Padding

> You're arguing for the legalisation of wage theft on the basis that it might disrupt prices.

No. I'm arguing that we're currently labeling something as "theft", that might not actually be theft, and that we should thus take a closer look at the issue.

> if you have an economy where all the growth goes to the 1% and the 99% see no change

Yes and no. Growth (and progress) will go to everyone - Obviously, new technologies will be available to everyone, since there'd be little point in them if the average consumer couldn't afford them. Actual money however will only to to the "1%" (or whatever other small fraction).

The idea is that since, in total, those "1%" will spend less of that money on consumables/personal-indulgences, most of this money will either be taken out of circulation (and thus damping inflation) or handled by professionals (and thus put to good use).

> But why in God's name would anyone want to live like that?

(1) Because it makes for a more easily predictable future, resulting in less headaches.

(2) Because less of the work performed by humanity as a whole will be squandered on unimportant endeavours.

Like I said, what is the alternative? Give people more money to spend on things like booze and vacation trips?

> But from a market point of view, people are like small firms that sell labor. We don't want a system where people can "go out of business" and be unable to survive, because that's inhumane.

You're conflating issues here. Something (or someone) that's not adding any value to an economy has no place (and no reason to participate) in it.

That being said, letting people starve is obviously inhumane. However, the answer to this isn't opening up bullshit positions in the economy, by introducing artificial inefficiencies, in order to accomodate those otherwise "useless" people. Regulations (ideally) are there to keep the markets efficient (in the long term) by maintaining "fairness". Not to ensure that individual humans don't starve.

Keeping people, that are unable to support themselves, alive and well is a welfare issue, and is not otherwise adressed by markets (directly).

> What do you propose?

For starters, rational discourse. I don't see much point in being cynical.

If there is demand for those overtime hours and people willing to supply them .. and society as a whole is better off for it in the end, but our rules prohibit it, then clearly there's adequate reason to question the rules.

We need to conduct research on how both alternatives - i.e. either enforcing the rules or changing them - would affect everyday life, and then, as a democratic society, let people make a deliberate decision as to which alternative they prefer.

Is this a joke? The language used certainly seems inadequate.

Other than that, aren't there already other "completely relational" systems like Dataphor (and some arcane IBM products) .. that failed to gain traction?

> This has spread to multiple industries across many sectors. It’s affected not just minimum-wage workers, but also middle-class workers.

I have no idea how much of an issue this is and what the real-world implications for the individuals are, but if it has become a systematic phenomenon, then maybe it's worth rethinking the rules?

If it really is as wide-spread as they say, then having everyone play by the book might result in a redistribution of large amounts of money, thus impacting inflation .. which I guess is hardly in anyone's interest.

Please elaborate.

I agree this is sad. On the other hand however one needs to consider how much is really lost this way.

Given the inefficiency/pointlessness of much of the effort involved in compulsory education, I'm not sure better teachers would be able to significantly improve the system. We need a structural change here first, and only then start to look around for brigther people. Otherwise, any bright people that may enter the system, will eventually be frustrated, give up, and in the end achieve results (in the field) that are no better than those of the borderline-acceptable teachers.

> It's wrong to do others work for them and let them represent it as their own

This is an intricate topic. On what grounds do you claim this to be wrong? What is the alternative and why is it so much better?

> It lets them receive qualifications that they didn't earn and others who want those qualifications in competition with them, do not receive them.

You are mistaken here. From what I read in the article it seems these admissions essays have little to do with actually picking out the people most qualified for the positions, but rather the people that can hit the reviewers' emotions the hardest.

This is an inadequate system to begin with. Any fault should be placed on the people in charge of the system rather than the individuals trying to wiggle their way through it.

Frakly, I'm disgusted by how our society treats people sometimes.. "You have to be timid yet idealistic, ambitious yet giving, and reserved yet honest" What is this crap? Why can't we let people be what they are? How is this any better than discrimating based on physical properties?

