficit out of its own pocket, along with imposing the hassle of bureaucracy, it provides a very effective dis-incentive to people to start new places, new centres of higher learning, all the while making sure that the few colleges and universities who have a name are the ones who are most profitable (because they can charge arbitrary amounts for the "discretionary" admissions, and the ones with the best reputation charge the most).
What this, in effect, leads to is that there is a ridiculous amount of competition for a very small number of seats, and that the vast, vast majority (above 70%) of the nation's students are getting an education which leaves them unemployable in any meaningful way.
It also has further, unintended, and catastrophic consequences, in terms of the allocation of resources, many of which are very scarce in a country like India (forgive me if I sound like Sowell here, I'm reading his book right now).
Because of this unnatural competition (in a market system, such an artificial shortage and scarcity would not have happened, and therefore I call in unnatural), people try to find ways to game the system.
These tests follow a pattern - the AIEEE, for instance, will consist of three sections, one devoted each to Mathematics, Chemistry, and Physics. The questions in each section will be multiple-choice. Now, given the general pattern, it is possible for a coaching institute, which trains students to take a specific test, to do a statistical analysis of every paper since the test's inception, and guess what will be asked next. The rich can, naturally, afford the best coaching, and thus overwhelmingly dominate the pan-Indian tests.
...Microsoft has lost the ability to compete in a free market?
The article is suggesting that under a free market where the law were enforced and the contract of the EULA (as enforceable under local law) is respected, Microsoft would not, in fact, be able to compete with the alternatives available in the market.
They know this. That is why they are taking advantage of the general laxness of laws regarding copyright infringement in India (for the sake of full disclosure, let me say that I'm an Indian) and China to ensure that their marketshare remains dominant, as part of a longer term strategy to wait until the standard of living rises in these two countries, at which point they can start milking.
Though it may not seem like it, this differential behaviour towards customers in the West and in India and China is not only patronising to someone like me here, it is also anti-competitive, and detrimental to the health of the entire economy in the long run, as such differential rules interfere in the market's working, and prevent the optimal allocation of scarce resources the market is so good at. Coercion to protect marketshare is one thing, and the analogy may not be immediately seen, but this is exactly what is going on here - the misapplication of laws for the pursuance of your goals. It doesn't matter whether you buy out the state and try to have a law enforced which shouldn't exist in the first place - it has the same effect as the non-enforcement of a law that should be - namely, the misallocation of resources in a marketplace.
Even from the perspective of a person who was not comfortable with the Microsoft anti-trust case (a monopoly is impossible to sustain for any length of time in a free market where the actors cannot buy the coercive power of the state), I still think that this is ethically absolutely wrong.
As a supporter of free market policies for the simple reason that they're the only ones that work most efficiently in the long run, one of the best reasons I give for supporting free software is that it allocates scarce resources most optimally, and that it therefore will outcompete other, sub-optimal allocation systems and methods (such as the ones used by Microsoft). An intrinsic assumption to this view is that the laws and contracts regarding Microsoft software will be enforced. Such behaviour, however, calls that assumption, which underlies the entire legal and economic system, into question. Microsoft's behaviour in this case is completely and insupportably unethical.
I would LOVE it if the distribution channels for copyright infringing software became practically inaccessible - it would mean a HUGE boost for free software. By trying to wriggle out of the market's grip by selective enforcement of laws, Microsoft has lowered itself in my eyes, much more so than by most of its previous actions.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there is some confusion here about the types of assumptions used in economics. It's not that I can fault you for it - the origin of this debate stretches back to a philosophical disagreement between Aristotle and Plato, and very few economists, much less others, are even aware of it.
One type of assumption - or rather, abstraction - is where you assume that everything not specified is explicitly absent. This is the position you seem to implicitly hold, and which is widespread among economists (if they ever examine the underlying philosophy of the field, that is). The other type of abstraction is one where nothing is assumed about things that are left out of the abstraction. Fundamentally, the first type assumes that everything not included is specified as absent, whereas in the second, everything not included is absent from specification, and can take on any (arbitrary) values. The medieval Scholastics had a name for this distinction: they called the first type precisive, and the second non-precisive abstractions.
