What happens when you are the doctor on the airplane? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cockeyed.com/personal/doctor_airplane/doctor_airplane.html <comment><USER2> I have had several medical emergencies onboard as a pilot. One thing I constantly say to physician friends (my wife is a doctor), is that we (the crew) expect from them to make as fast assessment of the situation as possible.

For example in my company we don´t have an online doctor to ask for help, so the volunteer has to take care of the situation. Recognizing the problem as soon as possible and prescribing the necessary action (Is not going to be easy with such limited capabilities, sometimes is just impossible, but is better an overreaction), is important because commercial planes fly at 8 NM/minute, and depending where are you flying ( flying over the ocean or africa) 10 minute delays could mean another 30 extra min to land or even several hours if you have passed a no return point in the middle of the ocean.

Don´t hesitate to take control of the situation regarding the patient, stewardesses and other passengers:

\- Ask for the medikit (only physicians are allowed to use it). I have seen some chief stewardess resisting to bring it, just to avoid having to write the compulsory report. \- If it is necessary to lay the passenger on the ground or other seats, bring him water or any other thing, just give the needed orders and ask for help. \- Ask the stewardesses to keep other passengers away if they are interfering too much. \- As soon as practicable give a report to the captain and if necessary ask him to land the plane. He will be waiting for it. \- If possible never declare a decease onboard , first you could be wrong!, and it is a bureaucratic mess. Is better to keep trying CPR till the emergency team can take care of the patient. We apply this in Europe although it is not a written rule, I don´t know how it works in USA. -Remember when in doubt it is better to ask the captain to land. Everybody will lose an hour or two but a live will probably be saved.

<comment><USER3> I know I'm going to get down-voted for an information-free post, but I think it's awesome that you're a commercial pilot and participating in HN. It can sometimes get too insular with valley-type techies here. Thanks for participating.

<comment><USER4> Not for being "information-free" but for breaking the guidelines: "Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you."

<comment><USER5> I don't think he was baiting users so much as apologizing in advance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are interested in medical "hacks" on long-distance flights, the award has to go to two doctors who were on a 1995 British Airways flight from Hong Kong to London when a patient had trouble breathing. They determined that the patient suffered a collapsed lung, so they made an incision in her chest, and used a coat hanger, brandy, and a tube from a medical kit to drain the lung. As I recall the story, there was also a nurse who assisted but I can only find the AP story which references the two doctors.(1)

I also have a relative who is a doctor/med school professor who does a lot of traveling, and has had to assist the crew three times with in-flight emergencies. One was a heart attack, one was deteriorating condition of an unknown cause (the flight was diverted to evacuate this man) and the third was a guy who had intense bladder pains mid-flight which turned out to be the result of downing a huge quantity of beer before the flight and being unable to urinate.

1\. [http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ZBxOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=p...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ZBxOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pOwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3211,3732374&dq=hong+kong+doctor+flight+collapsed+lung&hl=en)

<comment><USER7>
        intense bladder pains mid-flight which turned out to be
        the result of downing a huge quantity of beer before the
        flight and being unable to urinate

was that due to the altitude or something else?

<comment><USER6> The stricken passenger had the option of using the restroom, but for unknown reasons could not urinate. They stretched him out on a row of seats which seemed to help the pain, but from what I recall was unable to go until they reached the destination airport. The total trip time was about three hours.

<comment><USER8> Beyond a certain capacity the bladder is no longer contractile and must be catheterized to urinate. Happens every day in the OR or PACU.

<comment><USER3> Really? What happened before modern medicine? I'm not being snarky: I believe you.. but a burst bladder would be lethal without access to modern medical knowledge. That seems like a epic fail by evolution.

<comment><USER8> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe#Death>

<comment><USER9> Now I have something to be paranoid about and will be going the bathroom as much as possible.

<comment><USER8> Alcohol is a double-whammy because it induces a degree of transient paresis, allowing the inebriated to hold it longer than they should. Just don't fight the urge and you'll be fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't find it now, but my favourite 'doctor on a plane' story was from an anesthesiologist who struggles to sleep on a plane, so on a long haul flight took something to help him doze off. He woke up to the 'is there a doctor on the plane?' call, and called the flight attendant over. It turned out that he was the person that they wanted to attend to, they were concerned since he was passed out and drooling on the passenger next to him.

</comment><comment><USER11> My dad, an electrical engineer, was once on his way back from a conference with a Concorde flight full of other EEs. In the air, the stewardess asked, "Is there an engineer on board?" Everyone responded enthusiastically. She was forced to clarify, "Is there an _aeronautical_ engineer on board," to disappointment all around.

I must admit, some secret part of me always hopes I'll be in a situation on an airplane where they need an emergency perl script written . . .

<comment><USER12> That story seems _really_ fishy to me...

Why would electrical engineers fly to a conference on a Concorde? What good would an aeronautical engineer be _in flight_?

<comment><USER13> (Disclaimer: I'm Dove's husband. The man in question is my father in law, and I've heard the story from him firsthand, apparently much more recently than my wife did.)

> _"Why would electrical engineers fly to a conference on a Concorde?"_

The airline was moving a Concorde to a different facility (ie, it wasn't part of regular scheduled service). They decided to "upgrade" a bunch of passengers who were scheduled to be on a different type of aircraft. They moved the whole group of engineers together.

The stewardess asked for a "Concorde engineer", who was needed for after landing. It had something to do with the way the Concorde hooks up to the loading bridge at the terminal (it may have something to do with the unusual height of Concorde?)

<comment><USER11> Ah. I guess it has been some years since I heard the story. Thanks for the correction. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The medical director of my paramedic program used to work for a hospital that provided medical control for a number of major airlines (generally speaking, even when they ask for a physician on a plane, they're also calling the airline's 'on call' doctor as well).

His scariest stories weren't due to the criticality of the patient, but rather the incompetence of the provider on board the plane (to the point that he, on several different occasions, had to instruct the flight crew to 'please keep him away from the patient for the rest of the flight'). Just because someone is a 'doctor' doesn't necessarily mean they're well equipped to handle a medical emergency (note: the physician interviewed here managed the patient perfectly appropriately).

