flumbaps

I think you're both over-estimating AND under-estimating the rationality of people's behaviour. It is important that going bankrupt is somewhat unpleasant. If it wasn't, then normal people, who are somewhat rational, would have no incentive to pay back debt, and defaulting on loans would become normal. However, some people are always going to fail to think ahead and try to borrow irresponsibly. Even if bankrupt people were put in the workhouse and given punishing physical labour, those kinds of people would still be financially irresponsible. That's why the poorhouses were never empty, despite them being horrible places by design. Saddling people with debt forever won't stop irresponsible borrowing. Being broke is already horrible and punishing people harder is unlikely to make them think more rationally.

I'm guessing you're probably a smart person who thinks ahead and makes smart choices - you have to understand that not everyone in the world is like that. Punishing people who are not like that is unlikely to change them. You can't punch someone in the face to make them smart. You can punch someone in the face to make them obey you, but in this context that would mean singling out all irresponsible people and then punishing them before they take out a loan, not after. If you were able to identify irresponsible people then you might as well just not lend them any money.

Which brings me to the real benefit of bankruptcy. That is, if you really want to stop irresponsible borrowing, then it makes a lot of sense to also discourage irresponsible lending. Banks and credit unions are far more rational than the general population. If individuals are allowed to go bankrupt, there is a clear incentive not to lend money to people who don't have the means to pay off the debt. By providing that incentive, it then becomes the problem of the lender to identify whether or not an individual is likely to be able to pay of a loan. The lender is has a lot of information and resources through which they can make such a determination.

Now, different people have different ideas about the morality of this situation. Some would say that it's wrong for banks to take advantage of the irrational people, so it makes sense to provide incentives for responsible lending. Others would say that if individuals are irrational, then they get what they deserve, and banks should only be required to behave rationally. Personally, I don't think stupidity is morally wrong (otherwise dogs would be pure evil), and it's often quite self serving to argue otherwise.

> Letting the market allocate resources has a lot of inefficiencies, but it works better than any alternative that has been tried.

I don't think we've ever tried having the market solely allocate resources. I think pretty much every government has regulated trade, collected taxes, that sort of thing. What seems to have worked best would be letting the market allocate resources to some extent, but collecting taxes and investing in long term goals (such as research and infrastructure). But maybe this isn't necessary, maybe in a truly free market there would always be genius entrepreneurs like Elon Musk appearing every now and again to progress humanity. Still, there's a massive difference between the kinds of long term planning that modern western democracies already do and a communist dictatorship.

I think you're creating a false dichotomy here. It's perfectly possible for a government to encourage people to work in certain areas without descending into tyranny.

Most modern democratic governments already regulate their financial markets, and already invest in research grants, infrastructure projects and support for start ups. The fact is, providing incentives to work towards long term goals is exactly the kind of thing that free markets aren't good at.

I can imagine that in extreme cases it is useful to have people who follow their own judgement rather than a fixed set of rules. The problem here is that these spies place practically no value on the rights of the public. Which means their judgement continually works against the public interest. Now this could be due to stupidity or corruption, but either way, it's not what you want from people who think themselves above the law.

In the future, we may simply not have a use for violent people anymore. War can be automated to some extent. Violence can be abstracted, so it is done via remote control. This is already happening. Humans may just become domesticated, like dogs. If we have relative peace for long enough, those who can't control their violent urges just won't fit into society any more.

However, that doesn't negate your point that we could end up ruining it all through war. The thing is, most people want to follow, and they aren't very choosy about who leads them. Leadership tends to attract the kind of people who enjoy power, and so, even if resources are abundant, there is always something to fight about.

The technology that could bring about a lasting peace wouldn't be robotics, it would be some social mechanism through which we could obtain wise leadership. Which is certainly possible. Information technology opens up the possibility of entirely new levels transparency and accountability. Alternatively, there is the possibility of extremely rigid population monitoring and control.

Frankly, I think the most likely possibility is that there will only be a very brief period of time (maybe 50 years) between the point where we can automate all manual tasks, and the point where we have AI or augmented human minds, that are (by definition) impossible for us to predict.

Okay, so I agree that money in the bank doesn't do nothing. However, ultimately one of the main reasons why we want a thriving economy is to raise the quality of life for the people. If you look at the trends over time, in real terms, the rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer. If you look at other countries around the world, this seems to be a thing that happens as income disparity increases. Basically, even if having a concentration of wealth doesn't make the economy bad (that point is debatable) the benefits of the economy are not fairly shared by the people.