Though this sounds like a small distinction, it has very interesting implications for the development of a field and, curiously enough, even programming languages.
As you raised the question of economics, I'll include that as an example. There is an excellent paper by Roderick Long on precisely this topic: "Realism and Abstraction in Economics: Aristotle and Mises versus Friedman". One interesting consequence of using only non-precisive abstraction when building economic theory, and assuming that that which is not specified by the abstractions used is not absent, merely unknown, and that the theory should work irrespective of whatever that unknown happens to be, is that the theory always applies to reality, no matter how abstract it may become. Theories built on precisive abstractions have the problem that they apply to reality only in an unspecified way, and only when reality condescends to confirm in some degree to their assumptions. These theories are, needless to say, of much less analytical value, but often much easier to come up with.
I think, however, that for the Slashdot audience, a much better example would be the differences between programming languages based on this view of abstraction. Let's take the idea of class definition in C++/Java and Python.
In C++/Java, if the specification of a class does not include some attribute, it is impossible - without changing the specification - to add or define it later to an object of that class. The assumption is that everything that is not specified in the class definition is explicitly not there. This is analogous to precisive abstraction, because it is assumed that not specifying the presence of something is equivalent to specifying its absence. Python, on the other hand, has no such restriction; an attribute can be added to an object when and where needed, even if the class definition doesn't include it. Python assumes that things not included in the definition of a class are just unknown, not explicitly absent, which fits in with the Aristotelean idea of abstraction as being non-precisive.
Though there are partisans for both types of object systems, it has to be conceded that Python's object system is strictly more powerful/expressive than that of C++/Java, nor does it force the programmer to decide beforehand what to include in his abstractions, enabling a far more 'experimental' approach to development which is closer to how models and programs are actually developed. Though most programmers are not aware of it, design choices in programming languages usually have deep philosophical implications, and thus significant practical consequences.
Doesn't the 'selection effect' of who Google's 'People Operations' group hires as employees almost completely negate the validity of this survey? Allow me to elaborate:
Even though the employees of Google may value traits 'A, B, and C' over technical skills, isn't that possible only because everyone Google admits into the company as an employee has excellent technical skills to begin with? This allows the employees to take great technical skills for granted, because everyone has them, so these skills aren't thought of a differentiating factor any more. When comparing managers, both of whom are highly technically competent, you would as an employee focus on what differs between them, not what is the same. If both these managers are also tech gurus, you'll say that it is their other skills the make the difference; this this is perfectly correct, insofar as your peculiar environment (Google) is concerned. And so when you are surveyed for what makes a good manager (or when such data are collected or mined from other tools), technical competence doesn't show up as a major factor, because it is, within your sample, practically universal.
Another reason could be that technical competence's effect on managerial ability may not be linear, but a threshold. So having less than that threshold is a great handicap, but the difference, in managerial efficacy, of people who are just above it, comfortably above it, and very highly above it, isn't all that much; after you've reached the threshold, the marginal gains are minimal and decreasing, and other factors are much more important. If everyone in Google meets this threshold, it will obviously not show up as a factor in their analysis.
Of the two hypotheses presented above, I do not know whether either is true, or whether some combination thereof. But unless they are taken into consideration and ruled out, I would be wary of using that data in any organisation that is not Google. My personal experience and intuition suggests that some combination of them explains the results obtained at Google. In fact, I would surmise that, were Google employees made to work in other environment - or were a survey conducted in organisations which are not Google - with large and highly consequential differences between the technical skills of managers, the metric of technical competence would rise significantly in the rankings, if not to the top.
This is quite interesting. I had heard of the concept in Muslim law - that the fact that a person is a Muslim gives him quasi-legal authority to act as police, courts, and executioner. I don't know the case-specific details (IIRC, they vary from law to law, and the individual authority granted therein), but I'm familiar with the attitude. Could you provide some reference for the idea in Hindu law?
If this is the way they are treated, how will they ever grow up?
The correct way for them to treat these kids is first of all to make it clear that this point marks a discontinuity in their education - earlier, the system was responsible. Now, as a student, you are. Give them both freedom and responsibility. Let them face the consequences of their actions. Maybe they will crash and burn - in the first semester. After that, they're damn well going to start studying and start attending, because then they'll know what happens if they don't.
