"I can tell you that, by *FAR*, the best highways are in France and in Catalunya"
And both of them are mostly toll-based and, at least in the Catalonian case, newer than average (I'd say it has more to do with the fact of being newer than being toll-based. My guest: A2 Zaragoza-Barcelona: toll based but older, therefore subpar. And lucky we are that most of the way is just a long straight, so not much of a problem).
"If Americans drive twice as far as Germans every day, it would make sense that twice as many people would die."
No, it wouldn't since not all highway kilometers are born equal. Just like a plane very rarely have problems while in steady flight so I'd expect intercontinental flights to be much more secure per-mile than local, you can't compare short trips on overpopulated difficult orography to mile after mile of a straight in the middle of a desert.
"The reason for the lower standards on the American Interstate Highways is in part due to the huge scale of the whole project being a continent spanning system as opposed to something that simply runs through a much smaller country."
Good argument, except basically all the EU shares the same standards regarding highway engineering so you end up comparing apples to apples.
European Route E90, for instance, covers 4770Km (almost 3000 miles) from Portugal to Turkey, which happens to be a bit longer than Los Angeles to New York.
"If you seriously believe that rising productivity causes poverty, then you need to explain the last few centuries of economic progress"
If you seriously believe that unbound natality depletes world's natural resources, then you need to explain the last few centuries of economic progress.
"No, because it is implying that infrastructure can only be built by public entities."
No, there's no such an implication.
The implication is that if you manage to convince people to add wealth to a pool and you manage to extract wealth from such a pool without putting anything into it, you are better off. It doesn't matter if there are other wealth pools or other agents producing wealth.
"Like the rules of the prisoner's dilemma happen in nature."
They can be transalated into nature examples quite a lot of times, yes.
On the other hand, I used "prisioner's dilemma" because it explicitly had "dilemma" in his name but I was certainly not restraining to it (it's absurd) but to game theory in general or, if you like me to be more precise, to the iterating prisioner's dilemma family of games.
"Yeah, you may think that's the reason companies hire younger folks, but it's not. I hire in IT and more often than not take the young (cheap) people. "
I was going to reply but then found Anonymous Brave Guy's answer below, so all that rests now is "he nailed it".
Only thing I can add is that the severe Dunning-Kruger syndrome is not only impairing the dev team but also HR.
Not only Dawkins but I don't really know how's this news at all.
It's been known for long that the best group strategy is cooperative while best's individual is defeating. That's why it's called prisioner's *dilemma*.
Therefore, a population in equilibrium will "produce" as many defeaters as it can sustain due to the higher efficiency cooperation (of the major part of the population) permits.
There're, of course, systems where no defection is tolerated but for them to work, defection needs to be immediately detected and retaliation immediately executed, both things that usually don't happen in nature.
"But without the speculation, the experiments which eventually accumulated the evidence would never have been performed."
That helps to produce a romantic narrative, but it is not usually the case.
Usually evidence gets gathered by "mere" observation of natural phenomena or by structured attack to current theories that, oh, surprise, happens not to render the expected results (falsification).
Usually, *only* when it's already suspected that a theory (or group of theories) has a flaw or a crack *and* there is an alternate theory that offers a clear falsification experiment, you go for the experiment after the speculation.
"Perhaps you missed the part where Einstein wasn't actually all that hot at math"
Relatively speaking -pun intended.
Einstein might not be as good at maths as his friend Marcel Grossman, but he still could beat your pants off any day of the week unless you are a professional physic or mathematician (and Grossman helped Einstein on his General Relativity work, once Einstein already had published what earned him his Nobel Prize -just to put things into perspective).
"it wasn't until years later that there was the slightest shred of evidence that they actually described reality."
Well, up to a point. Einstein didn't work in isolation and Michesol-Morley experiment, back in 1887, put a serious crack to the ether theory and Einstein just worked on that wave. Fizeau's experiment's results from 1851 also were a perfect match -another pun intended, for Einstein's special relativity. So by the time his paper was published (1905) it already described known reality better than any other theory and it also showed very promisory as it cleanly put together things that previously didn't fit (electricity and magnetism).
"If this device hadn't been found, anyone and I mean ANYONE who dared to suggest that such technology existed in this time-frame would be described, ESPECIALLY on forums like this one, as a complete 'anti-scientific' 'nutter'."
Yes, exactly that.
And there lies the difference between a scientific mind and a nutter: once the device was found and found to be legit, the 'anti-scientific' tag is gladly removed and the implications researched.
The nutter, on the other hand, will still insist that "man was never on the Moon" or whatever is his preferred conspiracy theory no matter what.