It's possible he was just pandering to the room of soon-to-be paramedics at the time, but he said he generally instructed the flight crew to ask for a paramedic before a physician, simply because they're generally more comfortable working in the 'austere' medical setting found on a plane.

<comment><USER14> My wife told me about a famous dermatologist who flies in dread of getting that call and there being no other doctor available. When med school was 40 years ago, you're not necessarily going to be comfortable handling, say, a heart attack.

<comment><USER15> One of my paramedic instructors told me a pretty funny story.

Apparently they were on shift one Saturday afternoon, when a call came through for a Code 2 (Cardiac Arrest) at a local racecourse.

Anyway, it was about 15 minutes away so they took off in a hurry, all the while receiving notes on their terminal regarding the job. Apparently it went along the lines of this:

Initial: Unknown Age, Cardiac Arrest, Racecourse etc Update: CPR in Progress Update: Doctor has self accounced at scene. Update: Doctor has called patient as deceased. CPR ceased.

It took another 5 minutes for the paramedics to get to the racecourse, and they still unloaded their gear and made their way to the patient. When asking for the doctor, they found that it was actually the racecourse veterinarian who had made the call.

<comment><USER12> I'm assuming the patient wasn't a racehorse?

If I had a dollar for every time a dermatologist or podiatrist tried to be 'helpful' on an emergency scene... I could probably buy a coffee at Starbucks... The same goes for 'nurses.' If an ER nurse wants to help out, that's great. Invariably though, it's a nurse at a nursing home or dialysis center...

I don't mean to imply these folks aren't skilled professionals, but prehospital medical emergencies are generally well outside their experience, and the confusion that arises from that can be dangerous.

<comment><USER16> Unlike a podiatrist, a dermatologist went to medical school. If they're young, there's actually a good chance that they were among the very best medical students -- in the past few years, dermatology has become one of the more competitive fields in medicine because of the lifestyle (short predictable hours, high pay, minimal insurance hassles).

There are daft people in every field, but I would be _delighted_ to have most of the derm residents and attendings I've met in an emergency (in fairness, I should note that this is a small sample, drawn from a couple top-tier hospitals, and biased towards people who do volunteer backcountry search and rescue).

<comment><USER12> Yeah, the podiatrist comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Like I said, I'm not try to discredit these folks as skilled (and in many cases, extremely smart) individuals.

However, a couple weeks of a rotation through an ER during med school isn't really going to prepare you well for prehospital emergencies (SAR, on the other hand, can be great training for that). Making an assessment and clinical decisions based on fairly limited information isn't something I've found most physicians to be comfortable with, especially in an emergency setting.

My list of 'glad to see you' docs is pretty much: ER, OB, and Anesthesia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My wife is a surgeon; while we were flying to Morocco last spring, a man on the plane accidentally put himself into a diabetic coma. A nurse was sitting next to him and thought that he was having a heart attack. The attendants called for a doctor; my wife recognized the actual issue, and revived him by rubbing honey on the inside of his mouth and gums (the onboard medical kit had nothing of use beyond rubber gloves).

The other passengers on the flight actually did applaud her, which was cute, but I think they mostly did it because it meant that the flight didn't need to be diverted to Heathrow.

<comment><USER17> Wow, shocking that the plane did not have glucose tablets. I carry the gel in my luggage just in case since it's particularly common and so simple. I guess sugar is sugar, but manipulating gooey honey sounds a lot harder that squirting gel pack.

(Don't want to rant too much, but it irks me that TSA has, once or twice, confronted me on the things.)

<comment><USER18> yes back when I helped organize a medium sized (1200-11300) camping event we always had plenty of sugar and mars bars to cater for diabetics that went out of balance this is in addition to what the on site St Johns team had.

Only had one close shave where some one diabetic had become and unconscious and thrown up in there sleeping bag - let me tell you seeing someone being carried towards you on a stretcher certainly gets rid of the hangover quick - this was pre mobile phones so i had to sprint to the public call box to call 999 (911)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Okay, I'll share random doctor flight story - last week some family friends were flying to Hawaii for vacation, and a man across the isle said he had been on vacation for several weeks and didn't bring enough heart medicine. He said he would just get some more when he got home, but halfway through the flight he slumped down in his chair, unresponsive. There was a doctor on the flight that used a stethoscope to find there was no heartbeat. (Not sure if the doctor had his own stethoscope or if it was in an on board kit.) The doctor just looked up at the flight attendant and shook his head. Luckily, this flight was not to Hawaii. It was just a layover from Houston to LAX, so they were able to land in Phoenix to have a medical response team take the passenger off. Apparently when they took him off, they didn't use a board or anything - one man grabbed his wrists, another his ankles, and they carried him off, but they couldn't completely lift him so his butt was dragging on the floor down the isle. I thought that was a little weird.

Also, is it legal to just put a blanket on the guy, pretend he's sleeping, and then deal with it when you get to your destination? Our friends missed their connecting flight to Hawaii in LAX because of this ordeal.

<comment><USER20> It's a little surprising to me they didn't even attempt CPR.

<comment><USER21> Out of hospital CPR has very slim survival chances. Being on a plane will result in at least 30 minutes of CPR even before an ambulance can take over. Chances on surviving that are extremely low. Therefore I can see why the doctor on the plane decided not to perform CPR. I have a medical degree myself btw.

<comment><USER15> This +10. Out of the 11 out of hospital arrests that I went to as a Paramedic (in a 6 month period), only 1 of them survived.

Ironically, the one who survived was a prisoner who had cut his own throat. He had pretty much bled out by the time we got there, with a tiny little junctional on the monitor. Today he has 0 deficits, and it is like the event never occurred.

<comment><USER22> Maybe I'm missing something, but even if there's only a 10% chance of survival I'd still want somebody to give it a shot. What is the downside -- somebody has to do it for 30 minutes until the plane lands?

