karmacondon

I apologize for being "meta", but I feel like your comment might be a bit off topic for this thread. I read the article and thought "Wow! Cool!" and wondered what the hn community had to say about this technology. I was dismayed to see that your top comment (at the time) was yet another warning about surveillance and big brother and 1984 and etc.

I get it, man. You and others value privacy highly and feel that it's important to discuss it. But every single thread? Can't we have just one day without the dystopian science fiction? There are plenty of stories on the home page dedicated to the issues of privacy, surveillance and government bad behavior. Would it be possible to limit the discussion of those issues to the relevant articles?

It's good to point out non-obvious uses or potential unintended consequences for new technology. And I understand that the hn zeitgeist is what it is. But the repetition of certain ideas is getting a little old.

Is there any evidence that machines are actually causing significant unemployment? Articles of this type are composed of anecdotes. Machines can now do this or that, several individuals lost their jobs to machines, etc. Do we know that jobs aren't being created as fast as they are being destroyed?

The siren song of the hype machine is very tempting. But it would be comforting to know that there's some substance to the implication of this article before we start taking baseball bats to technology. There are several compelling social, economic and historical reasons to believe that people will continue creating jobs for other people, for as long as humans exist.

They didn't just choose those criteria out of thin air. They compiled data and ran a logistic regression that was able to predict whether or a not a given user would be banned from a web community based on the content of their posts. And it turned out that negative words, profanity, spelling and grammar were all predictive features in determining that result.

Here's how science works: If you don't like the conclusions, you can question the methodology. You can conduct the experiment yourself to see if you can reproduce the results. You can run your own studies and see if you come up with different conclusions. But you don't get to say "Hmm, the data don't conform to my preconceived notions about how the world should work, so I reject their implications."

Everyone doesn't agree with the idea that every thought from every person should be heard at all times. Some people are just jerks. "Trolling", by definition, is about making provocative statements to incite reactions, as opposed to contributing to conversations. There are places where that kind of thing is accepted (4chan) and places where it is not (hn). Tools that help communities to encourage their preferred forms of communication are good things, and will be increasingly important in the future.

None of these things seem like problems that need to be corrected (within reason [1]). Part of being a member of a minority group is that members of the majority group will never speak or behave in exactly the way you would like. That's the nature of living in a heterogeneous society.

There will never be equal proportions of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or culture in any group. In the interest of everyone being able to work together effectively, we all have a responsibility to draw a line between preference and abuse. People who become abusive should obviously be castigated or removed for the good of everyone. But if we place too much emphasis on appeasing the preferences of every group or individual, we'll be too busy focusing on choosing just the right word in every situation to get things done. Effective communication is hard enough as it is. Parsing every word because it might potentially offend someone only makes the problem worse. Everyone has a cross to bear and no one will ever feel that they fit in perfectly. Some times toes get stepped on, and that's ok.

I think the term "unintentionally sexist" says it all. There was a time when open and aggressive *-ism was common, but that kind of thing is generally no longer acceptable in polite or professional society. It seems like the best thing for all of us would be to focus on what we have and common and what we can do to get along, instead of publishing lists of "I hate it when group X says thing Y".

[1] clearly numbers 6, 9 and 10 on this list are right out. there are several others that might not be acceptable depending on the context/wording

Adding a new profile field that says "contact email (optional)" seems like it might actually help a lot.

This is an example of the Pareto Distribution, and it's entirely expected.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution

I just don't agree with the "technology is advancing" argument. If something is legal, ethical and moral then it doesn't matter if technology makes it easier to do or not. If it's right for the police to follow one person around to see what religious ceremonies, political meetings and protests that person is attending, then it's right for the police to do that same thing at scale.

The issue here is: is it right for the police to be able to perform physical surveillance of an individual? It's a yes or no question, regardless of what use the police make of technology. If you think the police shouldn't be able to follow you around to see what meetings you go to, which they can do now without a warrant, then it shouldn't matter if they do it with their feet or by automatically capturing and recording license plate numbers.

