Midichlorians upset quite a lot of the fan base, but that was based on canon of a fantasy setting. The Identity Politics card that's been played (very prominently) is all about being patronising to a whole segment of the fan base in the real world. Again, it's pretty much what Gillette have done with their recent advertisement. The vast majority of people who this is 'targetted' at already know the 'message', and already live their lives in such a fashion as to render it irrelevant to say it. It's like having a micromanager at work. After the 500th time in a day they tell you _how_ to do something you already know how to do, it irritates the crap out of you, and you just know that you'll have years of having to endure this if you stay.
Not especially paranoid, i just watch the way things are playing out. For court cases, I'd pretty much agree that the evidence base would rule out most of the spurious claims. But alas these days, the very mention of misdeed is enough to end someone's career (and there are swathes of the population who are pretty much neo-puritannical).
I tend to withhold judgement until I get enough out of something to make a judgement. If I can't, and your anecdote is a tough one, then I mark it as something to keep under consideration in the event something else occurs.
On my side, that kind of behaviour was fairly common against me in my years from about 8-11. It was reported, and on occasion observed by staff at the schools. And the action was to tell me that the kids bullying had a tough life at home, and thus weren't responsible. And I should get to know them because they weren't all bad.
There have been women who've snuck into my bed, and if the genders had been reversed, would have been accused of rape, except people I've mentioned this to think it's funny, because I'm a guy. The fact that these particular women scared the hell outta me because they were really not quite normal doesn't even get considered.
As far as it being a lie, I've seen it occur before in teams I've been in (and in one case, in a team I was managing), so this whole brushing it off thing doesn't work with me, I'm afraid. So please stop believing your myth that this doesn't happen. There's advantage to be gained, so some people will take advantage of it.
I take each case as it happens, and my axioms are that most play fair, and that some don't. I can't assume guilt or innocence, and can only see the preponderance of probability. The more evidence there is, the more the probability shifts. And I've seen so many quite involved ways of setting people up, manipulating events, accusations and so on, it's overwhelming.
One great case in point was a gal I knew back in my late teens, early 20s. Great fun, and very charming. Then she came up to me one day, claiming her partner had effectively raped her. She passed that message quite wide, and he got excised from the social group (And blackened name). She got a guy fired from her work after claiming he'd sexually assaulted her. Then after a few years, she claimed she'd had a huge argument with a current (quite popular) partner, and he was abusing her, and was threatening to kill her. I got involved, and got her out of the city, helped fund her until she got herself sorted in the new place, and protected her as much as possible, including against the very angry partner. When that settled down, she said she had cancer. Now I happened to know people at the hospital she was claiming treatment, and her apparent appointments were at times when the oncologists in question were not working. It took me a while, but I proved she wasn't being treated. So I went back to the historical paths of people she'd claimed against in the past, and lo and behold, her story didn't stack up with what others were saying. Literally everything she'd said had been a lie. So, after knowing how well I'd been manipulated, from that day on, I've looked far more skeptically at things. I'd seen how easy it was to cost people their jobs under accusation. How easy it was to turn people against others. And how much more people listened to those accusations from women more than men. That last part isn't something I'm against really, as I am quite old fashioned, and believe that women should be protected a little. They have enough hassle from the way biology works in the sexes without adding more to the plate.
So, please stop believing your myth that this doesn't happen, because it does. And is observed to do so, and as it's been successful on the edge cases, it's been adopted more widely as a mechanism of gaining advantage, and been proven to be very effective. The best we can do is get as much evidence as we can, and then work out just how much either side is at fault given the objective probability.
The line between flirting and serious sexual misconduct has already been blurred. By people wanting greater excuse to complain and leverage it as a tool of power. Serious sexual misconduct used to be pretty much just shy of rape. And almost universally, it was something that people would rally against. Now it's become "they brushed against me, and I can find advantage in claiming sexual assault". By dilution of the meaning, you have a corresponding decrease in the reaction of sizable quantities of the population who correctly observe the dilution. So now, with sexual assault becoming just what someone can get away with saying it is, large swathes of the population are now treating it with very little credibility. And there's no clear immediate way to distinguish between some minor infraction, and some major problem. XKCD had a very clear message on exactly this: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/c... All that's happening is that someone is pointing out the state of things as they are now, and allowing people to determine if they would like to get a clear definition in place, or just arbitrarily decide to string people up because they choose to define behaviour as something on an ad-hoc basis where it serves their agenda. The big hint is that one way allows people to to accurately assess the meaning of an accusation and judge their reaction commensurately, and the other way leads to metaphorical burning of the witches.
You really don't get biological imperatives, do you? Or the vagaries of human interaction. You treat sex as if it's interchangable. In which case, nobody would ever choose monogamy, as it'd be just as suitable to engage with the next mate that showed up. You're also making the assumption that initial advances were made by the man. That in itself is a flaw in your logic. The fact is that nobody apart from the original pair involved, are likely to know what really happened. And perhaps not even those two, as perceptions can be distorted by subjectivity.
Hey, there's no reason that you should allow your employees food in the working day. If they're that desperate for sustenance, they can wait 'till the end of the day and go and pick up some food from the trash cans, and drink from the gutters. See how your argument starts to fail?
If you have all the answers, please, lay it out with evidence that would be suitable quality for a court case (which is about the standard I have for reasonable stance, anything less is hearsay, and I treat it as such; a possibility, but by no means a probability).