<comment><USER12> That's 10% for someone who had access to advanced care within a few minutes.

If CPR goes on for more than 10 minutes or so in a non-hypothermic patient (with no other interventions), your chances of survival are basically nil. This is is especially true if you have a limited number of people doing compressions. Effective compressions are extremely hard work, and rescuer fatigue is a huge issue with CPR (we switch every two minutes no matter how 'fine' the person doing compressions claims to be). I doubt you could maintain effective CPR on an aircraft for 30 minutes (I suppose you could get a couple dozen people involved, but that seems unlikely).

If I'm not back in 15 minutes, please stop... At that point enough damage has been done to my brain that I don't want to come back...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My wife was on a flight from Taipei to LAX when they called for a doctor. She didn't see whether or not a doctor responded, but there were no further calls or announcements after that. Later when she went to the bathroom she saw a body bag on the floor near the bathrooms. When the flight arrived there were police waiting. Nobody could leave the plane until they were done with the body. No details were given to any of the passengers.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious if insulin is a standard part of the medkit. I was on a transatlantic crossing once with a coworker who went into diabetic shock (that's another long story).

A nurse was onboard the flight but no insulin. We had to divert and my coworker was laid up in a Newfoundland hospital for 3 days.

<comment><USER25> Why would a diabetic person not travel with insulin?

<comment><USER24> Pretty much a collision of unfortunate events. We were at a work function until 2am in London and returned to our room to find it had been robbed. The thieves took his bag which contained his insulin kit.

So now it's 3am GMT and he can't reach his doctor in the States. We're supposed to leave at 8am for the flight home. No pharmacy is open and even if they were, they wouldn't help him. Nurses at Heathrow couldn't help him either.

So he decided to risk it and see if he could make it all the way home without having any trouble. He went into shock 4 hours into the flight.

<comment><USER25> Ouch.

Were I ever to become diabetic (and manage to figure out my fear of needles), I'm pretty sure I'd carry around spare insulin, like an epi-pen.

(Is it something that can be carried around trivially? Or does it need to be refridgerated? You know what, maybe I'll just eat healthier.)

<comment><USER26> Insulin will last around 30 days unrefrigerated. Refrigerated, it lasts until the expiration date, which is years for the insulin I have.

That said, insulin is used to treat hyperglycemia, which is usually not an acute incident. "Diabetic shock" refers to hypoglycemia, in which the individual needs sugar to raise their blood sugar to normal levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This happened once to my father on a flight. He's an orthopedic surgeon (the woman in this story really hit the jackpot with an a anesthesiologist--the only thing better would be an ER doc, I think), and someone was having chest pains. He determined very quickly that it was not a heart attack or other critical condition, but through the whole ordeal, the passenger next to the patient (who did not know the patient and had no medical training) kept second guessing my dad's requests and diagnosis. The flight attendants ended up "asking" this other guy to move several rows back to an empty seat.

Everyone's a critic.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm a former ski patroller, which is a kind of outdoors EMT / paramedic. Once, on a flight from Seattle to Boston (for a YC interview!) I walked to the aft bathroom only to find a young woman who had collapsed there, still prone and lethargic, with a stewardess standing over her with a look of annoyed disgust. An evaluation indicated she was probably just dehydrated, so I had the still- annoyed stewardess bring her water, which revived her. (Of course I recommended that she see a doc when we landed just in case, but I doubt she did.) After an hour or so we were able to get her back to her seat. The rest of the flight was uneventful. The only thing that never added up was the bizzare attitude of the stewardess.

(edited: semi-conscious -> lethargic)

<comment><USER12> How did you get the water into someone who was semi-concious?

<comment><USER28> Semi-conscious, if I recall correctly, covers a wide range of responsiveness. She was unable to stand and slow to respond to questions but was well-oriented w.r.t. person, place and time. Drinking water wasn't a problem. The possible danger is that they'll vomit it up after passing out, or that they have some issue that requires emergency surgery. Now you've put something in their stomach that they might vomit during surgery, which is somewhat dangerous. But she had signs of dehydration so I did it.

In retrospect I should have given her honey or the like just in case she was having her first ever diabetic shock.

<comment><USER12> No, the possible danger is that they'll aspirate the water and you'll compromise their airway. Sounds like she wasn't semi-concious though, just tired, and maybe a little lethargic.

<comment><USER28> Of course, if they are that badly out of it - I decided she wasn't. It sounds like I used the wrong term, thanks. Fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have one question regarding the question: "Did you end up getting sued?"

Why would the doctor get sued? Why would that question even be asked? I didn't feel like any type of catastrophic event happened to merit a lawsuit.

<comment><USER30> You'd be surprised. A course was held recently on in air medicine here in NZ. The airline running the course said that they would foot any resulting legal bills that resulted, from anywhere on earth. However there was one condition - medical staff called when on a plane will give their time for free. The airline had received invoices for medical staff time in the recent past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.

</comment><comment><USER32> An interesting interview. I wonder if he gets upset if people call him Shirley?

</comment><comment><USER33> I was flying transatlantic with a friend who has a medical degree when they called for a doctor.

There was an older fellow who had a heart condition for which he was taking medication. His reasoning had gone something like "I need to take one of these pills four times a day, but I'll be traveling, so I'll just take all four of them right before checking in". Needless to say, this didn't work very well, and he was having sort of issue with his heart as a result. The poor guy was so scared he literally shit himself.

My friend actually had to make the call whether we needed to land on an airport in Greenland to get the guy to a hospital. He thought about it for a minute and decided that the guy was going to live, so we continued to Amsterdam, where an ambulance was waiting.

As a "thank you" from KLM, my friend was allowed in the cockpit during landing (this was before 9/11), and he got a bag full of little bottles of alchoholic beverages. Unfortunately, he's a teetotaller.

</comment><comment><USER34> Everytime I have seen a doctor call on airplane it was either an allergic reaction to food, or some guy who opened his duty-free bottle on the plane and had a little too much fun.

