bakhy

has anyone checked out the relativistic probes claim? what potential speeds are we talking about? and, i presume, there are no brakes? :D

i don't think we're talking about the same phone. -> http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z5_compact-7535.php

the case with a keyboard is an interesting suggestion, thank you!

ad 2 - Sony's Compacts are pretty good. tho, no Gorilla glass (Sony has it's own, scratch-friendly thing), and they issue new models at such a stupidly quick pace, that the Z1 Compact which i have is already not getting updates any more (no Marshmallow) even though it's less than 2 years old, and almost identical to the Z3 which is getting the update. but i guess that happens with all producers...

the smartphone market is crap. it seems almost like the economy of a communist country - everything is the same.

recently my husband and me were buying new phones. i had trouble finding a decent smartphone (decent = good specs) which is <= 4,5". incredibly annoying. i simply want a strong device that fits nicely in my pants pocket, and it seems that's a weird request... my husband wanted one with a physical keyboard - now that's science fiction. completely unavailable in Europe at the time (aside from ancient phones on eBay).

so, this trend analysis seems really ridiculous. consumers have a very limited choice in the matter. the companies behave like sheep, and most writing about the market is sycophantic crap.

are you sure it's Signal? cause i have this problem with my husband too, but it happens with Hangouts as well as with Signal. my best guess is that his android phone, a cheaper LG model, has limited resources and puts some services to sleep...

what if, for example, Netflix did something like this, and charged a higher subscription fee to, e.g., Comcast customers? though i don't believe this would solve the problem, it might bring the issue of net neutrality closer to home for many customers, and weigh on their decision which ISP to take (if they even have the choice, which would be an issue in the US, i presume?). and it's ultimately fair - why would all users pay for this through their subscriptions, if only some ISPs violate net neutrality.

there's a kinda funny part in the Daodejing (or, Tao Te Ching, by the old Giles-Wade latinization of Chinese):

(3) Not to value and employ men of superior ability is the way to keep the people from rivalry among themselves; not to prize articles which are difficult to procure is the way to keep them from becoming thieves; not to show them what is likely to excite their desires is the way to keep their minds from disorder.

Therefore the sage, in the exercise of his government, empties their minds, fills their bellies, weakens their wills, and strengthens their bones.

He constantly (tries to) keep them without knowledge and without desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep them from presuming to act (on it). When there is this abstinence from action, good order is universal.

---

I think our elites most of the time do a good job at the "empty their minds" bit. Spread a lot of confusion, FUD, and nobody dares to do anything. They are failing on the "fill their bellies" front, that's something to work on.

I find the passage kinda funny, since eastern philosophies are very popular nowadays mostly because of a hippie outlook on what they say. This part is in a way very cold and calculated. Daoism is pretty level-headed, my favorite of all eastern schools, along with some elements of Zen.

Maybe that's the point. I feel sometimes like the world today is so complex, that it's hard to be sure of any politics whether it will work, or produce more misery than good. So, perhaps on a subconscious level, it's easier to bicker about details and never actually do anything.

Moral high ground is the privilege of those that don't do anything...

well said. i just feel it is something people easily say, but hardly put into practice.

i am being unfair, perhaps, as the other comment here states. i may be identifying some negative aspects in some people with a whole group that did not deserve it. but, OTOH, you two may be resorting to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

i'm suggesting "purely rational" prohibits the existence of emotion, otherwise we're dealing with a contradiction. sorry, i already replied to the peer comment to yours, maybe you can reply there?..

well, i'm definitely not educated on the terminology, particularly when it comes to economics. i guess we could clear out a lot of the misunderstanding here as soon as we sort the terms out ;)

so, just IMO, a perfectly rational actor should be emotionless, at least on the matter at hand. any kind of emotional tendency would skew their reasoning.

to add to what you said more above, about those fruitful discussions: i would bet that the people you had those fruitful discussions with have had another common characteristic. namely, they did not have much personal stake in the issue you were discussing. when people approach a discussion with only a desire to learn and improve their opinions, they can indeed have a quality discussion.

ultimately, i don't believe such neat separation of rational and irrational can ever work (aside from sometimes being a useful approximation). which is why i asked those silly questions - how can a rational actor want something, without wanting it? i find the concept very contradictory, borderline useless.

edit - i think i have to back down a bit, or maybe just clarify, dunno. i maybe get what you meant. people that appreciate rationality will tend to be better discussion partners even if they are personally affected. but it will be much harder...

your perception of society's "decadence", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, is your problem. i was trying to have a discussion here, but you're apparently deliberately misreading everything i write because you have some battle to fight against society... wow.

must be hard being so superior to everyone around you, huh? ;)

no, it's just you keep putting words in my mouth. as i already said above, which you fail to read for the second time - i did not offer it as THE black-and-white explanation. i merely pointed out that going for the retard explanation is insufficient - as you yourself have said, they could just be evil :) so why are you fuming? we seem to actually agree. jeez.

and the reason i asked the "do you realize" question is because we were talking here about rationalism and it's limits. i'm in a kind of mildly anti-rationalism position, and you attack me, all emotional. so i thought, this is kinda funny. get it?

edit - and now, in an edit, you suddenly join the discussion... i'll have to get back to you later.

not to attack your position, but just to further illustrate where i'm going with all this.

> ...rational Bayesians sharing information...

setting aside the inherent humor of economics (which is sadly completely lost on economists), have you ever wondered - why would a purely rational actor even participate in the discussion, or, as a matter of fact, in anything? why would a purely logical machine get out of bed in the morning? would it not need to "want" something first? what would an emotionless logical machine "think" about, and why would it think about that and not something else? intellect without emotion is nothing. not figuratively, not poetically, but literally nothing.

