The 2009 UN World Drug report in pictures - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/2009_un_world_drug_report.html

<comment><USER2> I am sorry but the war on drugs is a sham. The refinement and habitual use of refined drugs did not come until prohibition of weaker forms. Think about it, we got Heroin, Crack, Meth and the rest from the unrelenting pursuit of lesser forms of mind altering substances, Opium being the first. Soon after opium's prohibition Heroin made its debut.

All this war has done is victimizing individuals who have made poor choices and empowered those who are willing to take the risk to traffic in the substances.

Now I agree that drugs have the ability to ruin peoples lives, but that argument is negated by the acceptance of alcohol which has just as devastating of an impact on an abusers life. One must willfully ignore the fact that alcohol abuse, for all intents and purposes, happens in only a small percentage of the population (we are not talking about college party years here but rather life long abusers). As well as, the fact that given it's availability stronger forms of the substance (liquor) make up for the smallest portion of consumption.

If weaker forms of these substances where available (opium, coca) then I believe that you would see a similar trend.

Now I am not a government conspiracy nut and I don't think there is this grand conspiracy to control drugs. I just think that our tradition conservative base of the past had a grand idea of trying to save people from themselves and the basis of their assumptions did not materialize, so it is time to rethink the whole thing.

It has been proven time and time again, that you cannot legislate morality and I believe that it is time that the government stops trying to. It just further victimizes individuals.</comment>


Go issue: memory corruption on Linux 5.3.x from async preemption - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/golang/go/issues/35777 <comment><AUTHOR> The Go team has found that recent Linux kernels break the recently integrated goroutine preemption logic.

There is deep analysis here [https://github.com/golang/go/issues/35326#issuecomment-55821...](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/35326#issuecomment-558212984) They have bisected the kernel and found that [https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/d9c9ce34ed5c892323c...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/d9c9ce34ed5c892323cbf5b4f9a4c498e036316a) is the culprit. Apparently, it introduces changes in the signal handling behavior only visible when compiled with GCC 9, presumably because it uses AVX registers.

The entire discussion is a nice read.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you use Confluence? - <AUTHOR> Maybe the question here has multiple parts:

  - What do you use to organise and curate your team's and/or company's knowledge
  - What would be the best practices followed to ensure that things do not get messy, out of hand quickly
 Confluence can be the choice of a Wiki/Documentation hub for many, how can you apply the best practices from point 2 in Confluence <comment><USER2> Have a flexible heirarchy and build lots and lots of pages. When I learn something new I document with a background explaining things and dilimenate into clear sections with explantations and code snippets, documents, and links where necessary. If I find an old page that is now irrelevant, I delete it. When the heirarchy needs to be reorganized we add/delete sections and move pages around no problem. 99% of my team's doc is written by me and one teammate (hundreds of docs).

I know people that are nitpicky want to spend hours arguing over the perfect way to organize things, but it ain't worth the time. What is important is that you document lots and lots of stuff and can find specific things via search + keyword.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you rely more on heirarchy or labels/tags and rely on the powerful search of confluence? Also have you tried Confluence for personal use or only professionally (I am thinking of moving away from Evernote but am afraid Confluence is an overkill)

<comment><USER2> Professional. I'm an electrical engineer (not a developer), but I write plenty of code in various languages and we have lots of systems we support. I'm not sure what labels/tags are, but find the search seems to work extremely well regardless.

We have a query section that has dozens of queries broken up into use cases and each has a short description, so if someone spent a day writing a 2 page query, you can find and use it quick without digging around too much.

One thing that frustrates me is that the language support is super limited in some ways. Yea it has a fair amount of languages, but there are so many more and grabbing the syntax support from notepad++ can't be that hard for their devs. It isn't GitHub or anything, but if you need an easily assessible place for some utility scripts it is perfect as you can document the usage in much the same way as a Python notebook.</comment></comment></comment>


Australian govt predicts an average household requirement of 15mbps by 2023 - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/serious-flaws-in-turnbulls-nbn-costbenefit-analysis-report-20140907-10dqu0.html

<comment><USER2> Lol, my wife and I are pounding 10mbps at our home and I'm wanting to upgrade it to 20mbps. We live in rural western Kansas.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah... and in worse news, they predict the average household will only need ~3Mbps upload bandwidth.</comment>


Concerning Stephen Hawking's Claim  That Philosophy Is Dead (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://filozofskivestnikonline.com/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/120/117 <comment><USER2> As a philosopher who also works in philosophy and frequently reviews for top journals, I have skimmed over this article and unfortunately have to say that these kind of loose essays who mingle together various unrelated issues in some grand tour de force without any stringent argumentation don't do our discipline much of a favor.

In my personal experience, roughly 90% of philosophy publications are trash (give or take), but the remaining 10% are extremely interesting and worth reading both by philosophers and people outside the field. You have to pick carefully. Moreover, if you look at the history of philosophy that has always been the case, although the percentage of trash might have increased a little bit lately due to the nature of peer reviewing and the overall state of the discipline as a profession (too many people, not enough room for originality, too much focus on number of publications and self-promotion).

Hawking's point was different, though, and he's essentially right. The vast majority of all professional philosophers simply don't have the mathematical skills and time to keep at pace with any developments in physics after special relativity and early quantum physics. But don't blame the philosophers alone for it, this is the result of our educational system and the extreme rise of mathematical methods in sciences in general. Who can afford, in our modern society, to master the latest developments of String Theory and what's going on in philosophy with its many areas and subareas, all of this at the same time?

On a side note, if you're interested in formal philosophy, exact philosophy, philosophy as a science or however you might call it, I'd recommend studying mathematics instead and philosophy only as a secondary topic or not at all. It's easy to get into a philosophy department as a mathematician, there are many examples, but the other way round? Not going to happen.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious why you believe all philosophers need to keep up with mathematics and science, as you appear to imply. Certainly philosophers working in branches that deal directly with science, math, and the nature of reality must maintain an accurate perspective on the latest research and methods to properly do their job. Philosophers of science must actually study the focus of their research. Those working in metaphysics must ensure their theories do not conflict with those of physicists (or ensure they conflict in interesting and valid ways).

But what of ethics, aesthetics, politics and other more humanistic branches of philosophy requires those doing working within them to keep pace with the latest developments in physics and maths?

<comment> wu-ikkyu While many major schools of philosophy are strongly related to the accepted mathematical/scientific theory of the day, OP seems to be making the unproven theoretical assumption that the answers to the metaphysical questions "where do I come from, why do I exist?" can be _explained_ using mathematical models.

<comment><USER4> What kind of question is that though? In that sort of question, I sense a hostility toward a plain answer.

We violently exploded and cooled, and the crispy outer crust of a planet started to organize itself, eventually resulting in a loose group of combinations of matter called people. I mean that's what happened.

That, or we're here to be nice to other people... I don't think the mathematical models are at issue here.

<comment><USER5> > We violently exploded and cooled, and the crispy outer crust of a planet > started to organize itself, eventually resulting in a loose group of > combinations of matter called people. I mean that's what happened.

Your answer is not the answer. How we was able to explode when there was nothing to explode? When there was no space to explode?

Once upon a time lived a man named Newton. He invented gravitational theory. We study this theory in school and have no questions for it (or at least the most people don't). But the contemporaries of Newton had a lot of questions. They didn't like the idea of long-range interaction between planets. How planets can know their masses and masses of other planets to move smoothly by Newton's law of gravity?

Make a break, think a little about how did you feel about newtonian gravity before you discover general relativity. Isn't newtonian gravity looked great theory explaining all the things? And if so, maybe general relativity in you mind is another semantic stopsign* like newtonian gravity was? Maybe its just the cheap way to answer complex questions without answering?

I'm not sure about general relativity, but I'm almost sure about quantum mechanics: QM do not answer questions, QM is just a bunch of calculation methods to predict nature behaviour. Like Newton gravity equation was just calculation method, which is able to predict, but unable to explain.

> That, or we're here to be nice to other people... I don't think the > mathematical models are at issue here.

Yes, you are right. Mathematics is unable to solve such a problems, because philosophy has not made sufficiently strict and clean abstractions, which mathematicians can use in their equations. Mathematics can't work with real problems, only with abstract ones.

*) [https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Semantic_stopsign](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Semantic_stopsign)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > By the same token, consider an ultra-relational metaphysics such as that of > Bruno Latour, who tells us that a thing is nothing more than whatever it > modifies, transforms, perturbs, or creates. If this were true, then > everything would be nothing more than its current effects on everything > else; the surface events and interactions of the world at this moment would > be its only existing layer, with nothing held in reserve and no possible > engine of change.

But that is precisely how it is. Things that do not interact, do not exist.

<comment><USER7> > But that is precisely how it is. Things that do not interact, do not exist.

What kind of predictive statement are you trying to make? How does the world change if your statement is correct, as opposed to false? What would be different?

<comment><USER6> The kind of predictive statements that all physicists are making for quite a while now and on which all of our technological progress is founded.

If there were some other fundamental means by which reality might be modified besides the basic interactions we know, our standard model of particle physics couldn't work so well, right? So to our knowledge, interaction is the one and only thing that puts a thing into existence or not.

As a side note: that is also the reason why WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) are a candidate for dark matter. The idea is that there might exist a form of matter that only interacts very weakly and thus it is incredibly hard to confirm its existence. Furthermore these WIMPs are massive (compared to other known elementary particles), so they might be out of reach of our particle accelerators.

