Scientists say the darndest things. Especially, when you quote them out of context or don’t pay attention to cultural context.
This just came out: People Aren’t Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say
Of course, it’s only true in the US of A. (Sic!)
=> Dunning–Kruger effect => Cross-cultural variation
…and the opposite is true in Asia.
In 2010, I argued:
“From psychological distance grows the tragedy of the commons. None of us are willing to act responsibly, because the responsibility is distant or shared.”
As it happens, this is indeed the case:
Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to win the Nobel in Economics earlier this week (2009). Her work refuting the “Tragedy of the Commons” validates basic anarchist and Left Libertarian principles. For those of us trying to look beyond the magic of the market and the inherent problems with government regulation her work provides some great insight into what successful management of the commons takes.
Short HOWTO is waiting for you here.
References:
This is what it’s about.
Piotr Czerski: We, the Web Kids.
…Our view of the social structure is different from yours: society is a network, not a hierarchy…
… We do not feel a religious respect for ‘institutions of democracy’ in their current form, we do not believe in their axiomatic role, as do those who see ‘institutions of democracy’ as a monument for and by themselves. We do not need monuments. We need a system that will live up to our expectations, a system that is transparent and proficient. And we have learned that change is possible: that every uncomfortable system can be replaced and is replaced by a new one, one that is more efficient, better suited to our needs, giving more opportunities.
What we value the most is freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of access to information and to culture. We feel that it is thanks to freedom that the Web is what it is, and that it is our duty to protect that freedom. We owe that to next generations, just as much as we owe to protect the environment.
Perhaps we have not yet given it a name, perhaps we are not yet fully aware of it, but I guess what we want is real, genuine democracy. Democracy that, perhaps, is more than is dreamt of in your journalism.
Vastauksena keskusteluun: Yritysten yhteiskuntavastuu ja alihankinta Kiinasta: Onko iPhonen ostaminen eettisesti hyvä valinta?
Onneksi tää keskustelu päättyi niinkin hyvin kuin tämä Frankin viimeinen kirjoitus. Suurella tuskalla selasin tuota alkua ja katselin, että voi herran tähden, ei voi noin fiksut kaverit olla noin yössä näissä asioissa. Suurin osa asioista mistä yllä puhuttiin oli vaan oireista puhumista.
Eräs asia mikä pitäisi pikimmiten tajuta on tämä: maailmassa on kahdenlaisia suuria toimijoita, valtioita ja yrityksiä. Molemmat toimijat muodostuvat loppuviimein ihmisistä. Hallintomalleja on demokratiasta diktatuuriin ja valtiopuolella jonkinlainen vesitetty kansanvalta puolustaa vielä jonkinlaista sijaa, mutta se on huomattavasti harvinaisempi yrityksissä.
Lopulta jokainen toimija pyrkii hyvinvointiin omalta kannaltaan. Hallintomuodosta riippuen hyvinvointi voi tarkoittaa kansalaisten, työntekijöiden, omistajien, johtajien, alihankkijoiden, kuluttajien, jne. hyvinvointia tai jonkinlaista – usein hyvin painottunutta – hybridiä näistä.
Tämä on yksi avain asiaan ja Frank on nimenomaan asian ytimessä nähdessään, että yritysten kansalaiset, aka työntekijät ja omistajat voivat olla asiassa merkittävässä roolissa rakentamassa parempaa huomista. Systeemisesti vain voiton maksimointiin tähtäävä kilpailutalous tosin asettaa tälle toiminnalle raamit ja vain hyvää tekevä yritys helposti ajautuu elinkelvottomaan tilaan markkinoiden eloonjääntikamppailussa. Näin ollen markkinoiden villi länsi itsessään synnyttää epäeettisesti tuotettuja tuotteita ja on kyseenalaista kaikenkaikkiaan, että voidaanko nykysysteemillä ensinkään tehokkaasti puuttua moniin ylläolevassa mainittuihin oireisiin sen paremmin kuin Länsiväylän kierrättämisellä ympäristökysymyksiin.
Jos niitä keinoja on, ne löytyy vaikuttamisen kautta suurissa toimijoissa – valtioissa ja yrityksissä.
Kysytään nyt vielä, että kumpi on parempi kuluttajan peliliike: a) ostaa Niken lenkkarit vai b) ostaa XYZ lenkkarit ja antaa väliin jäävä summa Greenpeacelle?