Why should anyone care about anything more than aplicants being honest, faithful/conscientious and qualified?!

> It might just be a mundane 10 hour essay, but that person may not have had the time management skills, writing skills, or will to do it and therefore should not have received the marks that he did

All qualifications required for the titles earned will (or at least should) be taught to the students during the course of their studies. If they lack the time management skills necessary for the degree, the evaluation of their abilities during the course of the studies should make sure they eventually fail. If the students find ways to offset their limitations, then I fail to see any issue. Don't we all have limitations that we eventually need to find ways around?

If they don't find ways around their limitations, and the system still awards them a degree, the blame still lies on the system.

Humans are fallible individuals, and only so much can be done about that. It is processes that should be engineered to perfection, in order to guide the people within them towards making the right choices. Not the other way round.

> Of course, I didn’t have time for moral quandaries. As my name became more popular, I found myself with more clients than I had time to help. I couldn’t interview all of them, so I needed to find a way to produce essays faster. My solution: writing about my own intimate experiences.

This is an interesting bit. Why do that?

Standard economic theory would suggest increasing prices (and thus margins) as demand increases, rather than actually work more (and thus decrease margins).

People usually think of Haskell when strict type systems come up.. Ada is a "different kind" of strict though.

It doesn't do any of the fancy/confusing inference stuff that Haskell does in order to verify that type conversions/transformations progress along the intended paths, but instead requires you to be very explicit about what you're doing.

E.g. (1) Trying to read something from stdin is a minor challenge, because of how Strings are usually fixed-length and don't interoperate with special arbitrary-length strings. (2) If you want to do dynamic memory stuff yourself, you need to declare your packages as such (with the intent of this showing up during reviews and thus leading to the code being more thoroughly scrutinized.) (3) It allows for creating special sub-types of primitives, like integers of a limited/well-speicified range, so that they can be put into APIs intead of ordinary machine/compiler-dependent integers. (4) Conditions (in IFs and such) don't (by default) short-circuit evaluate, and you have to use speical key words if you want short-circuit evaluation. And the list goes on..

All in all, Ada is quite enjoyable imho. It allows you to write code without thinking too much about it, since you won't be missing (many) corner cases.

On the other hand of course all of this results in more work, which can feel tedious to some - but at least it's not the mind-boggling "what is this *?!" strictness that has you pulling your hairs out in confusion/desperation, that usually accompanies Haskell.

There's no compiler (and standard library implementation) that has faced public scrutiny like other popular languages have. Aditionally, there are no IDEs for Ada comparable to the IDEs of other comercial languages (e.g. C++, C# or Java). Which is understandable given how little interest there is in Ada, amongst the "general public" of developers, which is understandable given how there's no proper free implementation of for Ada.

There's essentially just the AdaCore implementation that costs $$$, the GPL'd AdaCore implementation that requires you to publish your source code (because of the libraries) and then there's some unsupported GCC implementation.

I like Ada, and I would like to see it gain more market share. If it had, things like Rust and Go may have been superfluous. But the way things are, I just don't see it happening. Unless you're some big enterprise Ada is essentially a non-option, due to licensing, and if you're a big enterprise it's essentially a non-option since there's very few devs around for it. And so it remains an obscure language used in very niche applications (albeit with great success there?).

This explains a lot.

I've always wondered about how insects can survive large falls (e.g. from desks or ceilings) mostly unharmed, yet for humans a fall from a similar height, relatively to the body size, would be certain death.

> but if its done in a uniform fashion things should work out ok right?

I wouldn't be so certain of this. If the "uniform distribution" of the added weight results in the walls being (proportionately) thicker or denser than in the original, the model may be an invalid one.

> It is interesting how purity has a very strong allure - maybe our brains are naturally drawn to a reduced state of complexity, and thus energy consumption?