"Just consider computer date epochs - virtually all of them count from years or decades before the software was developed, and many start from a point thousands of years in the past."
The most widely known being UNIX' epoch, which is January the first... 1970.
"Most normal people don't know how to properly secure their networks. Any law that doesn't account for that simple fact is just insane. Good luck with that."
Good luck trying to repel a law on the basis that it's insane.
"I'm beginning to think that many corporations establish online systems without ever doing a serious 3rd party security audit and then penetration testing"
Your problem is that you have been contaminated by those bastards of the Meaning of Life.
Dad: That's the way it is my loves. Blame the Catholic Church for not letting me wear one of those little rubber things. Oh, they've done some wonderful things in their time. They preserved the might and majesty, even the mystery, of the Church of Rome, the sanctity of the sacrament, and the indivisible oneness of the Trinity. But if they'd let me wear one of those little rubber things on the end of my cock, we wouldn't be in the mess we are now.
[...]
Mr Blackitt: When Martin Luther nailed his protest up to the church door in 1517, he may not have realised the full significance of what he was doing, but four hundred years later, thanks to him, my dear, I can wear whatever I want on my John Thomas. And Protestantism doesn't stop at the simple condom. Oh, no! I can wear French Ticklers if I want.
Slashdot Mirror
""Each prisoner is in solitary confinement" with an intermediary. Please point to some natural examples."
Each gene is in solitary confinement, with an intermediary which is the body exposing its related phenotype.
Cooperating might favour the phenotype, since hybrids usually posses a better fitness but, on the other hand, this means less copies of itself.
"I can tell you that, by *FAR*, the best highways are in France and in Catalunya"
And both of them are mostly toll-based and, at least in the Catalonian case, newer than average (I'd say it has more to do with the fact of being newer than being toll-based. My guest: A2 Zaragoza-Barcelona: toll based but older, therefore subpar. And lucky we are that most of the way is just a long straight, so not much of a problem).
"If Americans drive twice as far as Germans every day, it would make sense that twice as many people would die."
No, it wouldn't since not all highway kilometers are born equal. Just like a plane very rarely have problems while in steady flight so I'd expect intercontinental flights to be much more secure per-mile than local, you can't compare short trips on overpopulated difficult orography to mile after mile of a straight in the middle of a desert.
"Statistically, French are no more terrible drivers than American."
Basically no one is more terrible driver that USA (on the fatalities ratio, at least)
"The reason for the lower standards on the American Interstate Highways is in part due to the huge scale of the whole project being a continent spanning system as opposed to something that simply runs through a much smaller country."
Good argument, except basically all the EU shares the same standards regarding highway engineering so you end up comparing apples to apples.
European Route E90, for instance, covers 4770Km (almost 3000 miles) from Portugal to Turkey, which happens to be a bit longer than Los Angeles to New York.
"If you seriously believe that rising productivity causes poverty, then you need to explain the last few centuries of economic progress"
If you seriously believe that unbound natality depletes world's natural resources, then you need to explain the last few centuries of economic progress.
See the parallelism?
"I challenge everyone disagreeing with me to say they enjoy paying taxes, and would be happy to pay even more."
Begging the question, uh?
Well, I can say that I would be happy living in a society similar to those of Finland, Denmark or Norway, and that implies paying more taxes.
"No, because it is implying that infrastructure can only be built by public entities."
No, there's no such an implication.
The implication is that if you manage to convince people to add wealth to a pool and you manage to extract wealth from such a pool without putting anything into it, you are better off. It doesn't matter if there are other wealth pools or other agents producing wealth.
"Like the rules of the prisoner's dilemma happen in nature."
They can be transalated into nature examples quite a lot of times, yes.
On the other hand, I used "prisioner's dilemma" because it explicitly had "dilemma" in his name but I was certainly not restraining to it (it's absurd) but to game theory in general or, if you like me to be more precise, to the iterating prisioner's dilemma family of games.
"Yeah, you may think that's the reason companies hire younger folks, but it's not. I hire in IT and more often than not take the young (cheap) people. "
I was going to reply but then found Anonymous Brave Guy's answer below, so all that rests now is "he nailed it".
Only thing I can add is that the severe Dunning-Kruger syndrome is not only impairing the dev team but also HR.
"You are assuming a perfect world where taxes are used efficiently"
No. Think about it twice and you'll see why the parent post' rationale works even if taxes are not used efficiently.
Not only Dawkins but I don't really know how's this news at all.
It's been known for long that the best group strategy is cooperative while best's individual is defeating. That's why it's called prisioner's *dilemma*.
Therefore, a population in equilibrium will "produce" as many defeaters as it can sustain due to the higher efficiency cooperation (of the major part of the population) permits.