</comment><comment><USER35> Cool story.My girlfriend is a flight attendant. I hear a lot of stories from her and it is very common to ask if there are any doctors on the plane. What crazy is that people in-flight non stop (we just don't hear about it). Anything from heart attacks to other health problems, even just because they are old.

Sometimes they will put a blanket over the body, sometimes they will pretend that the person is sleeping. Depending on the situation.

I don't really get into the details but that's the scoop.

=)

</comment><comment><USER36> I used to work with a consultant paediatric neurologist who had the call go out on a trans-pacific flight for a heart problem. She was hesitating before responding because the last time she had anything to do with hearts or adults was in medical school 20 years earlier, and was frantically running through what she could remember of cardiac medicine. Just as she made up her mind to respond she was beaten to the response... by a cardiologist.

</comment><comment><USER37> This was a very interesting article, given that I just experienced something similar.

Flight from SFO -> IAD last week. As soon as we took off, they asked for a doctor. He spent 2 hours treating the patient before they started drink service, and continued until we landed. We were all quite worried about the person, but found out at the end of the flight that they had overdosed on NyQuil. That made the whole ordeal fairly frustrating.

<comment><USER12> Overdosed on NyQuil? How much NyQuil did he take?

I have no idea how big a typical bottle of NyQuil is, but assuming it's somewhere in the ballpark of 10oz (we'll call it 300ml to make the math easy). NyQuil has 325mg/15ml, so our hypothetical 10oz bottle has ~6,500mg in it. That's certainly a respectable dose of Tylenol, but it's not likely to be fatal in a couple hours for an average sized adult...

<comment><USER38> I'd guess that the problem was excessive sedation due to the antihistamine, rather than acute liver injury from acetaminophen toxicity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "The medikit was actually really comprehensive ... that contained ... even morphine."

I am surprised that it contained morphine. Pain killers would not help much in resolving whatever medical issue is occurring.

Besides, is it not dangerous to report the fact that morphine is available on a flight? Some medkits are easily accessible and can be taken when the flight attendants are not looking.

<comment><USER40> When you have a myocardial infarction or acute pulmonary edema inflight, you'll be glad there's morphine available.

<comment><USER15> It is amazing how well morphine can work, and how utterly useless it can be at other times. I found it to be incredibly helpful during the AMI cases, especially for putting the patient as ease, especially when they understand the gravity of the STEMI that they are currently experiencing.

We went to a fractured tib/fib (Football injury) and we loaded him up with the maximum dose over the course of treatment (50 minutes or so) and it didn't even touch the sides.

Looking back we probably should have called for the IC guys and done some ketamine + realignment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Oh stewardess, I speak jive.

</comment><comment><USER42> Here's the google cache version (site is under heavy load) ... [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.coc...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.cockeyed.com/personal/doctor_airplane/doctor_airplane.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> An uncle of mine was in a situation like this once. He was sitting in first class and had to tend to someone in economy class. He decided that it would be best that he stayed by the man he was tending to so my uncle swapped seats with the man's wife. They gave him a bottle of wine for his help but I would have expected something more.

<comment><USER44> What airline was that? They should have at least given him a round-trip ticket since he missed a part of flight he paid for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I was half-dozing on a Southwestern flight when a stewardess came on the PA system calling for any physician to identify themselves.

I spoke up, and the crew directed me toward the back. They already had this incredible medical kit opened in the aisle. I mean they had _everything_....ACLS drugs, defibrillator, suction, a complete mini-pharmacy, and what looked like a few plastic-7 wound and/or trauma kits at the least. I mean, I was practically drooling over this high-tech kit.

Of course, it was also at that moment that I started frantically running through cardiac code algorithms in my head, and pondering _exactly how long it had been_ since I'd actually dealt with a code _in a hospital_ , with plenty of trained staff, lab support, etc.

Of course, it wasn't any kind of life-and-death situation at all - a young person very stressed and anxious about relocating and the actual conditions of the flight, who'd been hyperventilating, hadn't eaten or had anything to drink for many hours, near-syncopal, etc etc.

I tried my hardest, but couldn't think of a single thing to use out of the medi-kit. I _wanted_ to use it.

I just sat down next to her and listened, which is 90% of medicine anyway.

Southwest was great - gave me two round-trip tickets to anywhere for taking a few minutes to talk.

A colleague at University of Hawaii wrote a paper about dealing with psychiatric emergencies in the air. One thing that stuck out in the paper was the interesting phenomenon of what he called "honeymoon psychosis", with one of a young newly married couple away from home for the first time, possibly on their first flight, all leading to some interesting disturbances on those long pan-Pacific flights.

<comment><USER18> Would not they check the passenger list for Dr's first? I remember being told that this was an occupational hazard for Phd's that you might be assumed to be a MD Dr.

<comment><USER8> As a physician and government traveler, the online booking service never asks for my title, and even if it did, I'd have to choose: Dr/MD? LCDR/USN/MC? Most identities online don't require a title and I don't offer. It only induces spam.

<comment><USER46> Just as an entertaining aside - the British Airways registration page currently includes Viscountess amongst other titles. Even so it's relatively limited - in its early days it contained a bizarre list of titles including the, um, uniquely prestigious "pope". Presumably the result of over- enthusiastic data population of the DB from some authoritative resource.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm confused. Why is this on HN?

<comment><USER48> To paraphrase the rules, if you see a submission that doesn't belong, just flag it and move on. If enough people agree, it'll go away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Unreadable on mobile (pre text or something preventing reflow). And no byline or date, so completely useless. Fuck off basically.

<comment><USER50> Outside of the parent's bad attitude, he does have a good point. No timestamp on the article makes it hard for me to place the story in context.

It is one of my pet peeves when I come across some morsel of information online but I can't evaluate if it is still applicable because there is no timestamp anywhere.

<comment><USER51> That's a pet peeve of mine, also. There's usually a date, but often not near the top and/or not in a standard format. Then there are these sites that use relative times, e.g., 0 minutes ago, or 865 days ago ...

