alphapapa

Vast tragedies throughout history were perpetrated by people who thought they knew better than everyone else, that their ends justified imposing their means on the rest of the human race.

Your attitude is dangerous, because you can use it to justify anything (e.g. you think you're about saving lives). It is evil, because it places you above everyone else and leads to death (e.g. you think you're saving civilization, which requires destroying the bad parts of it).

You either have not learned from history, or have learned the wrong lessons from it and are following in the footsteps of millennia of anti-heroes.

What a cynical, defeatist attitude. The Internet is full of people, and you don't know who reads what. Everyone has to learn somewhere, to start from something.

Your logic essentially is, "No one can learn anything; their opinions are fixed," but that's obviously false, as we have all learned or else we would be unable to read and write and do everything else we do.

In fact, your posting your own comment contradicts your logic, as according to it, there's no point to saying what you said, since it can't change anyone's mind.

Wilfred is a genius. The OP article is from about a year ago, but it laid the foundation for the Emacs package he just released: http://www.wilfred.me.uk/blog/2017/08/30/helpful-adding-cont...

What kind of conclusions do you mean?

It helps us see through the deceptive arguments against anonymity. You don't think that's helpful?

So what about the IPCC scientists who have whistleblown and quit because of their unscientific practices?

> Universal basic income, free university education and free state-run healthcare are leftist... no Democrat puts those things in their platform so I wouldn't call any democrat leftist.

That's not a logical conclusion. Even if they did support those things, they wouldn't put them in their platform now because it wouldn't fly now. You're defining "leftist" as "actively supports X, Y, and Z," which is arbitrary. And the part about Europe is a red herring; this isn't Europe.

Well here's an interesting observation: the "right" subreddit cites some sources that the "left" subreddit cites, but not vice versa. For example, NYT and Politico appear near the tail of the "right" sub's sources and near the head of the "left" sub's sources, but none of the "right" sub's sources appear anywhere in the "left" sub's sources.

So, assuming that NYT and Politico are left-leaning, it would appear that the "right" sub links to its opponents' views, while the "left" sub does not.

The implications of this are left to the reader.

Left and right are degrees of authoritarianism, e.g. libertarian is far right, and nazism and communism are far left. Nazism and communism would be flavors of authoritarianism.

MBps or Mbps? I'm guessing the latter, but...

Good grief, it's like an invisible war going on inside your browser.

> We're on a mission to drive them out of business

But if you succeed, won't you go out of business? It's like antivirus vendors: if there were no malware, there'd be no need for AV software. How do you remain ethical? If you win, will you close up shop?

They should probably change their wording if they want to gain wider appeal:

"Plasma Mobile turns your phone into a fully open hacking device..."

So, just to be clear, you want to impose your will on the planet, as a whole. You don't care about any form of democracy. You don't care what anyone else thinks. You think you're right, and anyone who opposes you is wrong. And since you're right, you're justified in doing whatever you think is necessary.

Am I understanding you correctly?

> How about this: Are people allowed to act in a way that will save themselves, even if it sames everyone else on the planet, and has some side effects? I think the answer is an emphatic yes!

Who decides which ways will save and are therefore allowed?

Why do you trust the IPCC?

> Never mind that smarter, nation wide, grids can allow electricity to flow in either direction depending on where the production and need is.

Larger grids are also more vulnerable grids. We should learn from the lessons provided by, e.g. the 2003 blackout in the northeastern U.S. We don't need bigger, more vulnerable, more tempting targets for the bad guys. We need more compartmentalization to limit potential damage and make systems easier to understand and repair.

Nothing wrong with his comment. Yours is rude.

I'm sorry but this is a complete no-go. As much as I like Backblaze's attitude and pricing plans, this is unacceptable for a backup service. It's way too easy for files to be accidentally, unknowingly deleted, and for this to not be noticed for months or years. Any backup system that deletes missing files is not a backup but a mirror.

Indeed, I nearly lost my GPG key due to undetected corruption, because the corrupted file had been backed up for a long time. I only recovered it from a very old CD-R backup I made years earlier.

Keeping old snapshots (e.g. one or two per year) is an absolute must.

A couple of years ago I went to use GPG for the first time in a long time. My private key didn't work. I looked at the file, and its size was 0 bytes. Cosmic ray? GPG crash? System crash while the file was being written? How it got truncated, I'll never know.

No problem, I'll just restore from backup. I have CrashPlan online backups, and local backups with Obnam, so I'll just recover it from one of them.

Every snapshot in CrashPlan and Obnam had the truncated file, going all the way back to the first snapshots. I thought I had lost my GPG key forever.

Then I remembered that I had some old CD-R/RW backups from years ago. I started going through them. Some of the discs were unreadable. Finally I found one that was readable and had the untruncated private key file.