Technical capability doesn't alter the definition of right and wrong. This is why we should think through laws and rules carefully, so that they apply not only to the present, but to how things might be in the future. If it turns out that we need new laws, then there's a process for changing them. But I don't think that we should let the technical trends of the moment alter how we view our basic principles.

I think there might be different definitions of "enforcement in good faith" here. Your perspective, if I understand it correctly, is "The purpose of this law was presented as fighting terrorism and now it's being used for other purposes, which constitutes bad faith enforcement".

Another perspective is, "Law enforcement isn't doing anything that it shouldn't be doing, therefore they aren't acting in bad faith". Whether they're going after terrorists or drug dealers or money launderers, it's all the same to many (if not most) people. As long as there's no evidence that government officials are abusing the provisions of the PATRIOT Act to settle personal scores or persecute those with unpopular beleifs, most people will see them as acting in good faith. This assumes that actions taken are within a reasonable interpretation of the letter of the law, of course.

I get where you're coming from, or at least I think I do. I just don't think that the issue is so black and white. This may be a case of "The current government isn't doing what I want it to do" as opposed to "We should change the way that the laws are written". And the solution to that is pretty simple: Vote.

"Education" != "University". You never said that it did, but I just wanted to be clear on that. A line cook can read wikipedia and books from the library, or take community college or learning annex classes if he or she wants to further their education. Kahn academy, meetup groups, MOOCs, book clubs and autodidactic self study are a few of many ways to learn more about the world and grow as a person.

The question is, why don't more people avail themselves of these (mostly) free resources? I think that the answer is that the majority of people don't care, and don't feel as enriched by knowledge for the sake of knowledge as the average hn member, or even the average college student. After a hard day of menial work most people want to relax and watch tv or have a beer with friends. The majority of people care about "education" in as much as it can help them to get easier and higher paying jobs, as far from laboring as a line cook as possible. Let's not pretend that the average McDonald's worker is thirsting for knowledge about the humanities or would materially benefit from it in any way.

The idea that everyone should be pursuing secondary education seems like a bit of projection. If general education classes were beneficial to you, then that's great. But most people are more concerned with their families and relationships, paying their bills and enjoying life in their own way than they are with learning and personal growth. If a trade school is the best way for them to do those things, then so be it. Telling people to study things they aren't interested in because "it's good for them" probably isn't going to help much.

You should have a strong and overriding sense of personal morality when dealing with government, but you should also keep in mind that your opinion is not the only one that counts, nor is your personal moral code necessarily "right". Democracy means that we must accept the will of the majority even when it conflicts with our own beliefs, even if history ends up judging us right and everyone else to be wrong. That's just part of living in a cooperative society.

As the GP comment pointed out, people knew about these NSA programs in particular before Snowden. I certainly did. Just because you weren't paying attention to these issues until they were attached to a charismatic personality doesn't mean that no one else had any knowledge of them.

Congress did indeed debate the details of the Patriot Act. Once again, just because you find it boring to watch CSPAN doesn't mean that the issues weren't debated in open forum. You're conflating your lack of awareness with a secrecy that didn't exist.

The FISA court operates how it's supposed to. It approves the majority of requests because prosecutors can thoroughly evaluate each case before bringing it before the court. They approve everything because prosecutors can request that cases be strengthened before they're even presented.

The bottom line here is that all branches of the government approved of these programs. That's how our system works. If you don't like it then propose a new system, potentially one where every decision has to live up to your personal moral code of righteousness. Until then, we'll stick with doing the best that we can to make the right decisions using the process outlined in the constitution.

If you think that Snowden is a hero, start a petition to put up a statue of him in Fort Greene Park. The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument wasn't just put there by some guy on a whim. It was a decision made by government at all levels as the result of a process that is public and open to all citizens.

Is Snowden a hero? Maybe, I dunno. Ask your fellow citizens if they want to put a statue of him in the park. That's how democracy is supposed to work. It isn't perfect, in fact it's the worst form of a government. Except for all the others.