Mitä sitten tulee Appleen, mun ehdottomasti suurin gripe sen suhteen on Steve Jobs. Jos nimittäin näkee paralleelin valtioiden ja yritysten välillä, niin Jobsin johtama Apple oli malliesimerkki fasistisesti johdetusta yritysvaltiosta. Ne jotka fanittaa kovasti Applea ja Jobsia voi nyt ehkä sitten omakohtaisesti havaita minkälainen fiilis niillä oli, jotka kovasti on fanittanut muita diktaattoreja historian saatossa.
We must learn from the past and this is the single web page you really, really need to read. If you have any interest in having a better world, this is about the most important must-read material I have ever come across.
“There was a time when Scandinavian workers didn’t expect that the electoral arena could deliver the change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change.”
So go at it => https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/26-3
Now that Google has been declared evil it is a good time to think about your privacy online. There are many ways to go about it, here is one:
I thought no-one in the world would still like to use Xchat, but maybe I was wrong. I now have skype, twitter and two jabber accounts in Xchat through bitlbee. To get the auto-login to work right w/this somewhat exotic scenario, look no further: take this nice script and run: xchat-hacks.pl. (It isn’t mine and I’m grateful to the author.)
All you need to do is to place the script in your ~/.xchat2/ directory and to add a file called ‘waider.conf’ into that directory w/the contents:
[bitlbee]
password='YOURPASS'
That’s basically it. If you want additional irc-commands, you need to hack the script. Search for ‘bitlbee’ in the script if you want to add actions to your bitlbee autologin. Perhaps you want to start a chat automatically w/a good friend:
IRC::command( “/query good_friend_nick”);
,or whatever you like. :-)
BTW: To get this thing to generally work, you need install skyped, bitlbee and configure them both. It will take a bit of effort, google around to figure out how it goes.
Today I needed to convert loads of .rtf files to .html files so that one could use gwrite instead of wordpad: unrtf_tree.sh.
Once again the local mainstream media failing us, I have to use my blog to report about this: Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas. There can be no doubt anymore that the Clathrate Gun is firing. And it’s been firing for a while.
I don’t think anyone of us really knows what will happen, but scenarios like hell and high water are certainly not out of the picture. There are even estimates that the mankind will be extinct by 2039. Feel free to criticize the writer: The Last 11,000 Days. I have to say that I don’t have the competency to do so, but from what I can tell from other sources, we might really be royally fucked:
The Great Dying could have been caused by “sudden release of methane clathrate from the sea floor”
“It was the Earth’s most severe extinction event, with up to 96% of all marine species[3] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct.[4] It is the only known mass extinction of insects.[5][6] Some 57% of all families and 83% of all genera were killed. Because so much biodiversity was lost, the recovery of life on Earth took significantly longer than after other extinction events.[3] This event has been described as the “mother of all mass extinctions.”[7]“
There is really little more left to say. For once, I wish there was a god we could pray to. It might well be that our other options are exhausted. Be it as it may, none of us really know what’s going to happen. The mechanisms that will be started or stopped by what is going on right now are something that we know little about. Some say we may be facing an ice age, others fear that the entire atmosphere will vaporize into space and Earth will end up like Venus, which probably had a runaway climate change, as well.
As any software developer knows, there comes a time for every program. A time to throw it away or to write it from scratch again. As others have noted, software programs evolve like organisms. They become insanely complex at some point and there seems to be few proper methods to stop this from happening. And boy, have we tried.
The problem w/organically growing non-organic organisms is that they don’t necessarily die. Biological organisms do – and from what I can tell, that is a true blessing in disguise. A wise developer always thinks what we can live w/o and understands that every line of code is a liability. What you don’t write, can’t fail in testing or cause a shuttle to fly into the sun. What you can remove, won’t be there the next time you come around to confuse you.
But this is not true only for software! We tend to think that this is a fundamental problem in programming, but the truth of the matter is that this is a fundamental problem, period. To give you an example that my good friend just pointed out to me, the handbook of personal taxation in Finland is 880 pages long! In Estonia, taxation, for now, is very simple. Just a few rules and that’s it. Sounds a lot like software – give it time and it grows into a monster.
The same is, w/o a doubt, true for most rules and regulations and you all out there should make it your personal quest to fight this. All rules, regulations and laws should be made as simple as possible. This would reduce the amount of work that is wasted on part of many different parties and as an added bonus, there would be no tax loopholes to exploit. Any proper programmer can tell you that taking care of the functionality and the security of a wildly large program becomes impossible. At a certain point, the complexity just cannot be maintained and the same is equally true for rules and regulations.
To keep it short and sweet, I just propose this to be yet another fundamental pattern.