221–230 of 528 posts
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Thanks for making the distinction. I've had Type I diabetes for over 20 years and occasionally get the "but you're not fat" comment. EDUCATE :o)
They need to change the stupid name already. Hypoinsulinomia and caloroglucitis, or something.
Great rant though.
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Is there any indication that education needs geniuses? Does it substantially improve innovation? When America was world dominant in innovation, were its geniuses in academia, or industry?
So Sweden is ranked as the "most innovative" country, with the USA coming in seventh. Switzerland and Singapore beat the US also. Yet I can't think of a single innovation I've seen from them. Good governments, great fashion, cheap furniture, sure. But what is the innovation they speak of? Fwiw, Iceland was number one last year. Was it for their constitution? My point is that I don't think you really have to look into…
http://www.thelocal.se/15578/20081110/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swedish_inventions
http://www.du.ac.in/fileadmin/DU/DUCorner/pdf/14812_IR_Examp...
It can be noted that most people studying engineering in Sweden go on to work for companies like ABB, Volvo, Ericsson, Scania etc.
My fellow HNers: It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life. That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some footba…
Oh goodie, another arrogant whine by raganwald where he can't understand why the greatest minds (implying people writing code are somehow the greatest minds) aren't doing what he thinks is important. This post makes two incorrect assumptions. First, that the things he derides (Google automating targeted content, Facebook introducing new search features that are tangential to their current features, Apple changing for…
Care to explain how it benefits society as a whole ?
Essentially he's asking why person-hours are expended on things that make the most money rather than things that are important, for some definition of important. There are several answers to that. 1. The most obvious is that people need to make a living. People can and do work at some discount in order to work on things they think are important, but it rarely stretches as much as 10x. I expect most workers either don…
Someone is following their own advice:
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
So regarding hypocrisy, while it's true in certain contexts and under certain conditions, calling out hypocrisy, could constitute a logical fallacy, simply stating that possibility, says very little about how to value it.
Is hypocrisy good or bad? Perhaps the question is ill-framed. Avoiding hypocrisy, can create a powerful resonance between the speaker's aligned actions and words. It may be worth nothing this not a moral value judgement, but speaks to leadership. People on average, appear more willing to follow those with strong and bold congruency, and yet abandon them, when that illusion shatters (aka Lance Armstrong).
That said, my own view is that hypocrisy is generally inefficient, as it appears to increase the noise in the system.* As the proverb goes "talk is cheap" and hence it costs little to put an opinion out there, which is not bad in and of itself, merely that it requires little effort.
Thus with a sea of opinions floating out there, and limited time to process (if your cognition doesn't naturally operate in a frequentist manner), who can you trust?
There does not appear to be a definitive set of answers, however the heuristic of matching words to actions, while not perfect, combined with a test for integrity, has personally proven useful over the years.
*cf bounded rationality, opportunity cost, SnR etc.
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No thank you, Christian Scientists are "experimental" enough. We don't need the Tim Ferrises of the world selling snake oil to parents (as medicine).
We also don't need the government telling adults what kinds of contractual agreements they can or can't enter into. "Caveat Emptor" and all that. People are, at the end of the day, responsible for the outcome of their own actions. Interestingly enough, this is still true even if we DO have a nanny state and an FDA and all the accompanying B.S. Spin the FDA off as a non government agency, with no force of law behind i…
In ayurveda, there are 3 types of medicines, food, herbs and poisons. The current allopathic system is purely the last type. It is heavily regulated because it is big money. There is not big money in the first two. (You may think there is money in food, but not fresh food which you actually have to prepare and eat within an hour, not prepare and let sit and pump full of preservatives).
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Your point about hypocrisy is something I have thought myself- Being a hypocrite doesn't make your argument wrong by default, and it's strange that we instantly act like it does. There must be some reason we act this way, does anyone have a good explanation?
If someone claims that "you should always do X" and then proceeds to do Y, isn't the fact that they did Y evidence that "always do X" isn't a good rule?