There're, of course, systems where no defection is tolerated but for them to work, defection needs to be immediately detected and retaliation immediately executed, both things that usually don't happen in nature.
Which is a given, since he was talking about "Historical records".
"But without the speculation, the experiments which eventually accumulated the evidence would never have been performed."
That helps to produce a romantic narrative, but it is not usually the case.
Usually evidence gets gathered by "mere" observation of natural phenomena or by structured attack to current theories that, oh, surprise, happens not to render the expected results (falsification).
Usually, *only* when it's already suspected that a theory (or group of theories) has a flaw or a crack *and* there is an alternate theory that offers a clear falsification experiment, you go for the experiment after the speculation.
"Perhaps you missed the part where Einstein wasn't actually all that hot at math"
Relatively speaking -pun intended.
Einstein might not be as good at maths as his friend Marcel Grossman, but he still could beat your pants off any day of the week unless you are a professional physic or mathematician (and Grossman helped Einstein on his General Relativity work, once Einstein already had published what earned him his Nobel Prize -just to put things into perspective).
"it wasn't until years later that there was the slightest shred of evidence that they actually described reality."
Well, up to a point. Einstein didn't work in isolation and Michesol-Morley experiment, back in 1887, put a serious crack to the ether theory and Einstein just worked on that wave. Fizeau's experiment's results from 1851 also were a perfect match -another pun intended, for Einstein's special relativity. So by the time his paper was published (1905) it already described known reality better than any other theory and it also showed very promisory as it cleanly put together things that previously didn't fit (electricity and magnetism).
"If this device hadn't been found, anyone and I mean ANYONE who dared to suggest that such technology existed in this time-frame would be described, ESPECIALLY on forums like this one, as a complete 'anti-scientific' 'nutter'."
Yes, exactly that.
And there lies the difference between a scientific mind and a nutter: once the device was found and found to be legit, the 'anti-scientific' tag is gladly removed and the implications researched.
The nutter, on the other hand, will still insist that "man was never on the Moon" or whatever is his preferred conspiracy theory no matter what.
"Just consider computer date epochs - virtually all of them count from years or decades before the software was developed, and many start from a point thousands of years in the past."
The most widely known being UNIX' epoch, which is January the first... 1970.
"Most normal people don't know how to properly secure their networks. Any law that doesn't account for that simple fact is just insane. Good luck with that."
Good luck trying to repel a law on the basis that it's insane.
"if the traffic isn't MITM-able by the BlueCoat appliance, and it appears encrypted, it doesn't go out."
Thank you for the information. So it's only a matter of cracking a single machine to gain access to all your cyphered traffic, right?
What could possibly go wrong?
"I'm beginning to think that many corporations establish online systems without ever doing a serious 3rd party security audit and then penetration testing"
Doing it costs money. Where's the benefit?
"I live in a (very) Catholic country."
You are Irish, ain't you?
Your problem is that you have been contaminated by those bastards of the Meaning of Life.
Dad: That's the way it is my loves. Blame the Catholic Church for not letting me wear one of those little rubber things. Oh, they've done some wonderful things in their time. They preserved the might and majesty, even the mystery, of the Church of Rome, the sanctity of the sacrament, and the indivisible oneness of the Trinity. But if they'd let me wear one of those little rubber things on the end of my cock, we wouldn't be in the mess we are now.
[...]
Mr Blackitt: When Martin Luther nailed his protest up to the church door in 1517, he may not have realised the full significance of what he was doing, but four hundred years later, thanks to him, my dear, I can wear whatever I want on my John Thomas. And Protestantism doesn't stop at the simple condom. Oh, no! I can wear French Ticklers if I want.
"Julie Smith, a member of the Gilbert Public Schools governing board, said that she was a Catholic and "we do not contracept.""
Yes. And probably is right now a healthy person, so I suggest taking all illness agents out of the biology book too.
"How do they even know it was "Cox subscriber having IP address 24.252.149.211", as opposed to his neighbour who tapped into his WiFi?"
Why do they should?
Probably there's a contract provision for the customer to take apropiate care of the service is provided.
Given that this is a civil issue, it'd make total sense for that to be the case.
"Somebody obviously cracked my relatively simple password and hacked into my modem."
Therefore you failed in protecting your conection with due dilligence.
"That's a bad analogy, because, unlike taxi medallions, diamonds aren't artificially scarce."
Except, of course, that they are.
De Beers is not a monopoly but the world diamond industry *is* a colluding oligopoly.
"This discussion is about cursive writing, not Middle English literature."
Cite: "Historical records in many countries are written in cursive, and not just English wring ones."
You are either stupid or a troll.