In the current case, there is a timestamp of sorts at the bottom of the page: "Updated December 27, 2012 Copyright 2012 Cockeyed.com".

Here is blog owner's About page, last updated January 27, 2012: <http://www.cockeyed.com/personal/about.html>.

<comment><USER52> Is there some form of timestamp which is better than the full date at the bottom of the page?

<comment><USER30> Personally I find it useful when it says it was an hour ago, or a day ago, or 3 days ago etc up to a week. Then the date is what I want.

<comment><USER51> Yes. And it also helps if it's near the top of the post, as opposed to being buried in a signature or something.

Bottom of the page would be OK, too, if people always put it there. But they don't.

Consistent date placement promotes efficient search engine result scanning (Google's date constraints are highly imperfect).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do all the iPad articles really add something valuable? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering how much of the front page would be crowded with iPad today... most of it I guess is the answer.  Do all these articles really add any value beyond perhaps the first or maybe second?  I feel like there are huge diminishing returns on these types of articles.  Am I missing something? <comment><USER2> You are asking a very self-referential question which you probably know the answer to. If a tsunami of iPad posts don't add much value, as you suggest, how much value do meta-iPad posts add, do you think?

<comment><USER3> They provide other people with the information that not everyone here wants to discuss the hype of the day. For me, this was valuable, since (coincidentally?) yesterday was the first day that I couldn't find _any_ submission that I was even _remotely_ interested in.

Meta posts have their place, if they are used in moderation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the first time I've ever pulled up Hacker News and found nothing interesting on the homepage.

<comment><USER4> I'd appreciate a comment with the downvote. I _was_ answering the question. Do you simply disagree that the most interesting stories are buried more deeply than usual?

<comment><USER5> I guess you're being downvoted because it's such a clichéed thing to say, and it adds nothing to the conversation beyond a "Yes" or "No" sound.

<comment><USER6> I haven't seen it mentioned before, so for me it isn't cliché, and I was sort of surprised to see the story was still running that strong.

A high-resolution iphone that can not make voice calls is not the earth shattering announcement that it was rumoured was coming.

The danger of having the hype machine out of control like this is that you can basically only under-deliver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a little frustrating seeing a full page of iPad posts but when I looked a little closer I could see that they're all (mostly) looking at different things. I was keen to know more about why it didn't have a camera and how this would affect web-apps - there's an article for that. :)

That said I think I'll take the next couple of days off from HN.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is self-correcting.

When people are bored of talking about the iPad then they will stop voting the articles up. If more exciting things appear then they will be voted up.

Give it 24 hours, and the wheel will turn again.

</comment><comment><USER9> This too shall pass. Also, people have been mature enough to avoid tossing an Erlang-bomb, which is a plus.

<comment><USER6> It's sad that Erlang will be - at least on HN - forever associated with the stunt pulled by a very limited number of individuals.

<comment><USER2> Probably not forever. People will move on eventually, reach some clojure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Do all these articles really add any value beyond perhaps the first or maybe second?"

You must be new here!

Aside from the "value is in the eye of the beholder" answer, Apple has always had a bit of a cult like following even among some developers, and when an Apple product launches you can expect some links on the front page. And arguably it does have some impact on Hacker's lives and is worth some discussion, even if you think (as I do) the reactions (both pro and anti) to this specific product is overblown.

But yes, this will fade over the next few days. Just the "cost of doing business" on HN. Just wait a couple of days and things will be back to normal.

</comment><comment><USER11> Only a small fraction of them do, and this is not one of them. One can understand the excitement, however. I would imagine this will tail off over the next day.

</comment><comment><USER12> Don't forget the niche in a niche - at a quick glance the top 8 articles and 14 of the top page are iPad related, but only 5 of them attracted me and only 2 warranted upvotes. Only 3 got enough support to make it to the best page.

So it's not the same 87 people upvoting all the articles. They are discussing different facets, which will appeal to different HN members.

Having said that, I am looking forward to tomorrow ...

</comment><comment><USER13> The rush of iPad news means there are a lot of lookers on HN and not enough makers. Makers care about tools and processes and generally stuff conductive of making, while lookers want to ogle. Lookers aren't bad people, but makers need to have their own place with high signal/noise ratio, while lookers tend to unwillingly destroy it when they show up in large numbers.

</comment><comment><USER14> I believe it is a sign of how important this issue is to the community. I wouldn't underestimate it.</comment>


Atlas shows how genes organize the surface of the brain - <AUTHOR> http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-atlas-genes-surface-brain.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Abstract of the underlying study as published in Science:

<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6076/1634.abstract>

I learned about this study from the Behavior Genetics Association.</comment>


eBay: What's the Deal with Bitcoins Anyway? - <AUTHOR> http://deals.ebay.com/blog/whats-the-deal-with-bitcoins-anyway/

<comment><AUTHOR> eBay thinking about accepting Bitcoin?

<comment><USER2> They are probably testing the soil

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the _farfetched_ idea is; PayPal wants a stake in it if it happens but can't endorse it by publicly talking about it.So using eBay's brand makes more sense.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft billionaire takes on cell biology - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/microsoft-billionaire-takes-on-cell-biology-1.16520 <comment><USER2> Paul Alan's philanthropy doesn't get much press but he's donating his money to some interesting work. In particular, his open science brain research:

[https://www.alleninstitute.org](https://www.alleninstitute.org)</comment>


Deschooling Society (1970) - <AUTHOR> https://davidtinapple.com/illich/1970_deschooling.html <comment><AUTHOR> "Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.

In these essays, I will show that the institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization, and psychological impotence: three dimensions in a process of global degradation and modernized misery."

<comment><USER2> I loved Illich when I was in high school. I read all of his books, dug up old audio recordings, and even built a website hosting all of the hard-to-find stuff he wrote.

Reflecting on his work now, I think Illich's anti-institutionism was extreme and his alternatives are genuinely not compelling.