These kinds of predictions follow from that.

<comment><USER8> > If there were some other fundamental means by which reality might be > modified besides the basic interactions we know, our standard model of > particle physics couldn't work so well, right? So to our knowledge, > interaction is the one and only thing that puts a thing into existence or > not.

You're looking at this backwards, I think.

You claimed that a thing must interact in order to exist. If this is false then things exist but do not interact. Things which exist but do not interact with anything would not change anything we see in the world at all, and cannot in any way be tested for. The statement provides no predictions.

<comment><USER6> I see your point. What I meant was that existence and interaction are equivalent. But I see that I didn't express myself well there.

Let us presume that existence and interaction can be separate. Let us also assume for a moment that there is a definition of 'existence' without interaction. Then a reality with a thing that exists but doesn't interact is equivalent to a reality where this thing doesn't exist. If a thing's existence and non-existence yield equivalent realities, we can always assume that it does not exist. Therefore, we can set 'it interacts' and 'it exists' to be equivalent for all practical purposes.

That's my line of thought, which of course still doesn't exclude that things can 'exist' but not 'interact'. But if you would press me, I'd ask for a definition of the word 'existence' without using any form of interaction. I wouldn't know a proper answer to that.

<comment><USER8> I think really this is leading into much more philosophical discussions. The practical viewpoint is I think 'anything that cannot interact with me can safely be ignored as irrelevant'.

But to push into a few thought experiments:

If I go into a room and it is sealed up so that nothing at all may escape and the room may never be opened, do I cease to exist? Or do you? Do we now have two realities? Is it possible to construct a setup where _discrete_ realities no longer explain the true nature? Can I construct a system where two agents will disagree on where the boundaries are between these realities? Since we can create things where two parties cannot agree on the ordering of events, perhaps this could be extended to identify a setup and point in time where two parties would disagree on whether or not something exists (I'm really not sure on this, I feel the answer is no but then I think that about other things that smarter people than me can construct).

Do you consider only current technology or must we also consider things we don't yet know? When humanity was in its early stages, did one tribe not exist to the other? Did some countries not exist?

Do things "exist" if they don't currently interact, and may never interact, but possibly could?

The practical conclusion is perhaps that the term "exist" isn't very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I urge you interested readers to read Wolfgang Smith's article on this topic: [https://perennialphilosophyreadings.wordpress.com/2012/02/26...](https://perennialphilosophyreadings.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/response- to-stephen-hawkings-physics-as-philosophy-by-wolfgang-smith/)

</comment><comment><USER10> What would Pythagoras say?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras)

</comment><comment><USER11> What does that mean to the Ph.D. (= Doctor of Philosophy)?

</comment><comment><USER12> Maybe he meant that positivism is dead.</comment>


How The NSA Is Killing The Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140107/11490525790/7-things-you-missed-if-you-didnt-read-wireds-big-story-how-nsa-is-killing-internet.shtml <comment><USER2> Blogspam. The correct link should be [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/how-the-us- almost-k...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/how-the-us-almost- killed-the-internet/all/)</comment>


Ask HN: Why do you (or don't you) have contact info in your profile? - <AUTHOR>

I quite often look at users profile to see who they are. Some have an e-mail, some have links to their startups or blogs, and some haven't filled in anything.
I was wondering why you put your contact info in your profile and what kind of communication you would approve of? Are you only interested in work-mail or don't you mind a friendly mail about how great your hair looks? Do you actively communicate with other users, or have you done so by shooting them an e-mail?
It would be interesting to shed some light on how many friendships/partnerships/random net acquaintances are made on HN.
So what's your story? <comment><USER2> When I joined I never happened to fill out a profile. As I got involved in the community here a few people asked to contact me - as I was posting personal blog posts anyway (and so the link was trivial to most) I added an email adress to my profile.

It's resulted in a surprising number of amazing links with people I now count as friendly.

Right now I am happy to keep a contact email in my profile because, as I see it, there is a lot of people on here that are amazingly interesting and if they happened (for whatever reason) want to contact me then I wouldn't wish to miss out.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess the reasons would differ from reaching out to fellow brethren to just showing off the stuff they do.

I wish i could show off, until then it's just a way of letting people associate a person with an otherwise anonymous username.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm - I suppose that I don't because I like my email address. No other reason...

</comment><comment><USER5> I must have met or corresponded with 50+ people off of HN.</comment>


Google, nobody asked for a new Blogger interface - <AUTHOR> https://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2020/08/google-nobody-asked-for-new-blogger.html <comment><USER2> If you want to be in control, the solution has always been the same: own your own domain, and post there.

If you post on someone else's domain, then it's their content, and they're in control of it, not you. No matter what is claimed otherwise.

Yes, it's harder. Getting visibility is also harder. It's still the only solution if you want to be in control.

It's okay to pay someone to run the blogging platform, etc., as long as you own the domain name & can decide what it points to. You can then switch providers, switch systems you use, or whatever you want to do. But if you don't control the domain name, someone else is in control.

<comment><USER3> This issue is why I'm skeptical of SaaS in general.

I look at software as a solution to a problem. When I have a problem and software solves it, I'm happy. The better the software, the more thoroughly it solves my problem without creating new problems for me (by being annoying or inefficient). The best software seems to hit a sweet spot with the right set of features targeted at solving a particular problem or small class of problems with minimal fuss.

Really good software becomes extremely difficult to improve on. But services can't deal with just hitting the sweet spot and calling it a day. They need to grow, which means they need to evolve. The constant cash flow seems to burn a hole in the manager's pocket. Eventually they cross a threshold and exit the sweet spot. Maybe they release a major version with an awful new UI. Like a TV series which has gone on too long, they jump the shark [1].

Perhaps this problem of SaaS may be analogous to network decay [2], though the latter is more gradual.

[1] [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JumpingTheShark](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JumpingTheShark)

[2] [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NetworkDecay](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NetworkDecay)

<comment> open-source-ux _" This issue is why I'm skeptical of SaaS in general"_

SaaS is eating the B2B (Busines to Business) software market. Companies small or large are much happier not having to manage servers, installation, updates and security.

I don't particularly like SaaS either, but what is the alternative? It is _impossible_ to self-install a web app on a server in a way that is _easy and simple to do_ particularly for non-techical users. Until that happens (which may be never), SaaS will continue to grow and dominate the B2B market.

Imagine if installing a web server app was as easy as installing a desktop app. It would unlock countless opportunities for developers. My impression is that developers think it's a non-issue or have simply never thought about it.

(And no, before someone mentions it, Docker, Sandstorm, Cloudron, command-line installations etc are not easy-to-use options for non-technical users.)

<comment><USER4> You didn't mention other things security, scaling, keeping the service up, backing up. Securing a web application is HARD.

<comment><USER5> Very hard. Terrifying to me as a professional developer. I can't keep up with all of the possible failure paths. The more of that I can foist off on somebody who does it full time, the better. Then I can focus on my application domain rather than the basic mechanics of keeping the thing up and secure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ooh yes is so blatantly obvious that this is some developers' vanity project that he enthusiastically promoted in order to get his own promotion. Really bad redesign for no reason at all, ending in a frankenstein solution of mix of old and new interface. Great developers like this should stay in google forever.

Similar thing with paypal's redesign

<comment><USER7> > just some developers' vanity project

I think you underestimate the number of people involved in these kinds of projects.. guarantee there were multiple product managers, a host of UX designers, engineering managers, and devs. It's much harder for a developer to get a thing like this through than a product person.

<comment><USER8> A problem is that people have to justify their employment, so they have to do 'something' even if that 'something' does not improve things. The other option they have is to move to another division/project. Moving may not always be an option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I imagine you don't have to worry about it for very long; next they'll announce that it's shutting down and that you can use the YouTube community tab instead

<comment><USER10> they will let you know you have a month to transfer your blog to YouTube community, and at the end of that period if you haven't transitioned (a process whose ramifications in terms of privacy and how it affects your ability to keep separate identities on different platforms are entirely opaque) your entire blog will be deleted and lost forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sandstorm has accidentally solved the problem of rapid change by not having enough developers to continually update the available applications, which include Wordpress. You can also ignore updates.

Thankfully, the architecture of Sandstorm turns many types of vulnerabilities in the installed applications into non-events. This means that the lack of updates is not so alarming.

[https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/using/security-non- event...](https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/using/security-non- events/#wordpress)

<comment><USER12> Good to hear Sandstorm is still alive! It is precisely the kind of thing that has some chance of making self hosted popular among the wider public, instead of ever shrinking patches maintained by die-hard enthusiasts inside a sea of corporate silos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ok nobody asked but what about the guy at Blogger team who's role is to make up bullshit OKRs and get promotions?

<comment> V-eHGsd_ spoken like someone who remembers the kennedy announcement.

<comment><USER14> And for those who may not, the 2011 "Kennedy" UI initiative at Google.

[https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google- redesign-h...](https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign-how- larry-page-engineered-beautiful-revolution)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3620566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3620566)

<comment><USER15> These kind of announcements probably happen all the time within Apple, why do people rage when someone else tries to fix UI inconsistency in L&F and behavior, but Apple does it by changing what you're use to without asking you, and nary a peep?

At least other companies sometimes let you keep the old theme/skin for awhile.

