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Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

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Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If devices talk directly to one another there's very little a central authority could do to censor communication

It might be true that devices could connect across the US-Canadian border, but most borders are dead spots. I suspect that, when territory was being scammed, stolen, claimed, fought over, whatever... borders tend to develop in those places where there isn't a big population. And those borders have tended to remain empty. There will be exceptions, but not enough to matter. Short of science fiction devices, I dunno wor…

True, most connections would be within individual cities, so you would definitely need it to hook servers and satellites into the mesh so you can cross dead zones. But that would already be a huge win for humanity.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#132
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could divide it into 5-10 different test, administered over the course of several years. Anything but what they are doing now, which sounds like it was custom designed to encourage drug abuse and suicide.

now your stress is over several years, and if you fail an early one, what motivation do you have to keep on going? plus as children / young adults, many are still developing so you want to push testing as late as possible

The stress is distributed over time, so lower peak stress, and for those who are not cut out for this, they will find out much more quickly, which minimizes their time wasted studying. They could invest their times instead into a trade school etc., which will be of greater benefit to society.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could divide it into 5-10 different test, administered over the course of several years. Anything but what they are doing now, which sounds like it was custom designed to encourage drug abuse and suicide.

Can you write out the detailed arguments as to how that would be a net benefit?

For a start, you don't permanently mess up your life if you are sick/distracted by personal issues for that one exam.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#134
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could divide it into 5-10 different test, administered over the course of several years. Anything but what they are doing now, which sounds like it was custom designed to encourage drug abuse and suicide.

now your stress is over several years, and if you fail an early one, what motivation do you have to keep on going? plus as children / young adults, many are still developing so you want to push testing as late as possible

Is it pass/fail? I figure if you fuck up on one test then you have several others to look forward to and improve. And each individual test could be more focused, so easier to study for. Just have a test at the end of every year from ~13-18 instead of one ultra-test that makes or breaks your entire existence. Sounds dystopian. And also completely detached form how reality works. Unless you're in the Olympics, no one cares how you perform once. They care about how you perform and will perform over months and years.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#135
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardized testing does not aim to be a perfect evaluation, it aims to be a good enough evaluation that can be made highly resistant to corruption/bribery relative to its qualitative alternatives.

They could divide it into 5-10 different test, administered over the course of several years. Anything but what they are doing now, which sounds like it was custom designed to encourage drug abuse and suicide.

Drug abuse is rare and severely punished. You go to prison if you're Korean, you did drugs recently and got caught in Korea. It doesn't matter if you've smoked pot overseas, flew back to Korea, got tested and the drug test came out positive. They'll still throw you in prison.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The West" is a very murky sort of definition. Arguably the colloquial "Cultural West" is what is on the Western side of what used to be called the Iron Curtain. Poland was definitely on the Eastern side of that.

Iron Curtain was a political, not cultural border. Western civilization usually includes all European catholic countries, i. e. also Poland. (Huntington is a notorious example)

Yeah of course it was a political border but it absolutely had cultural consequences.

You can literally see the difference in Berlin on either side of the wall. The Eastern side is similar but still different to the Western, culturally.

Even the architecture is still quite different between the two sides.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are going to vote a certain way out of fear or due to having been misled, cutting off communication is a safeguard against those people caning their minds or being convinced by facts. Just for one example.

i guess if they're making up their mind at the last minute

Looking at least at the US elections, I think there are plenty of people that do. Look at the whole Hillary's e-mails thing for example.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#138
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardized testing does not aim to be a perfect evaluation, it aims to be a good enough evaluation that can be made highly resistant to corruption/bribery relative to its qualitative alternatives.

They could divide it into 5-10 different test, administered over the course of several years. Anything but what they are doing now, which sounds like it was custom designed to encourage drug abuse and suicide.

100% agree There's a simple statistical argument behind it: the variance drops as you increase the number of tests.

Let's say your true ability is A and you have one measurement M1. The variance (or, let's put it in another way: the probability that your M1 is waaaay different from your A) goes down if you also get M2, M3, M4 and take an average.

In other words: your measurements become more precise and the stress goes down a lot

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#139
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could divide it into 5-10 different test, administered over the course of several years. Anything but what they are doing now, which sounds like it was custom designed to encourage drug abuse and suicide.

Drug abuse is rare and severely punished. You go to prison if you're Korean, you did drugs recently and got caught in Korea. It doesn't matter if you've smoked pot overseas, flew back to Korea, got tested and the drug test came out positive. They'll still throw you in prison.

When do they test you?

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#140
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardized testing does not aim to be a perfect evaluation, it aims to be a good enough evaluation that can be made highly resistant to corruption/bribery relative to its qualitative alternatives.

They could divide it into 5-10 different test, administered over the course of several years. Anything but what they are doing now, which sounds like it was custom designed to encourage drug abuse and suicide.

Happiness index for Korea is 6 Happiness index for US is 6.9

Suicide rate in Korea is 21.2 per 100k Suicide rate in US is 14.5 per 100k

Drug death rate in Korea is 0.16 per 100k Drug death rate in US is 18.83 per 100k

And I only did the US and Korea because I only know the US. My conclusion is South Koreans feel about the same as Americans but do way less drugs.

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