It's worth pointing out that almost none of the work in the examples in your first paragraph is done by someone straight out of school with only a college degree. Surgeons, lawyers and engineers typically go through years of on the job training before they are allowed to install heart values, prepare complex trusts or design pacemakers. Which says little about the value of the college education, other than that it serves as a filter before someone can receive the hands on training and mentorship that is critical to performing those tasks.

If surgeons/lawyers/engineers say "I'm only go to offer an apprenticeship to someone who went to school for eight years like I did", then that's fine, it's their choice of who to invest their time with. But it doesn't prove that a traditional four year education is a necessary prerequisite to being able to do any of those jobs.

A college education is like money: It has value because we all agree that it has value. And like money, it will retain its place in society until we all decide to use something else instead.

The system of higher education isn't going to change because people have too much invested in it, and that investment can never go bad like the housing market or tech stocks did. College graduates will talk about how much they learned, the networking and social experience or of being exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking. It isn't possible to question the value of those intangible benefits, or to prove to someone that they could have gained the same things through other means. So the system perpetuates itself.

To be honest, it seems like an unbreakable cycle. Well off kids go to college, get jobs and move into management where they hire other well off kids who also went to college. MOOCs, community/online colleges and vocational schools are emerging as additional options, but most of the decision makers at major institutions attended traditional four year colleges and expect the people they work with to have done so as well.

It seems like the best way to control the cost of education would be to make employers responsible for paying for it, instead of the students. Then market forces would come into play. If a business had to choose between paying $120k to send someone to Harvard or $20k to send them to a state school or community college, then they would have an incentive to evaluate the difference in quality of education and training from the respective institutions. Right now all of the financial risk is placed on students, and businesses get to pick and choose who to hire with relatively little consequence.

Obviously the system isn't going to change any time soon, if ever, no matter how many opeds the washington post publishes.

People who break the law are criminals, period. It doesn't matter if the law is just or unjust, or whether or not you personally agree with it. The simple fact is that the majority of citizens don't want online drug dealing to be legal, so it isn't legal.

Equating drug dealers with Ghandi, MLK and the US Founding Fathers is a stretch at the least and outright offensive at worst. These people aren't making bold political statements. They're selling drugs.

If you think that drugs should be legal, convince your fellow citizens to vote to make them legal. MLK, Gandhi and the Founding Fathers did what was necessary to change laws that they felt were unjust. Criminal behavior isn't the same thing as civil disobedience, and there are no shortcuts.

Simply: The average person can read at ~300 words per minute, and listen at ~150 words per minute.

I'm not a big fan of video as a tool for conveying information in general. Not only can I read faster than I can listen, but I can skim and skip around as well. There are situations where video is the best way to impart certain information, but those seem to be the rare cases. I hate it when websites make me sit through a 3 minute video in order to get an answer to one simple question, or to understand "What does this thing do?"

I've never taken a MOOC course because I can't imagine having the time to watch X hours of someone talking at a camera. If this video-less trend catches on I might actually be able to benefit from online education.

I was struck by the prescience and clarity of Mitch Kapor's writing. He correctly predicted that a computer would be able to win on Jeopardy [0], 9 years before the fact. And he understood that the Turing Test was more of a thought experiment than an actual test [1], which is why I assume he took the bet in the first place.

Conversation is actually a rather poor measure of intelligence. I would say, show me a computer that can learn anything that it wasn't specifically programmed to learn. This doesn't mean unsupervised categorization or learning to play a video game. I'm talking about a scenario where programmers present their code or machine with no knowledge of what the task will be. Not something chosen from a known list of possibilities, but any task that a human could conceivably be taught to perform in less than an hour. Anything from writing a sonnet in iambic pentameter to assembling ikea furniture based on instructions. A true test of _general_ intelligence.

I would take that long bet out to 2129, and beyond. I don't see software with that level of intellectual flexibility being written in our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of our children or their children.

[0] "While it is possible to imagine a machine obtaining a perfect score on the SAT or winning Jeopardy..."

[1] "... a skeptic about machine intelligence could fairly ask how and why the Turing Test was transformed from its origins as a provocative thought experiment by Alan Turing to a challenge seriously sought."

