Game theory is a fun diversion, but it has little basis in how people act, unless the people in question are sociopaths or economists. When Nash first tested his games on secretaries at RAND, the majority gave the 'wrong' answers, much to his annoyance.
Did you even read the entire post, or did your mother drop you on your head when you were a baby? I already addressed your pathetic little argument; if we can't judge them by todays standards why should we judge ourselves by their (clearly outdated) standards.
Yes, they knew what it was to be free. They were also quite happy to deny freedom to women, blacks and people who didn't own any land. The idea that nobody contemplated the freedom of slaves in the late 18th century is utter ignorance. Just because it wasn't contemplated by the soporific social class which you clearly hail from, doesn't mean it wasn't contemplated.
So this isn't a total shock. I'm so glad I saw Prof. Hawking lecture before he decided to leave this decaying and stagnant country, though. To be frank, opportunities to see him speak are getting fewer.
You aren't very good at playing devils advocate - especially with the Churchill example. The declaration of war against Germany was actually made by Chamberlain - the prototypical appeaser - who changed his mind when it became apparent that his previous method of dealing with Hitler was doomed to failure.
And you will have to back up the notion that not making up your mind is a sign of weakness, rather than a sign of a cautious and analyzing mind that has seen too many people come to grief through impulsiveness. Feminine trait? According to your logic, half the population is indecisive and weak. Tell that to Margaret Thatcher or Joan of Arc
'Problematic labor arrangement'!? You make it sound like someone is in an office and lacks promotion prospects. Human beings were owned as fucking property. Try and respect that.
And your excuse for them is that they had their fortunes tied up in it? Is that supposed to make me sympathetic towards them, that their being rich was built on the misery and forced labour of others?
You don't have to be completely selfless to not profit from the enslavement of human beings. You just have to be a human being yourself. And if you claim that we can't judge the founding fathers by modern standards of conduct, then perhaps we shouldn't be using their writings on freedom to judge modern laws...
Given that we tend to dump flash memory whenever a larger and more compact one comes along, and transfer our data, what use is there for a flash chip that will keep data for 100 years but be obsolete in 2?
In the Soviet Union in the 1950s, sofas kept getting bigger and bigger because furniture factories had their productivity measured by how much wood they used...
Western society is stagnating, badly. I look at leaders like Gordon Brown and George Bush and I see Leonid Brezhnev. Old men, polishing their medals and maintaining an establishment that is dying from the inside out.
Per capita energy consumption has already peaked and gains in efficiency are increasingly marginal (as dictated by the laws of physics). The kind of expansion our elites have made their fortune with is no longer possible, and so they have fallen back on pure rent seeking. They have had to commodify ideas beyond the scope of anything that is reasonable to compensate for our reduced physical capacities as a species, and in doing so they suppress the very innovation we need to get ourselves out of this rut.
I think that depends on your definition of economics. I find economics to be not a true science, but then again I am a physicist and some of us even think biochemistry isn't real science. We are kind of snobby about being top of the pile:)
That said, I appreciate that proper economics isn't quite so stupid as the pure laissez-faire rubbish being bandied about by people who have latched on to the very basic parts of economics as a mathematical backbone to their nasty elitist views.
Funny you hit on that size (100-150) based on an estimate of your personal experience, as from what I recall that is the maximum number of people your brain is equipped to know. Everyone else is just scenery.
The idea that private enterprise is not better, it simply avoids the problems experienced by government agencies by generally not trying to do anything on too large a scale, leads to a depressing conclusion; we can't do scale at all. This limits our technological development a great deal. We can never build a space elevator or an orbital habitat, eliminate world hunger, or any of the other great projects people have envisioned because any organisation big enough to take on such projects starts to fail.
The West's triumphalism over the fall of the USSR was then quite hollow. We weren't better than them, we simply fled from the kind of organisational problems they tried (and failed) to tackle. Like a morbidly obese sports fan telling a football player he has had a rubbish game.
Unless we can find ways to scale our efforts effectively, without crushing bureaucracy, waste and political infighting, our species could very well face a decline.
Actually market forces were abandoned in the NHS and the public education system is still a giant monopoly.
Wrong. The UK education system still uses thatcherite league tables to provide an internal market for schools, and that market drives middle class people to buy up all the houses near 'good' schools segregating the country.
The NHS does use internal markets - I know I have fucking worked there.