 _Deschooling Society_ 's critique is powerful, and _Learning Webs_ is literally exactly how I learned how to program. But, it's an entirely unworkable alternative for like 60% of students. If we deschooled, we would absolutely end up with a double-digit percentage of the population either illiterate, innumerate, or both.

If you're honest with yourself, _Medical Nemesis_ is has some great passages but in it is also the germs of the anti-vaccination and natural healing movements.

His critiques are powerful but the answer is not deinstitutionalism. The answer is taking his _Tools for Conviviality_ to heart when engaging with/through institutions.

Without conviviality, _Learning Webs_ will become a "Platform" with blood- sucking silicon valley middle men taking a 20% cut on all education spending and gig worker teachers languishing away in poverty. Of course, Illich would just say SV platform capitalism is also an institution^1.

With convivality, even the most institutional institutions can become places for human flourishing (Illich spent his life in the Catholic church, after all!)

So, I love Illich's critique. And Illich was a genius, in the sense that he proposed online education 30 years before the internet was invented.

But deschooling isn't the answer.

Conviviality is.

\--

[^1]: which is one of the reasons that Foucault is worth reading of Illich resonates -- Illich always sort of grounded out in a no-true-scottsman when you point out his alternatives don't work. Foucault provides a more robust theory by explaining how power and institutions relate to one another.

<comment><USER3> Can you expand a bit more on conviviality, what is represents?

<comment><USER4> Another take on conviviality is from its root - 'to live with'. Hannah Arendt (and I'm sure many others) argues that 'living with' other people, well, in a polity, where you inevitably have different views, is a key problem of modern life. If you are strong at sciences as a kid, it often takes you a while to understand this.

If you can get the BBC - this radio program (In our time) is a good introduction. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08c2ljg](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08c2ljg)

<comment><USER5> I appreciate how the french idea of _education_ includes _savoir vivre_.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211)

One should be able to be convivial even with those who aren't companions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Illich's concept of a "Radical Monopoly," is also immensely relevant to internet platforms.

Radical monopoly is a concept defined by philosopher and author Ivan Illich in his 1973 book, "Tools for Conviviality," and revisited in his later work, which describes how a technology or service becomes so exceptionally dominant that even with multiple providers, its users are excluded from society without access to the product. His initial example is the effect of cars on societies, where the car itself shaped cities by its needs, so much so that people without cars become excluded from participation in cities. A radical monopoly is when the dominance of one type of product supersedes dominance by any one brand.

Social media as a technology in the forms of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter could be seen as a radical monopoly for reputation, as is Linkedin for employment, colleges for education, etc.

I think Illich's criticisms of car culture pushed him outside the Overton window of policy making, but his radical monopoly concept is a useful critical tool for reasoning about tech and ethics. A counter argument could use the example that the discovery of fire created a radical monopoly on heat, and therefore it's so general as to be applied arbitrarily to anything you don't like. However, being able to think about the consequences of a new radical monopoly might have on some aspect of human experience is useful for anticipating policy options in response to dynamic technology development.

<comment><USER7> > I think Illich's criticisms of car culture pushed him outside the Overton > window of policy making.

Then or now? Cars being terrible and destroying society is not a fringe view in many places.

<comment><USER8> No, but being "anti cars" is still extremely controversial, see for instance the "Yellow Vests" in France.

<comment><USER7> Yes it's controversial, but that controversy is not evenly distributed: there many places one can be openly anti-car and still get elected. (And that's not even counting proportional representation giving voice to minority views.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Classroom attendance removes children from the everyday world of Western culture and plunges them into an environment far more primitive, magical, and deadly serious."

I know it was written in 1970, but back then a family could still have one person working a good job on just a high school diploma. Today, grade school serves the primary purpose as a daycare for the kids so both parents can work.

<comment><USER10> Families these days can still do it but they don't because they are led to believe in paying for convenience and get into a cycle that turns everything in their life into something the market provides. The insidious thing is that once you get into debt it is very difficult to break this cycle.

<comment><USER11> It's hard to do unless one parent is comfortable with, capable of, and willing to spend years facilitating homeschooling (property near good schools is expensive). Then it's still incredibly expensive in lost wages (and greater income insecurity/risk, which is even worse in the US due to how healthcare and retirement works, plus it probably ties the other partner to secure corporate jobs for healthcare if nothing else, and so limits upside available from riskier moves) compared with other options, unless you have several kids and the stay-at-home parent had fairly low earning potential.

<comment><USER10> I have to disagree with you on several points:

1\. Schools are ranked by test scores mostly, which is 99% dependent on the education and income of the parents. Even then housing near schools with excellent test scores isn't expensive except in the most expensive cities in the US.

2\. I totally agree about the healthcare system though it has become a lot better since ACA. Healthcare is still disgustingly expensive but at least you can still get it and if you have a normal middle income in a family with a couple kids then healthcare is essentially free.

3\. Requiring two incomes is much riskier than just one. Of course living from one income and saving the other is the best, but most people don't do that, and it's harder to do if you are both working since it costs so much money to work. Not working is cheaper. Take a look at Elizabeth Warren's book, The Two- Income Trap. It explains this paradox much better than I could.

<comment><USER11> 1\. Unless all the stuff about how important peers are to future success is BS then it's still a very good thing to have your kid in good schools, even if the schools are mostly good because of who's there rather than instruction quality.

2\. Yeah ACA definitely helps, but it certainly seems like yet another program with aid cutoffs far too low, leading to a largish doldrums income zone of paying a lot for "coverage" with no subsidy, but still having enormous risk exposure and high copays discouraging normal care. Maybe some day our HC system will not suck.

3\. A society with normalized single-worker households might spend less, but one operates on the norms and market(s) one finds oneself in. And anyway even income covering 90% of expenses (with things like savings and retirement temporarily cut to zero) is better than income covering 0% of expenses, so I still think two incomes is more secure even if earnings are very unequal or expenses are higher than they would be with one income.

