Wikipedia is just a smaller version of the internet, especially now that websites are so cheap and blogs are so common.
Not only are students (in the UK at least) told not to use google/wikipedia when researching essays but there is software with complex algorithms to check that essays aren't from the internet.
If correct facts are that important then you will know not to use the internet for your research.
All my arguments apply to the internet as much as wikipedia.
As for hurting people, I am not advocating people vandalising wikipedia, I am saying to people who find innacurate articles to correct them (including people who find innacurate articles about themselves).
Correct! and proving I turned the paper round would be all the proof they need. We are talking about the law here which has to be general. Specific laws for every single situation is bad law. It would involve huge amounts of administration and bureaucracy.
I agree, when everyone is relatively well off. If food and shelter started to become a large majority of living costs for most people then it becomes completely about resources. (Just look at America in the 30s). If someone is thrown out of there house because they can't pay back their mortgage, do you think they are going to spend money on my intellectual idea? (look at the recent sub-prime problems, these people would have only been worrying about shelter)?
Exponential economics based on nothing other than intellectual property is an illusion which only exists because we currently have plenty of resources. Why do you think wars are fought over things like water/oil/land? It's becasue they are the source of everything. People get very annoyed over intellectual property rights and go to court but they don't fight wars over them. (Wars over intellectual ideas like facism, communism etc... are nothing to do with economics they are just a "my idea for the world is better than your idea for the world" thing and not an "I own the rights to communism not you" thing).
... Resources are also difficult to implement without valuable ideas for how to arrange and configure them....
Not particularly, planting a seed in the ground is pretty easy, and the information on how to tend the plant is easy to come by and would not be worth anything financially.
The thing is that intellectual ideas that are currently for sale are fairly complex ideas that would be worth something in a market where consumers don't need to worry about food.
I agree that in theory, exponential economic growth is not impossible, but resources and ideas are linked. We could survive without having complex intellectual ideas (not a great thought but we could, and have done in the past) but we can't survive without resources.
I also agree that within one country (particularly a western one) it can appear that we are in fact living in a culture of exponential growth. But as more and more of the economy becomes intellectually based, we rely more and more on other countries for our resources (as the former producers in the west become traders/service providers). This actually makes our economy more and more fragile. If the other countries doing the producing had, say, a famine they are going to concentrate more on feeding themselves and not feeding us. They can live without our intellectual ideas but we cant live without their food.
Except, of course, that if you have 50 patches, the chance increases of some patch having dependencies on another patch already being installed, which would mean two re-boots.
All it means is that if a person has put some measure of security on their product (however paultry) then, if you physically have to do something to circumvent it (again, however paultry) then they have grounds and proof to sue you.
... How do you answer the argument that all of your points work in reverse?...
They don't work in reverse because everyone ultimately needs resources (food, warmth, shelter). When things are difficult, no-one would be bothering about paying for someone's intellectual idea. If you ran a business based purely on intellectual ideas and things got difficult you would be out of business very quickly. It's only becasue we in the west currently have an abundance of cheap food/petrol that we have the luxury of trading in intellectual ideas. Resources always come first.
Why is resource value MORE real than intellectual value?
Because resources are more real. Reources are something tangible that people need. intellectual ideas are intangible and people only want them (not need them).
... If the two values are combined in a single product, why does the resource value take precedence, even if it is very tiny?...
I didn't say it takes precedence, just that the intellectual part is ultimately based on resources. Even with a brilliant idea it's difficult to implement without resources (even if it is just in man-hours (which is effectively paying for food/warmth/shelter for that person)).
Finally, if you're going to mention things like the paper or medium it takes to write down the idea or the costs of the bandwidth to trsnsport the data, then that would be lame and I'd like to dismiss that in advance, because these things are mere pennies compared to what pure ideas (like software, or books) sell for.
That just shows what little value we in the west place on resources. The only reason the paper you write on is cheap is because the person cutting down the trees for paper for you to write on is paid a very small amount of money. It might be a lot to them, but eventually they, and other people in their country are going to start wanting a better standard of living.
It's the same if the ideas are written in electronic format. Every bit transferred across the net uses electricity. Where does that come from? Yes we can make things more efficient, but resources are finite.
Everything is based in resources. Intellectual ideas, the service industry, the futures market... , everything.
... some value... is created entirely out the human mind...
Name a value that originates entirely in the human mind and I will try and show that it actually originates in resources and the ultimately everything starts with resources. (It might be tomorrow now as it's getting late here in the UK).
... What about the people who sell that intangible service? Obviously, they don't fit into your equation, and there are lots of them...
It's the money spent on those intangibles that is earned from money that is not intangible.
... Plenty of our earnings come from resources but not all of them...
All of them come from resources. Most of them come directly from resources, but the other part come indirectly from resources (because the people that pay your wages have most of there imcome from resources and the people that pay their wages have most of their ioncome from resource etc...)
Ultimately this chain ends in someone, whose entire income comes from resources (farmers, miners etc...), paying for goods/services.