The Mail is a right wing oriented new outlet, in much the same way the Guardian is a left oriented one. I've caught both in serious errors and propaganda. And I've also seen valid articles in both that wouldn't appear in mags of the opposing political stance (as it would 'disrupt' their message). That tired old "I'm the only independent thinker" is classic NPC rhetoric. It takes more than a very left wing view to be an "independent thinker".
Classic "Appeal to Utopia" logical fallacy, and also appeal to extremes. Mankind is a sexual animal. The amount of responsible people I've seen go into not-so-responsible behaviour due to temptation of one kind or another is spectacular. You're assuming that everyone is perfectly incorruptible and perfectly un-temptable, and to be something else is somehow to be sub-human. It's actually the natural state. Being that perfect paragon is the extreme exception. I spend a lot of time avoiding paths that could lead me to situations I'm not sure I could predict my actions on (I always go with the theory I'll be prone to manipulation by base instinct). And that's not perfect either. The hard fact is that humanity are part of the animal kingdom. We have our innate impulses that drove the species to reproduce enough to be successful. If you don't acknowledge that, you're missing a huge part of the picture. What we do about it is something altogether different. Over my working life, I've seen workplaces go from banter being quite accepted, and people (apart from the obligatory assholes that occasionally crop up) being self regulating. If people didn't like something, others backed off. It created a cohesive group, and a good cameraderie. There's now a huge pressure to be clinically detached and professional to avoid any chance of "causing offense". So the calibration patterns are never learned as to how to treat individuals as individuals. I've noticed that there's significantly less socialising in groups that correlates with this (correlation is not causation, but it's a suspiciously close correlation to which there aren't any sizable confounding factors that I've observed).
From my point of view, the OP has it correct, with the optimum path being "Stop being a dick and taking every 'micro' act as personal and the end of the world". The world is imperfect, deal with it. By all means help it become better globally, but this isn't achievable by tyranny (which is what hunting for every excuse to claim offense is). Things will occasionally get 'ugly' in that path, as people get into situations they have difficulty extracting themselves from, which rationally are reasonably predictable. Again, that's part of 'experimentation', which leads to increased fitness and genetic diversity in a species. Occasionally, it goes very well, and the individuals have an extremely happy life. More usually, it goes awry and gets messy. But that's life. And the optimum path is to get people to accept this, work with it, and find their own path of greatest peace through the maelstrom, rather than burying the head in the sand, and saying that it's everyone else's fault and the world would be perfect if only everyone else would change who they are to fit a single person's ideology.
Yes. Engineer the cohort such that you get the replies you know you'll be looking for (as the political wing have the tendency to do). Then treat the replies through the general political function (while having real data, so you don't stand accused, rightfully, of outright fabrication of the data set, which is unethical and fraudulent). I applaud what they're doing, and consider that it's much needed, however, they need to be airtight with respect to their scientific process. There's more than enough room for them to get their message across the _right_ way, which would make it a valid, and ethical experiment. As it stands, there are flaws in their science that invalidate what they aim to show.
Species generally don't give a crap about ecology. They do what's in the interests of their species. Plants evolve traits that give them the best shot at the environment they grow in. Animals do exactly the same. Every single species on the planet affects the ecology in some way, just humans have found a way to affect it the most. If you get a 40% increase in biomass for the same investment in various pesticides, herbicides and general land use, you can either increase your production (if there's a market for it), or decrease the rate at which new land is required to maintain food production for the population (allowing the 'natural' ecosystems to last longer). So I'd say there's a definitely ecological benefit.
When you harvest the plant, you kill it. Your food is dead. Usually by the time you get it, very dead. What largely degrades the nutrition is a combination of oxidation and bacterial decomposition. Yes, irradiation does break some molecules apart (that's what kills all the harmful stuff), but mostly into fragments that cooking will do the same to. The parts that are created purely by ionization are also found naturally, as guess what.. Ionizing radiation exists in nature.
If you want to grow your own, buy some seeds. That way you can get a lovely variety of food that you often don't see grown in commercial enterprises. That's what I do. The agricultural industry doesn't give a single crap about people growing their own (and the commercial farmers I know actively help and give growing tips to people who bother to talk to them). So that pretty much says you're talking out of your derriere again.
Never, ever eat anything with table salt on it, as that kills plants very effectively. Never, ever use vinegar on anything, as again, that's used as an organic herbicide, and has vastly more toxic effects than roundup in the doses applied in agriculture. In fact, never, ever ingest anything. Never use antibiotics, because, well.. The damage you do. The dose makes the poison, and by the time it reaches place, it is well below the No Observable Effect limits to human physiology. Affecting the gut microbiome to adversely affect the host would be an observable effect. And as the limits on concentration allowed in food is a small fraction of a percentage of the No Observable Effect dose, you'd probably literally explode by packing the quantities you'd need into your body (the sheer volume of food would either kill you, or force you to admit defeat at the very least).
Yes, the lost it because the jury didn't understand the science behind it, and the fact that weaker studies said "there may be a link", while the strongest forms of study say "there's no detectable link".
Which is why we have all kinds of intellectual brakes to keep the caveman in check. When we get really clever (and people study more physics, chemistry and biology, rather than politics and law, and get better money for doing so), then we'll have a good shot at thinking our way around the pollutants, and obtaining newer sources of resources that have previously been inaccessible. That's pretty much the story of the rise of humanity.
