[2014] "For most practical purposes, assume that number pi is equal to three"
*ahem* *ahem* is this thing on? OK, great.
So, I was thinking, I'll get something off my chest. No, not you, cat, although it would be helpful, too. *cough*
So, let's talk political corectness [boooo!] and globalisation. [booo!]
The problem that we have with this world is that, again, technology outpaced social progress, and we have ran out of planet to expand to. I think that's why people dream about space (but do remember, even of you have viable way to colonize something else and move millions, you'll leave billions behind). We have global communication at a speed of light, global transportation network which is cheap-ish, and fast-ish, relatively low barriers too trade, and not much more in common but the fact that we are all humans. We have no global language, no global culture, no global laws et caetera et caetera.
And here's the thing: we have to agree on the rules, because it's not like if someone will fucked up his own country
So, we have to negotiate protocol of communication, and to do it we need to compare cultural references without killing each other, and to do it it's best too look at each other and appeal to good will. And argue, within the rules of engagement.
There's few patches of wilderness here and there.
If you tell Brazil (for purpose of this exercise, assume that countries are spherical and uniform), that it has to stop clear-cutting rainforest because it is a part of global world heritage and it must be preserved, and you're Britain telling them so, expect "did you ask anyone before burning yours, and besides, you seem perfectly content to buy soybeans we grew up in place of the forest".
Barebone protocol of direct action, is to acknowledge something must be done, argue until you agree what this something is (at this point, some people will leave), agree to time and date and tools and such (some people will leave), and meet (and then do the headcount, look at the enemy, and decide if you don't want to cancel anyway. Also, if there is some crazy guy waving
Mix and match. If your upper management talks some six-sigma-kaizen-agile-whatever bullshit and factory floor talks "but it was always done this way", you have to have something in the middle to translate the lingo. Sometimes a few layers. Establish an escalation process, don't abuse it, and it will all be well. Aim for perfectness, but you'll have to stop somewhere.
Look at this pre-prepared example I made earlier. IT: assumed wisdom is that "security by obscurity" works. In military, you operate on need-to-know basis, and only top brass needs to know everything, ground grunts should take orders and
Americans feel uneasy about tales without happy ending, because they are the standing champion in the category "empire" and do not want for this to change. British don't have this problem, because they lost already. Germans were good at this game, until the rest of players agreed to change the rules and nerf them, violently. First be customary beating, then by more serious one.Then they. Russian seem grim, because shit they got through was grim and it was best too blend in, but in more private setting they are most cheerful people I know. They also have tendency to do what dear leader says, because alternative is to leave. And so on, and so on.
You have to have some kind of mirror to look into yourself, and too. Also, be wary of anyone who want to blindly deny all your requests, and take someone wh. Sometimes you have not too protest too much if natives think that you are god or king, but be sure at the same times that this doesn't mean you are not sacrifice to some larger god.
So while we're here, on this multi-generational spaceship Earth, let's just put some thought about dwindling supplies, irreplaceable parts, and need to take shared responsibility for floor sweeping, . Also, maintenance manuals were hopelessly outdated, so we're need to write down at least basic procedures and stick to it, because while we're discovered quite a few rules, it was at a high cost and it would be a shame to let all this knowledge to evaporate, and there ar . And, for fuck's sake, let's just agree to do something about that atmosphere control system we've fucked up with our exhaust gases and all the other shit we've done, instead of pointedly ignoring all those beeps, bells and whistles in hope that it will not blow on your watch.
Because from what we gathered so far, it *will* suffer failure, and it *will* result in loss of life. On heads of our crew generation hangs the decision to defer maintenance further, (and than it will be total), or act on our best knowledge now (and that maybe it will be limited). I know that the spaceship itself is in pretty bad shape, and most of it is not our fault, but if someone will find it, lifeless and drfiting, do you really want to be the idiots
General advice - learn to recognise and avoid fundamentalism, remember that authorities are not universal, and rules are to be challenged. If you have to resort to physical violence, you will suffer consequences. And do what you need for you and things important to you to survive, even if this means listening to Vogon poetry.
Well, that's it. Before I sign off, riddle me this[1]: while writing this wall of text, I was insomniac, had cough attacks, listened to Dubioza Kolektiv and had a lot of my plate at work because someone decided to expand rapidly out of the blue. I played Civilization and Simcity (but the last one), Doom. My 8-bit computer was Timex 2048, but I went to local cultural center too and used Atari (65 and 130XE, I think) and PCs with amber monitors, I was born in Poland in 1978, (but it's not my fault), work in IT, dropped out of academia twice and never finished, hate the car-centric cities while having two and half cars, love trams, like trains, have cats, like dogs, love mix-and-matching cultural references.