Lesson learned: always keep your old backups. You never know which files on your system have suffered from bitrot or accidental truncation or accidental deletion--until you try to access them. It's very likely that some of them will have been destroyed more than 30 days ago.

Now keeping old backups doesn't mean keeping every snapshot, ever. CrashPlan takes 15-minute snapshots by default, so obviously I don't need every one of those going back years. But I definitely want to keep at least one snapshot for every year I've used the system, at least one for each of the last 12 months, etc.

How do you define "hate movement"?

> It is the argument that is still lawfully used to deny service on the basis of sexual orientation in much of the country; only a minority of states have public accommodation laws under which sexual orientation is a protected class.

> Which can be an argument for internet companies not having their free speech rights limited in order to mandate that they relay political views they disagree with as easily as it can be an argument for that imposition.

That argument seems in direct opposition to the argument that, e.g. Christian bakers and photographers should be required to provide services for gay weddings. If Google may not be mandated to relay political views that they disagree with, how can photographers be mandated to do so? Do multi-national megacorporations have more rights than individuals? Or is one political view simply wrong, and therefore acceptable to discriminate against?

It's very simple. It's morally wrong to enforce fairness of outcome, for a few reasons:

1. Doing so requires taking away from those who have, whether property or opportunity. This is theft and oppression.

2. Doing so requires an unbiased party to make judgments about what shall be taken from whom and to whom it shall be given. Humans are biased, so this cannot be done fairly.

3. Doing so restricts others' freedom.

Those who want to enforce equality of outcome want to rule over others, because they think they are qualified to make such decisions. By calling for it, they have already decided that there is a problem, and that they have the solution, and that everyone else is wrong.

In contrast, those who want equality of opportunity do not want to rule over others. They want power to be decentralized so people can make their own decisions.

It's left as an exercise for the reader to determine who is more trustworthy: he who would decide for you, or he who would have you decide for yourself.

> In fact, I did not refuse to consider his arguments. I considered them. They're poorly sourced, terribly reasoned, and not very well communicated.

There are prominent, respected authorities and experts on both sides of the political spectrum who disagree with you, ones who have explained in detail why they disagree with you. What do you think about that?

> My point is that you'll ALSO never find truth if you climb every adversary-constructed hill in the state space.

I feel like you didn't read my comment, because you're repeating your previous argument: "...climbing every ant hill to the bitter end may not get you to an answer in your lifetime anyways," to which I responded, "This is a strawman and an argument to absurdity, i.e. also irrational."

> Your suggested method for finding truth is even worse than mine, and what's more, you're claiming the opposite.

Again, I feel like you didn't read my comment. Where did I suggest such a method?

> I'm at least admitting that I have to use heuristics. You're just watching the tower of exponentials crank up and claiming "no problem! We can compute that!"

Where did I say that?

> It's possible to remain open to new ideas and also not waste time on evaluating or responding to arguments that aren't motivated by a genuine search for truth.

I agree with this.

However, you are jumping to a conclusion by assuming that he is not interested in the truth. It is quite arrogant of you, to assume you know what is in his mind and heart. This is not good faith on your part.

> Do you spend all your free time reading and/or responding to arguments from flat earthers, BS science posted on white supremacy forums, and marketing claims made by infomercials and bill boards? Do you engage with every crank preacher and evangelist who comes to your door or yells at you on the street? Of course not.

Once again you prove Damore's point: by equating him with such people, and equating his memo with such things, you are evincing an emotional, prejudiced overreaction and stubborn refusal to seriously consider his arguments.

I'm observing that your attitude is defensive, as if the assertions you're refuting are personally insulting to you, as if they imply that you shouldn't have bought a Tesla. I don't understand why this is so.

Here's a comment that refutes the use of those "scientific" sources in the Quora post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021735

Are you saying that there exist unbiased sources?

Who has the authority to determine which ideas are worth discussing? Are the rest of us obligated to comply with their judgments?

Are you saying that the question, "Did NASA land on the moon?" is equivalent to the question, "Is the main reason, that fewer women work at Google, that men are sexist?"

> Ignoring an argument because its source is "odious"ly biased is the political equivalent of using heuristics to prune a huge search space.

You're proving Damore's point. You refuse to consider his arguments because of your prejudiced, emotional reaction. This is patently irrational.

> It may not always give you an optimal answer. But then, climbing every ant hill to the bitter end may not get you to an answer in your lifetime anyways.

This is a strawman and an argument to absurdity, i.e. also irrational.

> So you can actually be pretty damn certain that without heuristics, you'll never find the truth.

You'll never find the truth if you irrationally dismiss arguments that oppose your prejudiced opinions--unless, of course, you've already arrived at the truth. But believing you've already arrived at the truth would be arrogant and closed-minded, right?

Is your attitude typical of Tesla owners?