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hkmaly

Story, Wednesday March 7, 2018

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8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Even not actively favored, just not suffering makes harder to see reason to rush.

Meaning, we lack anyone capable to evaluate it fairly. It's hard to find middle ground when noone is standing on it.

It is like some of the current political dialogue. Nazis advocate that Jews, genderqueer people, the disabled and people of colour should all be exterminated to preserve the purity of the human race. Jews, genderqueer people, the disabled and people of colour all want to be not exterminated and to live in peace. And thoughtful individuals not personally threatened by the Nazis are of the opinion that a middle ground should be found yet strangely the targets of the Nazis do not agree. The world is truly strange.

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15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

To try ... or to publish it? :)

Of course. Next time it will possibly be just 200 attempts. I don't think we are READY to try on humans.

... of course, there were lot of researchers who didn't waited until being ready. Some even succeed.

You've covered about any reply I could make...

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1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

You've covered about any reply I could make...

I agree 100%. Mind you, I personally feel an urge to at least attempt to do the math before doing something dangerous, like trying heavier-than-air flight by jumping off a cliff. This may stem from my conviction that the Wright brothers did a good deal of theory before building their aircraft.

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1 minute ago, The Old Hack said:

I agree 100%. Mind you, I personally feel an urge to at least attempt to do the math before doing something dangerous, like trying heavier-than-air flight by jumping off a cliff. This may stem from my conviction that the Wright brothers did a good deal of theory before building their aircraft.

And gilder testing.  And inventing the wind tunnel...

Just jumping off a cliff straight away?  To quote Zaphod Beeblebrox, "!0 out of 10 for style but minus several million for clear thinking"

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Just now, Vorlonagent said:

Just jumping off a cliff straight away?  To quote Zaphod Beeblebrox, "!0 out of 10 for style but minus several million for clear thinking"

Mind you, in exactly Hitchhiker's, the secret to unpowered human flight was to throw yourself at the ground -- and miss.

Nonetheless, I'd hesitate before trying that in the real world. :icon_eek:

1 minute ago, Vorlonagent said:

And gilder testing.  And inventing the wind tunnel...

I know, right? Cheaters. :P

It is amazing how useful a little math can be. I wish I had had fewer idiots for math teachers in school, I might have learned some more.

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Just now, The Old Hack said:

Mind you, in exactly Hitchhiker's, the secret to unpowered human flight was to throw yourself at the ground -- and miss.

Nonetheless, I'd hesitate before trying that in the real world. :icon_eek:

The Guide does state that missing is the hard part...

1 minute ago, The Old Hack said:

I know, right? Cheaters. :P

It is amazing how useful a little math can be. I wish I had had fewer idiots for math teachers in school, I might have learned some more.

It's one of those rare "proud to be an American" moments.  Not that the airplane is listed as a US invention but that a couple of nobody bike shop owners from middle-America beat university professors and other better-funded world luminaries to powered flight.  One of the US signature attitudes is that regular people rock and elites and elitism is overrated.  The Wrights are a case in point.

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2 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

The Guide does state that missing is the hard part...

This is true. I think I would hesitate to attempt it even within the confines of the esteemed Mr. Adams' own universe.

3 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

It's one of those rare "proud to be an American" moments.  Not that the airplane is listed as a US invention but that a couple of nobody bike shop owners from middle-America beat university professors and other better-funded world luminaries to powered flight.  One of the US signature attitudes is that regular people rock and elites and elitism is overrated.  The Wrights are a case in point.

I would take it even further. I would say that elites and elitism are both actively harmful. They accept members regardless of the actual quality in many cases and in others keep extremely talented people out based on some irrelevant criteria of family, social standing, gender, sexual orientation and so forth. In Danish schools working class children were discouraged from seeking scientific or artistic occupations because they weren't good enough. It took most of the 20th Century to beat this attitude even partly down.

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22 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

I would take it even further. I would say that elites and elitism are both actively harmful. They accept members regardless of the actual quality in many cases and in others keep extremely talented people out based on some irrelevant criteria of family, social standing, gender, sexual orientation and so forth. In Danish schools working class children were discouraged from seeking scientific or artistic occupations because they weren't good enough. It took most of the 20th Century to beat this attitude even partly down.

"There you go, Dennis, bringing class into it again..."