I must say one thing about this - isn't it assumed that by the time you hit university, you actually want to be there? That the people who come to get the Computer Science or Mathematics degree are the ones who are interested in the subject matter, and excited by the subject, to begin with?
This view may sound rather naive in this day and age, when real education has been replaced with job training, but isn't the solution to this to make the system better, not to cave in further?
As far as I am aware, the Tirupati temple in India is the wealthiest religious organisation in the world, in terms of disposable income. The Vatican is the richest in assets, but most of these assets aren't liquid, and most are immensely difficult, if not outright impossible, to liquidate.
I don't know of scientific, but there is a philosophical way out of that dilemma - pure monism of consciousness.
Advaita Vedanta
The keys are, like, right next to each other. ;)
What we are talking of here are two closely related problems.
The first is the perception of what constitutes an "alpha male" in common culture. Today, a person who doesn't give a crap about anything important, has a callous attitude towards all values, does not care for the values of the past (irrespective of their merit) and delights in their violation, and acts extremely impulsively without thought for the future is called an "alpha male". It just so happens that that overlaps to a very large extent with the sporting subculture's perception in wider society. Now, given this stereotype, and the fact that fitting into it requires no intellectual capacity whatsoever, it is but a natural consequence that those lacking such capacity, but having the physical strength (or whatever other attribute) necessary to join this club, will feel tempted to join. The sad part is that the culture covers up the negative side of this - it is portrayed in only positive terms. Because of this imbalance of perception, a lot of people's lives are unnecessarily ruined when they cannot make it in what is essentially a winner-take-all contest, and because they have not made any backup plans (because the idea that the consequences of failure may be so severe is not portrayed in the culture at all).
The second is the culture's lack of recognition of the proper place of sport, specially professional, made-for-mass-consumption, ultra-competitive sport, in human society and human life. What we have lost sight of is that these things only exist for our - or society's - amusement. Professional sportsmen exist, and can exist, because we as a society have decided that they amuse us sufficiently to warrant the expense we bear on their account. If we decided that sports were no longer amusing to us, and stopped watching, then the supply of money would dry up, and sport would return to being a community affair instead of being a nationwide obsession. It is necessary for all to acknowledge that the proper place of sport and sportsmen is as our amusement - the amusement of the people who do productive work - and that their existence depends on our munificence. Once this realisation dawns, and the proper perspective is regained, the skewed image we have of the alpha male will fade away on its own.
This is far worse than normal infringement, because when I infringe copyright, I'm honest about it, and so are millions of others. We know what we're doing, and we don't try to cover it up. We give credit to the creator.
These entities, on the other hand (the example in the FA, the plagiarism of the Wiki by The Times of India, and many others) are worse - they do not even acknowledge the source. They do not give the creator due credit. Not only do they infringe copyright and break the law, they also try to pass off others' work as their own - something that file-sharers and other "personal use" infringers do not do. Not only that, they actually profit from it - which is precisely what copyright law was originally supposed to prevent.
In fact, given this context, the state should come down much harder on these entities than on simple "personal use" infringers, because the prevention of such abuses is the very purpose of copyright law in the first place.
......when I think that porn, or some equivalent thereof, has been responsible for all human progress throughout history.
I'm an Indian, you insensitive clod!
(For once, it's funny because it's true. I actually AM an Indian.)
The formal stratification is a thing of the past, but its after-effects continue to be seen, as you mention.
A bit of the background about the Indian school system. If you've passed the 4th standard, it means that you're functionally literate and numerate. If you've passed the 10th standard, it means that your (basic) education is complete. And when you do the +2 (pass the 12th standard) in either Science, Commerce, or the Humanities/Arts, it means that you now know the fundamentals of those subjects, and are prepared for a college education in that stream.
This is around the time where the problem occurs: the number of seats available in all the good or decent engineering or medical (or even law and commerce) colleges put together is an order of magnitude smaller than the number of applicants. So - and right now I'm confining myself to my field, engineering - you have things like the IIT-JEE test, where you have more than 150,000 students competing for 3,000 seats, or the AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Examination), where you have 850,000 people competing for the top 10,000 to 50,000 spots. A difference of a single mark can change your rank by a few hundred, sometimes a thousand.
