nbashaw

Using the website isn't honestly that great of an experience, but the iPhone and Mac apps keep me coming back for sure. Every time you put a thought in, you get one back from the past. It's always an interesting surprise.

Why is it bullshit?

You're wrong about one key point - judges in policy debate are allowed to use whatever decision-making framework they want. They don't have to consider a dropped argument valid. But most do, because the point of policy debate is not to wax poetic about your beliefs in a passionate attempt to persuade others, but rather to play a highly technical game against challenging opponents.

I never liked the alternate forms of debate that attempt to re-create some golden era of slow talking persuasion because the decisions made are often arbitrary. I prefer a value-neutral environment where I can be assured a more objective basis for judgement.

It not indigestible, you just have to train your ears to hear it and think fast. After two years you start to have less and less problems with it.

You have a good point here - why not just learn to understand and articulate arguments by doing something productive for the world rather than competing against one another in pointless weekend tournaments?

It makes no sense to compare debate to radically different activities (like programming or starting a startup). I'm not arguing that debate was the best thing that anyone can do, rather that it's a worthwhile and not totally bullshit activity. I understand if you don't want to do it (different strokes for different folks) but I gained a lot from it and I think it deserves a certain amount of respect. I would never disparage a tennis player for having wasted his time just because I find it tedious running back and forth. I would respect him and want to learn about tennis from him.

Everyone in debate knows they're just there to win rounds. People often argue ridiculous things (e.g. "your plan to explore space should be rejected because it reifies western colonialism") just for a kick. If you asked them whether they believe what they say, I predict 90% would say "no, not really".

After a while, it gets boring. That's why I quit. But the activity actually gave me a great appreciation for the limits of my knowledge and the relationship of words to truth. Once you realize that a good argument can be made for almost anything, you start questioning the default rationalizations we all grow up with.

Running outside is the same, at the end of the day you return to the same place you started. The point isn't to get somewhere fast, it's just to run. We do it because we want to be healthy and athletic people. In the same way, you join debate not to get at the truth, but to increase your mental abilities.

I debated in High School and College. I don't think you're giving competitive policy debate a fair treatment here.

On the surface it seems stupid to think that an un-refuted argument should be considered true. But arguments are evaluated that way in policy debates for a very specific reason -- the purpose of debate is not to discover the truth, it is to win an argument. That's the whole point of the activity. If you don't like it, you don't have to play.

That's actually the reason I quit during my sophomore year, but it doesn't make debate a worthless activity. Nothing taught me to work harder or think faster.

Debate is like working out. It's not real, so certain considerations go out the window. Under your logic, running on a treadmill is a bad idea because you're not actually going anywhere. But the point of debate isn't to discover the truth, it's to sharpen your understanding and wit.

Where debate goes wrong is when you stay in it too long. After a certain point the skills become harder and harder to transfer to other parts of your life. And a lot of the people in it, as you might be able to imagine, are pretty arrogant know-it-alls.

After I left debate, I had to re-socialize myself back into the world of normal people who don't argue with each other all day for fun. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but all my friends were debaters and all my time was spent researching, debating, or arguing with them about literally everything. That's just how debaters tend to spend their free time.

This is pretty cool - but it's hard to get to the book content itself. Maybe consider just publishing it as blog posts?

Awesome! I have been thinking about making something like this, but it looks like you did a better job than I would have. Responsive design is an idea who's time has come.

Yes, but following something on Twitter or Facebook doesn't guarantee you'll see what you've subscribed to. It's so transient!

I'm finding it difficult to replace RSS with that.

My response: http://www.nbashaw.com/2011/06/09/ideas-matter-too.html

Grand theorizing isn't unique to design. I can name probably 20 variants of "x driven development".

I found that weird too. It seems like a low number.

Haha I just found out about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful

I'm almost hesitant to mention it, since they're the startup-du-jour, but Airbnb is a perfect example. Can you imagine your grandparents using it? Maybe, depending on whether or not they were hippies, but my guess is that the majority of people in that generation would be far too scared to try it out. It's definitely a cultural shift towards trust and informal arrangements.

How does the author measure anxiety, hostility, depression, confidence, compassion, and happiness? That seems to be left out.

Sure - but I'm mostly curious to learn what kinds of experiences good hackers have had in trying to get their ideas out there. The publishing industry just seems terribly archaic, and most people trying to write books are locked into it because they don't know how to _create_ stuff on web, just consume it. HN is full of people who can create web-based stuff, so I was curious to see if there were any neat experiments people had done.

If you don't mind me asking, why did it leave a bitter taste in your mouth?

Congrats! Sounds like a success to me. How'd you make the decision to self-publish? Did you try and shop it around to literary agents first, or go straight to the readers?

One explanation of the possible higher education crisis could be that we simply have higher expectations. The world is moving faster and our education system hasn't caught up. Our grandparents typically stayed with the same company for decades, but we change jobs every couple years. Not only are we changing companies, we're changing skill sets. New competencies emerge and vanish in the course of years, not centuries. This is a very new development.

Were universities always a mediocre way to get an education? By today's standards - yes. The thing is, "mediocre" is a relative term.

Quora is of greater intellectual merit than Yahoo Answers, and isn't siloed into verticals like Stack Exchange.

This gives me an idea. What if there were a virtual university that was entirely conducted via chat? Like Quora meets Convore.

There's a pretty lengthy section in the middle of "What Technology Wants" by Kevin Kelly that argues against romanticized portraits of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Here's the short version:

Lifespans were short, so there were basically no old people. Old people are key carriers of institutional memory. Without them, you don't have much culture, and you can't learn from the past. Every generation is forced to reinvent the wheel. That's why they didn't develop technology or art.

http://books.google.com/books?id=_ToftPd4R8UC&lpg=PT30&#...

For those who are unaware, Francis Fukuyama is the Hegelian who said at the end of the Cold War that we have reached the end of history. I think it's one of the most provocative and misunderstood statements of the past 20 years.

What unaddressed problems do you think they should be solving? All in all, the consumer web is a pretty over-served market. I don't see a problem with there being ~5 serious competitors in a big, fresh problem area.

Oh, it's unpaid. But I have to do it for school credit to graduate :(

I'm a political science major.

Thank you so much for making this. I'm learning to program, and an intern at a place where I can't use my computer, can't install anything on their windows machines, and have a lot of free time. You just made my life a LOT better.

I don't understand this:

During the the Lean Startup era, the advice was clear; focus on building the company and avoid hype. Now that advice has changed. Like every bubble this is a game of musical chairs. While you still need irrational focus on customers for your product, you and your company now need to be everywhere and look larger than life. Show and talk at conferences, be on lots of blogs, use social networks and build a brand. In the new bubble PR may be your new best friend, so invest in it.

The only justification Steve gives for hype-seeking is that this is a game of musical chairs. What does that mean?

Horrible term? Just because it's the catch phrase du jour doesn't mean it's totally meaningless. I get annoyed with the buzz and malapropism just as much as the next guy, but like it or not, cloud computing is a major global phenomenon.