Which brings us to the next point, which is a bit of a mess, so I'm going to have to pick it apart in detail. Firstly, you are essentially saying that all people are not equal, and so it is not "fair" for wealth to be shared equally. This is true, but irrelevant. No-one has asked for wealth to be shared equally, we are asking for less of a concentration of wealth. We are saying "the system is not fair" you are replying "total egalitarianism is not fair" - irrelevant! Secondly you say that the only thing a society needs to do in order to be fair is make sure that everyone has the same rights in regard to the law. This is either obviously false or impossibly hard, depending on how you define the application of law. If you just think that the rules should be applied equally, then this is obviously not enough to ensure a fair society. For example, you could make it cost $100,000 to run for office. This is a rule that may be fairly applied to everyone, no matter their wealth. It just so happens that only rich people will be able to afford it. For another example, you could have entrenched media companies that act as gatekeepers into the political process (as we currently do). Now, nothing stops an individual with no connections to these entrenched interests from starting their own media empire - but even if they had a chance of succeeding, it still forms a massive barrier to entry that could hardly be called fair. If you expand your idea of what the law covers to include such things, then you're essentially saying is that the only thing society should do is have fair laws that are applied fairly, where a person of merit has an equal chance of success regardless of the circumstances of their birth. Which is great, but impossibly hard and definitely not what is happening right now. The third thing you say is that anything beyond the fair application of law is a race to make everyone the same. This is clearly not true. I don't want to live in a world where everyone is the same. I just don't think our current system is fair. Personally I think that everyone deserves to be fed, clothed, sheltered, educated and given access to healthcare just as a participation prize for being a human being. I think we can easily afford it (for proof, just look at countries with low income disparity). The set of standards I am describing is what people call human decency. It is not total egalitarianism. The last thing you say, almost in passing, is that making everyone the same in every aspect renders everyone poor by default. This is a strangely pessimistic view of matters. If you rendered everyone the same, then you'd render everyone average income by default, not poor. Unless you were talking about poverty in an objective rather than relative sense, which is either untrue or else you have very high standards. Even if we did descend into some kind of egalitarian nightmare where everyone was provided for equally (oh lord! the horror!) the quality of life would be fine. There's plenty of resources to go round, especially in the West where we have a lot of wealth. The real problem would be providing incentives for people to work, but I doubt that was the point you were making. (Incidentally we could, for example, create a currency that affords social status and narcotics rather than general material goods - which is, I suppose, just a streamlined version our current incentive system.)

This discussion is devolving into pointless bickering about where you draw the line between science and technology. If we stop being fussy about the definitions, it's pretty clear that some research/engineering is profitable in the short term and some is not. A lot of the work that is not profitable in the short term has potential long term benefits that are very important.

I think the main potential in analogue computing is to create complex networks of feedback loops where different regions of stability correspond to different machine states. I've seen models of neural network memory where the interconnection of neurons works like a combination of a symmetric linear transform and an amplifier followed by vector normalisation. The transform maps the sensory input into a reduced dimensional space (where each dimension corresponds to a possible memory). The reduced vector is amplified via the neural response function, and then it's transformed back to the sensory input vector space through an inverse to the original transform. That creates a feedback loop where (because of how the neural response function works) whatever the input is, the system converges to a vector that corresponds to exactly one of the memory vectors. It basically picks out and amplifies the closest memory to the sensory input.

That kind of system is a huge simplification, but similar things could be done with analogue computing. In particular, I think probabilistic computing could be done by setting up network feedback loops corresponding to underlying Bayesian networks, where stable points correspond to highest likelihood parameterisations. (I may actually do some work in this direction next year, because it's pretty cool stuff.)

a) There is such a thing as cultural awareness. It is not the same as discrimination. If you travel a bit you find that there are actual differences between cultures. If you use those differences as justification to treat individuals unfairly then that is discrimination. (If you use false stereotypes as justification to treat individuals unfairly then that is also discrimination.) Discrimination is about how you treat individuals, not about being unaware of general trends. In this case, since the author's interaction with this individual is in the past, neither she nor her coach is discriminating.

b) The coach, according to the author, made that call after she recounted the story. Presumably in a lot of detail, and after numerous other coaching sessions in which her coach would have built up a detailed picture of how she worked and where her weaknesses lay.