So it's not much of a surprise that the people who do make it to the better colleges through these examinations are the best - it's simply because there are just so many to choose from that the examination is more about eliminating people than letting them in. It has more to do with the system being overloaded than with stratification.
The consequence, of course, is the same - to an outside observer, it will look as if we're deliberately identifying the best students and investing all our resources in them. In reality, we're investing all our resources pretty much equally, but there still has to be some way of selecting the top ten or fifty thousand out of 850,000 test-takers countrywide, because that's the maximum the system can actually provide for.
Another problem is the difference between the private and public sectors. Schooling is pretty much open for anyone, to conduct as a business, if they so wish. You only need an affiliation with a state board, or the Central Board, which is quite doable as long as you actually provide an education - they have a list of pre-requisites. You can set the fees, you can select whom you want to take in or kick out, and there is no affirmative action required at the school level.
At the college level, however, the government keeps very tight control. Fee structures, syllabi, student intake, what percentage of seats must be reserved for affirmative action candidates, irrespective of their merit or actual ability to cope with the course (right now, it's 50% of all seats north India, 70% in the state of Tamil Nadu), everything is under the government's control. So it doesn't attract investment, like schooling does, and thus doesn't grow. And that's why we have this problem of 850,000 people applying for 25,000 seats.
It opens fine in OO.org on the latest Ubuntu (Gutsy, 7.10).
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
It opens fine in OO.org
No, it won't. A renunciate is a renunciate.
I don't know where you get your ideas from, but please be more careful.
When the author mentions the "extreme Hindu group", he misquotes its name as the "Vishnu Hindu Parishad". It's correct name is the "Vishwa Hindu Parishad".
Also, as far as I am aware, it has not asked for the ethnic cleansing of anybody, though many of its members are of a very extreme bent, and may well hold such opinions.
Thirdly, they have also not, to my knowledge, ever acted to block any piece of scientific research. It's an organisation concerned mostly with the social aspects of religion, and they don't bother with what goes on in the laboratories.
Probably the only thing they care about in regard to science and research is that we have bigger and better nukes than the Pakistanis.
I'm sorry to say this, but this is complete, total rubbish, probably born of ignorance.
If you knew ANYTHING about the societies which were (they aren't now) run on a system of caste organisation, you would know that the monkhood is open to everyone.
In India, in all Indic-influenced countries, one of the things that a monk undergoes is the renunciation of his ties with the world, including his birth, his caste, and his society. He is a free spirit. There is a saying, "Never seek the source of a sannyasi or a river." This basically means that once a person is a renunciate, that's it, you don't bother what he was before his new life, the old self is dead. This is the position taken by everyone, from the ultra-orthodox to the most liberal, and is the way things have been done for millennia.
A part of renunciation includes conducting a full and proper funeral for the "old self", where all links to the past are cut. It is a difficult thing to do or undergo, but once it is done, that's it, it's over. You have no caste, no gender, no ties with the world, no regard for the taboos of your society, and no fear of the power structures within it.
As for the allegation that monks do not do their duty to society - isn't it the exact opposite that is happening here? Aren't the monks acting as a rallying point for the protests?
I apologise if this sounds insensitive, but people in IT usually aren't supposed to cry, they're supposed to go out there and do whatever it takes to fix the problem. Crying, though useful to women as a release of emotion, and a way to let go of frustration, does not solve anything. It also projects vulnerability, which other people will exploit. It is sad for many women that this has to be the state of affairs, but that is how it is, and it would be better to accept it.
You mean I Pee, right?
There's a name for it when it'd done at such an early age, when intelligence has not had time to really manifest itself.
The caste system.
Indians are usually far more sanitation conscious than is made out. The problem is a lack of proper facilities, due to the inefficient government monopoly on all services of this nature, not the tendencies of the people themselves. For instance, bathing was a regular part of the common man's daily routine for known Indian history. In the great city of Vijayanagar (destroyed by Muslim invaders in the year 1565), there were adequate sanitation facilities for every citizen to have a bath. Hell, even the cities of the Indus/Saraswati valley civilisation (c. 3300-1700 BC, flourished 2600-1900 BCE) had an elaborate system of baths and underground drainage.