[edit] oh I should add to #1 that in my cheap city if you use bad schools as the baseline, OK-school areas are about 1.5-2x the price for a similar house, and good-school areas are another 25-30% above the OK-schools price. Not considering the city proper, since housing prices there are weird and anyone with money and a house there doesn't send their kids to those public schools, ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Steven Kell has noted the relevance of Illich's ideas to computing and software:

[https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/...](https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/kell19de- escalating-intro-script.txt)

"Ivan Illich was a 20th-century philosopher whose work recurringly examines the counterproductivity of modern social institutions. ... I encountered Illich's writing entirely by chance, but was immediately struck by how directly his words transferred to described what I saw as the plight of software."

[https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/...](https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/talks/kell19software- slides.pdf)

"Software Against Humanity? An Illichian perspective on the industrial era of software

... (Ivan Illich) observed that (institutions he criticised were) poor at (their) stated ends... the means and ends had become confused! (those institutions) can still be self-sustaining, can still claim advances by (their) own criteria ..."

</comment><comment><USER13> > In these essays, I will show that the institutionalization of values leads > inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization, and psychological > impotence: three dimensions in a process of global degradation and > modernized misery.

> Ivan Dominic Illich (/ɪˈvɑːn ˈɪlɪtʃ/; 4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) > was a Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic.

I wonder if his experience as a priest informed his commentary here.

Religions start from exceptional individuals who divine spiritual truth. They develop followers who recognize said truth. Over time, followers ossify into a church, which can be thought of as an institutionalization of spiritual values.

<comment><USER2> His ministry work in Puerto Rico was particularly influential on his thinking about schooling and institutions more broadly. The famous "students instinctively know..." quote that's currently top-voted on this article is referring to the Puerto Rican youth he worked with as part of his work at Centro Intercultural de Documentación. I can't remember where I learned this; it might have been in one of his other books (perhaps Tools for Conviviality?) or in one of the audio recordings of him lecturing.

It's kind of hard to read the last chapter of _Deschooling_ without noticing he's an Italian priest...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an instance of having very compelling writing that describes a problem eloquently.... and then proposes solutions that are disastrous and make things even worse.

Educating humanity is difficult. Every solution has its flaws. Giving up on it is worse than every flawed solution, however.

<comment> throwaw4y-plate That's basically Marx in a nutshell. Great diagnosis, impractical cure.

<comment><USER15> Is there a particular "cure" that was recommended by Marx/Engels for addressing their observations on the relationship between capital and labor in mid-19th century industrialist England that you found specifically impractical for the time?

<comment><USER16> I think he was referring to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto) Perhaps specifically: "In the last paragraph of the Manifesto, the authors call for a 'forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions', which served as a call for communist revolutions around the world." And we know how those went.

<comment><USER17> The greatest managers of capitalism are authoritarian communists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Written in 1970, still relevant.

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

</comment><comment><USER19> I've heard this called "Defund the thought police."

<comment> core-questions We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I read Deschooling Society after taking a job at a school that is modeled after The Sudbury Valley School in MA. I agree with the critique about the design and function of school in our society, and think that democratic self directed education is a viable starting point for a future educative system. At the school I work at, we have created a democratic community that is focused on learning as opposed to teaching. Kids are able to learn whatever they would like without interference or coercion. The rules and limitations are decided by the community according to democratic principles. It is the best example of a functional educational environment whose goal is true education that I have encountered so far.

I would also recommend people check out "Energy and Equity", I was impressed and influenced by the assertion that energy consumption is an important window to understanding class and society. The idea that we could have chosen to increase all human's speed to 20mph, but have instead allowed a small minority to travel at 70 mph, and an even smaller minority to travel at nearly 600 mph, has deeply influenced my view of structural inequality and violence.

</comment><comment><USER21> If we take the long-term historic perspective, society has been mostly de- schooled throughout history. Going to school was a privilege for the children of the haves; the have-nots didn't go to school, and that was one factor which kept them that way, generation over generation.

Deschooling will never happen across all social strata; the privileged will keep sending kids to school no matter what.

Only a complete idiot would fall for this hippie bullshit and not send his kids to school.

The anti-intellectual movements in America in the 1960's likely did in fact contribute to a kind of deschooling of the lower classes, resulting in ever larger economic inequalities fifty years later.

</comment><comment><USER22> A thread from 2008: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=285107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=285107)

One interesting comment from last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578620)

Illich related from last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21512587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21512587)

</comment><comment><USER23> "Indeed, preventive concentration camps for predelinquents would be a logical improvement over the school system."

Nice.

</comment><comment><USER24> My god, when I read stuff like this (and some comments here), I think -- only someone who grew up in a society which benefitted from all the supposed ills of education and useful institutions could even have the luxury to write or seriously believe something like this.

This is like saying that because of a small percentage of (yes, I agree) non- ideal outcomes, one should dismantle the entire system that has gotten us to the state we are in today -- which is, to remind many people, a stable, more materially prosperous, more-free-of-conflict time than any in our past. I hesitate to point out some parallels to our current social movements, for fear of being branded a counter-revolutionary.

More people are educated and out of poverty right now than any time previously in history. You would seek to destroy the system that has gotten you here, because some of its imperfections are showing by the very nature of the progress it has produced? Many people around the world would love to have the curse of educational systems that grind down your spirit by providing you textbooks, materials, teachers, computers, and corporate faceless healthcare systems that cruelly save you from life-threatening diseases.

How quickly we let the great become normal and disappointing.

We should fix things that are going wrong, and that expose and remedy the flaws in how the system was designed. It's true that in any system, unintended side effects and people seeking to gain from it start to emerge. And that should be fixed.

But, often the people who lack proper perspective on all that a system has produced (at hard toil and accomplishment of their predecessors) -- usually those who are young and those who have nothing to lose -- are too willing to destroy something that has given them the luxury of thinking it should be destroyed.

<comment><USER25> Deschooling has a lot of material to consume, and the term is pretty strong sounding, so I don't think it's surprising, but your conclusion that Illich wants to "dismantle the entire system" is far from most readings of his work.

