This rebuttal certainly makes me more inclined to believe the takedown piece. Disruption obviously happens but Christensen has made me less likely to believe he has any ability to predict when it is going to happen or why, or that he has anything useful to say about it.
There can be an infinite number of different rigorous conceptions of logic, while at the same time there are also an infinite number of modes of thought outside of logic .. we know the ones like instinct, superstition, and religion that are considered inferior to logic. Is it possible for there to exist a mode of thought yet to be found or invented that is better?
This article is kinda missing the point. The "empty" is the undefined. That which has yet to exist, or never will. There is that which is uncountable, for example the number of corners in a circle. Just because it is a contradiction doesn't mean it is wrong -- maybe your models are wrong. The usefulness of eastern philosophy is to free yourself of preconceived ideas. I think it is obviously clear to everyone today that there are modes of thought that are far inferior to logic. I think it would be supremely arrogant to presume that logic is the best mode of thought that humanity will ever come up with. To try to shoehorn everything to fit into a logical framework feels akin to epicycles to me.
It's signalling. An employer that refuses to negotiate is looking for employees that are easily bullied. If they have lots of candidates to choose from who allowed themselves to be bullied, they can get away with this. Do you really want to work for them? I would consider it good luck to be able to get out of a bad situation before you potentially put yourself in a situation you cannot get out of (because of leases/house purchases, loss of time and money moving for the new job, contracts, etc)
So understandably you don't want to be too specific about how you pick search results to beat the seo people, but could you talk briefly about how ddg returns results? Is it still some variant of PageRank?
But it should be obvious there are a lot fewer salespeople needed than factory workers, and more importantly, robots don't buy things, so who is buying the artisanal pocket calculators and where are they getting their money?
I have a huge problem with this, because what should be obvious is, the number of people who can be in management/architecture roles is necessarily much smaller than the number of people who are in basic development roles. Assuming the majority of aging programmers don't die of unnatural causes, the only way all of them continue to be employed is if the total size of the software industry is growing at a significant rate (as it has been for the last few decades) but there's really no guarantee this will continue forever and not only that, basic math tells us there is no way this can continue forever. I am starting to think that similar to models and athletes, whose careers start fizzling out in their 30s and 40s, our careers start fizzling out in our 40s and 50s.
While I personally think the above post is morally repugnant, I was very disappointed to see that it had been downvoted significantly and I upvoted it to try to balance it out. The poster might be wrong but he did so with a civil tone and an actual attempt to include citations. I question his basic premises but this is exactly the sort of thing that free speech should protect. He may be wrong and you can ignore it but you shouldn't be allowed to shut him up.
I don't think the quote was meant to be taken literally. You are missing the point if you are.
It should be obvious by now that OOP is a programming method that is possible in any programming language, and it is easier in some and harder in others. There is no language that exists where you can't force out non-OOP code, and you can always build your own OOP framework, even in C or assembly.
A more productive use of the quote would be to compare the design of small talk and lisp vs say java and c++, and think about why someone as brilliant as Alan Kay should consider that it is not easy to write OOP code in java or c++.
The writer mentions that he doesn't believe in the subjective theory of value, but doesn't explain why. I am really curious as to what his reasons are.
On what basis do you make the claim that you are the #1 rated mattress? I see that you have mattresses that are 5 star rated, but that does not imply you are the best one. According to Amazon's "Top Rated" mattresses, your brand is not even in the top 10. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/top-rated/home-garden/3732961/]
Since you bring up Fowler, in his book Refactoring he gives specific examples to show why you should AVOID comments. In most situations you should try to write code that is so clear no comments are needed. That's what the above code is really about.
I agree with everything that you said however consider the possibility of every residential building being bought out and replaced with a server farm along the locations where googfib is first being laid out. I think we can understand why google doesn't really want that right now?
We know that conway's game of life can support a turing machine, therefore everything that can be computed on a regular turing machine can be computed in conway's game of life. Want to know what's REALLY cool? Conway's game of life is a 2d world. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110] is a 1d world and you also can create a turing machine in it, therfore allowing you to simulate anything that we can simulate on a regular computer.
That's very interesting. Do you think addicts already have those personality traits from before they became addicted, or the traits developed as a result of the addiction?
Pretty sure you are addicted to oxygen. You are probably addicted to hackernews also. This is not meant to be a banal comment. Addiction is not necessarily a bad thing. You could be addicted to hard work, for example. You could be addicted to your family. Being so addicted to your family that you would be willing to die in order to protect them is not necessarily a bad thing.
It is not clear to me from the article and from the brief googling I did, how they came to the conclusion that there was no trading class? What evidence did they use to prove this absence? It seems to me the ruling class of any society works by trading with each other, in promises if not in currency. I don't see how it could work any other way?
A (partial) end to slavery.
Significantly improved lives for women as far as being raped and domestic violence goes.
A significant number of people moving from the working class to the middle class
Democracy vs having a violent war frequently when there is a question of succession.
A significantly reduced fear of violent death, or violence in general really.
Unless you don't think slaves are people, I really think people are much better off nowadays compared to pre-writing.
Can we agree that writing did have negative impacts, but given the trajectory of human civilization since then, that the benefits have outweighed the costs?
Yeah and when cars replaced horses, the next generation got dumber because they no longer learned the skills they would have acquired by learning how to ride a horse?
If anything, based on what I have seen, the next generation will be shockingly smarter, more adept at fact-checking, much better at focusing and multi-tasking, much more disillusioned about institutionalized education and much more interested in self-directed learning (with much more options to do so)