Or maybe complicated more often than not is just not a "carefully balanced mix of grey" but more of a clusterfuck .. and we learned to be wary of it.

Have a look at this: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

The real issue here is that the public has no control over the spying. Imho, many would probably be fine with other people listening in on their phone calls, or going over their browsing history, if the only effect of that would be terrorists getting caught.

The problem is that currently there is too much potential for the surveilance data to be comercialized or abused for trivial legal matters.

I think much of the debate could be settled by alowing the public to scrutinize the surveillance process, and putting any abuse of the data (i.e. its usage in non-terror-related situations) under extordinarily humiliating punishments (like denationalization).

> Would a segregated lane make commuting on smaller vehicles safer? Undoubtedly. Would it be necessary to incentivize biking over driving larger vehicles? Probably not.

Because numbers on charts matter more than people on the streets being safe. This is sad.

That might be quite apealing to some. 60k isn't that little if most of life's necessities (housing, food, clothing, etc.) are provided to you for free.

Plus no relatives to ever deal with again, til you retire.

I would've probably taken the offer, but as it stands, I probably lack the qualifications required.

That's a good question.

My guess is that Google is still much too young a company to esperience any of the issues. Maybe once the founders are out for good, and we see more tradtional MBA-style leadership, the traditional illnesses will start emerging too.

Up to now Google has avoided the problem by consistently biting off more than it can chew, landing some borderline-success and improving on from there. This is what they did with search, advertising, book digitalization, online videos, etc. In short, there wasn't much need for internal competition, since they were actively looking for new challenges from the outside.

It's great that they're doing all of this, but I'm curious whether at some point (a few decades from now) they'll eventually decide that all the effort isn't really worth it and focus only on the high-margin stuff.

Isn't this basically what Amazon does? I've always felt very comfortable and safe when pushing the buy button on their site.

Our society has a weird and twisted notion of freedom. Have everyone do whatever they feel like (within the legal limits, of course) .. and no one thinks twice about it. Millions of people dying? Yeah, sure, ressources are scarce - not our fault the universe is so cruel. Right?

But then as soon as someone somewhere manages to twist reality in a way such that it actually impacts our emotions, e.g. by claiming that it could be your child to suffer this inequality in life, all of a sudden there's an outcry out for regulation to fix that one specific issue with rationality-be-damned and ends-justify-the-means methods.

How about instead we take a step back and look for structural causes for these issues. Chances are that if our society allowed for the tech-industry to be unjstifyably hostile towards women, it also allowed for some generic industry X to be unjstifyably hostile towards some generic group Y of the population. Chances are that if our society allowed for marketing to negatively impact the opportunities that women have later in life, it also allowed for some generic business practice X to negatively impact the opportunities that generic group Y of the population will have later in life.

Given this, what kind of madman would assume that providing an ends-justify-the-means hotfix that solves (or at least tries to solve) the issue for some y (in Y) is the right approach to this?

Or to put it more bluntly, what makes women so much more worthy of our attention compared to all those other groups of people that are struggling in life? Why do they get to fasttrack their issues, rather than have to wait for a structural solution that benefits everyone, just like everybody else too?

So it's necessary but not sufficent? Or neither necessary nor sufficent?

> I don't think we "know" anything of the sort.

I think this is rather easy to check - just have a look at per capita GDP.

> Efficiency, for one, is an empty term.

How did you reach this conclusion?

> Efficiency with regards to what and towards what?

With regard to how much effort you need to spend in order to achieve some outcome.

> And why "force a larger population" to strive for it?

Because it means we all waste less time/effort (on inefficiencies).

> I know millions who have devoted themselves to various external causes

I wasn't talking about specific individuals, but humans in general. Virtually every society will have some bad apples amongst it, and even those that don't will at least have incompetent ones.

I don't mean this in any derogatory way - in the end it's just genetics, random mutations and all that stuff. It's not exactly a process we can reasonably influence or even just comprehend.