School. From teachers who have cosy government jobs.
If you think teaching is a cosy job, perhaps you should actually try it before shooting your fucking mouth off about a subject you clearly know nothing about.
BBC (Britons broadcasting communism)
If the BBC is such a poor service, forced upon the British people by 'communists', then why do foreigners lap up its content? Why is the world service considered once of the finest sources of news on the planet? Idiot.
The BMA. Basically a trade union for doctors.
And a group consisting entirely of doctors can know nothing about running a health service? Retard.
Think again about your comment.
I have, and if your pisspoor attempt at a rebuttal is the best anyone has then I have even more faith in my comments. This is how bad you are at persuasion.
You don't need big accelerations to get to the moon. SMART 1 showed us that. Given the ISS is designed to be reboosted, it can certainly survive some acceleration, and all you need are little pushes at the right point, over about 3 months, to take you to the moon.
So boosting it to the moon is definitely feasible.
Crappy software, let me repeat that without deleting a big chunk:
Yes, university professors are hired on the basis of extreme specialisation. As opposed to the private sector, which (serious example) hire PHP developers on the basis of customer facing skills. I happen to like my physics professors being just physicists. Someone has to specialise, otherwise society would end up having a flat, wikipedia level of knowledge about everything.
Yes, university professors are hired on the basis of extreme specialisation. As opposed to the private sector, which (serious example) hire. I happen to like my physics professors being just physicists. Someone has to specialise, otherwise society would end up having a flat, wikipedia level of knowledge about everything.
Are you seriously suggesting that without the government, business would be less concerned with the bottom line? That shareholders would stop making a fuss? Are you that naive?
I would imagine Britney Spears has shifted more units than the entire series. Popularity is no indication of quality. Yes, it may be a big deal in terms of shifting consoles - but in what it adds to gaming in general I don't see what the fuss is about.
Slashdot Mirror
Game theory is a fun diversion, but it has little basis in how people act, unless the people in question are sociopaths or economists. When Nash first tested his games on secretaries at RAND, the majority gave the 'wrong' answers, much to his annoyance.
Next installment of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is going to be set in Switzerland
Did you even read the entire post, or did your mother drop you on your head when you were a baby? I already addressed your pathetic little argument; if we can't judge them by todays standards why should we judge ourselves by their (clearly outdated) standards.
Yes, they knew what it was to be free. They were also quite happy to deny freedom to women, blacks and people who didn't own any land. The idea that nobody contemplated the freedom of slaves in the late 18th century is utter ignorance. Just because it wasn't contemplated by the soporific social class which you clearly hail from, doesn't mean it wasn't contemplated.
Your stupidity both astounds and disgusts me.
So this isn't a total shock. I'm so glad I saw Prof. Hawking lecture before he decided to leave this decaying and stagnant country, though. To be frank, opportunities to see him speak are getting fewer.
You aren't very good at playing devils advocate - especially with the Churchill example. The declaration of war against Germany was actually made by Chamberlain - the prototypical appeaser - who changed his mind when it became apparent that his previous method of dealing with Hitler was doomed to failure.
And you will have to back up the notion that not making up your mind is a sign of weakness, rather than a sign of a cautious and analyzing mind that has seen too many people come to grief through impulsiveness. Feminine trait? According to your logic, half the population is indecisive and weak. Tell that to Margaret Thatcher or Joan of Arc
Obama hasn't been elected president yet. How can this apply to his presidential policies?
Its not your ISP causing the problems. Its The Thing. You are all doomed.
Note to Americans: This guy is being taken as a representative sample of your people.
Why is changing your mind considered normal for average people, absolutely vital for scientists, but a mortal sin for politicians?
I really hope that was an attempt at satire.
'Problematic labor arrangement'!? You make it sound like someone is in an office and lacks promotion prospects. Human beings were owned as fucking property. Try and respect that.
And your excuse for them is that they had their fortunes tied up in it? Is that supposed to make me sympathetic towards them, that their being rich was built on the misery and forced labour of others?
You don't have to be completely selfless to not profit from the enslavement of human beings. You just have to be a human being yourself. And if you claim that we can't judge the founding fathers by modern standards of conduct, then perhaps we shouldn't be using their writings on freedom to judge modern laws...
I would hardly call 100 years archival. In some exceptional cases its within the memory span of a single human individual.