So there was that, thank you, thank you, I'm here until I decide to terminate it. Comment section is open for AMA[2], in which I'll answer each of your question in one simple sentence, but your . If I don't get at least three questions, I'll think that cruel word doesn't acknowledge my specialness, and kill myself. If you overwhelm the queue, it can take a while.
[2] Can we somehow get this idea out of reddit, and other good ideas, and leave them to drown in misogynist, racist, speciesist, $culture supremacist shit they enable? Maybe it'll teach them a lesson or two.
OK, I want to continue this a little longer because I really don't understand why interdependence means we can't have very different economic systems. If the people of Country A want to have a 30 hour work week and a robust social safety net, and the people of Country B want to have a 60 hour work week and a minimal safety net, what's wrong with that? The countries can still trade with each other. For that matter, Country C could decide to have no private enterprise, and that's fine too (if they can make it work).
I agree that innovation is not the only goal, although I do think that the advancement of knowledge is a worthy goal in itself. The opportunity for productive work and giving everyone a way to contribute to the society they live in is also a worthy goal. I'm not sure that I regard sitting around watching TV as even a worthy goal, but if someone else does, their vote counts as much as mine. The goals of society, like its economic system, are best determined democratically by the people of that society, right?
I am certainly not advocating dismantling worker protections so that we can innovate faster. Partly because it's not that important to innovate faster, and partly because dismantling worker protections wouldn't help achieve that anyway. But I do advocate letting people behave more or less as they choose, absent a compelling public interest to intervene. And I don't see any compelling public interest to intervene if I like my work and I do a lot of it. It just doesn't sound like such a bad thing.
I don't really agree with your predictions about the future of intellectual work, at least not in my lifetime. But in any case, I'm only proposing policies for today, not for the future. If in the future intellectual work disappears, we can come up with different policies to deal with that situation then. Undoubtedly we'll know a lot more about what that situation is than we do now. Right now, we live in a world of vast potential and vast unmet human needs. So there's plenty of work to keep everyone busy, if we just build an economic system that enables that. If we run out of useful work to be done, that's a different and entirely hypothetical problem.
So, I was thinking, I'll get something off my chest. No, not you, cat, although it would be helpful, too. *cough*
So, let's talk political corectness [boooo!] and globalisation. [booo!]
The problem that we have with this world is that, again, technology outpaced social progress, and we have ran out of planet to expand to. I think that's why people dream about space (but do remember, even of you have viable way to colonize something else and move millions, you'll leave billions behind). We have global communication at a speed of light, global transportation network which is cheap-ish, and fast-ish, relatively low barriers too trade, and not much more in common but the fact that we are all humans. We have no global language, no global culture, no global laws et caetera et caetera.
And here's the thing: we have to agree on the rules, because it's not like if someone will fucked up his own country
So, we have to negotiate protocol of communication, and to do it we need to compare cultural references without killing each other, and to do it it's best too look at each other and appeal to good will. And argue, within the rules of engagement.
There's few patches of wilderness here and there.
If you tell Brazil (for purpose of this exercise, assume that countries are spherical and uniform), that it has to stop clear-cutting rainforest because it is a part of global world heritage and it must be preserved, and you're Britain telling them so, expect "did you ask anyone before burning yours, and besides, you seem perfectly content to buy soybeans we grew up in place of the forest".
Barebone protocol of direct action, is to acknowledge something must be done, argue until you agree what this something is (at this point, some people will leave), agree to time and date and tools and such (some people will leave), and meet (and then do the headcount, look at the enemy, and decide if you don't want to cancel anyway. Also, if there is some crazy guy waving
Mix and match. If your upper management talks some six-sigma-kaizen-agile-whatever bullshit and factory floor talks "but it was always done this way", you have to have something in the middle to translate the lingo. Sometimes a few layers. Establish an escalation process, don't abuse it, and it will all be well. Aim for perfectness, but you'll have to stop somewhere.
Look at this pre-prepared example I made earlier. IT: assumed wisdom is that "security by obscurity" works. In military, you operate on need-to-know basis, and only top brass needs to know everything, ground grunts should take orders and
Americans feel uneasy about tales without happy ending, because they are the standing champion in the category "empire" and do not want for this to change. British don't have this problem, because they lost already. Germans were good at this game, until the rest of players agreed to change the rules and nerf them, violently. First be customary beating, then by more serious one.Then they. Russian seem grim, because shit they got through was grim and it was best too blend in, but in more private setting they are most cheerful people I know. They also have tendency to do what dear leader says, because alternative is to leave. And so on, and so on.