<comment><USER16> Why when someone complains about something Google did does somebody always reply "nobody complains when Apple does the same thing," and when someone complains about something Apple did somebody always replies "nobody complains when Google does the same thing?"

<comment><USER17> The iOS / Android fanboi schism is a plague. It replicates the worst of 2-party politics, put at the service of the wealthiest corporations on the planet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm shocked Blogger made any changes at all. Always assumed they were in maintainance mode. I'm really curious how many people are still on the blogger team at Google.

<comment><USER19> They had to give them some work

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > I'm probably the last person on earth to do so, but I write my posts in raw > HTML.

Although I don't use Blogger/Blogspot anymore and I render my blog using a static site generator [1], I too write my posts in raw HTML [2].

In the past, the differences in how various tools interpret and render some of the corner case scenarios like nested lists, code blocks or blockquotes nested within lists, etc. caused issues in porting my Markdown files from one system to another. Granted, there is CommonMark now and I think it is a pretty good specification but it is not a standard like HTML5 is. I prefer standards, so that I know with a reasonable degree of confidence that what I write now would look the same 10 years from now.

[1]: [https://github.com/sunainapai/makesite](https://github.com/sunainapai/makesite) (Disclosure: My wife developed this project)

[2]: [https://github.com/susam/susam.in/tree/master/content/blog](https://github.com/susam/susam.in/tree/master/content/blog)

</comment><comment><USER21> These days, I am thinking that relying heavily on a particular Blog service has a risk. Those services will be eventually gone. Blogger is no exception. Like all the services Google purchased and abandoned in the past. I don't want to risk losing all the writings I intended to publish on the Internet.

But, blogging is not that important enough for me to set up a my very own dedicated web server.

So, these days, I'm simply using GitHub Pages for the blog. I realized all I need is to host static HTML files. I can write locally with my favourite text editor, git commit & git push to publish it. No need to use web browser at all.

Even if GitHub is gone, I have entire data on my multiple storages I owned and rented.

I can do this with other Blog services but I have to automate the web browser operation to copy&paste the writings for each blog services, which is not necessary if I simply use GitHub.

<comment><USER22> > But, blogging is not that important enough for me to set up a my very own > dedicated web server.

If for some reason you wind up wanting to move off of GitHub, I've found Linodes bottom tier to be great for hosting a small static site. You do have to configure the webserver yourself of course, but it's a step down in complexity from self hosting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Rather ironic that the post mentions things like accessibility while using a blog layout that is not responsive on mobiles, and looks like crap with tiny, unreadable text on large screens.

</comment><comment><USER24> I thought Google had completely abandoned Blogger. Is there a reason they are investing in it again?

<comment><USER25> The same reason that some other Google products have been redesigned recently: They used GWT and GWT has been deprecated.

<comment><USER24> When they launched the last Gmail redesign in 2018 I used an extension to check what they had used and it showed up Vue:

[https://twitter.com/PierB/status/989630991051476992](https://twitter.com/PierB/status/989630991051476992)

It doesn't show up anymore so they probably obfuscated it.

<comment><USER25> Gmail uses Wiz. The extension was probably misclassifying it.

[https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/958696304149868545](https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/958696304149868545)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm trying to think of internet brands that have successfully reinvented themselves, like analogous to an alternate universe where Myspace relaunches and becomes a thing. Maybe blogspot is a going concern, but it seems like the Altavista of internet publishing to me. Winner may take all in network effect companies, but does it mean you also only get one shot, or is there a "retro" effect online too?

To adapt another adage, users don't leave products, they leave communities. The idea of starting a new blog on blogspot doesn't really register for me anymore. Or maybe I'm out of touch?

</comment><comment><USER27> I just checked out the new UI for creating and editing new blogger articles. It seems OK to me, but I understand the author's complaints.

I have switched 3 or 4 times between using blogger and using a static site generator. This is easy to do because tools like Jekyll easily import blogger data dumps. Moving back from a static generated blog to blogger is a few copy and paste operations.

I like having everything in my domain, but using blogger is convenient. Right now, I am using blogger again, but periodically generate a static blog that I also link on my domain as a backup.

</comment><comment><USER28> Someone thought of a way to keep their job at Google.

Seriously though, I'd love to see some stats on Blogger traffic today and what level of ad revenue it contribute to Google. It's got to be a cash cow for them to keep it running for so long.

</comment><comment><USER29> It seems like google likes to engineer problems without considering the solution they already have in place. A handful of messaging platforms... etc.

</comment><comment><USER30> Shameless plug: if you just need a simple blog, check out DynaBlogger ([https://www.dynablogger.com](https://www.dynablogger.com)), a new blogging platform I just launched

</comment><comment><USER31> > _Google, nobody asked for a new Blogger interface_

... and new _Google Sites_ interface too.[0]

[0] [https://twitter.com/P_Nezzie/status/1292457186971529217](https://twitter.com/P_Nezzie/status/1292457186971529217)

</comment><comment><USER32> This is google being google. Blogger underwent a refresh maybe about 5 years ago, and that too was trending in this (worse) direction.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wait, people are still using blogspot?

<comment><USER17> I have a blog there since 2002. I've run personal websites before and after, which have long fallen to my laziness for sysadmin tasks. Blogger alwyas works, costs me nothing, doesn't try too hard, doesn't go down if traffic surges, and gives me significant google-juice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> And it puts full justify on comments... eww.

</comment><comment><USER35> gotta get that promo tho

</comment><comment><USER36> Google engineers wanted impact to get promoted, consider this a natural result (or whatever other rationale that does not put user satisfaction as the first criteria)

<comment><USER37> Someone mentioned elsewhere in the thread, it was updated because it depended on obsolete libraries. Presumably the new libraries made the new design more straightforward to implement than attempting to reproduce the existing one.

<comment><USER38> What, exactly, was "obsolete" about those libraries. Did the code stop executing? Were they written in languages whose compilers/interpreters stopped functioning? Or were there simply newer, shinier toys to play with?

<comment><USER39> If it was written in python, it can really stop working. Most companies are transitioning to Python3.

<comment><USER39> If you think I'm joking, there are huge companies that have already declared Python2 as non-supported software, so if you have any software written in Python2 you have to either rewrite or stop using it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-dislike-really-smart-leaders/ <comment><USER2> Personal anecdote, but I wonder if my experience as a junior officer in the Navy helped with this. The last comments in the piece are that intelligent leaders should 1) seek creative metaphors and 2) speak charismatically. Coming to the fleet from a bachelor's in physics, I knew I was reasonably intelligent, but also that there were some people _much_ smarter than me (at least my battered ego assured me of that).

So, walking aboard a frigate with sort of an academic's self-awareness and certainty that the world is an uncertain place, I had to lead a division of sailors who would do things that just left me dumbfounded. "Why would you attempt to drive through the closed base gate?" "Why would you test the 440V circuit with your fingers?" "Why would you go in the engine room without hearing protection?" "Do you realize you installed all the valves backward?" "Where did you meet this woman? No, she can't come on the ship!"

Then you have to get these folks to do work. They're not lazy, but trying motivate them with the bigger picture could be challenging. Metaphor came to hand more and more. And you sort of settle in. You're _not_ intellectually challenged, and repetition and comfort bring confidence, which makes charismatic patterns of speech easier.

When I went to grad school, I found myself using these same patterns of speech to get things done. And I still do. It's always poor form to toot your own horn, but the last few years, I have to say, I've realized more and more, having a hard science degree and early leadership experience are an extremely valuable combination. I have no idea how I'd be doing what I do now without that.

<comment><USER3> I have to ask...

Why _did_ sailors try to drive through the closed base gate and test 440V circuits with their fingers?

<comment><USER4> I don't know. Why do we push files to production on a Friday evening? Why do we snipe hot-fixes into production via FTP? Because we are all crazy & lazy bums, I would guess.

<comment><USER5> > I don't know. Why do we push files to production on a Friday evening?

Because we worked for the whole week on it and now want that other people can see it on their weekend. Since we are so proud of our work and trust in its quality, we are willing to do an extra shift on the weekend, should problems occur.

<comment><USER6> Are you missing a /s?

<comment><USER7> Since this sounds very familiar I would venture that he's being serious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There could be something else at work here.

My father told me that con men preferred to go after smart people, like doctors. The reason is that smart people thought they were too smart to get conned, and hence were more gullible.

He was also an economist, and told me that there wasn't an economist born who could stand the idea that the economy would run better (i.e. free market) without their "help".

And I've noticed many smart leaders who thought they were much smarter than they actually were, and didn't need to listen to others' advice, leading to some very poor decisions.

<comment><USER9> > the economy would run better (i.e. free market) without their "help".

As if boom and bust business cycles aren't a thing in free markets. Or monopolies. Or monetary policy. Or externalized costs. Or tragedy of the commons.

That's just run of the mill anti-intellectualism.

<comment><USER10> If putting economists in charge somehow curtails monopolies, externalised costs, tragedies of the commons and boom and bust business cycles then someone really should sit down and get that news out there. Nothing I've heard suggests economists outperform a healthy democratic process.

Monetary policy is one that is more up for debate - it seems reasonable that it can have a positive effect on gdp, but something has decoupled GDP from measures that actually effect people. I think that something is monetary policy, and note in passing that GDP was, prior to 1970, a much better proxy for energy/capita than it is now [1].

I watch the US economy with curiosity and note, for example, that core inflation, the central plank of US monetary policy, excludes basically anything I spend money on.