..... how much double standards have come to dominate our discourse.
Let me elaborate.
Imagine for a minute if a successful male role model had written a book explicitly for boys, in the tradition of the classical textbooks on engineering/science/mathematics, and emphasised rigour, and used examples exclusively applicable to males, using language which boys would be comfortable with (but girls would probably not). Imagine he used the default (i.e., masculine) pronoun throughout, so as to make it easier for boys to identify with any example given. Imagine that he completely ignored all the usual PC-language nonsense which the "progressive" crowd in educational circles is so fond of nowadays, and used a no-bullshit, call-a-spade-a-spade approach which boys can usually instantly grok, and are more comfortable with. Further, he would have tried to make mathematics more "manly" by making short work of the idea that boys who like mathematics are "nerds" or other social outcasts, and by identifying it with masculinity throughout the ages. Imagine he tried to bring out the kick-ass-ness of many male mathematicians throughout history, while implicitly linking their masculinity with both their mathematics and their kick-ass-ness - showing it as a complementary triad.
Now imagine that this book had succeeded - imagine it managed to convince a large number of boys to actually learn and like mathematics, and also proved to be something which sparked off a mini-revolution in schools across the country (extremely unlikely, I know, but please bear with me for a moment). Imagine it set off a pro-mathematics trend, or managed to correct the more pernicious effects of the anti-rigour and in general anti-intellectual atmosphere found in many schools today, with special reference to the subjects of mathematics and science.
What would have been the reaction?
Most probably, irrespective of the merits of the book itself, and the work it may have done it get a large number of boys interested in mathematics, it would have been denounced as social commentators, feminists, assorted people from the left, maybe a few from the right, and educationists, as discriminatory, sexist, and insensitive, with probably the "racist" epithet hurled in for good measure.
However, when a feminine role model does it, this thought does not even occur to us. We take it for granted that special books by females for females are, in some mysterious and unquestionable fashion, immune to criticisms which would be levelled against any male who did the corresponding thing for his gender.
This is not to suggest that we should criticise this author. To the contrary, in fact - she has taken efforts to rectify what she sees as a larger cultural problem. She must be applauded for that.
However, the point is that, the same way we applaud her, we must also applaud the hypothetical male author outlined above, for both are working towards a noble goal - that of education - in the way they think they can contribute the most. That is more than can be said for the vast majority.
By ignoring the differences between the genders, we do society and the individuals in it, through the medium of our education policies, a great disservice. By non-judgementally accepting the differences, and optimising our education systems to take them into account, with differently structured books for girls and boys in junior and middle school is the need is felt for such, we can improve education for everyone, instead of making attempts to forcefully fit it into out pet ideological framework.
Denying the reality of the differences between the genders because it does not fit in with our political worldview is, IMHO, as irrational as denying that some scientific fact because it does not fit in with our religious worldview.
More generally, while speaking of mathematics, it is my opinion that teaching it in a rigorous but intuitive manner is an absolute
... that at least you have a free-market system that works. I'm sure that, given time, this problem will resolve itself, one way or another. The market corrects itself. I just wish we had something like this here.
Think, for a moment, of what we have to face. The top engineering examination is the IIT Joint Entrance Examination, which is the only way to gain entry into the Indian Institutes of Technology. Every year, around 1,50,000 people appear for the IIT entrance examination, straight out of high school. That was the number last time. This time, I think it's much higher. Around 4500 get selected. Everyone else to told to go screw themselves. That means that only three percent of people who appear get in.
The next big examination is the AIEEE - the All India Engineering Entrance Examination. In this system, there are a number of colleges which choose to give admission based on performance in this exam. Here, around 8,50,000 people appeared last year. Out of that, only the top 50,000 are called for "counseling" - they are the only ones who have a chance at getting a place in a college. Out of those, only the ones getting into the top five thousand get the first tier colleges and universities. That works out to about 0.588% of all people who appear. But it usually works out for people with ranks up to 25,000 - they get into a good enough place. That's 2.94% of the total who appear.