The article isn't intended to name and shame a particular individual. It's meant to warn women about how gender discrimination can affect their career even if they are very careful to work in a meritocratic team of people who treat them fairly. The claim of the article isn't "this man was sexist" - we have no idea who this man was, and we don't get anything close to the full story. The main point of the article is "this is a thing that happens". I don't think that claim requires extraordinary evidence. It's just an attempt to bring attention to a plausible mechanism by which gender discrimination can negatively affect women, which they might not have been aware of otherwise.

Given that, I don't think we are in a situation where we should bias in favour of innocent until proven guilty. We can just make our own best guess based on what we know.

Your evidence 2 and 3 are weak. Being in a high pressure job often means being in a position where you (and the company) can't afford a big disaster. Lots of people are hard on themselves, it doesn't mean she was on shaky ground because of her competence (her colleagues wanted her around for another year at least). She insisted on leaving to make this guy happy because his stated reason for rejecting the job was her. Her colleagues wanted the guy to join them and they didn't have any reason to refuse her resignation. That doesn't shed any light on why the man was unhappy with her in the first place.

The guy didn't give convincing examples or well thought out reasons, he seems to have just made a guess that she was incompetent. You think his guess is unbiased and the coach and the author's guesses are biased. Even though it is the coach's job to make objective judgements about these things. In this scenario the man, the author and the coach all make judgements given information we are not privy to. Each of them has their own biases, their own agendas. I think the man's inability to explain his dislike when pressed, and the fact that the coach is supposed to provide negative criticism indicates that the coach's judgement is most likely correct.

I think there's a difference between a logical skip and a judgement call based on a personal experience of a situation.

Because her coach said that was the most likely explanation, and her coach represents an informed distanced opinion with expertise in the area.

It's an anecdote, not a court case. The author and her coach made their best guess based on their judgement of the situation. Obviously they are both privy to a lot of information that isn't in the article (and would be extremely hard to express). The author got to experience conversations with the person in question, and so probably had a lot of information that was expressed through manner and tone. The coach knew the author well, and knew the author's abilities and was in a position to make a qualified judgement over what the problem was. Also, of course, the coach was aware of cultural differences that are mentioned but not detailed (for obvious reasons) in the article.

The story does not strongly point to the problem being her not her gender. The guy in question did something extraordinary (pulling out of an accepted job offer) without being able to give much justification besides vaguely disliking her. If she was incompetent or had a poor personal manner then that is exactly something you would expect the man in question, her colleagues and her coach to bring up.

You can interpret this story in two ways:

a) The man had a non-sexist reason for disliking the author so much he backed out of an accepted job offer, but he was unable or unwilling to express that reason specifically, even though he was willing to tell her that she was the problem. The author is incompetent or unlikable, her colleagues are too incompetent to notice or say anything and the author's coach is so incompetent that she just spouts feminist paranoia instead of actually being helpful.

b) The author, the coach and the author's colleagues are all reasonably professional and competent, the man in question is from a culture where older men don't tend to like being under the authority of young women and this made him increasingly uncomfortable over time. He backed out of the job because of this feeling of discomfort, but was unwilling to give that as his reason because he knew it would be seen as unprofessional.

I believe that your choice of which of these to believe indicates that YOU are sexist.

Yeah, but during medieval and early modern times the church tortured and killed heretics and supposed witches. There isn't even anything in the Bible about doing that. Oppressive theocratic regimes aren't caused by the religious texts they interpret. The Turkish people have a very tolerant culture, despite being an Islamic nation.

The fact is, when a set of beliefs is used as a foundation for nation building, it usually gets twisted over time to create an oppressive regime. Think about the rhetoric of Communism, how explicit that is about equality and fairness, and how well that turned out. It is not amazing that Islamic nations are shitty places to live. What is amazing is that secular, democratic, capitalist nations are quite nice places to live.

Sharia is the laws OF Islam. Sharia is not equal to Islam. Set A contains set B. Set A is not equal to set B. You might as well say that Christianity is the ten commandments, Judaism is the halakhah and Atheism is the American Atheists’ conference code of conduct.

Please read again. I have not denied that Islam contains a set of laws. I said that Islam is not exactly equal to a set of laws. Which is correct.