[1] EDIT: [https://wilcoxen.maxwell.insightworks.com/pages/804.html](https://wilcoxen.maxwell.insightworks.com/pages/804.html)

<comment><USER9> In healthy democracies politicians seek advice from economists for their policy proposals.

<comment><USER11> Or, usually, just seek the "expert" support from economists for validating policies that promote their and their backers interests...

<comment><USER12> So then, there must be a visible, provable correlation between economist activities and inequality.

<comment><USER13> Yes.

[https://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/1429/19/142919512461...](https://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/1429/19/1429195124610.gif)

The late 1970s were when neoliberal economic fundamentalism took over public policy.

The graph shows the effect on equality.

<comment><USER14> I don't see this as evidence that economists => inequality. Even if we accept the notion that economists are directly responsible for growing inequality, it's worth remembering that there are disagreements within their ranks.

I would argue this is when most economists _lost_ influence in Washington, while a few like Art Laffer gained massive influence. The New Deal era prior to this was largely motivated by the work of noted economist John Maynard Keynes. Although the causality is debated, the New Deal was followed by recovery and economic growth. Economists gained influence in the public sphere because of the effectiveness, real or imagined, or "Keynesian" economic policy. These folks had lost sway in Washington by the early 70s due to the stagflation crisis[1] and the collapse of the "New Deal coalition" after the tumultuous 1968 presidential election.

The late 1970s was dominated by the ideas of economists like Art Laffer, who took an uncontroversial economic idea "tax revenue is maximized at some point between 0% and 100%" and turned it into "the tax revenue maximizing rate must be lower than our current rate" without presenting sufficient evidence for his claim. This was a convenient for some in Washington who already believed this to be true, and thus the "Laffer curve" was born. The following era of deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy likely played a large role in increasing income inequality.

[1] The causes of stagflation are still debated, but I am convinced this was directly caused by the OPEC oil cartel using it's market power to quickly inflate the price of oil by 400%, creating a massive supply shock that started the stagflation spiral.

<comment><USER11> > _I don 't see this as evidence that economists => inequality. Even if we > accept the notion that economists are directly responsible for growing > inequality, it's worth remembering that there are disagreements within their > ranks._

It's not "economists => inequality" it's neoliberal economists (almost all of them today) => inequality"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >The study's lead author, John Antonakis, a psychologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, suggests leaders should use their intelligence to generate creative metaphors that will persuade and inspire others—the way former U.S. President Barack Obama did. "I think the only way a smart person can signal their intelligence appropriately and still connect with the people," Antonakis says, "is to speak in charismatic ways."

This stood out to me. I would be interested to hear the thoughts of HN readers on this.

<comment><USER16> I think charisma is best used to signal a lack of intelligence. Someone else posted a link to a op-ed about GWB, but Trump follows a similar approach. Lots of people question his intelligence and decision-making ability, yet, every one of us hear or talk about him several times a day.

He also has a political sleight-of-hand that I don't think has ever been matched. Every time a key policy decision is being debated, the news channels are focused on Trump's latest gaffe rather than the decisions being made in Washington.

Appeal to emotion to get results, not reason.

<comment><USER17> To use a metaphor as a counterargument, if there were a 6 foot spider in my shower you'd better believe I would talk about it at least a few times a day. That doesn't mean the spider has charisma, just that it's a clear and present danger weighing heavily on my mind.

If anyone is exercising political sleight of hand I'd say it's the legislators and executive staff who are getting in all their unpopular actions while the getting is good, like a looter in a riot. Trump doesn't have to be politically savvy or even aware of what they're doing for that to happen.

<comment><USER18> Trump's skillset is that of a reality TV star. He knows what to say and how to say it to engage people in drama. His presidency has been a continuation of this. It freaks out the intelligentsia because it seems insane to them that a person in such a high place of power could get involved in things like Twitter flame wars. That's low class/blue collar behavior that is totally foreign to their own culture. That is why people on the blue collar end of the spectrum are more capable of realizing that this particular aspect of his behavior does not represent a genuine threat, because it's part of their culture.

<comment><USER19> > Twitter flame wars ... does not represent a genuine threat

...until it's a flame war between two nuclear powers with unstable leaders.

<comment><USER18> Your depiction of Trump as unstable is exactly this cultural bias I'm referring to. He doesn't exhibit the upper class white culture behaviors you're willing to accept in a president, so he seems unstable.

It's worth mentioning that while he's always been rich, Trump spent a significant portion of his youth around construction sites, so he has adopted a lot of low class blue collar behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is a simpler explanation. It is the Peter principle.

A person is promoted until failure. All else being equal, if two people are leaders, leader A will be on average as good as leader B. If one were significantly better, they would be promoted to the next level - eg a retired philanthropist billionaire or enlightened monk or what have you.

If P and Q are qualities correlated with leadership, if P and Q are independently randomly distributed, then a leader with higher P is expected to have a lower Q.

An analogy: farmers who grew 2 truck loads of bananas meet up to compare farms. On average the farms are 4 square miles. If farmer Joe tells you his farm is half a mile wide, you might guess it is 8 miles high, because the area is expected to be average. There was no causation at work — having a half mile wide plot did not cause the plot to be 8 miles tall.

Why should we assume that there is a causal link between high iq and being disliked, when it could be chalked up to correlation between factors of an equivalence relation? High iq allows non-charasmatics to function higher than they normally would, just as charisma may make up for a lack of brains.

<comment><USER21> If P and Q are independently randomly distributed, you can't tell anything about Q from the value of P.

<comment><USER22> ... unless the sample being examined was selected for being above average in at least one of P or Q. In such a sample, P and Q will be anti-correlated.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson's_paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson's_paradox)

<comment><USER21> Ok, that actually makes sense. If they are truly independent, they will be unrelated. However since P+Q=LeadershipScore, and all LeadershipScore are about the same, then a high P indicates a Low Q. The connection between the two only exists because of that third piece of information, LeadershipScore, being held constant. The only part I disagree with is that LeadershipScore will be roughly the same in reality, I think a quick glance at the world's leaders shows some are clearly better in most ways than others.

<comment><USER23> It should be P+Q = L (another random variable) >= THRESHOLD_TO_BE_ACCEPTED_AS_LEADER

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In my experience really smart people can be arbitrarily wrong, perhaps moreso than less smart people, because they can create elaborate mental models to justify bad ideas, and someone significantly smarter than me can create difficult to refute arguments that serve as a bulwark against pushback. Remember that sophistry requires sophistication but is still little more than the smart person's stupidity.

<comment><USER25> Metacontrarianism! I'm always delighted when I get a chance to link to this: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metaco...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metacontrarianism/)

<comment><USER24> It's a bit ironic to me that you linked lesswrong, because one example of an argument I consider sophistic is the quantum mechanics sequence. In particular because the relational formulation of quantum mechanics [0] pulls the carpet right from underneath the argument in a rather dramatic way.

[0] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm- relational/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-relational/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Related: 'George W. Bush is smarter than you'. Elite leaders often make themselves look dumber than they really are.

[https://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/](https://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/)

<comment><USER27> this is a crock. it was a crock when it was written and it's still a crock now. the idea that someone can for 8 years in the spotlight disguise themselves so much so that appear wholly opposite is ludicrous. it takes months for professional actors to produce 90 minutes of performance - the guy was on camera for literally weeks. he's not "smarter than you" this kind of revisionist nonsense is politically motivated - people were saying the same exact thing about Trump before he took office and we are now all very sure it's not the case.

<comment><USER28> Do you think you could become president of the US if you just wanted to? Probably not. Trump is smart. I would be in literal, not figurative, disbelief if any president in the history of modern US weren't. The competition for that position is very sharp and only the best make it. There are many problems with Trump, but IQ isn't one of them. Hitler wasn't dumb either. Being a good demagogue is hard. The strategy and skillset is somewhat different to ordinary politics, but don't mistake that for ease. While we're at it: Youtubers and fashion bloggers aren't dumb either.

Trump is narcissistic, insecure, mean, ignorant and has no honor, but dumb he ain't. Underestimating the guy is unwise.

<comment><USER29> Some of Trump's advisers are not to be underestimated. Their brilliance is in using Trump -- who has off the charts emotional intelligence -- as a president. They frame the issues, he taunts and captivates the press.

I would point to the incredible power struggle in the white house as a product of the undue behind-the-scenes influence.

<comment><USER28> Good point. I suspect Trump doesn't care about most issues, so GOP and administration gets free reign on those. I suspect that's part of why he hasn't been impeached and part of the benefits package of working for the administration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm a smart leader, and I am disliked. And it's this exact tone that they dislike most.

They feel I lack empathy, but empathy is why I do it.

And when someone likes me, I know they know we know what's up. That's also why I do it.

I find those who work hard to be liked creepy. I also find managers and supervisors who are paid to be your friend disingenuous. And I'm not going to butter someone up before I tell them they made a mistake. The last thing I want is to spoil them or keep them in a bubble. But I'll also tell them to focus on the problem, and not themselves. Don't be part of the problem.

Being liked is work in business. In our private lives it's personal preference, but you can also choose your friends. Professionally, it's a strategic decision, because it will inevitably involve people you may struggle to like personally.

The prevalent anti-intellectualism does intellects injustice more than anything else. Many would rather be spoiled than informed. They'd rather protect their ego than gain competence. They'd rather be forgiven than corrected for their mistakes. And they'd rather be paid for being who they are, than be told they need to work or put in the work.