Victorians used to believe that you couldn't travel faster than about 30-40 mph without suffocating. And we could. Man would never fly, until we did. If you don't try something, you'll never work out how to achieve it. Is it going to be tough, sure. Will people literally die for it? Most likely. Exploration isn't safe, especially at the cutting edge. The first people to get to Mars are quite likely to die for it. Then it'll be easier for the ones who come afterwards. And easier again for the next.. Until one day, it's commonplace. It's almost certain not to have a habitat in my lifetime. Maybe not in the generations that are alive now. But in a couple more.. I don't see any reason why not, if the effort is put into it. The crux is, that a planet has one shot at a technological society, as that one will consume all the easily available resources. You need the technology to reach the harder to acquire ones afterwards. Should something happen (plague, meteor, etc. etc.) on a planetary scale, having populations elsewhere is just a species survival strategy, no matter how hard the living is.
Personally, I suspect age is a factor. The last decade or two has seen a lot of expansion of investment into younger entrepreneurs.. And there's been a lot of getting burned by investment into that sector. I'll definitely agree that a lot of young people have the discipline to keep the books, but they're very unlikely to know the finer points of how this is really going to affect them outside what textbooks say. And have far less experience in planning for the tougher times, as they've not had to account for a whole load of continuity factors (which come with experience, and seeing other people's screwups as well as your own, on someone else's dime). And for every person that brings along a personality trait that offsets experience, you have the younger person with the same traits without the experience, which makes a rough situation untenable.
Back when I was setting up my first company in the '90s, I brought in a PR company to get the word around, and the quote I had then was that it was a shame I didn't have more grey in my hair, as it was a trait that was reassuring to investors, as it brought the impression of experience to the table. Then it became cool to have young CEOs and entrepreneurs, so the money went with the cool, and the ROI didn't quite pan out as hoped. Yes, there are young people with all the right traits for success, but experience AND traits beats traits. And given that the old cycle of 'older people getting the investment, doing a few decades and retiring' is now broken, you have the young successful people that were invested in originally starting newer ventures and being successful in the 4th, 5th, 6th try by now, and they know how to get the funding. And the ones that were successful in the first place now have the track record, and they're starting new things too, competing with the slightly younger and completely inexperienced people. From an investment point of view, you get two people asking for cash, one with a good track record for return, one completely without record, and unless there's a sure fire win in the untried, by and large, it's returning to the older behaviour of the most probable best return.
Then good on them for holding their own ethical standard, and taking a real stance (not just complaining and virtue signalling like crazy). I admire someone that makes a hard call for ethical reasons. The big question is how replaceable this person is. If it's trivial to slot another person in the role, then it's of limited effect. There again, in the perspective I have, it's not about forcing the world into your ethics, it's about standing up and doing the right thing (which is what this leaver has done; retained their integrity irrespective of what may happen). If enough people feel that strongly that the good ones start doing this in volume, then an entity (corporate or otherwise) would be well advised to take note. If they don't.. Well, I guess people didn't feel that strongly.
I have a Microsoft Natural Gen 1. None of the ones they've built after seem to have the same all round satisfaction, easiness of typing and robust feel. Had it since they released it, and it's been going strong since; I'll be sad on the day it finally gives up the ghost.
You've definitely picked a very narrow scope though, so fall foul of the cherry picking logical fallacy. However, the Democrats definitely have some pretty foaming ideologues that scare me just as much as the Republican religious zealots. I'm still completely boggled by how the hell people like that get to be voted in. Far more a fan of the German politicians (who are "grey people", and it's seen as an extremely good trait to have them as reliable, predictable, and extremely good at keeping the wheels on the country and providing for the populace).
I'm guessing you mentioned it because Trump was mentioned in the GP post, but that's kind of an aside to the general debate.
From your comment, you're identifying with the left. I don't hang my hat on any political wing, and would disagree with your assertion that the right aren't trying to educate their nut jobs into more sensible views. The left have a lot of pseudo science and ideology which fulfills pretty much the same drive as religion, and they have their ideologues who peddle their own misinformation. They're both as dangerous as each other when people get too far into it, and get too polarised. And the ideologues are pretty much the same as the Dominionist; they want to spread their ideology far and wide, and enforce it on other countries.
As for the left nutjobs not being comparable to the right, again, I'd disagree. On my wanders (I have a well developed sense of curiosity) I've encountered many a den of very left wing people that scare the crap out of me with how malicious, blinkered, violent, scheming and power hungry they are. There again, I've also encountered many a den of right wingers that scare the crap out of me with how malicious, blinkered, violent, scheming and power hungry they are. They are more alike that you seem to see.
We've standardised on some dodgy infrastructure as tech is new, and back in the day, some of the rubbish actually made sense with what was available, or what could be known (before the days of search, getting educated in tech was pretty tough, and quite expensive). I've had some pretty big companies as clients in the past, and worked at many levels. Yes, politics and shoutyness can have an impact (though usually at budgetary levels). Inside tech areas, it's more likely that just lack of experience, or education, and most especially, time to continue education, is a very large part of the problem. Companies are so interested in making the buck, they don't see keeping abreast of good practice and newer (though not cutting or bleeding edge) technologies as a revenue source. More a money sink that they don't want to pay for, so you have areas that just aren't funded to keep current. And that usually comes back to bite in due course, but most companies don't look far in the future; Western culture seems to be "I want it now. Tomorrow will take care of itself". By and large, the better you are, the better jobs you'll get, and the greater impact at large (though sometimes with a bit of resistance if you need to change culture at other environments). Part of the burnout (and yeah, been there, done that) is that you take things personally. I tend to just that. Which I've learned to balance, and after the 'hiccups', I'm back on track, just careful about how I approach (thankfully, I'm of an age where I'm also mentoring, and relying on years of experience, so I've got a lot of advantages).
