Communication and honest debate about facts and details, such as the ones you bring up yourself, is impossible when the people you are attempting to communicate with don't care about the truth -- they only care about how the words you are using make them feel.
Which is the whole point of the article: when feelings take precedence over truth and knowledge, science is at threat.
That's a cop out though, a "dog ate my homework" type argument. "I don't need to make a solid argument because they'll just ignore it if I do."
The problem with this logic is that it can't be disagreed with. If I accept the premise, then you're off the hook for evidencing your claim - like you say, honest debate is now impossible. If I don't accept the premise, then I'm clearly wrong, and therefore part of the group who put feelings over truth and knowledge, and therefore reasoned discussion with me is pointless.
But in neither scenario can I get a reasoned debate. Ironically, you've built a situation where your feelings trump logical argument. You only need to say "I believe science to be at threat" (or perhaps just "science is at threat", because "I believe" is always implicit in these sorts of statements without argumentation), and any response I give to you, positive or negative, will only confirm your position.
To me, the central claim here is that it is now unacceptable to teach that sex is purely binary. But as far as I can tell, medically speaking, sex isn't binary (although heavily bimodal), and biologically speaking sex as a binary is a useful model as long as you recognise the caveats. So I don't think the author's central claim holds true. Which to me breaks apart most of the argument. The rest of the article seems to be examples of students doing things that other people disagree with, which is surely the greatest prerogative a student has, and has been happening for millennia. If science is at threat because students are uppity then I think we have different definitions of the word "threat" (as well as, potentially, the word "sex").
"No sane people" sounds like a "no true scotsman" argument. The fact that you felt the need to slip "sane" in there suggests that you suspect that some people's feelings are actually hurt. And if someone's feelings are hurt, you just dismissed them by calling them insane. This merely seems like a nastier way to express your disagreement, rather than a justification of it. There's a pretty big distinction between "people aren't offended" and "people ought not to be offended".
You mistake the author's central claim. The central claim is that certain things cannot be taught or even researched if they appear to hurt the feelings of students.
Sex being binary (and the author carefully distinguishes between sex and gender) based on the size of gametes was simply one example. Other examples are discussed in the article:
- the inability to use the terms male and female
- fear of mentioning historical figures that are white and male to students
- teaching the concepts of sexual conflict, kin selection, heritability
- research about sexual selection and cultural differences
- NIH is denying scientists access to data if their research appears to be "stigmatizing"
Your focus on one example as the central claim that invalidates the author's thesis seems like a giant evasion of the real issue.
1) If you're busy maintaining backward compat, you're not busy building innovative new things -- Microsoft. 'nuf said.
2) You have a built-in excuse to not make your new stuff equal in functionality or greater to the old stuff, because hey, customers can just use the old stuff right? I built some software that talks to O365 Sharepoint. Ok, I have two choices of API: the older Sharepoint API or the newer Graph API. They recommend Graph, ok. Build the product and put it into production. Get a new customer requirement for fine-grained auth, and then find out that Graph doesn't handle fine-grained auth -- only the Sharepoint API does that. Oops. Ask Microsoft when that capability is coming to Graph? No timeline, because the Sharepoint API isn't deprecated.
3) Keeping old stuff working may be easier, but building new stuff is harder because the landscape is muddier -- how many times have you looked at Microsoft docs and found multiple ways to do things with no idea if the docs you're looking at actually apply to the approach you're using now?
I think there are ways to have (mostly) the best of both worlds. Linux does it by bring as much stuff in-tree as they can -- they break compat all the time for out-of-tree stuff. Ever try to keep a proprietary VMWare module building without errors? In-tree KVM never breaks because they're super careful with the ABI. Some languages have explicit mechanisms by which they attempt to keep things current, but make it easier on users -- Kotlin is an example of this [1] but its a young language so time will tell whether they can actually thread this needle. My experience so far is yes, I think they can -- I've updated code from Kotlin 1.2 to 1.3 to 1.4 with relatively little pain.