No one is paid for being who they are, not even celebrities. We're all being paid for our work. Our image is part of our work, even for non-celebrities.

Anti-intellectualism is also at the root of anti-professionalism. And it's a huge issue in America.

Out of pragmatism, out of optimism, and out of empathy, I am sorry, but I choose to be unapologetically professional.

I am the apologetic asshole.

And that's what's up.

(didn't expect this comment to turn out this way, but I'm submitting it anyway)

</comment><comment><USER31> My takeaway was that people don't like leaders that can't relate to them.

Obama related well to one part of the country, and Trump related well to another part of the country.

Trump's case being more surprising since he's tries very hard to come off as a class traitor. ex. Notice his love of the peoples food (fast food)

<comment><USER32> Question is why do we need a leader we relate to? We're not living in tribes any longer. The president of a country isn't likely to sit down and have a beer with us.

<comment><USER33> People feel that leaders they can relate to are more likely to take their interests seriously.

<comment><USER34> It would be better to say, if a leader can relate to the people, then he may be more likely to take their interests seriously.

<comment><USER32> But is that true? Or do the campaign managers know that helps get their candidates elected?

<comment><USER35> I believe that's the difference between genuinely being able to relate, and faking it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Immediately when I saw the title I assumed this had something to do with Trump. Both Bush II and Trump have been chided as being stupid. Yet their seemingly stupid demeanor is part of what attracts people. When people come across as super intelligent they can also come across as fake, particularly if there is already an inherent lack of trust in a domain like politics. When Trump tweets, his lack of diplomacy and unpolished grammar make him sound like a normal guy just talking about what he thinks rather than an elite, lifelong politician which no one can relate to.

<comment><USER32> And that's kind of scary. I don't want some average Joe I can relate to being the most powerful person in the world. I want someone smarter than me with a lot of solid political experience who knows how to navigate issues while being pragmatic enough to get stuff done. Being president of the US isn't like being a plumber.

<comment><USER37> If you believe this you will always get a technocrat with a great resume who has spent years enforcing the status quo, and, once elected, will do nothing to change it. If you want anything to be better you need to move away from gatekeeping "qualifications" because they are always bestowed upon proponents of business as usual by proponents of business as usual. What does "smart" mean? They went to Harvard and are therefore best buddies with the ultrawealthy and elites of society? The pundit class says they're smart? Rarely, once in 200 years, you'll get lucky with this approach and land on a class traitor and hero like FDR, but you're actively selecting away from that on purpose.

For a leader, you want a strong vision for the future, passion, a very strong will, charisma. It's ridiculous that people obsess about "intelligence" or "qualifications" \-- Obama was brilliant and supremely qualified, how did that work out for us? We picked a constitutional law scholar who continued and made permanent all the constitutional violations of the Bush admin. Friends with the very intelligent economic experts on Wall Street and able to recognize their expertise, he let them run his cabinet and bail themselves out and let them pillage our country's economy.

<comment><USER38> > For a leader, you want a strong vision for the future, passion, a very > strong will, charisma.

Europe was plagued with many of this style of "leader" between the 1920's and 1940's and tens of millions of people died for it.

<comment><USER37> Oh yes I agree strong leaders like I've described with the power to change society can be bad. Change is not always good. But a qualified technocrat will not ever change anything much, for better or for worse. Why change a system that worked perfectly for you? That you thrived in? Where you can do a bunch of spreadsheets in your off time comparing private insurance plans and cleverly pick the best one for you and save money, and if you screw up, your child's hospital visit isn't covered and you are instantly homeless! How fun! If you want change, don't pick the Harvard valedictorian "wonk".

They will suggest policies like: what if instead of feeding the hungry we define a specific income bracket adjusted dynamically to the purchasing power parity of... and in the first three words you've already lost 99% of the population who thinks it's unnecessarily complicated because it is: they're turning a moral issue into a technical one because they've been trained to do technical analysis and to not see things in moral terms, rather, to shift numbers around in spreadsheets. They are wholly incapable of stepping back and recognizing that the spreadsheet itself is wrong, not technically wrong, but morally wrong: that simpler is better, that universal programs (like roads, NHS) are better than means-tested ones, that these things which are simple moral imperatives should be able to be explained simply.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, it's a good thing that the world isn't all that complicated and that all of our problems can be solved with simplistic, well-intended platitudes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's possible that people have an innate tendency to be resentful of leaders who are smarter than them, but there may be other explanations.

Perhaps high IQ test results correlate with some negative trait that wasn't captured.

Perhaps it's unusually difficult for some reason to simultaneously be successful in business, well liked by employees, and really smart.

Perhaps the population of business leaders contains an abnormally high proportion of highly intelligent sociopaths.

Perhaps high IQ correlates with wealth, and employees tend to be resentful of business leaders who earn, say, 100x or 1000x what they earn.

Perhaps on average high IQ leaders were more likely to have goals that contradicted the goals of the workers (e.g. maximize profit at all costs vs. make this a great place to work).

<comment><USER40> Yeah, the article is quite shallow. I was thinking especially of your last point. I'm working in software engineering. We have a lot of the smart and driven software developers that you would want in management positions. However they are smart and driven developers because they enjoy toying with technical problems. They enjoy being developers. They mostly hate meetings where we're talking about fluff. They don't WANT to go into management.

There's a strong self-selection going on, at least in my company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> If you are struggling with such issues, you might find some of the resources at Hoagies Gifted Page helpful. I don't read it myself anymore, in part because it is the smart version of _poor little rich boy._ In other words, it whines a lot about "Oh woe is me. I am so smart and it is ruining my life." But if you are having social challenges as a smart person, that isn't necessarily a bad thing to be exposed to.

You can also search for _social and emotional needs of the gifted_ for additional material. You could look up _Beyond IQ_ as well.

<comment><USER42> i never got the self pity vibe from hoagies' page. i felt it was more explanatory than comiserational. it's a great resource, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Correlation is not causation! This article says, very high IQ is anti- correlated with perception of effectiveness.

That might be because having a high IQ causes people to perceive you as less effective.

It also might be because having really high IQ makes you more likely to be promoted, and is independent of other traits (like charisma or conscientiousness) which impact perception of effectiveness and therefore the population of people promoted without really high IQ tends to score higher on those other traits on average. Selection bias, in other words.

Based on the evidence presented, we just don't know. Everyone arguing over why very high IQ "causes" the effect we are seeing might just be making stuff up, because we don't know if there is a causal relationship at all.

</comment><comment><USER44> When I was a kid my family would often chide me for using "big words" and told I was trying to "impress everyone" doing that.

The truth is, I was just trying to relate something I'd learned and thought was interesting and every time that happened I was kind of shocked and left wondering how they'd missed the gist of what I was talking about. My own mother did it. I finally stopped sharing things I thought they'd attack me for like that.

Then, in the 4th grade the city I went to school in had all the kids in the district take a test to measure intelligence, though they didn't tell us students that was what we were doing. About a month later my teacher asked my mother to meet her. She told my mom that I'd tested the 2nd highest in the district. She recommended that I be bumped up a couple grades so I could learn more. My mother told her "No. He'll be in the same grade as his older brother and that will cause problems at home." She also told the teacher that she didn't believe I was "that smart".

My teacher was shocked by that. She pulled me aside the next day and told me about the test, her conversation with my mother, and that she was sorry that she couldn't do more for me.

I'd never given a thought about me being "smarter" than anyone. I knew that school was easy for me as compared to some of the other kids that seemed to struggle but I figured they'd get the lessons soon enough. I never talked to anyone in my family about it. I knew they'd just humiliate me if I did.

A few years later I looked into IQ tests and saw the Bell Curve Graph and where I stood on it. Since then I've almost never, ever, mentioned it to anyone but a very few close friends who are no doubt in the same general area on that graph because the first few times I did I got hammered on hard.

Just a few years ago (50 years later) one of my cousins came to visit where I live now and I started talking about something I'd just read and they stopped me right in the middle of it and said "Why are you always trying to impress everyone by using big words." Brought me right back to when we were kids.

I've always known I couldn't be alone with these kinds of experiences, and this article confirms that, but it got me to thinking about how little this has has been discussed and how this kind of exposes that it's probably a far more pervasive problem than we know.

I do know that over the years I've pointed out why something wouldn't work as planned and been told I was wrong and then later proved right. More than a few times it was an expensive lesson to be learned for those who ignored me. And pretty much every time I was hated for pointing it out.

I've never given any thought to the problem or how to fix it but it would probably be interesting to attempt to measure the costs and ponder solutions to it.

<comment><USER45> I don't know my exact position on the curve, but I can relate. I find it ironic that many of the folks who score pretty high on general intelligence, often have an issue with social intelligence. I spend a lot of time now trying to study human nature in a game of catch-up. What most people seem to learn instinctively, I need to study.

<comment><USER46> > What most people seem to learn instinctively, I need to study.

This is 100% my wife vs me. I had heard about EQ before I met her, but I never really witnessed the power of a high EQ in action until we started dating. She knew so much about me by reading my face, reactions, gestures, etc. it sometimes made me angry, like she was in my head or something. I watched as she predicted people's actions easily, or convinced people to do what she wanted just by talking to them a particular way. She really opened my eyes to the idea that maybe having a high EQ is more beneficial than a high IQ, at least in navigating life. I always considered it something people said they had because they knew they weren't smart (side note, my wife also has a high IQ, so if you're reading this honey, yes I know you're smarter than me too.)

