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ktizoon I went to the mall, and a little girl called me a terrorist.

So you are saying that if you are uncomfortable with your experience of discrimination then you should change your appearance to appease your persecutor?

Do you make this crap up yourself, or does it get sent to you through the mail as part of your subscription to Batshit Monthly?

ktizoon I went to the mall, and a little girl called me a terrorist.

Just because a utility function can be defined for a given perspective doesn't mean that it automatically makes sense from within that perspective, given that defining a utility function is choosing to view things from an economic perspective and even in economics there is a difference of opinion of what that actually means, with some economists viewing it as something abstract that is only used to discuss more fundamental things and with others saying that utility functions are in themselves fundamental.

Saying that utility functions are the "what there is to life", is a bit like 42 being the answer to life, the universe and everything in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What meaning you can draw depends totally on what question you are asking, or what perspective you are looking at it from.

For instance, if you are a squirrel, then an economist might be able to calculate a utility function for your behaviour, however the concept of utility functions themselves have no bearing (as far as we know) on "what there is to life" from the squirrel's perspective.

ktizoon I went to the mall, and a little girl called me a terrorist.

If you have walked a mile in someone else's shoes, you can then say whatever you like. For one thing, you are now a mile away, and for another, you also have their shoes.

(Not meaning to make light of what was an excellent post. Is just that I read your edit, and I thought you might be cheered up by sillyness.)

ktizoon I went to the mall, and a little girl called me a terrorist.

Only from a very narrow set of perspectives. There are many perspectives on life and for many of them a 'utility function' would seem nonsensical at best. Economics is not as all-encompassing a discipline as some people would like to make out.

ktizoon I went to the mall, and a little girl called me a terrorist.

Perhaps there is a bit more to life than a 'utility function'.

ktizoon I went to the mall, and a little girl called me a terrorist.

I'm not sure I agree with that saying. There would seem to be overwhelming evidence against it for one thing.

ktizoon I went to the mall, and a little girl called me a terrorist.

The complexion doesn't matter, they are religions, not ethnicities. Also you are likely to get an even bigger reaction as you would probably then be viewed by some people as some kind of traitor.

ktizoon I went to the mall, and a little girl called me a terrorist.

If I were a muslim girl getting discriminated against for wearing a hijab, I'd stop wearing the hijab.

So you would, I guess, also suggest that Sikhs should stop wearing turbans, Jews should stop wearing a kippah, nuns should stop wearing habits, pagans should stop wearing pentangles, etc.

Not only is your suggestion frankly both offensive and pretty idiotic, but the world it would lead to would have even more discrimination than now and be a hell of a lot more boring.

ktizoon Bay Area sheriff seeks drone for thermal imaging and surveillance

No, just arguing against your suggestion that they are not crimes if they are not detected by straightforward means.

If someone detects a murder by extremely technological means, say while using muons from cosmic rays to image though a structure like they are doing at Fukashima at the moment http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v109/i15/e152501, then that murder is still a crime whatever the method of detection.

Now it is reasonable to argue that growing weed should not be a crime in the first place, but to argue that growing it indoors should not be a crime on the basis of the level of technology required to detect it, does not seem to make any sort of sense.

ktizoon Bay Area sheriff seeks drone for thermal imaging and surveillance

If you can reliably recognise a given drone's rf, you could probably make one that homes in automatically.

ktizoon Bay Area sheriff seeks drone for thermal imaging and surveillance

Murders are detectable outside of homes. Is someone missing? Yes? Then start an investigation.

They could be missing already, or be unregistered kids, or recently arrived unregistered migrants. Not everyone who is murdered is noticed missing. Also, very few of the people who are missing have been murdered.

ktizoon TSA Removes X-Ray Body Scanners From Major Airports

I really hope you aren't being sarcastic, as that would be funnier. Here's how to make an x-ray machine strong enough to work with standard film that you can plug in the wall and uses old tv parts. Be careful in doing this as dosimeters apparently are required. http://www.belljar.net/xray.htm

ktizoon TSA Removes X-Ray Body Scanners From Major Airports

"FWIW, we have a friend who sells mw equipment, and he refuses to go through them for safety reasons."