Wonderful story. Both the janitor and the CEO epitomize Ayn Rand's "ideal man":
> "The moral issue is: how do you approach the field of work given your intellectual endowment and the existing possibilities? Are you going through the motions of holding a job, without focus or ambition, waiting for weekends, vacations, and retirement? Or are you doing the most and the best that you can with your life? Have you committed yourself to a purpose, i.e., to a productive career? Have you picked a field that makes demands on you, and are you striving to meet them, to do good work, and to build on it -- to expand your knowledge, develop your ability, improve your efficiency?
> If the answers to these last questions are yes, then you are totally virtuous in regard to productiveness, whether you are a surgeon or a steelworker, a house painter or a painter of landscapes, a janitor or a company president."
Another gotcha with HSTS + includesubdomains is if you have a naked domain e.g. https://example.com redirecting to a www prefix e.g. https://www.example.com, but the server is configured to send the HSTS header for the naked domain.
It's not always obvious because your gut reaction is "oh my web site is on www.", but that misconfigured naked domain redirect might indeed break "randomservice.example.com".
I find the the amount of traffic and comments articles with this message generate quite amusing, given the article can be boiled down to: don't use tools like Cassandra, Kafka, etc. until you've thought through whether they are the right tool for your use case. That last part is often forgotten -- these tools may not always be the right tool for the job, but SOMETIMES they are, regardless of your scale.
Well, duh.
The corollary is: if you're using one of these tools, and you HAVE thought through your use case and reasons, don't get defensive about it. If challenged by those with lesser knowledge after reading an article like this, calmly and rationally explain your reasoning. And like any technology choice, be prepared for someone else to offer another option you weren't aware of, with better reasons.
Leaving aside the (unconvincing) possibility that Boeing was actively covering up issues (which, if they were, is potentially a criminal issue due to fraud), there is a deeper philosophical point to be made about how people should view industry in the modern world, which includes aviation, but also all other production, ranging from farming and mining, to the manufacturing and use of products, and even to services.
It's easy to point to the various risks and lives at risk, due to the products of industry, such as aviation accidents as well as pollutants and even mundane things like typing on a computer (RSI anyone?).
However, what is often forgotten is all the amazing benefits of this industry -- from being able to fly to anywhere in the world in less than a day at a cost affordable by almost anyone in a developed country to having energy to light and heat our homes and run our medical devices, to the existence of this very forum. It is right and moral for both producers in setting their own safety and emission standards, as well as the state in setting limits on production in the name of "protecting society", to consider these positives as well as the negatives. It is morally right even knowing that not setting these limits higher will result in lives and health lost, because the alternative is, bit-by-bit going back to a pre-industrial society in which humans were lucky to live past 35. The way to achieve setting these limits higher is in fact by becoming richer, such that we can afford the better controls. If the state attempts to too tightly control an industry before it can afford those same controls, it is essentially the same as destroying it, and keeping its benefits from the world forever.
Aviation is an example of this whole process working. It's exactly why aviation has become so incredibly safe, while at the same time becoming ever more economical. Companies like Boeing are to be, overall, praised. When fraud occurs, it needs to be investigated and punished, but that doesn't change the essentially good nature of Boeing.
This comment is profoundly ignorant. You're dismissing her philosophy because of two descriptive words (and not even the best two, which would probably be "rational selfishness"), which you have decided are the "opposite of good" simply because history says they are? That's just an appeal to tradition: plenty of people have been wrong about plenty of things throughout history, especially in the areas of morality and ethics.
You clearly know nothing about Rand's philosophy. You would do yourself a favor to correct that error. Even if you ultimately disagree with her, she has very many intelligent things to say and, if you give her a chance, she will challenge many of your preconceptions about morality, ethics, and their postcursors of economics and politics, and raise the level of your discourse significantly.
Yes this happens to not be one of those cases, espousing the virtues of selfishness isn’t up for debate anymore. It’s wrong, and has been shown to be so time and time again. To have to rehash such foolishness is pointless.
>Social shaming also isn’t an argument. It’s a demand for listeners to place someone outside the boundary of people who deserve to be heard; to classify them as so repugnant that arguing with them is only dignifying them. If it works, supporting one side of an argument imposes so much reputational cost that only a few weirdos dare to do it, it sinks outside the Overton Window, and the other side wins by default.
> Nobody expects this to convince anyone... People who use this strategy know exactly what they’re doing and are often quite successful. The goal is not to convince their opponents, or even to hurt their opponent’s feelings, but to demonstrate social norms to bystanders.