Life is about struggle. Without that, we'd be stuck forever with shoddy things. Part of merit is actual proof that you've got a better way, and sometimes that proof takes a lot of effort to show.
I'd kinda disagree; you've come up with a wide spread of "Elites". Doctors, by and large are bashed by the left, who have the latest Woo treatment of crystals and odd vegetables that cure cancer and invoke world peace. Scientists are attacked from all sides, as we have the tendency to gather evidence, attack our own hypotheses, and what survives many people attacking the hypothesis is what ends up being considered firm enough to be going on with. And that tends to stomp all over people's nice world views of anything from the latest snake oil Woo, to Climate Change. Economists are useful, but speculative. Often times as predictors, you could flip a coin and be as accurate, but they come up with very interesting ideas. Even economists rail at economists. Sociologists are bashed largely by the right, as they have a very vocal crowd who have the basis of science, but misapply it and use it as a bludgeon. That undermines a lot of the good work done, but there really is a LOT of shoddy sociology out there. This conflicts most prominently with people with conservative ideas, and quite often, scientists, doctors and economists.:)
So, the mixing of the elites, not quite so much the unified set.
The reason there's the possibility of pushing lower wages and fewer benefits is globalisation. Quite simply, there are more possibilities of filling your role, which makes it more open to lower negotiation, in the same way that mass production reduces the cost per item. There are the higher paying jobs, but you need to exhibit the quality to the employer that makes you stand out. And even then, you only stand out in your area, which is a "lego block assembly" in the company as far as the corporate strategists are concerned.
The bubble that's been going on since about WW2 came crashing down a bit in 2009 with the Financial crisis. That'll take a long time to sort, and there will be a reduction in living standards against the curve. Also, Brexit coming up. Who knows what ripples that'll cause; could be almost nothing, could spook lots of markets, and will almost certainly upset the skillset balance in that area of the world (and could seriously change remuneration for certain roles).
The guys with the big money are simply playing to the rules that are presented to them, and having a shot at making them play to their advantage. That's what life does. Adapts, and tries to find advantage to thrive. Some of those guys are reasonably nice. Some are dicks. They're just people who'd played the game well, or had a family that play the game well.
People will treat you like people. To a company, you're a cell in the body. Most people don't have a problem getting an exfoliation treatment, or accept weight loss to go through leaner times, or lose the lard to be fit and healthy. Exactly how companies treat people. And there's only so much leeway on the grand scale that you can "not play the game" without being overtaken and eaten.
Ethics though, that's always a balance. A lot of the problem is that people have subjective morality rather than objective ethics, and base their determinations on insufficient evidence. I've served on research ethics boards before, and the determination of ethical standards is quite an intense process, and can be very lengthy. There's a lot of healthy debate, a dose of pragmatism, and hordes of supporting evidence from very strong sources (peer reviewed, meta analysis quality). By the modern standard of "Standing up for what you believe in", the witch hunts were perfectly acceptable (after all, you were protecting people from the curses, despite evidence not actually stacking up), or the Crusades (you have to call out the heretics who don't believe what you do). Reality is a vastly complex, and very nuanced beast. Most of the "narratives" are quite heavily contrived and blunt. Those that take the time to have a decent shot usually take books to read, or months/years of discussion.
The reason people rail against "the elites" is often because they have no idea what's going on
It takes the doc 80% of the time to convey the information to the scribe, and STILL needs to check the information before signing it off. Resulting in taking MORE of the doctor's time, adding one full WTE member to the payroll per doc, when the utilisation is about 3% of doctor time. Giving the scribe about 97% under utilisation. This is immediate work, not bulk scribing (that's already optimised, and works through a scribe pool via dictation, voice recognition to scribe pool to first fix, then to clinician to sign off). There are a few extra fields per patient to fill out that need to be done there and then. Then there's the infrastructure to take care of all the extra bodies. The logistics really don't work (I've crunched the figures, and working in a hospital, I get plenty of time to talk to the clinicians about optimisations for work, and it really doesn't stack up). At a financial level, it's woeful, and not at all plausible.
Because the medical scribe doesn't actually have either the legal authority, or have time to discuss with the doctor what the doctor meant at that time. Or would you have one medical scribe per doctor that was just intended to fill out the parts of the form that the doctor couldn't? That's a huge increase in staffing. Either that, or you need more people to plan to put the scribes at exactly the points they're needed to fill in the forms. Or an endless amount of other logistical nightmares that simply aren't solvable by this (big hint for you, I was involved in a process doing exactly this years ago; the IT department of the hospital I was in had the huge advantage that the woman leading this was actually a very geeky ex-nurse, who knew exactly what was needed and what wasn't from the clinical and legal viewpoint. The doctors still complained, but she effective stood up and said "tell me exactly what on this isn't clinically necessary to know to maintain the safety of the patient and ensure we have a full record of admission through to discharge". Not a one of them could say that things weren't necessary. The doctors will complain. They're busy, yes. So are the rest of us. That's what happens when you run resources tight due to budgets. Part of their duty of care is to maintain the records to keep a patient safe, including using exactly the wording to ensure that say exactly what is meant, and by the person responsible. They are responsible for ensuring they are clear, with no ambiguity (there's a reason that notes sent to the medical secretaries for typing up from dictation are referred _back_ to the doctor so that they can proof read). By all means have ideas, and submit them, but logistically, I can guarantee you that you're setting a nightmare up ready to roll following that line.
Slashdot Mirror
Midichlorians upset quite a lot of the fan base, but that was based on canon of a fantasy setting.
The Identity Politics card that's been played (very prominently) is all about being patronising to a whole segment of the fan base in the real world.
