It would not be the first time, that such a law finally passes the parliament. And it would not be the first time, that such a law is invalidated by the Federal Constitutional Court after that.
That's the problem. The draft is vaguely formulated. They seem to concentrate and take down Tor websites and "darknet admins", but the difference is nowhere mentioned, let alone acknowledged in the draft.
I skimmed through that law draft. Translation: They want you to face jail, if you provide an "internet based service", which "accessibility is restricted due to specific, technical precautionary measures", and which "purpose is to allow or encourage specific illegal actions".
They refer in particular to the Tor network and its abuse by serious crime, but how I read this law, you could apply it for all kind of things. For instance if somebody runs an encrypted IRC channel or email service. This is yet another attack on freedom in Germany thanks to the Christian Democratic Union.
Stopping to engage beyond a minimum of respect and politeness, that is, controlling their (emotional) reactions towards the client, is a standard tool of psychologists. I remember being all in tears during a session, and my therapist appeared unsettling unaffected. Instead of entering my self-pity, she appealed on my self-responsibility. It worked.
But try this to your wife. If she is clever, she will demand reinforcement. So instead of changing herself, she will just accuse you being impassive, unresponsive or insensitive.
It's one thing to have property, and another to have control over it. Also, there are enough examples for people, whose bodies are literally owned by somebody else (and enough examples for societies/structures, which tolerate, let alone promote all kinds of slaveries).
I like the idea. But speaking as a research mathematician, I cannot imagine that such a system will can be adopted in the math communities. You have quite a lot challenges to solve in this domain:
1. Only very few people actually read a certain paper. Of course it depends, but usually papers are only interesting for a handful of mathematicians world wide.
2. The access to papers is not centralized or can be controlled. You cannot know who read which paper. Often preprints are circulating via email. Published papers may be behind a pay wall.
3. How do you want to detect whether somebody really read a paper, let alone understand it?
4. Surprisingly many mathematicians are eccentric and hostile against computers (and programming). E.g. older people refuse to use new tools like LaTex and prefer TeX. I only know a few mathematicians, who use git/hg to make collaborative writing easier. Usually people emails documents back und forth instead. Cannot imagine, that a critical mass of mathematicians starts logging into some fancy new app. I also suspect that many people don't want to be tracked for what they read. After all, research is competitive.
Cannot speak about other research communities though.
Fully agree. Also the rest of the article has questionable advice. I doubt the helpfulness of later lists and anti todo lists. Not answering the phone or pretending to be incompetent sounds like an idiotic idea too.
> Decarbonizing the economy will be difficult, but it must be done.
Nothing like that is going to happen, as it didn't in the past. To this day we are on straightaway on the "business as usual" trajectory, which ends in collaps. See also
No, never had mentioned problems. I'm using Debian GNU/Linux exclusively since 10 years on various computers, and most of the time it just worked seamlessly. But usually I run older hardware. If I buy something new, I first assure myself about the Linux capability of the box.
It is true that our current system is basically build around growth.
But I find the resource leak bug metaphor of the article gravely lacking.
The problem isn't solely, that resources are allocated and not released afterwards. The problem of our time is transforming resources irreversibly into (toxic) waste at a breath-taking pace.
I also don't see alienation, complexity and bloat inherently as a problem. Not sure what to take from the article. It seems to be written from somebody, whose software-centric world view has himself alienated from reality. Especially the conclusion, that the input of hackers might particularly valuable for the "reconstruction" of civilization, due to their experiences with software bugs, reveals the author's déformation professionnelle.
Finding a mentor. Learning the craft from somebody, who started developing with Fortran and served 40 years in the trenches since then, is weight in gold for me.
One of the vaccines you want to get first, is against tetanus. It's a horrible disease. Also, speaking as a German, who is going to pay the bill? Is there any health insurance in the US, which is covering such a case?
Indeed, propositions are a bit vague. I've read many papers, which didn't use propositions at all. Then again there are papers, where propositions are heavily used, or randomly distributed. In my own work I try to avoid it. I rather would distinguish between "main theorem" and "theorem", then between "theorem" and "proposition".