I've also stated that, in practical terms, it is the behaviour and beliefs of the religious leaders that matter more that the laws themselves. The community Islamic courts you cite are a perfect example of this. You seem to expect them to behave according to some monolithic interpretation of Sharia law. Whereas, in reality, these courts are run by the Islamic community and are presided over by local religious leaders who make decisions (and interpret the laws) according to their own beliefs, informed by their own prejudices and self interests.

If you have any doubt that this is true, then simply consider that there are moderate Muslims in the world, and there are Muslims that believe God wants them to commit murder. Do you think it is a coincidence that those who see the West as the devil come from countries where the West has severely harmed in the past through selfish and corrupt interference? Do you think it is by chance that within the West and within countries allied with the West, we find more moderate viewpoints?

Religious rhetoric aligns itself with realpolitik. It is naive to see it in any other terms.

Islam isn't a system of laws, it's a religion. Like all organised religions, what's written in its holy books is of far less practical importance than what is preached by its leaders. Adherents don't read and figure out for themselves, they follow what they are told the books say. Like most religious leaders, the Islamic holy men tend to preach what is convenient to them. The fact that the religion is Islam isn't of particular note. It wasn't so long ago that American Christian leaders preached that God condoned slavery. You might explain this by talking about different branches of Christianity, and likewise there are different interpretations of Islam too. But really, I think that unless a religion actively encourages a practical pursuit of self-enlightenment (e.g. Buddhism, Taoism, spiritual Yoga), then it is nothing more than a system of control. Ultimately the important thing is how corrupt the leaders are.

Think of it this way, if there were no courts and no defence lawyers and no-one ever bothered to read the legal statutes for themselves, then would the actual text of the law mean anything? Or wouldn't it rather be that, in application, the law would tend serve the interests of the police?

Of course, yes, everyone is always in complete agreement about what is right and wrong, because humans are always absolutely objective when it comes to moral decisions.

In yearly global death count, terrorism accounts for around 10,000. That would not be a big deal even if all those deaths were in the US (and not scattered over the globe, and mostly in places of high civil unrest). I'm not saying 10,000 deaths isn't sad, but in 2011 a whopping 597,689 Americans died of heart disease. Yet, there aren't secret government enforced exercise camps, are there? There aren't secret courts that shut down McDonalds restaurants without trial, are there? It doesn't matter whether this is an evil plan to grab power by Obama or not. It gives a huge amount of power to the President. If you don't fight it now, that power will never be given back. Each successful president will enjoy the ability to kill of anyone they feel like in secret. Add to that the complicit news organisations, sweeping domestic spying programs and the secret prisons, and you have everything in place for a coup. All it takes now is for the wrong guy to get elected.

The core criticism is always that hipsters are purposefully contrary as a method of attention seeking.

Also, being judgemental and having a superiority complex are very different to bullying. Thinking you are better than someone is very different to telling them they are worse than you.

People often assume that when someone is dressed unusually they are doing it for attention.

I don't know anyone who actually dresses for attention. I know plenty of people who dress unusually though, since I'm part of the rock/goth/alternative community in my city. Every one of them dresses according to their sense of aesthetics. They dress in a way that they think looks good.

I get the feeling that a lot of the people complaining about hipsters are like when you get regular people complaining about modern art or jazz music. Ignorant people making assumptions. I'm not saying I understand hipster fashion, but I at least know that I don't understand it. I find it hard to believe that many people dress in a way that they personally think looks bad in order to be fashionable.

"Putting on airs" is not bullying. Being smug is not bullying. Your Aunt mocking you could be a form of bullying, however, I strongly doubt that your Aunt is representative of the hipster movement.

I don't know, like the article says, it's easy to confuse deep sincerity for irony. Some of hipster/geek chic is about beauty shining through unflattering clothes and awkwardness. Some of it is genuine appreciation for unusual things. Both part of a movement towards being more accepting of differences.

That's very strange to me - I don't understand why a stranger thinking they are funny or cool would be upsetting. People have different tastes, why does it bother you?

Very often people have their perceptions distorted by their emotions. When someone calls someone a "hater" they are saying that the "hater" is a person who lets their perceptions get distorted by hate, or some other source of negativity that is being channeled into hatefulness.