Again, it's pretty much what Gillette have done with their recent advertisement. The vast majority of people who this is 'targetted' at already know the 'message', and already live their lives in such a fashion as to render it irrelevant to say it. It's like having a micromanager at work. After the 500th time in a day they tell you _how_ to do something you already know how to do, it irritates the crap out of you, and you just know that you'll have years of having to endure this if you stay.
Not especially paranoid, i just watch the way things are playing out.
For court cases, I'd pretty much agree that the evidence base would rule out most of the spurious claims. But alas these days, the very mention of misdeed is enough to end someone's career (and there are swathes of the population who are pretty much neo-puritannical).
I tend to withhold judgement until I get enough out of something to make a judgement. If I can't, and your anecdote is a tough one, then I mark it as something to keep under consideration in the event something else occurs.
On my side, that kind of behaviour was fairly common against me in my years from about 8-11. It was reported, and on occasion observed by staff at the schools. And the action was to tell me that the kids bullying had a tough life at home, and thus weren't responsible. And I should get to know them because they weren't all bad.
There have been women who've snuck into my bed, and if the genders had been reversed, would have been accused of rape, except people I've mentioned this to think it's funny, because I'm a guy. The fact that these particular women scared the hell outta me because they were really not quite normal doesn't even get considered.
As far as it being a lie, I've seen it occur before in teams I've been in (and in one case, in a team I was managing), so this whole brushing it off thing doesn't work with me, I'm afraid. So please stop believing your myth that this doesn't happen. There's advantage to be gained, so some people will take advantage of it.
I take each case as it happens, and my axioms are that most play fair, and that some don't. I can't assume guilt or innocence, and can only see the preponderance of probability. The more evidence there is, the more the probability shifts. And I've seen so many quite involved ways of setting people up, manipulating events, accusations and so on, it's overwhelming.
One great case in point was a gal I knew back in my late teens, early 20s. Great fun, and very charming. Then she came up to me one day, claiming her partner had effectively raped her. She passed that message quite wide, and he got excised from the social group (And blackened name).
She got a guy fired from her work after claiming he'd sexually assaulted her.
Then after a few years, she claimed she'd had a huge argument with a current (quite popular) partner, and he was abusing her, and was threatening to kill her. I got involved, and got her out of the city, helped fund her until she got herself sorted in the new place, and protected her as much as possible, including against the very angry partner.
When that settled down, she said she had cancer. Now I happened to know people at the hospital she was claiming treatment, and her apparent appointments were at times when the oncologists in question were not working. It took me a while, but I proved she wasn't being treated.
So I went back to the historical paths of people she'd claimed against in the past, and lo and behold, her story didn't stack up with what others were saying. Literally everything she'd said had been a lie.
So, after knowing how well I'd been manipulated, from that day on, I've looked far more skeptically at things. I'd seen how easy it was to cost people their jobs under accusation. How easy it was to turn people against others. And how much more people listened to those accusations from women more than men.
That last part isn't something I'm against really, as I am quite old fashioned, and believe that women should be protected a little. They have enough hassle from the way biology works in the sexes without adding more to the plate.
So, please stop believing your myth that this doesn't happen, because it does. And is observed to do so, and as it's been successful on the edge cases, it's been adopted more widely as a mechanism of gaining advantage, and been proven to be very effective.
The best we can do is get as much evidence as we can, and then work out just how much either side is at fault given the objective probability.
The line between flirting and serious sexual misconduct has already been blurred. By people wanting greater excuse to complain and leverage it as a tool of power.
Serious sexual misconduct used to be pretty much just shy of rape. And almost universally, it was something that people would rally against.
Now it's become "they brushed against me, and I can find advantage in claiming sexual assault". By dilution of the meaning, you have a corresponding decrease in the reaction of sizable quantities of the population who correctly observe the dilution. So now, with sexual assault becoming just what someone can get away with saying it is, large swathes of the population are now treating it with very little credibility. And there's no clear immediate way to distinguish between some minor infraction, and some major problem.
XKCD had a very clear message on exactly this: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/c...
All that's happening is that someone is pointing out the state of things as they are now, and allowing people to determine if they would like to get a clear definition in place, or just arbitrarily decide to string people up because they choose to define behaviour as something on an ad-hoc basis where it serves their agenda.
The big hint is that one way allows people to to accurately assess the meaning of an accusation and judge their reaction commensurately, and the other way leads to metaphorical burning of the witches.
I really, really wish we didn't metaphorically burn the witch on the say so of another. It seems that this is still a popular path in today's society.
You really don't get biological imperatives, do you?
Or the vagaries of human interaction. You treat sex as if it's interchangable. In which case, nobody would ever choose monogamy, as it'd be just as suitable to engage with the next mate that showed up.
You're also making the assumption that initial advances were made by the man. That in itself is a flaw in your logic.
The fact is that nobody apart from the original pair involved, are likely to know what really happened. And perhaps not even those two, as perceptions can be distorted by subjectivity.
Hey, there's no reason that you should allow your employees food in the working day. If they're that desperate for sustenance, they can wait 'till the end of the day and go and pick up some food from the trash cans, and drink from the gutters. See how your argument starts to fail?
If you have all the answers, please, lay it out with evidence that would be suitable quality for a court case (which is about the standard I have for reasonable stance, anything less is hearsay, and I treat it as such; a possibility, but by no means a probability).
The Mail is a right wing oriented new outlet, in much the same way the Guardian is a left oriented one.
I've caught both in serious errors and propaganda. And I've also seen valid articles in both that wouldn't appear in mags of the opposing political stance (as it would 'disrupt' their message).