He should probably stop selling them then.

ktizoon Smart license plate frame that prevents you from getting a ticket

"The studies I've read from the Motor Accident Commission and the Victorian police here in Australia show a clear correlation between speed cameras and reduced incidences of accidents and fatalities"

You also have to be careful with some of these statistics. Speed cameras often get put up in reaction to a series of accidents. But statistically you would expect the amount of crashes to go up and down, and if you have just had an unusually high level of accidents on a stretch of road, then you would expect the average measured afterwards to be lower in the majority of cases, irrespective of whether a speed camera was installed.

ktizoon How A $19 Million Movie Makes $150 Million - And Still Isn't Profitable

The record companies real problem with filesharing is that they feel that not paying musicians is their own special prerogative and it annoys them for everybody else to be getting in on the act, especially in a manner so unprofessional that it doesn't even bother including absurdly written contracts.

ktizoon How A $19 Million Movie Makes $150 Million - And Still Isn't Profitable

One of the most egregious examples of this is David Prowse not getting any residuals for Return of The Jedi, as it also apparently hasn't made any profits yet. - http://www.slashfilm.com/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader-that-re...

ktizoon Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

If you did that some people would regard the dagger as the perfect place to attach their mobile phone on long journeys.

ktizoon Patents on Software: A Nobel Laureate’s View

Whatever the legal framework, if you don't tell anyone an idea, then you can keep it. If you tell people, then you have to negotiate if you don't want them to run off and do it too. If your idea needs lots of capital and labour to get it off the ground, then you always have to negotiate anyway, just to do it in the first place.

For me the question isn't, 'how do we protect the intellectual property of the people who do research', because the term intellectual property is a legal one that varies massively in time and geography. I would probably be more inclined to ask the question 'how do we make sure that the people who do research get paid really well and are really well resourced', and work from there.

ktizoon A science committee that doesn’t get science

How would giving equal weight to all votes in elections, compared to giving diferent weights according to geographic location, be any more or less 'mob-rule'?

ktizoon Show HN: What would Paul Graham do?

I was very disappointed to find no advice on hats, badgers or zombies.

ktizoon You keep using that word "meritocracy"

That reminds me of when I was first learning to program. I wondered for an embarrasingly long time what the hell 'foo' meant. I knew it must be something really important as it was absolutely everywhere.

ktizoon You keep using that word "meritocracy"

It is hard, only in the sense that programming anything is hard, if you don't know how to program. If you can program at all, you can solve it. It definitely wouldn't qualify as 'famously hard'. Things that achieve fame for being hard are usually very very difficult indeed. If anything, in the narrow circles in which it has any fame at all, it is famously easy.

ktizoon File-Sharers Buy 30% More Music Than Non-P2P Peers

"I'm pretty sure that the RIAA has never stated that file-sharers are bad for the music industry"

I'm pretty sure it has. It also sues them as individuals for large sums of money, so if it didn't state exactly that then it would have a very hard time making an argument in court.

ktizoon You keep using that word "meritocracy"

"FizzBuzz is famously hard"

Are we talking about the thing of writing "fizz" for multiples of 3 and "buzz" for multiples of 5 and "fizzbuzz" for both, for the numbers 1 - 100? If that is famously hard, then the definition of hard must have changed massively while I wasn't looking.

ktizoon You keep using that word "meritocracy"

As far as I am aware, meritocracy in the original definition is one which is ruled by people on the basis of their paper qualifications, which leads them to fundamentally believe that they are justified in holding power over others, despite the fact that those qualifications are often a consequence of a lot more than just ability. Part of the warning was that meritocracies can become both tautological and blind to corruption as the bits of paper become the main measure of the right to hold power.

ktizoon You keep using that word "meritocracy"

I had this argument with my mum about the word 'meritocracy' a few years ago. She was convinced that it couldn't have originated in a satire, as otherwise politicians wouldn't have adopted it because that would just make them look silly.

ktizoon A Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space

Reminds me a lot of "Dancing on the Timeline", a slitscan version of a classic scene from "Singing in the Rain"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmWljCI_4Ok

ktizoon When Academic Disagreement Becomes Harassment and Persecution

Well, the guy you are referencing has taken no position that we know of here, as far as what we were currently referencing, so I call shenanigans.

ktizoon When Academic Disagreement Becomes Harassment and Persecution

I bet she must be really dissapointed that you have failed to show concern for her in this. Your personal sympathy was probably the one thing she was really counting on. "Where's askimito?", she'll be asking. "I was planning on asking him/her/other to champion my education reforms!", she will then shout, while wondering if how she will possibly get through another day without this fountain of online approval.

ktizoon When Academic Disagreement Becomes Harassment and Persecution

Ok, she's been consistently publishing in academia since 1993 and was asked back to her job at Stanford after leaving to become Marie Curie Chair of Mathematics Education. If her research didn't cover a lot more bases than was suggested, then I don't think she would have held either of those academic positions.