Given that we tend to dump flash memory whenever a larger and more compact one comes along, and transfer our data, what use is there for a flash chip that will keep data for 100 years but be obsolete in 2?
In the Soviet Union in the 1950s, sofas kept getting bigger and bigger because furniture factories had their productivity measured by how much wood they used...
Slavery was not specifically banned because they owned fucking slaves. The idea that the founding fathers were champions of liberty is laughable.
Western society is stagnating, badly. I look at leaders like Gordon Brown and George Bush and I see Leonid Brezhnev. Old men, polishing their medals and maintaining an establishment that is dying from the inside out.
Per capita energy consumption has already peaked and gains in efficiency are increasingly marginal (as dictated by the laws of physics). The kind of expansion our elites have made their fortune with is no longer possible, and so they have fallen back on pure rent seeking. They have had to commodify ideas beyond the scope of anything that is reasonable to compensate for our reduced physical capacities as a species, and in doing so they suppress the very innovation we need to get ourselves out of this rut.
Here was me thinking patents were invented by shapeshifters, and enforced by invisible genetically engineered super soldiers
I think that depends on your definition of economics. I find economics to be not a true science, but then again I am a physicist and some of us even think biochemistry isn't real science. We are kind of snobby about being top of the pile :)
That said, I appreciate that proper economics isn't quite so stupid as the pure laissez-faire rubbish being bandied about by people who have latched on to the very basic parts of economics as a mathematical backbone to their nasty elitist views.
Funny you hit on that size (100-150) based on an estimate of your personal experience, as from what I recall that is the maximum number of people your brain is equipped to know. Everyone else is just scenery.
The idea that private enterprise is not better, it simply avoids the problems experienced by government agencies by generally not trying to do anything on too large a scale, leads to a depressing conclusion; we can't do scale at all. This limits our technological development a great deal. We can never build a space elevator or an orbital habitat, eliminate world hunger, or any of the other great projects people have envisioned because any organisation big enough to take on such projects starts to fail.
The West's triumphalism over the fall of the USSR was then quite hollow. We weren't better than them, we simply fled from the kind of organisational problems they tried (and failed) to tackle. Like a morbidly obese sports fan telling a football player he has had a rubbish game.
Unless we can find ways to scale our efforts effectively, without crushing bureaucracy, waste and political infighting, our species could very well face a decline.
Wrong. The UK education system still uses thatcherite league tables to provide an internal market for schools, and that market drives middle class people to buy up all the houses near 'good' schools segregating the country.
The NHS does use internal markets - I know I have fucking worked there.
If you think teaching is a cosy job, perhaps you should actually try it before shooting your fucking mouth off about a subject you clearly know nothing about.
If the BBC is such a poor service, forced upon the British people by 'communists', then why do foreigners lap up its content? Why is the world service considered once of the finest sources of news on the planet? Idiot.
And a group consisting entirely of doctors can know nothing about running a health service? Retard.
I have, and if your pisspoor attempt at a rebuttal is the best anyone has then I have even more faith in my comments. This is how bad you are at persuasion.
You don't need big accelerations to get to the moon. SMART 1 showed us that. Given the ISS is designed to be reboosted, it can certainly survive some acceleration, and all you need are little pushes at the right point, over about 3 months, to take you to the moon.
So boosting it to the moon is definitely feasible.
You are kidding me right? The solution is private roads? How the hell are poor people going to afford the bloody tolls?
Crappy software, let me repeat that without deleting a big chunk: Yes, university professors are hired on the basis of extreme specialisation. As opposed to the private sector, which (serious example) hire PHP developers on the basis of customer facing skills. I happen to like my physics professors being just physicists. Someone has to specialise, otherwise society would end up having a flat, wikipedia level of knowledge about everything.
Yes, university professors are hired on the basis of extreme specialisation. As opposed to the private sector, which (serious example) hire. I happen to like my physics professors being just physicists. Someone has to specialise, otherwise society would end up having a flat, wikipedia level of knowledge about everything.
Are you seriously suggesting that without the government, business would be less concerned with the bottom line? That shareholders would stop making a fuss? Are you that naive?
I would imagine Britney Spears has shifted more units than the entire series. Popularity is no indication of quality. Yes, it may be a big deal in terms of shifting consoles - but in what it adds to gaming in general I don't see what the fuss is about.