The next level are the state examinations. Through them, you can get admitted into the colleges affiliated with the local state governments. In states with good colleges, this works out for the top five to ten percent of people in the state.
If you don't get in through any of these channels, then your only option is to pay huge amounts of money to a college of your choice so that you may be included in the "discretionary" admissions that they allow.
It's not difficult to understand, economically - the government controls who and what constitutes a university and a college. It also fixes the fees of all of them. Further, it also controls admission criterion - who will get in, what the admission policies will be, and every other little detail. Now, by forcing colleges to charge students less than what it costs them to run the place, and making the deficit out of its own pocket, along with imposing the hassle of bureaucracy, it provides a very effective dis-incentive to people to start new places, new centres of higher learning, all the while making sure that the few colleges and universities who have a name are the ones who are most profitable (because they can charge arbitrary amounts for the "discretionary" admissions, and the ones with the best reputation charge the most).
What this, in effect, leads to is that there is a ridiculous amount of competition for a very small number of seats, and that the vast, vast majority (above 70%) of the nation's students are getting an education which leaves them unemployable in any meaningful way.
It also has further, unintended, and catastrophic consequences, in terms of the allocation of resources, many of which are very scarce in a country like India (forgive me if I sound like Sowell here, I'm reading his book right now).
Because of this unnatural competition (in a market system, such an artificial shortage and scarcity would not have happened, and therefore I call in unnatural), people try to find ways to game the system.
These tests follow a pattern - the AIEEE, for instance, will consist of three sections, one devoted each to Mathematics, Chemistry, and Physics. The questions in each section will be multiple-choice. Now, given the general pattern, it is possible for a coaching institute, which trains students to take a specific test, to do a statistical analysis of every paper since the test's inception, and guess what will be asked next. The rich can, naturally, afford the best coaching, and thus overwhelmingly dominate the pan-Indian tests.
I remember that during my days in suc
...Microsoft has lost the ability to compete in a free market?
The article is suggesting that under a free market where the law were enforced and the contract of the EULA (as enforceable under local law) is respected, Microsoft would not, in fact, be able to compete with the alternatives available in the market.
They know this. That is why they are taking advantage of the general laxness of laws regarding copyright infringement in India (for the sake of full disclosure, let me say that I'm an Indian) and China to ensure that their marketshare remains dominant, as part of a longer term strategy to wait until the standard of living rises in these two countries, at which point they can start milking.
Though it may not seem like it, this differential behaviour towards customers in the West and in India and China is not only patronising to someone like me here, it is also anti-competitive, and detrimental to the health of the entire economy in the long run, as such differential rules interfere in the market's working, and prevent the optimal allocation of scarce resources the market is so good at. Coercion to protect marketshare is one thing, and the analogy may not be immediately seen, but this is exactly what is going on here - the misapplication of laws for the pursuance of your goals. It doesn't matter whether you buy out the state and try to have a law enforced which shouldn't exist in the first place - it has the same effect as the non-enforcement of a law that should be - namely, the misallocation of resources in a marketplace.
Even from the perspective of a person who was not comfortable with the Microsoft anti-trust case (a monopoly is impossible to sustain for any length of time in a free market where the actors cannot buy the coercive power of the state), I still think that this is ethically absolutely wrong.
As a supporter of free market policies for the simple reason that they're the only ones that work most efficiently in the long run, one of the best reasons I give for supporting free software is that it allocates scarce resources most optimally, and that it therefore will outcompete other, sub-optimal allocation systems and methods (such as the ones used by Microsoft). An intrinsic assumption to this view is that the laws and contracts regarding Microsoft software will be enforced. Such behaviour, however, calls that assumption, which underlies the entire legal and economic system, into question. Microsoft's behaviour in this case is completely and insupportably unethical.
I would LOVE it if the distribution channels for copyright infringing software became practically inaccessible - it would mean a HUGE boost for free software. By trying to wriggle out of the market's grip by selective enforcement of laws, Microsoft has lowered itself in my eyes, much more so than by most of its previous actions.