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“I Don't Like Your Examples” (2000)

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Re: “I Don't Like Your Examples” (2000)

#81

Post by harrumph »

musage wrote: post #42

> The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude. http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw Substitute art with anything else, it's still a political attitude. Politics relates to how we live together, or fail to live together, not something politicians do 24/7 and citizens do once every four years. And even that wasn't so (though it is) the author did point out th…

>It all boils down to what class of problems you prioritize, people who read technical documentation not getting distracted or people not getting murdered. I say good on the author.

Clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap whistle clap.

Re: “I Don't Like Your Examples” (2000)

#83

Post by rhinoceraptor »

cwyers wrote: post #29

Leaving aside the politics, boy does the listed example suck. Relational databases are about relations. The trite little employee/department examples we've all seen before work because most people learning about databases immediately can understand a whole bunch of different relations that can occur here. You can think about concrete problems you might want to solve using that data -- figuring out who has to do annua…

You could also use the destruction of open source projects committed by Oracle as examples. It would be interesting to see the time from invasion to time of death for Solaris, Hudson, Open Office, etc.

Re: “I Don't Like Your Examples” (2000)

#84

Post by fahayekwasright »

coreyp_1 wrote: post #2

I think I disagree with him here. I tend to think that examples like his (polarizing topics) are distracting to the message of the content. I teach students, and they are, quite literally, paying me for my knowledge and experience about that subject, not for me to distract everyone with my personal opinions about unrelated issues. I doubt that any of them even know my political beliefs.

Your political beliefs can’t harm them in any way though. Examples are a silly thing to get upset about.

Re: “I Don't Like Your Examples” (2000)

#85

Post by monkeycantype »

The authors point is that publishing examples that fit our expectations of a standard example (employer & employee) is also a political statement, just that it is one in support of the status quo and therefore provokes little response. But it is still a political act, which contributes to the pervasive sense that the relationships embedded in the examples are natural rather than arbitrary and challengeable.

Re: “I Don't Like Your Examples” (2000)

#86

Post by tormeh »

happyrock wrote: post #79
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trite and wholly conventional political opinions It's weird that you judge political opinions on whether they're "conventional" or not, as if you're looking for only the most novel, original politics. I'm imagining a stereotypical hipster sipping kombucha, going "Ugh, tax reform used to be cool before all the fucking college kids got into it. I've been into legalizing meth lately--it's so real, y'know?"

There's nothing wrong with having conventional political opinions, and I wasn't really critiquing them as such. Again, my point was really about Feuerstein's weird psychology, in that he thought cramming his database programming book with such unremarkable observations was some bold act of defiance. I'm just picturing him at his keyboard, "I'm gonna blow these SHEEPLE'S minds... by opening their eyes to the TRUTH tha…

If these opinions were conventional/universal, then there would be no controversy. It wouldn't even be political. People wouldn't have made this much noise about something that was trite, like employee/payroll systems.

Re: “I Don't Like Your Examples” (2000)

#87

Post by musage »

tempodox wrote: post #56

God forbid we should be distracted with Real Life when reading a book about databases.

> We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?

-- Ray Bradbury

Re: “I Don't Like Your Examples” (2000)

#88

Post by musage »

Kiro wrote: post #46

I barely know who Kissinger is but the fact that the author admits it's controversial (in contrast to say calling Hitler a war criminal) is enough for me to avoid this guy's books at all cost. If I read a technical book I presume the examples are objective. If I would have read it without knowing anything beforehand I would take it literally and all of a sudden become a Kissinger hater without realizing it's actually…

Other things you have to avoid at all costs include Monty Python, they wrote a song about Kissinger. Imagine laughing at some silly physical slapstick one moment and becoming a war criminal hater the next.

Re: “I Don't Like Your Examples” (2000)

#89

Post by strken »

colemickens wrote: post #47
strken wrote: post #43

This is horrifying. Left and right already read different news, different fiction, different philosophy, and different scientific papers. Are they also supposed to read different O'Reilly textbooks? Granted, Kissinger should be a war criminal, but how does this press the case against him? It just creates another degree of separation in the divergent realities constructed by the two groups.

Totally agree, we need to find middle ground on Kissinger so as to not offend special snowflake liber... er, wait. There is only one reality. The rest is politics and self-delusion.

Alice doesn't know much about Kissinger, but detests Chomsky for denying the Khmer Rouge. Bob doesn't know much about Chomsky, but detests Kissinger for the bombing campaign. They both live in the same world, they both believe true facts, neither is delusional, but the reality they see is not the same.

If they approached each other from a position of mutual respect over their abilities and PL/SQL knowledge, they would have a chance to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. If they instead publish a series of passive-aggressive textbooks where Bob puts Kissinger in a table of war criminals while Alice places Noam Chomsky in a user's table next to David Duke, they'll hate each other and have no chance to fill in the gaps.

Re: “I Don't Like Your Examples” (2000)

#90

Post by KODeKarnage »

colemickens wrote: post #48
KODeKarnage wrote: post #17

How much more common is this type of person nowadays? Using a technical book to engage in hamfisted virtue signalling is such incredible cringe!

Boy I love when people use the phrase "virtue signaling". It's the new "SJW", in the sense that it's a bullshit phrase used by a political side in what is almost always the result of projecting more than anything else. It's so much easier than when the same sentiment is disguised and dressed up, so I know more immediately to roll my eyes and move on. Thanks. edit: Sorry, I shouldn't have replied. Didn't realize this…

I hate that a perfectly valid term like "virtue signalling" is co-opted by a certain side of politics and people from the other side are complicit in that appropriation.

The same thing happened with the term "dog whistle". Which I am sure you would have deployed at some point.

A "virtue signal" is when someone says something for no other reason than to represent something about themselves.

And negative karma doesn't mean anything. All it means is that you had wrong-think in an echo chamber post. One set of negative scores was for pointing out the (inevitable) inefficiency of public services, another was for criticising a guy who complained about an OS dev doing his own project instead of contributing to another one, another was for being critical of new Tech-Allah Elon Musk, and the final one was for calling someone out for being close-minded and spreading FUD about an article they didnt even try to understand.

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