That tired old "I'm the only independent thinker" is classic NPC rhetoric. It takes more than a very left wing view to be an "independent thinker".
Classic "Appeal to Utopia" logical fallacy, and also appeal to extremes. Mankind is a sexual animal.
The amount of responsible people I've seen go into not-so-responsible behaviour due to temptation of one kind or another is spectacular.
You're assuming that everyone is perfectly incorruptible and perfectly un-temptable, and to be something else is somehow to be sub-human.
It's actually the natural state. Being that perfect paragon is the extreme exception.
I spend a lot of time avoiding paths that could lead me to situations I'm not sure I could predict my actions on (I always go with the theory I'll be prone to manipulation by base instinct). And that's not perfect either.
The hard fact is that humanity are part of the animal kingdom. We have our innate impulses that drove the species to reproduce enough to be successful. If you don't acknowledge that, you're missing a huge part of the picture.
What we do about it is something altogether different.
Over my working life, I've seen workplaces go from banter being quite accepted, and people (apart from the obligatory assholes that occasionally crop up) being self regulating. If people didn't like something, others backed off. It created a cohesive group, and a good cameraderie.
There's now a huge pressure to be clinically detached and professional to avoid any chance of "causing offense". So the calibration patterns are never learned as to how to treat individuals as individuals. I've noticed that there's significantly less socialising in groups that correlates with this (correlation is not causation, but it's a suspiciously close correlation to which there aren't any sizable confounding factors that I've observed).
From my point of view, the OP has it correct, with the optimum path being "Stop being a dick and taking every 'micro' act as personal and the end of the world". The world is imperfect, deal with it. By all means help it become better globally, but this isn't achievable by tyranny (which is what hunting for every excuse to claim offense is).
Things will occasionally get 'ugly' in that path, as people get into situations they have difficulty extracting themselves from, which rationally are reasonably predictable.
Again, that's part of 'experimentation', which leads to increased fitness and genetic diversity in a species. Occasionally, it goes very well, and the individuals have an extremely happy life. More usually, it goes awry and gets messy. But that's life. And the optimum path is to get people to accept this, work with it, and find their own path of greatest peace through the maelstrom, rather than burying the head in the sand, and saying that it's everyone else's fault and the world would be perfect if only everyone else would change who they are to fit a single person's ideology.
Yes.
Engineer the cohort such that you get the replies you know you'll be looking for (as the political wing have the tendency to do). Then treat the replies through the general political function (while having real data, so you don't stand accused, rightfully, of outright fabrication of the data set, which is unethical and fraudulent).
I applaud what they're doing, and consider that it's much needed, however, they need to be airtight with respect to their scientific process. There's more than enough room for them to get their message across the _right_ way, which would make it a valid, and ethical experiment. As it stands, there are flaws in their science that invalidate what they aim to show.
Species generally don't give a crap about ecology. They do what's in the interests of their species. Plants evolve traits that give them the best shot at the environment they grow in. Animals do exactly the same.
Every single species on the planet affects the ecology in some way, just humans have found a way to affect it the most.
If you get a 40% increase in biomass for the same investment in various pesticides, herbicides and general land use, you can either increase your production (if there's a market for it), or decrease the rate at which new land is required to maintain food production for the population (allowing the 'natural' ecosystems to last longer).
So I'd say there's a definitely ecological benefit.
Such as what practices? Apart from accounting wrangles and the like?
When you harvest the plant, you kill it. Your food is dead. Usually by the time you get it, very dead.
What largely degrades the nutrition is a combination of oxidation and bacterial decomposition. Yes, irradiation does break some molecules apart (that's what kills all the harmful stuff), but mostly into fragments that cooking will do the same to. The parts that are created purely by ionization are also found naturally, as guess what.. Ionizing radiation exists in nature.
If you want to grow your own, buy some seeds. That way you can get a lovely variety of food that you often don't see grown in commercial enterprises. That's what I do. The agricultural industry doesn't give a single crap about people growing their own (and the commercial farmers I know actively help and give growing tips to people who bother to talk to them). So that pretty much says you're talking out of your derriere again.
Never, ever eat anything with table salt on it, as that kills plants very effectively.
Never, ever use vinegar on anything, as again, that's used as an organic herbicide, and has vastly more toxic effects than roundup in the doses applied in agriculture.
In fact, never, ever ingest anything. Never use antibiotics, because, well.. The damage you do.
The dose makes the poison, and by the time it reaches place, it is well below the No Observable Effect limits to human physiology. Affecting the gut microbiome to adversely affect the host would be an observable effect.
And as the limits on concentration allowed in food is a small fraction of a percentage of the No Observable Effect dose, you'd probably literally explode by packing the quantities you'd need into your body (the sheer volume of food would either kill you, or force you to admit defeat at the very least).
Yes, the lost it because the jury didn't understand the science behind it, and the fact that weaker studies said "there may be a link", while the strongest forms of study say "there's no detectable link".
Which is why we have all kinds of intellectual brakes to keep the caveman in check. When we get really clever (and people study more physics, chemistry and biology, rather than politics and law, and get better money for doing so), then we'll have a good shot at thinking our way around the pollutants, and obtaining newer sources of resources that have previously been inaccessible. That's pretty much the story of the rise of humanity.
Victorians used to believe that you couldn't travel faster than about 30-40 mph without suffocating. And we could.
Man would never fly, until we did.
If you don't try something, you'll never work out how to achieve it. Is it going to be tough, sure. Will people literally die for it? Most likely. Exploration isn't safe, especially at the cutting edge.