Money is a lot more than numbers in a bank account. Granted, it's not directly linked to silver or gold anymore (eg a pound in money representing a pound of silver in the bank), but the world economy is based on resources. Just because most of the direct production happpens in other countries doesn't separate us from that.
Yes, but the money people pay for that service is earned from their job which is ultimately earned (trough many steps) from some resource somewhere on the planet.
What we forget in the west is that all of our wealth ultimately comes from some kind of resource on the earth. Be it oil, gems, food, coal. Even if you are a trader in the city selling and buying futures in the service industry sector, ultimately the source of that wealth comes from some resource on the earth.
... perhaps someone should suggest to them that hammering a spike through the transmission line of their tower might be just as reasonable...
If you are working on a project that needs reliable info to the point that wrong info would be as catastrophic as "hammering a spike through the transmission line", then you shouldn't be using wikipedia. Go and do the research yourself.
On a related note, I hate when people complain that wikipedia has an entry that is wrong. If that's the case, change it!
Exponential is exponential (the increase from this year to next year is larger than the increase from last year to this year). It doesn't matter how you measure it. You can measure it in dollars, percentage, pounds or filluvian credits.
... exponential growth is possible over quite a long time as long as the growth isn't that rapid...
You are stil going to run out of resources though, unless you are importing resources from outside the planet.
"... quite a long time..." and "... as long as the growth isn't that rapid..." don't really measure up to my understanding of exponential.
... it doesn't mean adding bogus information isn't vandalism...
Actually, anyone can add anything to it. There is no law against changing anything on wikipedia. In fact, changing an entry of a well known topic to see how quickly it gets changed back is an extremely good way to measure the "efficiency" of something like wikipedia.
It's much like the practice of deliberately introducing a number of bugs into code to measure how well a programmer catches bugs.
... You start with no business and the next year, you have twice as much...
erm, twice as much as no business is no business.
By the way, continuous exponential growth is not possible. This is because resources are finite. It has nothing to do with customers or imaginitive ways of re-packaging a similar product to maintain growth.
... If you flip 1000 coins, and get 600 heads to 400 tails, a 6:4 ratio, that's exceedingly abnormal...
True, but entirely possible. In fact a 1:0 ratio is entirely possible (although, admitedly improbable). But that's my point. If a random number generator comes up with the same 128 digit number 3 times in a row, it doesn't mean it's faulty. Random numbers are entirely un-predictable.
And that's the thing about computer generated random numbers. They are, by definition, predictable. They use a formula which I can simulate on my computer. The seed could even be simulated with some effort. They are formulaic (which I suggest is the opposite of random).
... If your generated numbers don't cover the entire domain space uniformly...
I thought random numbers didn't necessarily distribute uniformly and that the mistake most people make (when asked to put random dots on paper, for instance) is that they are too uniformly distributed. In other words true randomness can, and does, form clusters.
Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia is just a smaller version of the internet, especially now that websites are so cheap and blogs are so common.
Not only are students (in the UK at least) told not to use google/wikipedia when researching essays but there is software with complex algorithms to check that essays aren't from the internet.
If correct facts are that important then you will know not to use the internet for your research.
All my arguments apply to the internet as much as wikipedia.
As for hurting people, I am not advocating people vandalising wikipedia, I am saying to people who find innacurate articles to correct them (including people who find innacurate articles about themselves).
Just to correct you, Flash is a lot more than a media player.
Correct! and proving I turned the paper round would be all the proof they need. We are talking about the law here which has to be general. Specific laws for every single situation is bad law. It would involve huge amounts of administration and bureaucracy.
I agree, when everyone is relatively well off. If food and shelter started to become a large majority of living costs for most people then it becomes completely about resources. (Just look at America in the 30s). If someone is thrown out of there house because they can't pay back their mortgage, do you think they are going to spend money on my intellectual idea? (look at the recent sub-prime problems, these people would have only been worrying about shelter)?
Exponential economics based on nothing other than intellectual property is an illusion which only exists because we currently have plenty of resources. Why do you think wars are fought over things like water/oil/land? It's becasue they are the source of everything. People get very annoyed over intellectual property rights and go to court but they don't fight wars over them. (Wars over intellectual ideas like facism, communism etc... are nothing to do with economics they are just a "my idea for the world is better than your idea for the world" thing and not an "I own the rights to communism not you" thing).
Not particularly, planting a seed in the ground is pretty easy, and the information on how to tend the plant is easy to come by and would not be worth anything financially.
The thing is that intellectual ideas that are currently for sale are fairly complex ideas that would be worth something in a market where consumers don't need to worry about food.
I agree that in theory, exponential economic growth is not impossible, but resources and ideas are linked. We could survive without having complex intellectual ideas (not a great thought but we could, and have done in the past) but we can't survive without resources.
I also agree that within one country (particularly a western one) it can appear that we are in fact living in a culture of exponential growth. But as more and more of the economy becomes intellectually based, we rely more and more on other countries for our resources (as the former producers in the west become traders/service providers). This actually makes our economy more and more fragile. If the other countries doing the producing had, say, a famine they are going to concentrate more on feeding themselves and not feeding us. They can live without our intellectual ideas but we cant live without their food.