If I could talk to my 14 year old self, I wouldn't recommend any particular books.

I would say, "Don't stress and worry so much about school or your grades, because absolutely none of that is going to matter in 10 years. Learn how to make things. Start now, and never stop. Learn how to use technology to the fullest, both software and hardware. Learn how to write, speak and communicate ideas as effectively as possible. Learn how to hack people and understand how social structures work. Take that seriously. Most importantly, don't let anyone change who you are. Choose a path and follow it doggedly."

Ironically, some of the best advice I've seen came from a book: "Who you will be in five years is determined by who you meet today and what you read today" [0]. But a 14 year old doesn't need to read a whole book to gain that particular pearl of wisdom, or many of the others. I read a lot now, several of the books mentioned on this thread and many others. But that's because I'm old, and it's too late for me. If I could talk to my 14 year old self, or any 14 year old, I would tell them that there is significantly more to life than what can be learned in a book.

[0] The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp

It just doesn't work that way. Price competition is still a thing. Businesses will be just as happy to have more customers at their current prices. Money from those extra customers will find it's way back into the economy, to lawyers and accountants and programmers. Economists are far from certain as to whether rising wages drive price increases, or rising prices drive wage increases. There's no reason to assume that prices will rise linearly.

Multiple studies have shown that it's better to give people money and let them decide how to use it than it is to create layer upon layer of social programs. We can figure out how much 'basic' housing, food, medical and child care cost and give everyone that amount. They can figure out how best to use it to suit their individual needs.

Since the OP was an analogy, I'll attempt one as well.

Say we both operate hot dog stands on opposite corners of the street, each charging $1 per hot dog. Basic Income goes into effect and suddenly 2X as many people can afford hot dogs. You raise your price to $2 in response. If I have any sense, I'll keep my price at $1 or maybe lower it slightly. More people will buy from me, significantly increasing the amount of money I make despite the fact that I haven't raised my prices.

This concept applies to most sectors of the market. People will still be price conscious, and businesses will benefit as much from more customers as they will from higher prices. Even with housing. If more people can afford apartments, more people will decide to convert existing real estate or rent out rooms which will hopefully increase the price competition. This all assumes that there isn't open collusion between market participants of course, which there very well could be. But the general idea is that prices won't rise uniformly in every sector of the economy at once.

These issues have obviously been addressed by more knowledgeable people, but here is my understanding:

(1) people work out of pride, not necessity. if your only concern was sustenance you could live off of welfare or charity now. even with a basic income, people will still be motivated to work because they want to have nice things

(2) market forces will still apply. if you raise your prices because low income customers now have more money, I'll lower mine. barring cases of outright collusion, you'll see economic growth as opposed to rising prices

Basic Income is still a long way away, but it has been thought through. A practical implementation may or may not succeed, but it won't be because of fundamental flaws in the idea.

That's kind of like asking, "How do you learn how to code?"

The answer is to do it. Do it often, do it a lot, over and over. The linked tweet provided great advice, as do other resources and comments in this thread. But the bottom line is that you learn by doing, and trying hard.

I remember reading the same section of a paper at least 30 times, no exaggeration. I would read it, then go and look up the topic online, then read it again, then go do something else, and then read it again. Over and over for days. i parsed every symbol and word of every line. And then one day I was elucidated. I finally understood it, and it was a feeling of awesome communion with the gods.

I'm not sure if there's a short cut, but I'll be monitoring this thread along with you in the hopes of finding one. Do what the others said and print the paper out, and take a pencil and highlighter to it. Look up terms you don't know online and be diligent in your use of search engines. Just stay at it, and don't give up!

As an afterthought, most modern computer science papers have a graphic or figure on the second or third page that does a good job of explaining the idea visually. Older papers tend not to have this, or it's buried deeper in the paper. Look for this key graphic and use it as a guide or framework to understand the rest of what's being said.