The first people to get to Mars are quite likely to die for it. Then it'll be easier for the ones who come afterwards. And easier again for the next.. Until one day, it's commonplace.
It's almost certain not to have a habitat in my lifetime. Maybe not in the generations that are alive now. But in a couple more.. I don't see any reason why not, if the effort is put into it.
The crux is, that a planet has one shot at a technological society, as that one will consume all the easily available resources. You need the technology to reach the harder to acquire ones afterwards. Should something happen (plague, meteor, etc. etc.) on a planetary scale, having populations elsewhere is just a species survival strategy, no matter how hard the living is.
Personally, I suspect age is a factor. The last decade or two has seen a lot of expansion of investment into younger entrepreneurs.. And there's been a lot of getting burned by investment into that sector.
I'll definitely agree that a lot of young people have the discipline to keep the books, but they're very unlikely to know the finer points of how this is really going to affect them outside what textbooks say. And have far less experience in planning for the tougher times, as they've not had to account for a whole load of continuity factors (which come with experience, and seeing other people's screwups as well as your own, on someone else's dime).
And for every person that brings along a personality trait that offsets experience, you have the younger person with the same traits without the experience, which makes a rough situation untenable.
Back when I was setting up my first company in the '90s, I brought in a PR company to get the word around, and the quote I had then was that it was a shame I didn't have more grey in my hair, as it was a trait that was reassuring to investors, as it brought the impression of experience to the table.
Then it became cool to have young CEOs and entrepreneurs, so the money went with the cool, and the ROI didn't quite pan out as hoped. Yes, there are young people with all the right traits for success, but experience AND traits beats traits. And given that the old cycle of 'older people getting the investment, doing a few decades and retiring' is now broken, you have the young successful people that were invested in originally starting newer ventures and being successful in the 4th, 5th, 6th try by now, and they know how to get the funding. And the ones that were successful in the first place now have the track record, and they're starting new things too, competing with the slightly younger and completely inexperienced people. From an investment point of view, you get two people asking for cash, one with a good track record for return, one completely without record, and unless there's a sure fire win in the untried, by and large, it's returning to the older behaviour of the most probable best return.
Then good on them for holding their own ethical standard, and taking a real stance (not just complaining and virtue signalling like crazy). I admire someone that makes a hard call for ethical reasons.
The big question is how replaceable this person is. If it's trivial to slot another person in the role, then it's of limited effect. There again, in the perspective I have, it's not about forcing the world into your ethics, it's about standing up and doing the right thing (which is what this leaver has done; retained their integrity irrespective of what may happen).
If enough people feel that strongly that the good ones start doing this in volume, then an entity (corporate or otherwise) would be well advised to take note.
If they don't.. Well, I guess people didn't feel that strongly.
I have a Microsoft Natural Gen 1.
None of the ones they've built after seem to have the same all round satisfaction, easiness of typing and robust feel.
Had it since they released it, and it's been going strong since; I'll be sad on the day it finally gives up the ghost.
You realise youâ(TM)ve effectively said âoeshut down the internetâ right?
You've definitely picked a very narrow scope though, so fall foul of the cherry picking logical fallacy. However, the Democrats definitely have some pretty foaming ideologues that scare me just as much as the Republican religious zealots. I'm still completely boggled by how the hell people like that get to be voted in. Far more a fan of the German politicians (who are "grey people", and it's seen as an extremely good trait to have them as reliable, predictable, and extremely good at keeping the wheels on the country and providing for the populace).
I'm guessing you mentioned it because Trump was mentioned in the GP post, but that's kind of an aside to the general debate.
From your comment, you're identifying with the left. I don't hang my hat on any political wing, and would disagree with your assertion that the right aren't trying to educate their nut jobs into more sensible views.
The left have a lot of pseudo science and ideology which fulfills pretty much the same drive as religion, and they have their ideologues who peddle their own misinformation. They're both as dangerous as each other when people get too far into it, and get too polarised. And the ideologues are pretty much the same as the Dominionist; they want to spread their ideology far and wide, and enforce it on other countries.
As for the left nutjobs not being comparable to the right, again, I'd disagree. On my wanders (I have a well developed sense of curiosity) I've encountered many a den of very left wing people that scare the crap out of me with how malicious, blinkered, violent, scheming and power hungry they are.
There again, I've also encountered many a den of right wingers that scare the crap out of me with how malicious, blinkered, violent, scheming and power hungry they are.
They are more alike that you seem to see.
We've standardised on some dodgy infrastructure as tech is new, and back in the day, some of the rubbish actually made sense with what was available, or what could be known (before the days of search, getting educated in tech was pretty tough, and quite expensive).
I've had some pretty big companies as clients in the past, and worked at many levels. Yes, politics and shoutyness can have an impact (though usually at budgetary levels). Inside tech areas, it's more likely that just lack of experience, or education, and most especially, time to continue education, is a very large part of the problem.
Companies are so interested in making the buck, they don't see keeping abreast of good practice and newer (though not cutting or bleeding edge) technologies as a revenue source. More a money sink that they don't want to pay for, so you have areas that just aren't funded to keep current. And that usually comes back to bite in due course, but most companies don't look far in the future; Western culture seems to be "I want it now. Tomorrow will take care of itself".
By and large, the better you are, the better jobs you'll get, and the greater impact at large (though sometimes with a bit of resistance if you need to change culture at other environments).
Part of the burnout (and yeah, been there, done that) is that you take things personally. I tend to just that. Which I've learned to balance, and after the 'hiccups', I'm back on track, just careful about how I approach (thankfully, I'm of an age where I'm also mentoring, and relying on years of experience, so I've got a lot of advantages).