You have to have some kind of mirror to look into yourself, and too. Also, be wary of anyone who want to blindly deny all your requests, and take someone wh. Sometimes you have not too protest too much if natives think that you are god or king, but be sure at the same times that this doesn't mean you are not sacrifice to some larger god.
So while we're here, on this multi-generational spaceship Earth, let's just put some thought about dwindling supplies, irreplaceable parts, and need to take shared responsibility for floor sweeping, . Also, maintenance manuals were hopelessly outdated, so we're need to write down at least basic procedures and stick to it, because while we're discovered quite a few rules, it was at a high cost and it would be a shame to let all this knowledge to evaporate, and there ar . And, for fuck's sake, let's just agree to do something about that atmosphere control system we've fucked up with our exhaust gases and all the other shit we've done, instead of pointedly ignoring all those beeps, bells and whistles in hope that it will not blow on your watch.
Because from what we gathered so far, it *will* suffer failure, and it *will* result in loss of life. On heads of our crew generation hangs the decision to defer maintenance further, (and than it will be total), or act on our best knowledge now (and that maybe it will be limited). I know that the spaceship itself is in pretty bad shape, and most of it is not our fault, but if someone will find it, lifeless and drfiting, do you really want to be the idiots
General advice - learn to recognise and avoid fundamentalism, remember that authorities are not universal, and rules are to be challenged. If you have to resort to physical violence, you will suffer consequences. And do what you need for you and things important to you to survive, even if this means listening to Vogon poetry.
Well, that's it. Before I sign off, riddle me this[1]: while writing this wall of text, I was insomniac, had cough attacks, listened to Dubioza Kolektiv and had a lot of my plate at work because someone decided to expand rapidly out of the blue. I played Civilization and Simcity (but the last one), Doom. My 8-bit computer was Timex 2048, but I went to local cultural center too and used Atari (65 and 130XE, I think) and PCs with amber monitors, I was born in Poland in 1978, (but it's not my fault), work in IT, dropped out of academia twice and never finished, hate the car-centric cities while having two and half cars, love trams, like trains, have cats, like dogs, love mix-and-matching cultural references.
So there was that, thank you, thank you, I'm here until I decide to terminate it. Comment section is open for AMA[2], in which I'll answer each of your question in one simple sentence, but your . If I don't get at least three questions, I'll think that cruel word doesn't acknowledge my specialness, and kill myself. If you overwhelm the queue, it can take a while.
[2] Can we somehow get this idea out of reddit, and other good ideas, and leave them to drown in misogynist, racist, speciesist, $culture supremacist shit they enable? Maybe it'll teach them a lesson or two.
OK, I want to continue this a little longer because I really don't understand why interdependence means we can't have very different economic systems. If the people of Country A want to have a 30 hour work week and a robust social safety net, and the people of Country B want to have a 60 hour work week and a minimal safety net, what's wrong with that? The countries can still trade with each other. For that matter, Country C could decide to have no private enterprise, and that's fine too (if they can make it work).
I agree that innovation is not the only goal, although I do think that the advancement of knowledge is a worthy goal in itself. The opportunity for productive work and giving everyone a way to contribute to the society they live in is also a worthy goal. I'm not sure that I regard sitting around watching TV as even a worthy goal, but if someone else does, their vote counts as much as mine. The goals of society, like its economic system, are best determined democratically by the people of that society, right?
I am certainly not advocating dismantling worker protections so that we can innovate faster. Partly because it's not that important to innovate faster, and partly because dismantling worker protections wouldn't help achieve that anyway. But I do advocate letting people behave more or less as they choose, absent a compelling public interest to intervene. And I don't see any compelling public interest to intervene if I like my work and I do a lot of it. It just doesn't sound like such a bad thing.
I don't really agree with your predictions about the future of intellectual work, at least not in my lifetime. But in any case, I'm only proposing policies for today, not for the future. If in the future intellectual work disappears, we can come up with different policies to deal with that situation then. Undoubtedly we'll know a lot more about what that situation is than we do now. Right now, we live in a world of vast potential and vast unmet human needs. So there's plenty of work to keep everyone busy, if we just build an economic system that enables that. If we run out of useful work to be done, that's a different and entirely hypothetical problem.
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