This misunderstands the point of news. People read it to have common subjects of conversation, filtered through the same perspective. It's actually important to human discourse within society. So that when two people are making small talk, one can say "Did you see what happened with Hilary Clinton/LeBron James/Kanye West?" It's pointless, but pointless communication has a role as a social lubricant. It lets people build up to weightier topics, or just politely pass the time together. And common knowledge of news subjects is a part of that system.

Ultimately, news is a form of entertainment. Now more than ever. People don't watch Fox News or MSNBC to be more informed voters or to take personal action. Many of them want to hear what Personality X has to say about Event Y. Same with twitter or facebook or the opinion section of the local newspaper. And that's cool. If that's what someone finds interesting or entertaining, then so be it.

In general, all of the arguments in this post could be applied to anything that people read, watch, play or listen to. From reality tv to Shakespeare. "It doesn't involve me and isn't useful in my daily life" and "I've lived without it for a long time and my life is no less rich" are generic statements that would be equally valid discussing pretty much any form of diversion. Part of maturity is realizing that the world is full of things that you don't like, and that belittling those things or questioning their value doesn't do any good. We all get to decide how to waste our time. Let people have their news.

I realize that you chose one example off the top of your head, but it seems like an incredibly rare case. The majority of developers can understand "Queries involving this column are slow, it needs an index". Slightly more sophisticated developers can use an EXPLAIN statement (or it's equivalent) to see how many rows are being scanned and apply indexes where necessary. How many hours of coursework is it worth to obtain the knowledge "finding things in a ordered tree data structure are way faster than scanning through the whole table"?

I'm not sure if I've ever run into anyone who said "The things I learned in college have turned out to be pretty much worthless in my professional career. I wasted a lot of time learning irrelevant information." It's interesting that the majority of every CS education is always valuable, to every person, with no exceptions.

Facebook doesn't invade anyone's privacy. They aren't going into your house and rifling through your things. People post things on facebook because they want other people to see them. If you don't want to do that, then don't use facebook.

You can't stop other people from talking about you, or from taking pictures of you or relating stories that involve you. That's always been a part of social life. If you consider that to be an invasion of your privacy, then leave society and live as a hermit. It probably won't be fun, but it will be very private.

I know several people who don't use facebook, myself included, because they just aren't interested in the service that it provides. Philosophical concerns about the nature of privacy don't really factor into it. The social fashions about what's cool and what isn't cool will change with the winds. It isn't worth paying attention to. If facebook or any other social software is valuable to you, then good, use it. If not, no sense complaining about what other people decide to do with their time.

So my issue with this is that there are numerous counter examples that come readily to mind. I understand that the plural of anecdote is not data, and that naming random exceptions is generally a poor form of argument.

But, Barack Obama was in the "Choom Gang" when he was in high school, which roughly translates to the "Marijuana Gang". Think about that: The current leader of the free world smoked so much as a teenager that he and his friends named their group after the drug itself.

The last three US presidents have said that they smoked marijuana as teenagers and college students. Carl Sagan was a big proponent, and there are many other successful people in the worlds of politics, science and business who smoked pot casually at the least. If it does change the structure of the brain and impair long term memory, what exactly does that mean? Whatever the effect, it apparently doesn't disqualify people from being among the most intelligent and successful in the world.

Brain studies are useful, but we should be cautious when using them to draw sweeping conclusions about social policy.

I don't think I agree with your interpretation of that story or the conclusions you've drawn from it.

Not wanting to donate the first apple II or use it to "help stop wars" doesn't make Steve Jobs a bad person or demonstrate a lack of empathy. He could have easily understood exactly where Wozniack was coming from, but have drawn different conclusions about what was right. The things that people associate with being "good" aren't always the best indicators of morality or motivation. Someone can be a good person without ever giving money to charity.

And before we crush the dreams of children, it should be pointed out that musicians, artists and athletes are heavily rewarded for their passion and skill every day. So are many successful entrepreneurs. It's our responsibility to chose the right heroes, for ourselves and for the next generation. There's a Judas for every Jesus. We get to choose which one we want to be.

I'm no Steve Jobs fanboy, but describing him as "unabashedly ravenous, merciless and ruthless" is far beyond the pale. Don't let a few rumors and out of context stories color your judgement of an entire human life. Empathy, right?

