jongraehl (u/jongraehl)

jongraehl commented on Facing opposition, Amazon reconsiders NY headquarters site, two officials say washingtonpost.com/local/... · Posted by u/ihuman

komali2 · 7 years ago

That's an untenable position, for the following reasons.

First, I want to define "you" as follows:

Multi-usage identifier. "You" functions as stand-in for a hyper rich financier, an immigrant single mother of 2, a college kid working to fund education, a middle aged janitor, etc etc. Any given person existing in the USA.

I'll use "fire safety regulations" as the example.

Your argument is untenable:

1. Individually, you do not have the experience or education to make an informed decision regarding fire safety (be it, determining whether you want to work in a location given the fire safety mechanisms they have chosen, or, choosing to eat in a location given the fire safety mechanisms they have chosen, etc).

2. You probably don't have a choice in the fire safety mechanism implementations of where you eat, work, live. You more than likely are forced to make those decisions based on factors such as the need to have money to eat (place of employment), the need for a heated place to live in the winter (place of residence) that is within your budget, etc. Therefore, there is no "government choosing for you," there is no "you choosing for you," it is whoever owns the building.

3. As evidenced in rapidly developing nations, those that do have the power to make decisions regarding fire safety mechanisms will, deliberately or otherwise, make bad ones, without government regulation and enforcement.

http://iafss.org/publications/fss/8/353/view/fss_8-353.pdf

Don't forget that regulations aren't just an enforcement mechanism, they're a standards one. The government pooled our resources to find "the best" standard way to make fire safety in buildings acceptable. That allows builders and parts manufacturers to efficiently develop a standard set of fittings and equipment. It literally saves everyone money, while saving lives.

jongraehl · 7 years ago

'You probably don't have a choice ...' is a reach. The rest is well-argued.

Anyway the most telling point is if OP gets his wish, then next time a bunch of people burn to death the public will clamor again for mandatory fire escapes, inevitably. We aren't the sort of people he wishes we were.

jongraehl commented on Peter Thiel to serve as Trump delegate thehill.com/blogs/ballot-... · Posted by u/coolandsmartrr

crispyambulance · 9 years ago

    > I have enough faith in our system of government
    > to feel that its self regulating that we could
    > put pretty much anyone in the office of president
    > and they'd not be able to fuck it up too much.

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong other than....

Nomination of supreme court justices that take back decades of progress.

Starting new and unnecessary wars, making the geopolitical situation more dangerous and unstable : George W started 2 of them, didn't finish, and we're still dealing with the mess.

Have a leader who is a laughing stock, much like Berlusconi was in Italy.

jongraehl · 9 years ago

"progress"

You think progress should be achieved by changing the interpretation of existing law? Odd view.

jongraehl commented on Google says self-driving car hits municipal bus in minor crash reuters.com/article/googl... · Posted by u/sajal83

dsp1234 · 9 years ago

And here is the actual accident report [0]

"A Google Lexus-model autonomous vehicle ("Google AV") was traveling in autonomous mode eastbound on El Camino Real in Mountain View in the far right-hand lane approaching the Castro St. intersection. As the Google AV approached the intersection, it signaled its intent to make a right turn on red onto Castro St. The Google AV then moved to the right-hand sid of the lane to pass traffic in the same lane that was stopped at the intersection and proceeding straight. However, the Google AV had to come to a stop to go around sandbags positioned around a storm drain that were blocking its path. When the light turned green, traffic in the lane continued past the Google AV. After a few cars had passed, the Google AV began to proceed back into the center of the lane to pass the sand bags. A public transit bus was approaching from behind. The Google AV test driver saw the bus approaching in the left side mirror but believed the bus would stop or slow to allow the Google AV to continue. Approximately three seconds later, as the Google AV was reentering the center of the lane, it made contact with the side of the bus. The Google AV was operating in autonomous mode and travelling less than 2 mph, and the bus was travelling at about 15 mph at the time of contact.

The Google AV sustained body damage to the left front fender, the left front wheel and one of its driver's-side sensors. There were no injuries reported at the scene."

[0] - https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/3946fbb8-e04e-4d52...

jongraehl · 9 years ago

splitting the lane for a right turn is common in CA (assume legal too). but you'd best be sure you can make it without having to cut someone off. if a human did this the result might be the same. tough problem. there's a chance that if the google car went faster than 2mph it might have gotten some respect (or around the sandbags before getting hit, if there was room in front)

jongraehl commented on Pull request acceptance of women versus men peerj.com/preprints/1733/... · Posted by u/schmichael

jongraehl · 10 years ago

For regular contributors, women appear* to accept a man's work (slightly) more than they will a woman's, and men appear to accept a woman's work more than they will a man's. Since there are more men than women, this means that on the whole women are privileged.

* appear: maybe men or women have a different internal bar for how polished they'll make a pull request (how afraid they are of rejection, etc). the study looks at profiles that are closeted vs out as a gender. If you reveal gender on purpose, this tells us something about you, presumably, but for convenience the difference between closeted and out is taken to signify "bias against [out] men/women". Much of this is not statistically significant, probably (study doesn't give enough info, and suspiciously did an "insider" vs "outsider" analysis rather than a pooled analysis, suggesting they didn't like what they found until they split into two pools).