Except, of course, that if you have 50 patches, the chance increases of some patch having dependencies on another patch already being installed, which would mean two re-boots.
All it means is that if a person has put some measure of security on their product (however paultry) then, if you physically have to do something to circumvent it (again, however paultry) then they have grounds and proof to sue you.
To answer your questions one by one
They don't work in reverse because everyone ultimately needs resources (food, warmth, shelter). When things are difficult, no-one would be bothering about paying for someone's intellectual idea. If you ran a business based purely on intellectual ideas and things got difficult you would be out of business very quickly. It's only becasue we in the west currently have an abundance of cheap food/petrol that we have the luxury of trading in intellectual ideas. Resources always come first.
Because resources are more real. Reources are something tangible that people need. intellectual ideas are intangible and people only want them (not need them).
I didn't say it takes precedence, just that the intellectual part is ultimately based on resources. Even with a brilliant idea it's difficult to implement without resources (even if it is just in man-hours (which is effectively paying for food/warmth/shelter for that person)).
That just shows what little value we in the west place on resources. The only reason the paper you write on is cheap is because the person cutting down the trees for paper for you to write on is paid a very small amount of money. It might be a lot to them, but eventually they, and other people in their country are going to start wanting a better standard of living.
It's the same if the ideas are written in electronic format. Every bit transferred across the net uses electricity. Where does that come from? Yes we can make things more efficient, but resources are finite.
Everything is based in resources. Intellectual ideas, the service industry, the futures market ... , everything.
Name a value that originates entirely in the human mind and I will try and show that it actually originates in resources and the ultimately everything starts with resources. (It might be tomorrow now as it's getting late here in the UK).
It's the money spent on those intangibles that is earned from money that is not intangible.
All of them come from resources. Most of them come directly from resources, but the other part come indirectly from resources (because the people that pay your wages have most of there imcome from resources and the people that pay their wages have most of their ioncome from resource etc ...)
Ultimately this chain ends in someone, whose entire income comes from resources (farmers, miners etc...), paying for goods/services.
Money is a lot more than numbers in a bank account. Granted, it's not directly linked to silver or gold anymore (eg a pound in money representing a pound of silver in the bank), but the world economy is based on resources. Just because most of the direct production happpens in other countries doesn't separate us from that.
I say again. If correct information is that vital to your project you shouldn't be using wikipedia (or even google) for that matter!
Yes, but the money people pay for that service is earned from their job which is ultimately earned (trough many steps) from some resource somewhere on the planet.
What we forget in the west is that all of our wealth ultimately comes from some kind of resource on the earth. Be it oil, gems, food, coal. Even if you are a trader in the city selling and buying futures in the service industry sector, ultimately the source of that wealth comes from some resource on the earth.
If you are working on a project that needs reliable info to the point that wrong info would be as catastrophic as "hammering a spike through the transmission line", then you shouldn't be using wikipedia. Go and do the research yourself.
On a related note, I hate when people complain that wikipedia has an entry that is wrong. If that's the case, change it!
Exponential is exponential (the increase from this year to next year is larger than the increase from last year to this year). It doesn't matter how you measure it. You can measure it in dollars, percentage, pounds or filluvian credits.
You are stil going to run out of resources though, unless you are importing resources from outside the planet.
"... quite a long timeActually, anyone can add anything to it. There is no law against changing anything on wikipedia. In fact, changing an entry of a well known topic to see how quickly it gets changed back is an extremely good way to measure the "efficiency" of something like wikipedia.
It's much like the practice of deliberately introducing a number of bugs into code to measure how well a programmer catches bugs.
erm, twice as much as no business is no business.
By the way, continuous exponential growth is not possible. This is because resources are finite. It has nothing to do with customers or imaginitive ways of re-packaging a similar product to maintain growth.
So what your saying really is:
1. Be a nerd
2. Live with rednecks
3. Profit!
RTFA! He used paid up hotmail accounts for the experiment.
Are you saying that only people that own property should be allowed to vote?
True, but entirely possible. In fact a 1:0 ratio is entirely possible (although, admitedly improbable). But that's my point. If a random number generator comes up with the same 128 digit number 3 times in a row, it doesn't mean it's faulty. Random numbers are entirely un-predictable.
And that's the thing about computer generated random numbers. They are, by definition, predictable. They use a formula which I can simulate on my computer. The seed could even be simulated with some effort. They are formulaic (which I suggest is the opposite of random).
I thought random numbers didn't necessarily distribute uniformly and that the mistake most people make (when asked to put random dots on paper, for instance) is that they are too uniformly distributed. In other words true randomness can, and does, form clusters.
Must be. Our work doesn't have dress-down Fridays it has Firefox Fridays!
What's all this talk of patterns? Everyone knows it's three psychic albinos in sensory deprivation tanks!
I'm struggling to see the difference between the two answers!?!
Sorry, it had to be done!