Usually that accusation is justified. Even if the complaint itself is reasonable, in most cases, the act of complaining is not. For example, if you see someone who is overweight, the sentence "you are fat" is arguably objectively correct. However, the act of saying that sentence out loud reveals something about the speaker. The weight level of a stranger is not their business. They do not convey any new information. It seems likely that the motivation for making such a statement is some desire to hurt the stranger. Desiring to hurt strangers is a bad thing, and is pretty much the definition of "hater". A "hater" is someone who lets their own personal emotional problems colour their perspective of the world, generally seeing other people in a negative light, and generally thinking it is okay to hurt strangers for no reason. The world is chock full of people like that and if you can't see that, it's probably because your perspective is similarly skewed.

To clear up a few things, context is important. It shouldn't be socially acceptable to publicly throw vitriol at strangers who are deemed attention seekers. (If you don't like attention seekers, don't give them attention. Nothing more is reasonable.) On the other hand, someone singing badly outside your apartment clearly directly affects you. People who campaign against fox hunting are personally invested in the issue. Whether or not it's reasonable for them to get upset about it is a matter of opinion - and is closely related to whether or not their views are deemed reasonable. The anti-fox hunting movement is generally seen as legitimate, even by people who disagree with them. However, not everything that people campaign on is regarded as reasonable, take the Westboro Baptist Church for example.

Being turned into a hipster meme is pretty harsh, whatever you say. Even the hardiest of Internet tough guys break down under torrents of social media abuse. There are countless examples of Reddit mob justice singling people out and breaking them down. It's obviously a deeply unpleasant experience, and unless you've been through it, I don't think you're in a position to make light of it.

Lastly, I just want to say I find it hard to understand why you don't have any concept or understanding of what bullying is. The most likely explanation is that you are prone to negativity and you're being self indulgent about it. So, given your commitment to absorbing other people's perspectives, why don't you take on board mine? I think you're probably an overly negative person. If you see the majority of people around you negatively, then you have unrealistic standards (by definition). Unrealistic standards will make you unhappy, because you will be perpetually disappointed and full of complaints. It's better to care less about the faults of others and enjoy their good points. In fact, if you want to live a happy life, then you need to have tougher standards on yourself than you do on others. That might sound counter intuitive, but it's pretty obvious that most people live pretty unhappy lives. If you want to live a happy life then you need to do better than them - and you can't get upset at their failings, because that'll make you unhappy.

Even though people from all walks of life visit Reddit, that does not mean every demographic is equally represented.

>Effective schooling could never occur on such a federated level.

Really? You think that state run education is terrible all over the globe? I don't think the problems with the US system are universal. Certainly here in the UK, education is pretty good. The UK is smaller, but we're only talking a factor of five here.

Asking people to educate their own children is unrealistic. Teaching is not easy. Good teaching requires intelligence, skills, knowledge and understanding that most people don't have. Private tuition requires a lot of money, which most people don't have. You can claim these things are a cop-out, but I think you're being naive. You are a successful high school dropout. Which means you're probably very smart, motivated and independent. Most people are not like you. It's unrealistic to judge other people by your own standards. Most people need education while they are young in order to give them vitally important abstract thinking skills they simply wouldn't be able to figure out on their own. Most people are not capable of providing such an education for their own children. Education has always been a mechanism of control, but that's because most people need to be taught some measure of control. The people that don't need it can think for themselves anyway, so it doesn't matter.

I had this cool idea for a sci-fi book (I may one day write), set long after modern civilisation collapses. Humans survive but with all the readily available iron ore used up, we are perpetually stuck in a pre-industrial revolution world. Hundreds of thousands of years pass and we evolve. At this level of technology we can farm, so we're still very successful, and the biggest threats to us are diseases rather than predators. So we evolve towards having much greater conscious control over our bodies and health. Incremental changes happen, starting from an expansion of the existing placebo effect, towards a conscious ability to manage immune responses, and then further into being able to affect cell chemistry in different areas of the body. The book would follow what happens when humans evolve the ability to do genetic engineering on themselves, and the following completely organic technological revolution. (Probably ending with some gene hackers growing diamond hulled space craft and leaving to explore the galaxy.)

Personally I'd rather spend time with a weak, lazy person, than someone who gets angry about weakness. Lazy people can at least be good company.

This isn't an obese person making excuses, this is medical research. Rather than discuss the science, you just seem to be against any medical treatment of obesity on the grounds that you are personally emotionally invested in making obese people feel bad about themselves. Frankly, I'd keep that quiet if I were you, it makes you look very bad.