For unsolicited outside contributions, closeted men seem to get rejected more than closeted women (men's bar is lower?). Out men get rejected more than closeted men or women. Out women get rejected more than closeted men or women. The key is: for this category, people appear to be less biased against out men than out women (but somehow people prefer contributions from hidden-gender folks?).

Anyway, this is interesting stuff but I'm not sure what to take from it. I do expect more low-quality outside-team submissions from men than women, and I might judge them unfairly if they were out men, but this is just a random hunch and I doubt it would affect me much (probably I wouldn't notice).

jongraehl commented on GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart businessinsider.com/githu... · Posted by u/easyd

baq · 10 years ago

censorship has a very strict definition, so they may be right in a way.

jongraehl · 10 years ago

if we think some pattern should be called "censorship", then it is called that. if your interlocutor refuses to move beyond "argument about definition of words" and you still want to communicate, you then have to taboo the word, which slows your thinking+communication down a bit, but so be it.

jongraehl commented on C or C++ for my game engine? crafn.kapsi.fi/new_engine... · Posted by u/AlexeyBrin

jongraehl · 10 years ago

Every one of his complaints has a good solution, albeit some not widely known. Except compile time, single source file or otherwise - the compiler is using lots of smarts and lots of library headers on your behalf.

That said, author has done a good job explaining his thought process in taking the rewarding-at-every-step path, given he's not a C++-wrangling junkie.

jongraehl commented on GCC 6 Will Warn You About Misleading Code Indentations phoronix.com/scan.php?pag... · Posted by u/frostmatthew

jongraehl · 10 years ago

clang-format is better

jongraehl commented on Is Sound Gradual Typing Dead? [pdf] ccs.neu.edu/racket/pubs/p... · Posted by u/bshanks

jongraehl · 10 years ago

I prefer mandatory static types + type inference. It is a productivity boost if you're allowed to skip entering type names for local vars. If you ever want to change anything meaningful in a large system, you better have meaningful compile-time checks. The only downside is longer build times, but tools are improving. Outside of legacy projects (Linus loves C! and fantastic library ecosystems for scripting languages) I don't see any future for languages without static typing + inference.

jongraehl commented on The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dominance of the Stubborn Minority [pdf] fooledbyrandomness.com/mi... · Posted by u/networked

antidamage · 10 years ago

What is mainsteam? It's the agreement dependent on subject by an ever-changing, large group of people of what is normal behaviour or what is outside of that. It's ever-changing and by nature made up of lots of different groups of people agreeing on one particular thing at a time.

I've always held a view that minority groups can be some of the most conservative groups around - this is how they persist in a culturally fluid world, by conserving who they are regardless of the social outcome when tested. So I find it wrong that some groups attach themselves to requests from society that are liberal in nature when they are entirely conservative in their own behaviour. But then again, who can fault them? Well, we can.

The definition of "well adjusted" would suggest someone who is open to change. It also suggests a middle-of-the-road approach, although I can't and won't go into too much detail there since that phrase is subjective, but in the understanding that most people will agree with me, I'll make this statement: the most successful people tend to be well adjusted, at least until they reach the pinnacle of their success and their various personal flaws become highlighted through either stress, response to success or simply by way of being more visible.

Because of this traversal of the median range of human behaviour, minority groups are naturally held back. This isn't a social bias ending in -ism, the less successful one is at navigating different groups of society, the less likely one is to be successful. Opportunities shrink. For those of us without strong or singular identity, the world opens up.

And yet we need these outliers - every so often, they come up with new ideas that mainstream humanity wouldn't have thought of on their own, or someone deeply useful simply strongly identifies with a minority group. No matter how unsuccessful their peers seem to be, we have to retain them. But right now we're pitching minority group versus minority group in the only battles they hope to win or lose. This is the way cultures live or die in a pecking order that risks homogenizing differences we sorely need.

My opinion for a long time was simple: fit in or get out. This isn't the way I think any more. The behaviour of key minority groups sometimes offends mainstream-us on a personal level but they represent no real risk to our own hegemony.

So we already know that society works. It has worked for the majority for a long time and minority groups have only seen that situation improve for them. But now they suffer under the inability to progress where there is no more room to progress. We had a wonderful century of massive wins for all of us, but especially minority groups. But it's hard to keep up that progress, eventually you're nitpicking over small details and pointless social mores.

This century might see the end of minority progression, simply because there will be no room left to progress as we have in the past. At some point mainstream society is going to get a new gift: universal tolerance. It could happen within our lifetimes, but likely it'll require those of us older than our late teens to expire to for it to truly pervade.

The concepts we're all dealing with today are already old-fashioned. Minority groups who survive by being intolerant themselves can't last in the face of the movement they kicked off so long ago. This is a blip in history - 20 or 30 years of angry minority groups and a shrinking of groups that survive on intolerance in general. I've carefully not named any, but feel free to to some mental algebra and fill in the blanks with whatever you like. It'll still hold true.

jongraehl · 10 years ago

Get tolerant or get wrecked sounds great until you look at the details (especially the asymmetric-nuclear-etc ones). Still, well said (not sure on "we need differences" - that's conveniently kumbaya; I'll settle for "eradicating all differences = monstrous bloodshed so don't do it").