I don't know where you come from and what your background is, but where I live, contact to the (average) people is not that bad. It turns out that my inner emotional state has the most impact on my ability on interacting with people. If I'm in a good mood, I can be charming, curious and cheerful. If I'm irritated... not so much. So I suggest to first keep yourself in a good mood. In my case, sleep is my most important mood factor. Second, you can try a bunch of tricks like smiling, genuinely listening, asking curious questions. Humor and irony can help to ease the conversation, sarcasm to round somebody. I think your basic idea to make it for both as pleasant as possible, is on the right track. It just needs a little training in both introspective and empathy. Also, instead to indulge yourself in avoidance behavior, try to open up and confront yourself with people. It won't get better without practice.
> That is what I mean by a false dichotomy. It's not just that life involves both randomness and selection, but that they are not opposed things.
Ok but I don't see why the just world fallacy is a false dichotomy. It is precisely a fallacy, because people don't acknowledge randomness and selection.
> People who stand against meritocracy are the people who have never even reached average talent.
Or just people, who experience(d) a highly competitive environment, where excellent performance doesn't imply advancement, and advancement was often preluded by average performance.
I had to use R in previous times, to analyze time series. It was a huge pain in the ass. It is more fun to write a GNU makefile, then trying to learn the arcane logic behind R's interface. Kudos for anybody, who tries to soothe that pain.
Belief in meritocracy is yet another version of the just-world fallacy. If you belief in a just world, you need to fight off any counter evidence. This leads automatically to discrimination. Same thing with merits and success. To not acknowledge happenstance and luck is a huge red flag for me.
Speaking as a mathematician, for me it is: It boils down to choosing a proper probability space. After that, you have the full force of probability theory on hand. Of course it's not always simple or obvious, how to choose your model. If that is the point, the article tries to make, I agree.
This doesn't surprise me. PhD students remain in a vulnerable position. They are not only intelligent and sensible, but also often exploited by the hierarchy and underpaid. The cynic in me sees the whole procedure of academic ordination as a kind of humiliating ponzi scheme, based on effort justification and the sunk cost fallacy.
I agree, but population growth continued, technology advance continued, wealth accumulated. There was no necessity to doubt on the superiority of mankind (those doubts increased after WW2, facing nuclear annihilation).
Now, in the worst case, climate change will lead to a massive population die-off on a global scale, due to starvation, drought and wars. And stall any progress in technology, wealth, society and culture, due to negative feedback loops, which are discovered gradually. This will finally crush the narrative of the superior man, which we all grew up with. I think the psychological effect of experiencing the limits of growth for the first time in modern history, is completely underrated. After WW1, people knew what mechanized slaughter is. After WW2, people realized the holocaust and the balance of terror. During climate change, people will experience the end of growth and expansion on a global scale, which formed the human mindset of the last 3000 years.
Acceptance criteria in the CS department of my alma mater is on a scale of 3-4 peer peer-reviewed papers, accepted in some journals. I would also be careful about what the point of research might be. The most important purpose of a PhD student is to produce a thesis in a foreseeable future, to qualify himself for scientific work. The success of the thesis depends on the advisor(s), and later the department and the reviewers. Thus, it's important to choose a topic, which is NOT an ultimate dead end. Even if your topic leads to a successful thesis, it might be a dead end later on. Because your advisor has no network, or because nobody is interested in your results etc. And even if you can continue with research, you are rather occupied with fund raising, networking and marketing. If I had to do a PhD again, I would try to figure out as fast as possible what is expected to do in the specific configuration I'm in, and then try to minimize all obstacles and distractions which might be in the way (teaching, assistance for the prof, fund raising, conferences etc). After that, if your're are lucky, you have 1-2 years left to write down your stuff.
Can only speak from the perspective of a long-term relationship. In my experience, one has to actively schedule it. Else it's one of the first things, which get sacrificed in the daily churn. As a ground rule: quantity over quality. You should do it even if you are too tired or not in the mood. Make an appointment, if necessary.