Elitism is a creeping crud that the US currently has entirely too much of.

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That's why I always found it ironic when people accuse Mensa of being elitist.  They have *one* criteria for membership -- scoring in the top 2% of any one of a number of intelligence tests, or high enough in their own admission test.  Given how many tests are on the list, it's probably more like 5% of the population could get in if they wanted to.  And that's *it*.  No matter what race, creed, color, class, income, social skills, popularity, personal demeanor, weight, disability, or any other factor.  The president of my hometown chapter, in the same town as a prestigious university, was the guy who drove the bus I took home from high school.  It's a club for people who have one particular thing in common, being good at certain types of thinking, but otherwise it's one of the most diverse pools of membership anywhere.  I know my body type would keep me out of soccer clubs or running clubs, and I never see them called elitist!

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Too often I hear speakers use the phrase "Elite" to describe individuals or groups who have earned the admiration or respect of others, but with whom the speaker (or the speaker's audience) disagrees.

I'm not elitist.  I just think I would be a better President of the US than my elitist opponents.

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16 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Jews, genderqueer people, the disabled and people of colour all want to be not exterminated and to live in peace. And thoughtful individuals not personally threatened by the Nazis are of the opinion that a middle ground should be found yet strangely the targets of the Nazis do not agree.

I'm not sure why. Obviously, the middle ground includes Jews, genderqueer people, the disabled and people of colour to not be exterminated, but I really don't understand why they should have greater right to live in peace than the nonthreatened people.

(Oversimplifying situation is "great" way how to avoid serious discussion. Luckily, even your oversimplification left me way out. Of course, serious discussion about this is out of topic here, but even in extreme cases like Nazis versus Jews giving one side everything they want just because their feeling of being persecuted is justified is NOT the way to reach equality. In fact, in this case it's already confirmed by what happened AFTER Jews got too much of what they wanted. On the other hand, yes, preventing extermination of one side is something which needs to be done quickly and not patiently wait it out.)

4 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

It is amazing how useful a little math can be. I wish I had had fewer idiots for math teachers in school, I might have learned some more.

Wouldn't help. If noone would show up instead of the teacher, you wouldn't learn anything either. Unless you already had a great teacher and he was taking turns with the idiots, what you really should wish for is at least one non-idiot teacher.

4 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

I would say that elites and elitism are both actively harmful. They accept members regardless of the actual quality

... might have something to do with how hard it is to recognize actual quality. Often it doesn't happen until years after that person death, which is usually too late to grant him membership of anything.

1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

They have *one* criteria for membership -- scoring in the top 2% of any one of a number of intelligence tests, or high enough in their own admission test.  Given how many tests are on the list, it's probably more like 5% of the population could get in if they wanted to.  And that's *it*.

Actually you mentioned *two* criteria. High enough score and wanting in. Granted, it's pretty hard to get rid of that second criteria, but there are lot of people who would score high enough but are not members because they don't see the point of it.

 

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6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Actually you mentioned *two* criteria. High enough score and wanting in. Granted, it's pretty hard to get rid of that second criteria, but there are lot of people who would score high enough but are not members because they don't see the point of it.

Where Mensa is concerned, I am of the Groucho Marx school of membership. I'd never join a club that would sink so low as to allow me into it.

Admittedly this is pure Danish prejudice born of the Jante Law. The very concept of Mensa is just a little bit odious to most Danes. And to be perfectly truthful, objectively speaking that doesn't make Mensa bad, it just makes Danes snobbish.

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17 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Admittedly this is pure Danish prejudice born of the Jante Law.

Sounds very harmful. However, I don't think it's pure Danish. Unless you want to say that Danish perfected it, but ... wouldn't that contraindicate that law?

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2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Sounds very harmful. However, I don't think it's pure Danish. Unless you want to say that Danish perfected it, but ... wouldn't that contraindicate that law?

It is not limited to Danes; it merely defines some of our principal traits. The list was meant as a highly critical deconstruction of Danish society and comes from some of that literature I so passionately despise. But there is a great deal of truth to it.

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On 3/7/2018 at 3:25 PM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

I really wanted super-calm Ashley to join the cast.

I think this may be because my mom was a Perry Como fan.

But that could be such a useful superpower.  She could walk into a hospital, prison, hurricane shelter, refugee camp, or theatre showing Ragnarok, and keep the patients, inmates, and victims from becoming an unruly mob.