Allowing yourself to be dragged into the same argument over and over again, because some people are just not listening (creationism, flat earthers, moon hoax believers, ...) is a waste of time. Publicly reminding the readers about the majority view on the situation and then letting the argument go is fine as a response.
(And yes, the majority view is that Rand is not worthy of any special attention as either a philosopher, political theorist, economist or author. Not more worthy than any other random member of those groups of people.)
There is absolutely merit to discussing ideas that you disagree with. And in particular to this context, I personally found lots of value in Atlas Shrugged. Often it lead to me disagree with her philosophy. If anything, reading things that you disagree with allows you to intelligently refute claims instead of vaguely claiming that someone is incorrect and refusing to engage. That is a sure fire way to make people dig into their beliefs.
The Nash equilibrium is also natural, efficient, and non-optimal in many cases. Which, in the face of "optimal", could be described as "wrong" if the belief is that optimal is desirable.
Just because something is "natural" doesn't mean it can't be ethically wrong. We have another word for things like that--they're called "amoral" and it literally means there is no ethical choice being made. The concept of "natural" is orthogonal to this.
Lots of things we consider "natural", we also pride ourselves on the ability to choose not to give in to.
Vice versa, there could be things that are "not natural" which--oh wait, no there aren't. To be "natural" is one of those really stretchy concepts that can include anything if you argue it the right way back.
For instance, this discussion is about a copyright bill. Is that natural? Is copyright natural? Is economics? Politics? Rationality?
We also have a word for such terms in an debate: inconsequential.
Not to speak of the idea that anything that is "efficient" must be amoral. In my opinion exactly the opposite is true. Most things which are "efficient" read pretty damn strong on my right/wrong moral compass--either I think they're pretty cool, or I think they're pretty terrible. There's really very few efficient things that make me feel "yeaaaahhh, it's efficient sure, but meh. you do you".
Things that are efficient you need to consider extra carefully exactly because the efficiency can swing the needle on the moral compass rather dramatically!
Killing newborn cubs and impregnating the mother with your own is also very natural and efficient. I hope you agree it's also very wrong and that the argument from nature is an amazingly awful argument.
> Yes this happens to not be one of those cases, espousing the virtues of selfishness isn’t up for debate anymore
In your selflessness, perhaps you'll consider espousing my view instead of yours? In return, I promise to dutifully, comprehensively, and correctly represent your view, as you can see I've done here now.
I've always seen objectivism as a branch of consequentialism. Utilitarianism is a different branch of consequentialism, in that it seeks to maximize the greater good for others. Objectivism seeks the maximize the good for the self. "Rational selfishness" is a fine enough description, I suppose, except for the cases where the two words conflict, like in tragedy of the commons.
Philosophy is too kind a word. If I invent a new kind of math which encapsulates obvious stuff like addition,subtraction and multiplication before going off the rails and spewing nonsense the fact that I reiterated arithmetic isn't much of a point in my favor.
She was born to wealth she didn't earn and saw the confiscation of such when the communists took over Russia.
She forever thereafter decried all taxation for the common good not seeing a substantive distinction between the communists taking all her families shit and a democratically elected government taxing to pay for hospitals and roads.
Her ideal man was a criminal to kidnapped a little girl, extorted her father for money, then took the money and ditched the little girls dismembered body and took the money and ran because he refused to live by societies rules.
She gushed over him before dying dependent upon the social security she didn't want anyone else to have.
Both use cherry-picking and unfalsifiable approaches to history and sociology to construct a narrative in which there are two classes: the noble, heroic people who produce all the value; and the awful, leeching parasites who attempt to co-opt that value for their own use.
The differences between them are rooted entirely in which class each views as noble and value-producing versus which is parasitical.
Which should have been clear to you when you joined the company and read and signed the employment and stock options agreements (you did read them, didn't you?). If that isn't to your liking, don't work for a startup.
You miss the point. I don't think they are acting shitty. They're acting according to what both you and they agreed to in advance. You knew (or should have known) what they were (and were not) going to give you in return for your effort. It's only shitty of them (and illegal) if they don't follow through on that agreement.
Which is the whole point of the article: when feelings take precedence over truth and knowledge, science is at threat.