> We might not have had Walmart 24/7 superstores or all kinds of BS foods and "indulgences" but it's not like they were missed much, if any.

I'd like to see a credible source for this claim. I for one would certainly miss some of those things.

My point was that him simply liking/proposing it doesn't mean much.

> It's not their phones.

No, it's not - because they have no sensible way for providing for themselves and you have a legal obligation to provide them with the things they need for everyday life.

The food they eat also isn't theirs, but that doesn't make it alright for you to first spit into it, before serving it to them, in order for you to blow off steam.

The roof over their head also isn't theirs, but that doesn't make it alright for you to make them sleep on the street because you're too tired of them keeping you up at night.

> If you possess a work phone, and never respond to your bosses call there are consequences

Not responding to calls on your work phone may result in you getting fired, but it will not result in you being humiliated (at least not directly). From what I've seen there's a fair amount of people not responding to some calls in some situations as a way of playing the "office politics" game - so it seems for many people this is a reasonable tradeoff they engage in at times in order to advance their interests.

Also, for better or worse, there's no formal way to "quit" your family and go be the child of other, possibly better, parents. Hence, parents don't really compete on who's able to provide the best family. (Though for some reason some of them seem to compete on who's got the most obedient child.)

> The alternative to this app is just taking away the kids phone, or grounding them (i.e imprisoning them).

The analogy is lacking.

There are humongous barriers to actually get someone into prison. Simply talking back to someone, or failing to pay attention to them won't suffice to land in prison, but may very well suffice for getting grounded. Also, there's no due process for children when being grounded (There's not even any official written record of the rules that can get you grounded). But then again, grounding really is a very very mild version of imprisonment, so there's not much issue with leaving it up the parents discretion - it's just that it's a bad analogy.

But still, imprisonment, as you might have noticed, actually is a valid disciplinary measure in modern societies and at every point throughout its enforcement care is taken to protect the prisoner's dignity as a human. Of course, in reality things aren't always that rosy everywhere.. but at least the theory is sound.

Putting people on a leash, on the other hand, isn't a valid disciplinary measure - or at least it hasn't been any more for quite some time in civilized societies.

> This is a bare slap on the wrist compared to all that.

No, humiliating someone is not alright, regardless of circumstances.

If proper punishments need to be dealt out (like grounding), or proper safeguards need to be put in place (like taking away the phone), then do that.

But deluding yourself that putting someone on a leash, because you feel that the infraction doesn't actually warrant the punishment, but you're also too lazy to actually educate your child on why not to do it again, or deal with the consequences of it happening again, is not alright.

> Suppose my child has absconded, ie gone off without telling me where they're going, I'm about to start my shift at work. Do I miss work and try and find them, or do I use this app and "force" them to respond indicating they're safe & well?

This is the equivalent of jerking a dog's leash. It's sad how ready some parents are to deny their children basic human dignity.

If you need to get to work and can't find your child, then whether you go to work or whether you run after your child is a simple matter of setting priorities and following through. Also, if your child takes off without telling you, and you have genuine reason to worry, then there's little reason to think this app will actually be of any help.

The only situation in which this app would "help" would be one where the child is not in any real danger/distress, but you'd still want to reassure yourself of the non-existence of danger (i.e. just calm your nerves), but are too lazy too actually take the steps necessary to do it properly. So lets trample that little human's dignity, for our own selfish desires, since there's only little they can do in return anyways, right?

This is disgusting.

The real tragedy here however is that children don't realize that they're actually the ones with the power in any parent-child relationship, until they've stopped being children and lost the respect for their parents. If they grasped the amount of power they hold, and occasionally jerked their parents around the same way, then these sort of apps most likely wouldn't exist.

> accept what fate threw at you, don't sweat what you can't control, and learn to make the best of it.

Yes, that's what drew me in at first too. But the details seem sketchy.

> It's not even a philosophy of efficiency

I believe that ultimately it is.