Unless, of course, the initial crowd consisted of kangaroos.

If she walked into that unruly mob of kangaroos and used that power, they'd be a ruly mob of kangaroos.

On 3/8/2018 at 5:01 PM, Vorlonagent said:

I think it is inevitable.  The US "melting pot" has done it for previous racial and cultural divisions.  There's no reason why it won't work with women and the current set of protected minorities.  The big difference is the current set are trying a different strategy.  For reasons you state, that strategy may not be successful.  If not successful, equality may not occur until sometime after failure is understood, accepted and some other approach emerges.  maybe even what worked before.

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11 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Where Mensa is concerned, I am of the Groucho Marx school of membership. I'd never join a club that would sink so low as to allow me into it.

Admittedly this is pure Danish prejudice born of the Jante Law. The very concept of Mensa is just a little bit odious to most Danes. And to be perfectly truthful, objectively speaking that doesn't make Mensa bad, it just makes Danes snobbish.

Reminds me of something I read about surveys to determine which nations have the happiest people. Denmark usually scores near the top. Japan likewise scores near the bottom. The US is somewhere in the middle. This is somehow supposed to prove that the amount of socialism that Denmark has makes people happier than the lesser amount that the US has, ignoring the fact that Japan is also more socialist than the US is.

But also ignoring that in Danish culture expressing dissatisfaction with one's life in general is looked down upon as antisocial complaining, while in Japanese culture expressing satisfaction with one's life in general is looked down on as antisocial boasting. And in the US both behaviors are accepted to some degree. Failure to account for such cultural differences means that no meaningful conclusions whatsoever can be drawn from the survey results.

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6 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

Reminds me of something I read about surveys to determine which nations have the happiest people. Denmark usually scores near the top. Japan likewise scores near the bottom. The US is somewhere in the middle. This is somehow supposed to prove that the amount of socialism that Denmark has makes people happier than the lesser amount that the US has, ignoring the fact that Japan is also more socialist than the US is.

I always did wonder about that kind of survey. My problem with it was twofold: one, that happiness is such a nebulous thing that I have NO idea of how to quantify it -- seriously, how do you do that? Pour it into a cup and weigh it? And two, I wonder how much good this sort of thing did for unhappy people in the 'winning' countries. It was like they were essentially being told, "Shut up, you live in a 'good' country so you don't get to have an opinion."

I think that instead of trying to measure something that is essentially an argument about the weight of a shadow you should focus a bit more on hard numbers. Number of alcoholics and those dependent on them. It is a safe bet that they probably aren't happy. Number of homeless people. Number of sick people. And so forth. And even that won't yield accurate numbers as they will only be able to detect physical causes that prevent the possibility of happiness. So frankly speaking, don't ask me, I don't know how to do this shit either.

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32 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

I always did wonder about that kind of survey. My problem with it was twofold: one, that happiness is such a nebulous thing that I have NO idea of how to quantify it -- seriously, how do you do that? Pour it into a cup and weigh it? And two, I wonder how much good this sort of thing did for unhappy people in the 'winning' countries. It was like they were essentially being told, "Shut up, you live in a 'good' country so you don't get to have an opinion."

I think that instead of trying to measure something that is essentially an argument about the weight of a shadow you should focus a bit more on hard numbers. Number of alcoholics and those dependent on them. It is a safe bet that they probably aren't happy. Number of homeless people. Number of sick people. And so forth. And even that won't yield accurate numbers as they will only be able to detect physical causes that prevent the possibility of happiness. So frankly speaking, don't ask me, I don't know how to do this shit either.

There's still a lot of factors to control for.  And that's before the possibility of bias rears its head.  

The things I'd look for in developed countries would be return on various advertising strategies.  Are strategies that appeal to the unhappy more or less successful?  Especially useful if the same ad campaign is localized into a number of different countries.

Also take advantage of the ubiquity of Google.  People type the craziest things into google's search bar.  Sometimes their darkest fears and angriest feelings.  It's as if Google is the confessor of the 21st century.  I just use it for searches myself...

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1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

This is somehow supposed to prove that the amount of socialism that Denmark has makes people happier than the lesser amount that the US has

... which suggests that getting real results was not in interest of people presenting the survey.