The Net Party seems like it defeats the purpose of representative democracy. The system was designed to let congress people differ from their electorate on certain matters. If you take the Net Party concept (as I understand it) to it's logical conclusion, isn't that changing the basic form of government from representative to direct democracy? Or in essence saying "Nice try James Madison, but we have something different in mind"?

It's great to to give citizens a forum for debate and anything that encourages communication between government and the governed is generally a good thing. Not sure how much I like the idea of making major changes to the basic process of government though, at least here in the United States. I can think of many examples of good things that might not have passed in congress if representatives had to vote the way that citizens using a particular software app wanted them to vote (slavery, income tax, segregation, healthcare).

I wish you good luck and it sounds like you're doing good things. Experimentation is good, even if it poses risks.

I think there might be confusion about terminology. The form of empathy that the author is referring to is more "understanding other people" than being "kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm and considerate". Basically, putting yourself in the other person's shoes and seeing things from their perspective as opposed to being agreeable or kind. The former is the essence of strategy and manipulation. The latter is generally being a good person.

It's clear that if you want to get ahead in life, understanding how other people perceive things is THE skill. Being warm, kind and sympathetic is also good, but not required. I can understand how being agreeable can be a detriment in many professional situation. The form of "empathy" being described in the blog post is always an advantage.

Iraq has a democratically elected government. Whether or not they are accountable, rights-respecting, impartial or even just is up for debate. But they can't govern without being able to impose the rule of law through a monopoly on force.

Warlords do serve a social purpose. But it's better for everyone if a stable government serves that purpose instead. The nature of being a warlord is such that they won't respond to reasoned arguments or give up the power they've risked their lives to build. The only way to get them to step aside to allow democratic governance is to kill them or convince them to surrender.

Killing a warlord has nothing to do with the concept of justice. The term "outlaw" originally applied to people who lived outside of the protection of the legal system, meaning that they could be robbed or killed by anyone. If a local leader wants the protection of justice, they should run for office or go through an official process to wield the sanctioned power of the state. Otherwise, they should be prepared to either get down or lay down when just democratic rule comes to their region.

The links you posted reference Iraq, which was not a very nice place over the last decade. In many cases, a strong personality would emerge as a local leader. He'll usually have access to several small arms and enough money to feed and pay several dozen militia fighters. To legitimize his power he'll coordinate attacks on US personnel, usually ambushes, and make deals with people who have connections to global "terrorist and extremist" organizations who can provide him with resources to pay for more weapons and manpower. This hypothetical leader isn't beholden to the law and makes up the rules for the people in the areas that he controls based on his interpretations of religious teachings and personal views on justice and proper conduct. The government has so many problems to deal with that they aren't in a position to oppose him or restore any kind of rule of law to the people that live in his sphere of influence. As his power increases, he becomes a more useful piece on a larger chess board, controlled by leadership in Mosul, Yemen or Saudi Arabia.

To the US, the solution is clear: Kill that guy. The force of his personality is what's holding his local power structure together, and if he's dead there's a good chance that the whole thing will collapse. This will take a piece off the board for a global opponent and give the national or regional government one less problem to deal with. Given that he lives in a remote area that he knows like the back of his hand, getting close to him would be difficult. But if they can pay someone to tell them where he is at a specific time, all it takes is one drone strike to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

It's not a perfect system. Sources will frequently give false locations in order to kill their own enemies or settle personal scores. Sometimes the intelligence is out of date by only a few hours, the target leaves a house and innocent people move in to it behind him. Or the weapons just plain miss.

The question is, do you have a better plan? Because the guys at the Pentagon would really like to hear it. Ceding large swaths of a country to random strong men doesn't seem like a sustainable solution. It's not good for the people in that country, it's not good for global security and it's not good for business. Civilian casualties are always regrettable and make for compelling headlines. But at some point, someone has to have an eye on the bigger picture. If there's a better course of action, then it should be taken immediately. Until then all the US government can do is to use the tools that it has available to deal with the current situation.