<comment><USER45> Hee, THe last line makes me think you are finally catching on also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> With the best kind of leader, when the work is finished, the people all say, "We did it ourselves."

~Tao Te Ching

</comment><comment><USER48> Maybe I'm just dumb. But I read tfa twice now, and I can't find a hint of an explanation. If I read an article is titled "Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders" I expect to read about why people dislike really smart leaders. I feel that perhaps this article is just clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER45> I would really like to see this study reproduced in an engineering environment. I wonder if the same trend holds, just a higher set point.

<comment><USER49> The article alluded to the point of diminishing IQ return varying depending on the industry - I think it would be interesting to also measure the IQ of the team behind that leader - I wouldn't be surprised to find the tipping point to be some multiplier of the median IQ of the team in question.

<comment><USER50> The underlying work, published in Journal of Applied Psychology, was explicitly meant to the test the idea that the tipping point is a multiplier of the team's IQ. From the abstract:

"Following Simonton's (1985) theory, we tested a specific model, indicating that the optimal IQ for perceived leadership will appear at about 1.2 standard deviations above the mean IQ of the group membership."

The researchers' findings are consistent with this theory in the group examined ("midlevel leaders", which I think means middle management); they say future work will test the theory with other groups who have different median IQs.

[http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-14279-001](http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-14279-001)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I am put off by the circumstance that in spite of the title, nowhere in the article does it seem to say (nor even suggest that the paper answers) why people dislike really smart leaders.

</comment><comment><USER52> May be related to this. I have the feeling that white rural Americans dislike "smart" people more than they dislike immigrants, blacks, city slickers and even billionaires.

<comment><USER53> If by "smart" you mean arrogant urban sophisticates who think very highly of their own intelligence then you're probably right.

<comment><USER32> Or it could mean more cosmopolitan dwellers who understand living in a connected, diverse world that's always changing better than your average rural dweller.

<comment><USER53> How would they identify that quality enough to dislike it? I'll tell you how: the smugness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Simplest answer: IQ doesn't measure inter-personal skills, and people who are really good at one type of thing (measurable by IQ) are often not as good at other things (various proposed metrics of social intelligence).

<comment><USER55> Anecdotally, I've found the opposite. People who are smart tend to be good at lots of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Here, smart means intellectual quality and their subject on leadership is private profit making. Why the rest of us should like those smart (highly intellectual, however their interest lies in their own profit) leader?

I'd like to see the study on the subject of public/social interest and I think that the result will be different.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm not sure if I would buy this conclusion without more data - it's quite possible that higher-IQ types are in qualitatively different roles than lower- IQ types in the same study. This would be very difficult to control for because if you do control such that you're comparing two individuals who are in similar roles but different IQ, you're then implicitly selecting for people who have other compensating characteristics.

</comment><comment><USER58> Sci-hub link to the actual paper[0]

[0] [http://sci-hub.tw/10.1037/apl0000221](http://sci- hub.tw/10.1037/apl0000221)

</comment><comment><USER59> I guess it's not an option that gets widely offered.

Most people would like a leader who is a) really smart and that's proven by "peer review", b) cares for their needs and not some other agenda, c) doesn't hesitate to display all that.

But that's just not who gets offered in e.g. modern democracy setting.

</comment><comment><USER60> I think there is "Smart", and there is "Wise". I have been thinking "Smart", as intellectually, is little over rated.

Wise, I dont quite know how to describe it yet, but is a combination of many many things.

</comment><comment><USER61> How did they establish that leaders with iq over 120 are not objectively worse, not just in the eyes of their followers?

I think it's common intuition that you need some degree of stupidity to sometimes make a prompt decision when more intelligent person would rather wait for more data to make better (but possibly harmfully late decission).

If there's a yes or no decission to be made you already have 50% chance of success as a leader even if you are no smarter than a cointoss. Smart leader might take too long to try to improve the odds or to verify that you can't improve them. Slightly dumber leader can decide faster "it's too hard, let's go with my gut feeling".

Maybe 120 is perfect for recognizing that often more thinking doesn't matter but at the same time recognizing instances when thinking pays off.

</comment><comment><USER62> How you define intelligence? The person who knows their audience and speaks in a way that connects with them is more intelligent than one who does not. And this is not measured by an IQ test.

<comment><USER63> Not necessarily. You might not care about connecting with your audience, or you might be maliciously intelligent and purposefully choose to alienate your audience by sounding smart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> It's simple. People are selfish so they like those which are like themselves and they want their self-images to be successful.

</comment><comment><USER65> Maybe the "Really Smart Leaders" not the real smart one?

</comment><comment><USER66> Trump these days is bragging how smart and genius he is, and well, we all know how disliked he is !! :)

</comment><comment><USER67> Looked up an IQ test to see if I'm too smart or too stupid to communicate.

Apparently I'm too smart. Thankfully that can be fixed! Lead poisoning, here I come! I'll pick up my old weed habit just to be safe.

<comment><USER68> Don't believe online IQ tests...

<comment><USER67> It wasn't really an IQ test, it was the mensa "IQ test" where they tell you if you might be able to join mensa based on your results. Apparently it's within my possibilities. You can see it here:

[https://www.mensa.lu/en/mensa/online-iq-test/online-iq- test....](https://www.mensa.lu/en/mensa/online-iq-test/online-iq-test.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I appreciate that that article was short and to the point.

<comment><USER70> Definitely. I really dislike the current trend in article writing, where the author(s) feel a need to start off with a multi-paragraph, tangentially- related (at best) narative about how their cousin's friend's sister's aunt felt this way and that about something, and the actual meat of the article is buried somewhere in the last 1/4th of the text.

<comment><USER71> They even do that for simple things like recipe websites. I google some food, find a recipe, and most of the time the first four paragraphs are describing the first time the author cooked with saffron or the cultural impact of the spice trade a thousand years ago. You know what? All I want is the recipe for my pressure cooker.

<comment><USER16> Serious Eats is good about this. They have a 'read the whole story' link on the recipe page for people that really care that a Magnum Unicorn is the best device for cracking peppercorns for steak au poivre. But the recipe page right to the point for those that don't care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> The problem with highly intelligent people is that they have a competition among themselves, and the most intelligent one coming out of those competitions is usually the one with the most measurable success (money) for the least amount of measurable input (work).

Meaning, there is a herd effect at work here, where renomee is nothing and looking down among the less intelligent ones is everything. Thus its a race away from productive intelligent endavours with lots of input (science) towards optimal endavours (hacking the system aka lawyer, investor). Meaning that blackhats among the intelligent always outcrowd the white hats in the long term deteriorating society as a whole.

Some streetsmarts might recognize the dynamic and engage it with disrupting countermeasures before the system itself is destroyed by a upper society where it is not feasible to be anything else then a well dressed game theory con- men.

<comment><USER73> The smartest people I know mostly have widely different goals, and mostly don't use money as a proxy for a measure of success (however I am not from the US...)

> competitions is usually the one with the most measurable success (money) for > the least amount of measurable input (work)

I remember thinking this way during my education years, but out in the real world I have learnt otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> The link is broken, FYI.

EDIT. Link is fixed.

<comment><USER75> Might have been fixed — works for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I wonder how the study was conducted. Was it only iq they tested? Did they test the social abilities of the leaders? It may have more to do with higher iq people generally having less good social skills than people with lower iq's than anything to do with the actual intelligence of the person.</comment>


MoviePass Parent Files to Raise $1.2B to Stay Afloat - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/moviepass-raising-1-2-billion-helios-matheson-1202863102/ <comment><USER2> A tad misleading, they filed to issue up to $1.2B more of their almost worthless stock over the next 3 years. They haven't actually raised any money. Here is the filing:

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1040792/000121390018...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1040792/000121390018008569/fs32018_heliosandmatheson.htm)

I'm not savvy enough to give it a full Matt Levine treatment so hopefully he will soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> From the perspective of a CEO: if you're about to go bankrupt anyway might as well as try a last ditch hail mary. It can't get any worse.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm quite baffled by the recent trend that burning money (without a sustainable business model) is considered equivalent to "growth".

</comment><comment><USER5> Good luck with that. The interest rate must be unreal.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. They should have just filed for bankruptcy instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> $1.2B is around 100x their market cap.

</comment><comment><USER8> don't worry, they're losing money on every sale but they'll make it up in volume.</comment>


Does Engineering Education Breed Terrorists? - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/Does-Engineering-Education/235800 <comment><USER2> That's an interesting article.

One's first reaction, just from the title and the realization that they would not be asking this question if engineers were not significantly over- represented among terrorists, might be to think that this is pretty much expected because smart terrorist groups will encourage young radicalized people to go study things like engineering that can be useful for the terrorist group. Terrorist groups aren't going to be telling young recruits to head off to college and get French Literature degrees. Thus, we should expect that among terrorists with a college or beyond education subjects helpful to committing terrorism will be overrepresented.