P.S. since when does the word "converge" apply to anything going on in a market? :P

do you realize that you're now going for a very emotional attack on my comment? do you see the problem? :)

you also seem to be putting words into my mouth. i was merely offering an additional explanation for that behavior, to indicate that simply putting it under "poor cognitive development" (i.e. calling people retards, but in bigger words) is insufficient. i never said that we should all accept absolutely anything, and skip across blooming meadows singing kumbaya lol.

i think you missed my point, which was that these so called "cognitive failures" are really integral to what we are. rationalism is not generally wrong. improving your cognitive abilities should be a goal for everyone. but it tends to lead people to a worldview where simple humanity is deemed inferior, wrong, and where a person actually starts believing that they outgrew themselves and their humanity, that they are superior, objective, free of bias. this is an illusion, nobody is free of bias.

in fact, people who believe they successfully suppressed or outgrew any emotion are typically the ones most influenced by it, subconsciously.

i absolutely agree that learning more is still better! in fact, meeting a gray area like this one is to me a heuristic indicator that something really worth learning is lurking behind. i think i took it from Zen - path to enlightenment through doubt...

my question is perhaps do we properly acknowledge the difficulty we face? you say, for example, "it's a hard habit to learn" - but can we ever even learn it fully? it should make us humble. we can easily add disclaimers to our speech, but in practice it shows that we don't really mean them. we say it is hard to shake the rationalizing habit, and yet we often ascribe a level of certainty and objectivity to our conclusions which makes it seem like we completely disregard the possibility of our own emotions being behind our thinking. and ultimately, can any thought ever be had without an emotion behind it? Minsky, i think, remarked that he does not believe AI without emotion is possible. i completely agree with that.

OK, but let's take again the political example - there is a confounding social factor there. i think it is common to regard a concession, in the eyes of the public, as defeat. this drives many people to shout their positions, and disregard rational counterarguments, resorting to personal attacks (like the "democrats are pro-crime" claim). even if those people are in fact perfectly reasonable otherwise... the political example is really insufficiently explained by bringing in just cognitive development.

now, generally, from experience, i have the impression that higher mental skills often translate simply into a higher capability of producing more elaborate rationalizations of positions that a person would have held anyway, positions which are rooted in emotions. pointing out rational counterarguments can in many situations only go so far. in fact, i have many times had an easier time discussing with people one might call primitive, since you get to the truth of their motives very quickly, and with respectful approach to people's feelings, a lot can be achieved. with very rational people it's sometimes really difficult to break through the layers of rationalizations.

i'm not saying that rationalism is bad, or that the author (or you) like to go around calling people retards :D i just feels that despite best intentions it can lead to disregard for emotion, even though in many cases emotion is the ultimate relevant "reality of the situation". we can and must make ourselves better, but we can never stop being people.

really interesting read.

the only thing that bugs me, with this text, and the whole rationalist world-view, is how human emotion sometimes becomes a thing to be ashamed of. something beneath a hypothesized "true", "correct" condition. like, the part about recognizing that other people have different minds, different motives, and thus reach different conclusions - on one hand i agree that it is a matter of personal development, and that many people are just plain jerks (sometimes, myself included). but on the other hand, the political examples given in the text seem like a normal emotional response. isn't it simply hard trying to think for everyone, understand everyone all the time? is it even possible? particularly when the issue is something that, for whatever reason, you feel personally. it is not automatically a sign of retarded cognitive development if you just simply got tired.

rationalism sometimes seems so, well, christian - we are all filthy sinners by default.

you could say we "evolved" medicine.

it's too simple to regard evolution as something that happens merely on an individual level. e.g. it was always possible that the strongest and smartest human will get killed by a group of physically and intellectually weaker people. does that mean we stopped evolving back then? no, we evolved social behavior, like many animals before us, i guess...

first thought: why would this be interesting? of course we are. but then i remembered all the radically religious nutjobs. :S

i understand, and agree. i would personally, though, avoid adding it, and add attributes for the same purpose instead. just as the article suggests... it achieves the same without introducing a new class, thus also remaining backwards compatible.

just like the author claims that we do not appreciate the good consequences of surveillance because, when it works well, it's invisible, i can claim the same about it's negative consequences. e.g., if congressmen and -women are changing their votes on intelligence budgets because some spy found out they hired a prostitute some time ago and blackmailed them. indeed, when it works well, it is invisible.

the core of the issue is limiting the spy's power, and giving them appropriate oversight.

then this abstraction has sprung a serious leak. the article seems to be fully right.

that makes sense. i think an important question here is - what does "return null" in a method which returns Optional<T> do? will it return a null Optional<T>, or will it return a non-null Optional<T> which is empty?

sorry to rub it in, but Java needs value types. this whole issue, however maybe irrelevant, does not exist in C#.

some have already commented here that author maybe complains too much (e.g., calling .get() on an Option<T> is a deliberate move, meaning that the developer explicitly took on the risk of that exception. that's very different than implicitly assuming that a regular ref is not null, using it and getting bitten in the ass.). but this one really hurts:

"The last flaw with Java's implementation is a bit ironic — It's possible for the optional reference itself to be null."

ouch.

apparently, she should be white too.

disgusting text. could not finish reading it.

the author should try appreciating the fact that IT is an industry where one can choose between jobs. many people do not have that luxury and must swallow a lot of shit to earn a living. the author comes across as an entitled brat that has absolutely no empathy or understanding for fellow human beings, all the while dishing out horrible insults at their humanity. disgusting.

upvoted for the angry Bruce Lee comparison!