Tag: commented

The Perils of Thinking Like an Individual

Preferring common sense over abstract economic theory or unreliable historical data may seem like, well, common sense. But there’s another problem with placing too much faith in common sense — namely that although everyone thinks they know what it is, they often invoke it to reach wildly divergent conclusions. And because when something is a matter of common sense it is considered beyond dispute, these disagreements can be extraordinarily difficult to reconcile — as current political debates illustrate.

Source: The Perils of Thinking Like an Individual

 

-OR- The problem with complex topics that most people aren’t educated well enough to understand sufficiently but are still expected to interact with intelligently (e.g. voting on big socioeconomic issues, taking care of one’s own health, properly caring for the environment…).

Missouri Hedges On ‘Teachers Can’t Friend Students’ Law – Slashdot

Missouri senators took a step Wednesday toward repealing a contentious new law limiting online conversations between teachers and students, but stirred opposition from the governor by still attempting to mandate that schools adopt their own policies about online chats and text messages. The action by the Senate Education Committee comes a couple of weeks after a Missouri judge blocked the new law on teacher-Internet communications from taking effect because of concerns it infringes on free-speech rights.

Source: Missouri Hedges On ‘Teachers Can’t Friend Students’ Law – Slashdot

RE: Missouri Law: Teachers and Students Can’t Be Facebook Friends – TIME

 

Are teachers so distrusted that we must have laws denying contact between them and students after-hours?

Then why are we willing to let teachers spend multiple hours alone with our children, unsupervised except by the other children?

Bandwidth caps are rate hikes

Provisioning is what ISPs call the amount of Internet backbone capacity they buy per subscriber. This number is always less than the amount of bandwidth we think we are buying because most of the time Internet connections aren’t used at all and ISPs count on this to keep costs under control. If you are buying an 8 megabit-per-second connection from your ISP, he in turn provisions you with around 50 kilobits-per-second of backbone. This data arbitrage is part of what makes being a broadband ISP so profitable.

Source: I, Cringely Bandwidth caps are rate hikes – I, Cringely

and his follow-up article:

The fact is there’s class warfare taking place between big and small business not just on the Internet but everywhere.

In the conflict between big and small I tend to come down on the side of small. We’re recovering from the worst recession in a generation and big companies aren’t doing a damn thing to help. They don’t pay taxes, they don’t create jobs, they don’t spend money, and as a result the economy is under-stimulated. Large U.S. corporations have restructured themselves to avoid taxation, they see their primary function as increasing productivity which means decreasing employment, they have their highest profits ever and are sitting on $2 trillion in cash that they aren’t going to spend.

Source: I, Cringely Internet Class Warfare – I, Cringely

 

I’d encourage any readers to check out out the longer, better thought-out comments questioning the demographic, geographic, and infrastructure differences that may or may not account for stuff in here. The second article also shows more clearly the bias of the author.

Scott Adams on the Benefits of Boredom – WSJ

Is constant stimulation hurting our creativity—and the economy? The “Dilbert” creator on his dull childhood and the power of tedium.

Source: Scott Adams on the Benefits of Boredom – WSJ

 

If boredom breeds imagination breeds disappointment, then will the newest generation of never-bored, never-interesting people also be harder to disappoint because they never bother to imagine how much better the world could be?

Great People Are Overrated

Last month, in an article in the New York Times on the ever-escalating “war for talent” in Silicon Valley, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a passing comment that has become the entrepreneurial equivalent of a verbal tick — something that’s said all the time, almost without thinking.

“Someone who is exceptional in their role is not just a little better than someone who is pretty good,” he argued when asked why he was willing to pay $47 million to acquire FriendFeed, a price that translated to about $4 million per employee. “They are 100 times better.”

Source: Great People Are Overrated

 

That’s nice and all, but in the real world the people writing the paychecks get to decide that. I’d argue this is as much psychological as anything else.

  • If you are being massively overpaid, then you probably think you deserve it.
  • If you deserve to be compensated like a demigod, then obviously you are special (since most people barely get compensated as human labor).
  • If you are so special as to be worth wads of cash, then there may exist other such special people who are also worth wads of cash (though less than yourself, of course).

On the flip side, if you are mediocre (or believe that society at large sees you as mediocre, as measured by your paycheck), then you may well see the great mass of humanity more similar to you and are more likely to see those with standout paychecks as undeserving of them.

In short, the star earner is more likely to see their personal effort as the driver of their paycheck whereas a commoner is more likely to see the lucky breaks as the driver, IMHO.