The researchers the article writes about considered that, and showed that this does not seem to be a big factor. A lot of the engineer terrorists were founders of their terror groups, and appeared to have become radicalized at or after school, rather than coming to school with terrorism in mind.</comment>


Why We Fight Russia - <AUTHOR> http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/221507/why-we-fight-russia <comment><USER2> The United States was on perfectly good terms with Russia from the early republic through 1917. During the American Civil War, and for that matter during the period about 1800-1814, we were on better terms with Russia than with England or France. During the later part of the 19th Century various persons of liberal convictions did complain about the Russian government; they made a persuasive case in the press, but how far this affected the opinions of the governing classes is not clear.

To have an opposite to point to does seem to do the national self-esteem good. The national mind might be another matter.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't like this line of thought - being anti-Russian because it is a "tradition".

There a lot more specific things to oppose Putin specifically and his 21st century Kremlin for:

* the wars in the North Caucasus, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria.

* the enormous plunder of Russia's natural resources and the corruption/bribery of democratic governments.

* the sponsoring of hateful ideologies and their export across the world.

* the unscrupulous sale of weapons to warlords and dictators across the developing world

* the war on truth - the killing and intimidation of journalists, the fake news on Russian channels, the spread of FUD on western media, even the wave of Internet trolls.

<comment><USER4> _the wars in the North Caucasus, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria_

The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya...

 _the enormous plunder of Russia 's natural resources_

The Dakota Access Pipeline

 _the sponsoring of hateful ideologies and their export across the world_

The cosy relationship with the exporters of Wahhabism

 _the unscrupulous sale of weapons to warlords and dictators across the developing world_

Handing out weapons like candy to every faction in the Middle East

 _the war on truth_

CNN

<comment><USER3> Actually there is a false equivalency even if I take your list on face value - the things you mentioned are done by multiple actors: two US administrations, Congress, Tribal and sectoral militias, Middle-Eastern governments, even private entities (CNN). On the Russian side your have Putin and his vertical of power (the popular term for his centralized, personal rule of Russia).

I also don't understand the point - is any of these things I listed OK because the "US" does them (or vice versa)? Looks like the 'Tu quoque' or 'appeal to hypocrisy' logical fallacy.

<comment><USER4> _Actually there is a false equivalency_

It is not false at all. The reality is that nations pursue their national interests, and the exact mechanism by which they organise themselves to do so is a mere implication detail.

<comment><USER5> How you organise yourself is a huge part of if and how you value people other than yourself. Some of us think democracy, free speech, civil liberties are important, because other people matter, and we are better off even with flawed implementations of those ideals.

So sure, cast them aside as mere "implication details" if you like. The Internet will always be full of nihilistic kids who don't think anything is worth standing up for, and it's valuable to have examples to point to.

<comment><USER4> _democracy, free speech, civil liberties are important_

That's funny because when _any country_ engages in _any policy_ it believes itself to be "the good guys".

Russia didn't export revolution "because we are evil lol" but it saw itself as liberating the oppressed every bit as America does when it launches the bombers. Again. One bombing mission on average every 20 minutes for the last 8 years. Show me some actual evidence that American values are any different than Russia's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm reminded of Abraham's Lincoln's quote:

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes" When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy

The way it talks about Russia seems anachronistic but I guess our view of the country hasn't really changed much over the last 150 years.

<comment><USER7> At the time Lincoln was writing, Russia was an absolute monarchy politically and largely feudal economically when the West (even those countries that were formally monarchies) had substantial penetration of both democratic institutions and capitalist economics (to the point that detailed criticism of capitalism and proposals for post-capitalist economic systems were around; this letter, after all, was written several years after the _Communist Manifesto_.)

So, yeah, it's not surprising that Russia would be chosen as an example of a backward and anti-liberty regime even then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is some strange aspirational, manifest destiny read on American individualism vs. Russian greatness through military might, anchored and extruded around the Tocqueville quote.

I much favor the alternate view, where the justifications and rationalizations are intellectual fluff and the day-to-day drivers are geopolitics. The about- face is still a jarring contrast, but only because Russia also considers the US an adversary.

While the two occasionally cooperate, generally it's not in one's vested interest to see the other one thrive beyond a boring, uneventful stability to where they're somewhat useful as a trade partner, stable enough to ward off unrest, and not assertive enough to project its power overseas.

<comment><USER3> "Its just geopolitics" doesn't have enough explanatory power. Why doesn't the USA have the same kind of relationship with Russia as it does with Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan or any other country with a either a similar population size, land area, natural resources endowment or level economic of development? Brazil is particularly comparable to Russia in terms in terms of the above and yet its foreign relations are totally different.

I see nothing inherent about Russia's geography to cause a conflict with NATO. If anything geography should push Russia _to_ the West and particularly the EU as the country is going lower and lower in the rankings of power by the rising populations and incomes across the former 3rd world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Suggested title: "Anti-Russia: Liberty and servitude in the new philo-czarist age"

This concatenates the title ("Anti-Russia") and the subtitle, as the title alone seems non-specific.

</comment><comment><USER10> OP, who is "we" referring to in your title? A very large portion of the US certainly disagrees with almost every point in this article.

<comment><USER9> The article title does not include the "we".

<comment><USER11> It's probably automatically taken from the HTML title of the page. No idea why the title's that way; they've probably changed the title at one point.

<comment><USER9> I see what you mean. The URL also reflects this: ...221507/why-we-fight-russia The bookmarklet would use this title as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Perl Renaissance - <AUTHOR> http://lanyrd.com/2013/linuxconfau/szzxt/ <comment><USER2> ...don't get mad for the question, but: anybody has any arguments for using Perl instead of, let's say Python, these days? (besides the "I already know it incredibly well" argument)

...cause the lack of an answer to such a question has only one conclusion: the language is dying, even if this is not already happening in a visible way!

(don't get me wrong, I'm not a Perl hater, and fyi, I think the world would be a much better place if Rasmus Lerdorf would have learned Perl and written a nice Perl web framework instead of inventing PHP :) )

<comment><USER3> Python significant white space. Really, that's what preventing me for ever liking Python.

<comment><USER4> Opinions on Python aside, I'd never hire somebody saying something like that at an interview, even about a language I don't like. You should really look past petty details when evaluating any tech and come up with actual arguments.

<comment><USER2> Really, _why_? You wouldn't hire someone that has some "language aesthetic preferences", although a bit different that the mainstream ones? He said "preventing me for ever liking Python" not "I'll never touch it because of this".

<comment><USER5> This is really the same as saying, "I won't work for company X because I don't think the brackets in the C++ code should be on the following line[1]!"

[1] E.g.:

      int main() {
      }

vs.

      int main()
      {
      }

This is an apt analogy because most companies will have some sort of code style guide that you have to follow, which doesn't make "coding at company X where bracket placement is enforced" much different from "coding in Python where whitespace is enforced."

I've yet to come across someone that had a severe hatred of Python due to the significant whitespace that was a programmer I respected. The last person that I knew (who had a visceral hatred of Python whitespace) wrote Perl code like this:

      sub func1 { shift->func2(shift)->func3(@_) }

or

      sub func1 { grep { $_[0]->func2($_) } $_[0]->func3() }

Note: These are literally code samples with the function names changed.

I don't know any Perl programmers that would condone this sort of code. It's a maintenance nightmare, especially since these were not one-off instances. Seems to me that the people that have a hatred of Python's handling of whitespace don't like being 'constrained' by their language, and are probably happier with Ruby or Perl.

<comment><USER6> There are some problems with the whitespace in Python.

I wrote some code with lots of nameless functions as input parameters (think JavaScript style or Ruby blocks), which of course was an _ugly pain_ to port to Python with no multi-line lambdas.

List comprehensions is another example -- a kludge coming from that the lack of multi instruction lambdas stop real map functions. (The fun part is that this necessity is touted as something good, instead of admitting that it is unnecessary complexity to learn.)

<comment><USER5> I've used both Perl and Python. When using Perl I use anonymous functions all the time. When writing Python, I don't. There are instances where in Perl I would use an anonymous function, but in Python I define a local function an pass the reference. Each language has it's own style.

If you're trying to fight the language's style, then you will obviously run into friction. I'm sure there are plenty of people coming from C/C++/Java that think that dynamically-typed languages are unusable because type can't be enforced at 'compile time.' Defining an anonymous function vs. a one-time use local function is mostly a matter of style/preference[1].

      | which of course was an ugly pain to port to Python with
      | no multi-line lambdas

There are two things you are describing here:

1) It was a pain to name all of these anonymous blocks.

2) The idea of naming the blocks is annoying / aesthetically displeasing to you.

#1 is just part of porting something between different languages. You would equally run into issues porting JS and/or Ruby code to Haskell, even with support to lambdas. #2 is just personal opinion / preference, even if it's one that shared by many.

      | (The fun part is that this necessity is touted as
      | something good, instead of admitting that it is
      | unnecessary complexity to learn.

I could use the same argument to rail against statically-typed languages. "A type system is just unnecessary complexity to learn."

[1] I welcome examples of where anonymous functions are unable to be replaced by local functions passed by reference.

<comment><USER6> >>Ruby code to Haskell

Uh... different paradigms. The scripting languages, which we are talking about here, are generally _very_ similar.

>> I welcome examples of where anonymous functions are unable to be replaced by local functions passed by reference.

Where did I write "unable" -- did I disprove some Turing machine theorem and forget about it? :-)

In this specific case it was a declarative data structure with some data next to code. It was well suited to have a dozen or two short functions next to the data structures.

You could rethink the whole thing and do something different in Python to keep it readable. But among the normal languages (in the same paradigm), Python is the odd man out, just because of the lack of multi line lambdas.