Life is about struggle. Without that, we'd be stuck forever with shoddy things. Part of merit is actual proof that you've got a better way, and sometimes that proof takes a lot of effort to show.
I'd kinda disagree; you've come up with a wide spread of "Elites". Doctors, by and large are bashed by the left, who have the latest Woo treatment of crystals and odd vegetables that cure cancer and invoke world peace. :)
Scientists are attacked from all sides, as we have the tendency to gather evidence, attack our own hypotheses, and what survives many people attacking the hypothesis is what ends up being considered firm enough to be going on with. And that tends to stomp all over people's nice world views of anything from the latest snake oil Woo, to Climate Change.
Economists are useful, but speculative. Often times as predictors, you could flip a coin and be as accurate, but they come up with very interesting ideas. Even economists rail at economists.
Sociologists are bashed largely by the right, as they have a very vocal crowd who have the basis of science, but misapply it and use it as a bludgeon. That undermines a lot of the good work done, but there really is a LOT of shoddy sociology out there. This conflicts most prominently with people with conservative ideas, and quite often, scientists, doctors and economists.
So, the mixing of the elites, not quite so much the unified set.
The reason there's the possibility of pushing lower wages and fewer benefits is globalisation. Quite simply, there are more possibilities of filling your role, which makes it more open to lower negotiation, in the same way that mass production reduces the cost per item.
There are the higher paying jobs, but you need to exhibit the quality to the employer that makes you stand out. And even then, you only stand out in your area, which is a "lego block assembly" in the company as far as the corporate strategists are concerned.
The bubble that's been going on since about WW2 came crashing down a bit in 2009 with the Financial crisis. That'll take a long time to sort, and there will be a reduction in living standards against the curve. Also, Brexit coming up. Who knows what ripples that'll cause; could be almost nothing, could spook lots of markets, and will almost certainly upset the skillset balance in that area of the world (and could seriously change remuneration for certain roles).
The guys with the big money are simply playing to the rules that are presented to them, and having a shot at making them play to their advantage. That's what life does. Adapts, and tries to find advantage to thrive. Some of those guys are reasonably nice. Some are dicks. They're just people who'd played the game well, or had a family that play the game well.
People will treat you like people. To a company, you're a cell in the body. Most people don't have a problem getting an exfoliation treatment, or accept weight loss to go through leaner times, or lose the lard to be fit and healthy. Exactly how companies treat people. And there's only so much leeway on the grand scale that you can "not play the game" without being overtaken and eaten.
Ethics though, that's always a balance. A lot of the problem is that people have subjective morality rather than objective ethics, and base their determinations on insufficient evidence. I've served on research ethics boards before, and the determination of ethical standards is quite an intense process, and can be very lengthy. There's a lot of healthy debate, a dose of pragmatism, and hordes of supporting evidence from very strong sources (peer reviewed, meta analysis quality).
By the modern standard of "Standing up for what you believe in", the witch hunts were perfectly acceptable (after all, you were protecting people from the curses, despite evidence not actually stacking up), or the Crusades (you have to call out the heretics who don't believe what you do).
Reality is a vastly complex, and very nuanced beast. Most of the "narratives" are quite heavily contrived and blunt. Those that take the time to have a decent shot usually take books to read, or months/years of discussion.
The reason people rail against "the elites" is often because they have no idea what's going on
It takes the doc 80% of the time to convey the information to the scribe, and STILL needs to check the information before signing it off. Resulting in taking MORE of the doctor's time, adding one full WTE member to the payroll per doc, when the utilisation is about 3% of doctor time. Giving the scribe about 97% under utilisation. This is immediate work, not bulk scribing (that's already optimised, and works through a scribe pool via dictation, voice recognition to scribe pool to first fix, then to clinician to sign off). There are a few extra fields per patient to fill out that need to be done there and then. Then there's the infrastructure to take care of all the extra bodies. The logistics really don't work (I've crunched the figures, and working in a hospital, I get plenty of time to talk to the clinicians about optimisations for work, and it really doesn't stack up).
At a financial level, it's woeful, and not at all plausible.
Because the medical scribe doesn't actually have either the legal authority, or have time to discuss with the doctor what the doctor meant at that time.
Or would you have one medical scribe per doctor that was just intended to fill out the parts of the form that the doctor couldn't? That's a huge increase in staffing. Either that, or you need more people to plan to put the scribes at exactly the points they're needed to fill in the forms. Or an endless amount of other logistical nightmares that simply aren't solvable by this (big hint for you, I was involved in a process doing exactly this years ago; the IT department of the hospital I was in had the huge advantage that the woman leading this was actually a very geeky ex-nurse, who knew exactly what was needed and what wasn't from the clinical and legal viewpoint. The doctors still complained, but she effective stood up and said "tell me exactly what on this isn't clinically necessary to know to maintain the safety of the patient and ensure we have a full record of admission through to discharge". Not a one of them could say that things weren't necessary.
The doctors will complain. They're busy, yes. So are the rest of us. That's what happens when you run resources tight due to budgets.
Part of their duty of care is to maintain the records to keep a patient safe, including using exactly the wording to ensure that say exactly what is meant, and by the person responsible. They are responsible for ensuring they are clear, with no ambiguity (there's a reason that notes sent to the medical secretaries for typing up from dictation are referred _back_ to the doctor so that they can proof read). By all means have ideas, and submit them, but logistically, I can guarantee you that you're setting a nightmare up ready to roll following that line.