Also, seriously, just because something makes Danes happy doesn't mean it will make Americans happy as well.

43 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

The things I'd look for in developed countries would be return on various advertising strategies.  Are strategies that appeal to the unhappy more or less successful?  Especially useful if the same ad campaign is localized into a number of different countries.

... advertise strategies appealing to the unhappy? What about looking at how many anti-depressives is sold directly?

 

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10 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

... advertise strategies appealing to the unhappy? What about looking at how many anti-depressives is sold directly?

because the only medication more over-perspectibed than antidepressants is ADHD meds..

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38 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Also, seriously, just because something makes Danes happy doesn't mean it will make Americans happy as well.

If Inger Støjberg got sacked, kicked out of Parliament and sent down to Den Haag to stand trial for crimes against humanity, I would party for at least a week. But I freely admit I wouldn't expect the American populace to care very much.

40 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

... advertise strategies appealing to the unhappy? What about looking at how many anti-depressives is sold directly?

Because antidepressants have nothing whatsoever to do with happiness. That is sheer superstition. It is medication prescribed for a biochemical imbalance in the brain that causes depression. It allows those who suffer from clinical depression (such as me) to operate at a level much closer to normal. It takes the edge off the worst depressive episodes so I, for example, don't actively contemplate suicide. What it doesn't do is make me happy. In order to be happy, I need something in my life that would, say, make people who AREN'T subject to depression happy.

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20 hours ago, The Old Hack said:
21 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... advertise strategies appealing to the unhappy? What about looking at how many anti-depressives is sold directly?

Because antidepressants have nothing whatsoever to do with happiness. That is sheer superstition.

My point was supposed to be that it's superstition shared by quite lot of people buying them.

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9 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

My point was supposed to be that it's superstition shared by quite lot of people buying them.

If they can do that where you live, then your laws are criminally lax. In Denmark the only way to buy antidepressants is with a doctor's prescription. And ordinary doctors in Denmark will decline to write prescriptions for this kind of drug if there hasn't been a psychiatrist involved initially and judged the use of such medication necessary.

And superstitions are all well and good (or bad) but I entirely fail to see what they have to do with the level of happiness anywhere, save possibly indirectly.

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2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

If they can do that where you live, then your laws are criminally lax. In Denmark the only way to buy antidepressants is with a doctor's prescription. And ordinary doctors in Denmark will decline to write prescriptions for this kind of drug if there hasn't been a psychiatrist involved initially and judged the use of such medication necessary.

The same holds true for ADD/ADHD meds, but people still frequently declare that they're overprescribed.  Oddly enough, such declarations are almost never made be the people who actually have a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD and need those meds in order to function, or by the family and teachers who have seen what a difference the meds can make in peoples' lives.

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2 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

The same holds true for ADD/ADHD meds, but people still frequently declare that they're overprescribed.  Oddly enough, such declarations are almost never made be the people who actually have a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD and need those meds in order to function, or by the family and teachers who have seen what a difference the meds can make in peoples' lives.

This has been true of medicine as long as it has existed. The opinions of those directly involved don't count. I remember reading about how Dr. Semmelweiss became the laughingstock of medical professionals in Austria because he recommended that you start washing your hands before assisting with births. He had learned this from observing midwives deliver babies, noticed that the fatality rate in births they oversaw was much lower and determined that it was the hand washing and clean environment that made the difference. This was clearly ridiculous because he had learned it from women and after all, what do women know about giving birth?

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3 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

If they can do that where you live, then your laws are criminally lax.

I wouldn't be surprised. However, I also though that it's possible in US.

1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

The same holds true for ADD/ADHD meds, but people still frequently declare that they're overprescribed.  Oddly enough, such declarations are almost never made be the people who actually have a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD and need those meds in order to function, or by the family and teachers who have seen what a difference the meds can make in peoples' lives.

Seeing one person with ADD/ADHD who needs those meds to function doesn't mean everyone taking them really needs them. In ideal world, doctors would responsibly and reliably evaluate patient's condition and prescribe the meds based on that. In our world, not every doctor is responsible and even the ones who are might misdiagnose psychiatric condition.

It's weird how the consumption of drugs rises; there should be some reason why our generation needs so much of them while the previous lived fine with less, shouldn't it? (In reality, there is likely SEVERAL reasons, combined with fact that the previous generations might not live as fine.)

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