(I also gave the example of bad influences on map, etc.)

<comment><USER5>
      | >>Ruby code to Haskell
      |
      | Uh... different paradigms. The scripting
      | languages, which we are talking about here,
      | are generally very similar.

Different languages are different, no matter how many similarities that they have. You _are_ going to run into issues porting between languages. Expecting anything else is setting yourself up for disappointment.

C++ and ObjC are both 'C-based', so there should be zero issues porting code between them, right? French and Spanish are both Latin-based, so they are practically the same language, right?

      | >> I welcome examples of where anonymous
      | >> functions are unable to be replaced by
      | >> local functions passed by reference.
      |
      | Where did I write "unable" -- did I disprove
      | some Turing machine theorem and forget about it?
      | :-)

Poorly worded on my part.

      | In this specific case it was a declarative
      | data structure with some data next to code. It
      | was well suited to have a dozen or two short
      | functions next to the data structures.
      |
      | You could rethink the whole thing and do
      | something different in Python to keep it
      | readable. But among the normal languages (in
      | the same paradigm), Python is the odd man out,
      | just because of the lack of multi line lambdas.

1\. The inclusion of multi-line lambdas in a language is what makes it 'normal'? This just seems more like a personal opinion than anything objective. I could easily say that Ruby is the odd-man out and Perl/Python are the 'normal' languages, because of this:

      a = 0
      if a
        puts "Evaluates to True"
      end

Or Perl is the odd-man-out and Ruby/Python are the 'normal' languages because they have a GIL.

2\. If keeping the data structure and functions together was the best use- case, then maybe Python wasn't the tool for the job. Just like I wouldn't talk about how crappy Ruby is because it doesn't have SciPy/NumPy.

<comment><USER6> >>The inclusion of multi-line lambdas in a language is what makes it 'normal'?

All the scripting languages are very, very similar (see data structures, etc).

In short, you don't argue against my point.

My point was that Python stops multi-line lambdas for some weird purity argument re white spaces (I haven't found any other motivation).

This hurts quite a few use cases (for a 2nd -- copy paste and automatic indentation of code is at least more complex, and so on) and makes it necessary to learn weird syntax (list comprehensions), which incidentally is touted as the next coming of Christ...

And the inability to admit a wart on Python is quite typical -- didn't Guido tell you guys to stop trolling recently, because you were getting bad reputation..?

>> Or Perl is the odd-man-out and Ruby/Python are the 'normal' languages because they have a GIL.

These three are all similar -- avoid threading. :-(

Not that it is relevant for my original point, either.

<comment><USER7> > These three are all similar -- avoid threading. :-(

Perl gets a bad rep on threading because it's threads don't map to what many people consider the strong points of threads, which is light weight processes. Perl fails spectacularly in that regard, but if you want multi-process programming with a standard, well understood set of primitives for IPC, it's really quite nice. That is, the 'threads' module isn't all that great by itself, but when paired with 'threads::shared', it's really quite nice (as long as you are pre-spawning workers or don't require quick thread spawning).

For example, I love how locks are scope based, which makes the following possible:

      my $local_var = do { lock($lock_var) }

as well as:

      {
        lock($sync_var);
        $sync_var = "start!";
        cond_broadcast($sync_var);
      }

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would recommend starting with MooseX::Declare instead of Moose if you are trying to upgrade your Perl, as Moose is great above standard Perl OO but doesn't go far enough by itself.

Previously I found that MoooseX::Method::Signatures was very slow, so I ended up selecting Method::Signatures::Simple.

Coupled together, you end up code that looks somewhere between Ruby and Java. It's not my first choice for a new project, but it's not a bad way to fixup an old but large codebase.

Possible code example:

<https://github.com/mpdehaan/Elevator/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow.. I've been using Perl heavily for the last three years and he still managed to cram some amazingly useful stuff I didn't know into that short talk.

Well worth watching if you still equate "Perl code" with "line noise" :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Anything you can build in Perl, you can also build in Ruby or Python (or hell, even PHP), so it seems rather pointless to argue any of these solutions are superior to another.

At the end of the day the choice is largely personal preference (or company requirement). Also, I know plenty of programmers who still earn a living writing Perl, so it's clearly not a dead language by any stretch of the imagination.

Personally, I would LOVE the chance to work on a Mojolicious project. IMHO that's the best web application framework today (in any language).

</comment><comment><USER11> Perl unfortunately has a bad image vs its true reality.

I think Perl / Python are interchangeable as a language choice for web scale projects. If your biggest problem is whether to use Python vs Perl vs X, then I say good luck to you -- you should really have more important problems to worry about.

I'd never use ruby for a web scale project (as evidenced by the many services solely dedicated to scaling ruby on rails apps). PHP is not really a language.

Maybe the future belongs to ECMAScript.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great talk! I've never posted before, but I'm inspired to today. Forgive me if my code is formatted terribly this post.

I used Perl back around 2000, like everybody else, to make CGIs. Then went away from it for a long time. But I've used Perl over the last year to create a large DMCA takedown system, the bulk of which is spidering and analyzing web pages for infringements. Torrent trackers, one-click file download sites, etc.

It's been a beautiful experience. The code runs quickly (for a scripting language), and CPAN is AMAZING. I feel Perl was the best choice for this project, and since I enjoy the language--and trust me, it's NOT line noise: these aren't little scripts, this package-based, documented, modular software development, the likes of which people normally associate with Java (for instance.

I have to say I disagree with one point in that talk. I don't think there are "too many" ways to do OO in Perl--and this sort of ties into his gripe about "@_" and slurping in subroutine arguments, which I think is pure joy. I'm not certain, but I think Larry Wall got this from Lisp. Please correct me if I'm wrong on my history there.

Anyway, in one package that I use as an object, I have this code:

        #/ @param object $this    an Offense::Analyzer
        #/ @param string $event    an EVENT_x constant value
        #/ @param int $targetId    a target id
        #/ @param int $obvious    TRUE for obvious offenses, or FALSE
        #/ @param int $same    TRUE for offenses found on the same target, or FALSE
        #/ @return int    the value for the given event, or undef
        sub getEvent($$$$$) {
            my ($this, $event, $targetId) = (shift, getEventFor(shift), shift);
            my $obvious = getObviousKeyFor(shift);
            my $same = getSameTargetKeyFor(shift);

            return undef unless $this->hasTarget($targetId);
            $this->{'data'}{$targetId}[$obvious][$same][$event];
        }

And I supplement that code with the following convenience getters:

        sub getIgnored($$$$) { shift->getEvent(EVENT_IGNORED, @_) }
        sub getNotified($$$$) { shift->getEvent(EVENT_NOTIFIED, @_) }
        sub getQueued($$$$) { shift->getEvent(EVENT_QUEUED, @_) }
        sub getRemoved($$$$) { shift->getEvent(EVENT_REMOVED, @_) }

I love the convenience of being able to use the incoming arguments array in this manner. In fact, because you explicitly pass the object reference as the first argument to methods in Perl, I even have this:

        #/ @param object    an Offense::Analyzer
        #/ @param string    an EVENT_x constant value
        #/ @param int    a target id
        #/ @return int    the value for the given event
        sub getEventTotal($$$) {
            int(getEvent(@_, TRUE, TRUE)) +
            int(getEvent(@_, TRUE, FALSE)) +
            int(getEvent(@_, FALSE, TRUE)) +
            int(getEvent(@_, FALSE, FALSE));
        }

Those are not static method calls (so to speak--package sub calls), but are object method calls. I love that convenience.

Does your fluency need to be very high for this to seem like a good idea? Probably. And in this manner, Perl can never compete with Python. But I guess my argument is similar to the argument a lot of Lisp dialect programmers make: I'm an advanced user, I don't need to be babysat, I can take care of myself, and I'm ok with exploiting the expressiveness of the language.

<comment><USER13> why aren't you using POD for your documentation

why are you mistakenly using prototypes for function signatures

<comment><USER12> You're right on both counts. I would never perldoc my private code...I already don't use it for installed modules. So that's a personal preference. The prototypes issue is spot on. They're ignored during compilation when dispatching isn't clear ($obj->method() ... which subclass?). Most of my subs aren't called that way, so I do get argument checking, which has saved my butt many times, so I just make a habit of always using prototypes. They've been useful for me: that's all I've got there. I could easily be wrong.

And that goes for my whole coding style. You could easily say it's wrong to use "@_" the way I do, which I feel is incredibly convenient. I'm not saying it's a best practice. Maybe it isn't. But for me, it presents no obstacle, and I feel the code is perfectly clear. In in fact, having to enumerate every single argument merely to pass them along, in the same order, to another sub...to me, that seems like a terrible idea. Some people prefer that verbosity (or clarity, if you like). I don't think it's necessary.

<comment><USER13> fair reasons both

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The fact that they "like" the language.

Not noticing it does not equal "nonexistent". Your perceptions do not describe the whole reality.

Any turing complete language can do any job. As long as they are not astoundingly unequal, which is not the case, people choose based on... taste.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm always looking forward to Perl6, waiting for its stable version, for 10 years.

<comment><USER16> I think perl 5.10 and beyond kind of preempted perl 6.

Alas, perl 6 in some ways isn't even perl. Perl 6 is cool, but Larry should have made a new name for his next hobby :-)</comment></comment>