What is the point of giving up on deriving happiness from external sources, if not to make the path to happiness a shorter and easier one? What is the point of not worrying about things outside your control, if not to help focus your efforts on the things you can actually impact? What is the point of tranquility, if not to allow for more concious rational thought? How is that not efficiency?

> you can be a janitor, collect rubbish, be a developer, a manager, an office worker, a CEO, it doesn't matter

By being a "tool" I didn't mean someone engaging in menial jobs. One can have a prestigeous well-paid job, and still be bored to death, because his heart isn't in it, or because tasks are perceived as too repetitive or too petty. (I hope I'm not offending anyone by saying this, but just think of e.g. divorce lawyers if you need an example.) Yet at the same time that individual might be, because fate saw fit that way, the perfect person for that particular job in a given society.

How can one both accept the fate (or duty?) he was dealt (or that his younger self chose for him), and at the same time still stop wasting his life? How can one find meaning in a process, that over the years has evolved to become devoid of meaning, because ultimately that's what is necessary for it to achieve peak efficiency? E.g. Like lawyers and doctors detaching themselves from their clients and patients, because they'll burn out otherwise. (Again, no offense intended, this is just the first thing to come to mind.)

> Stoicism is a personal philosophy. It doesn't concern itself with the whole of human kind but with you.

That doesn't invalidate any of my original points. The market economy benefits the majority of it's participants. I.e., someone feeling like a tool, wouldn't just quit because of some overall concern for society, but simply because he's still wasting less time this way.

Another concern also is that if we advocate to some broader public to adopt some "new" philosohpy, I think it's a prerequisite that that philosphy be one that ensures the wellbeing of a society as a whole. Otherwise it might prove difficult to engender support.

(By "new" I mean currently unknown/unpopular amongst that broader public.)

> your main meta-goal seems to be "efficiency"

No I didn't say that. I said stoicism seems concerned about efficiency.

> you are making philosophical choices, and many of those were already made by people before you

That's true. My criticism though isn't about philosophy as a whole - just about stoicism because it seems to be contradictory.

Stoicism is an interesting way to look at things and it certainly does make for some engaging mental exercises .. but I'm not sure how much actual value it can provide to everyday life.

One major problem with it, speaking as a 30-year old, is that it's not trivial to come up with some "ultimage goal" or "prime principle" for life. But maybe that's just me being unimaginative and isn't necessarily a flaw of the philosophy itself.

The real issue is that being consequent about stoicism seems to always result in contradiction given mankind's current state of knowledge. On one hand stoicism is concerned with not wasting time (on indulgences) and at the same time it ignores that a market economy (embedded in a democratic society) is the only way we know of, that can reliably force a larger population to strive for efficiency.

Of course the market economy isn't free - we pay for it by e.g. giving up moral values. It still allows for huge bubbles of inefficiency to form - things like complicance regulations that provide zero real value and only serve as market barriers. And of course we're all just fallible selfish humans, so there's no shortage of people studying and abusing these processes. But all these points are, practically speaking, irrelevant, seeing as how there are no (better) alternatives (yet).

So what is a stoic to do? Give up on a proven path to efficiency because he doesn't want to be a "tool"?

Just imagine how much more of our time would be wasted if there weren't an army of "tools" out there, working 8 hours a day towards the "indulgence" of ensuring that there is allways enough fresh milk stocked in the supermarkets of our cities.

I'm not sure you'd need to introduce new instructions.

"user-defined value types", i.e. structs, can already be done today by (ab)using the Flyweight pattern and storing data (possibly off-heap with RAII rather than GC semantics) in some byte[].

All a JDK-supplied implementation would really need to do is (1) automate/hide all the painful work necessary to set this up and (2) provide syntactic sugar in the form of operators that can directly manipulate members of these types (+fast implicitly inlined implementations of them, specialized on the member types).

Yeah, but he was also asking for operator overloading.