Wikipedia [0] has a good summary of the idea IRT schooling in general - it's basically a philosophical position that people are better at learning when they actually have interest in a given subject, and that humans are also instinctive learners. Forcing people to consume curriculum without interest actually contributes to phobia of a subject.

There are many successful people who have been educated using the principles of deschooling. It's not about rejecting education at all.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling#Unschooling/Descho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling#Unschooling/Deschooling_society)

<comment><USER24> I'll have to read more about that, thanks.

I will say the idea of "teaching to the test" which this sounds like, is of course not a good approach. But not everyone can have a Socrates as teacher. All the more so when we refuse to fund schools as they should be. And not everyone is a Plato and can handle an inspirational deschooled approach.

Either way, we should fund it correctly. As others have said, we pay now, or we pay later. I prefer to pay now. It's cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> John Taylor Gatto's work in this space is also worth noting:

[https://www.amazon.com/s?k=John+Taylor+Gatto&ref=nb_sb_noss](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=John+Taylor+Gatto&ref=nb_sb_noss)

I honestly could not be more happy that COVID is displacing Education once and for all and making it compete with the ED-Tech solutions, some from many from HN regulars. Because prior to that, it was always known how superior the product _could be_ if adoption were possible, but now that its happening it really is hard to grasp how fast it started to disrupt the Industry and how quick students are to adapt to it. Granted, there are growing pains, but I just finished my exams and required readings for my Supply Chain course(s) for the rest of the month this weekend and most of today, something entirely impossible in the traditional model.

I wish I had the patience to have stayed in the few Honor classes I was forced to sit in when I was in HS, if only because so many here have said that this model is actually more apt to what is being promoted, which favours autodidacts. Instead, I got impatient at the idea of mandatory attendance and class participation, because I was already attending University level STEM lectures by my Junior Year in HS of my own volition (MOOCS/ED-tech weren't a thing, nor was wide access to broadband or wifi for that matter back then) and felt it was a waste of my time entirely.

Still, I'm glad there are more options for children to opt out and still have a solid trajectory for some profession instead of being seen as a delinquent, degenerate, or misfit as I was accused of despite still holding a 3.6 GPA and only showing up for the exams/quiz days. I tried my best to try and defund the school I felt was holding me in a mind prison, and that got me in a lot of trouble and almost delayed my graduation date because despite having had _the grades_ the administration felt it was _imperative_ I show up daily and on time, something I didn't agree with and would become entirely optional in University where I had become more focused as I divested out of the HS model and took my Education into my own hands at the age of 16.

The sooner we can decouple from the formal Education paradigm, the better we will be as a Society and can explore for more efficient modes of professional Education and training, and this includes the University model which is starting to eat itself alive the further COVID delays classes on campus.

Extinction Rebellion and it's large collective of School Striking Youth are an affirmation that this was bound to happen, but it should also not be forgotten that these kids are also not lost causes, but are instead highly motivated environmentalists just seeking alternative ways to finding solutions to the dire consequences they face and should be trained in professions and positions that suit their aims.

I'd love to be able to teach some of them Ag/Plant Science for regenerative and sustainable farms, and have them in turn be able to get an opportunity to undergo the same apprenticeship model I followed and eventually manage a farm of their own to help offset the CO2 emission and undertake carbon sequestering/negative business models. I'd probably also sign them up for Grid Alternatives, which taught me how Solar Panel installation and grid hookups were being done in the US, whereas I only knew how to do it in the EU. Grid Alternatives [1] is also an amazing non-profit that helps low income families offset the expenses of Solar Panel installation and helps them integrate into their own community.

If we had UBI I could probably also teach a few kids the basics on how to cook properly and help some of them be the dedicated culinary staff that helps feed the staff on site installing the panels.

1: [https://gridalternatives.org/](https://gridalternatives.org/)

</comment><comment><USER27> "Schools, banks, government, vaccines, democracy, the apollo program? all giant conspiracies" says angry man

</comment><comment><USER28> Read Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault.

<comment><USER2> Foucault's distinctly french and distinctly intellectual. The two are definitely touching the same elephant, and if you like Foucault you'll probably find something in Illich, but Illich appeals to a less intellectual and more American (religious?) audience that would turned off by -- or simply never get past the first page of -- Foucault.

Religious fundamentalist homeschoolers will read Illich and get something out of it, but would probably not have the patience/reading comprehension level to engage with Foucault. Or, if they did, would burn it.

So, both have their place.

That said, I wish Foucault had provided a more thorough treatment of schooling, though. I think his reaction to schooling was something like "yeah that's so transparently a factory floor look-alike and so transparently training compliant factory workers that I'm not even sure it's worth saying much else".

<comment><USER29> "intellectual" sounding but certainly not actually "intellectual".

Foucault's explanation for why leprosy disappeared from Europe is pure psudoscience, along with the entirety of psychoanalysis (which he accepted at least partially). I don't like scholars who take the likes of Lacan as being serious instead of charlatans

Foucault had some good ideas in works like Discipline and Punish or A history of Sexuality but filtering between the noise and signal is extremely tough with him...

<comment><USER30> While that's a fair assessment, (even philosophers that idolized and refined Foucault's methods (see Ian Hacking) point out his loose handling of historical fact) that's not really why people read Foucault and to ignore the entire edifice of his thought because of such mistakes would be the very definition of missing the point.

In my opinion, it is not so much the concrete historical subjects of Focualt's work that are valuable, but rather his approach at developing a mode of critique founded on historicity and his reminding us in a very general and strong sense that our present is determined by a complex of historical events that don't actually fit into the neat and tidy bundled up narratives histories present (since this is usually the objective of writing history) but that things are far less coherent and far more like structural emergent phenomenon than they are the effects some historical will (a la Hegel) or the interests of "great men". Not to mention he does what any great philosopher should do which is make us recognize the concepts we take for granted thanks to years of idioms and cliches being drilled into our heads are not so simple after all (his analysis of power). I think it is the task of every philosopher worth salt to de-hypostatize concepts.

This is why critiques that take issue with Foucault for "forgetting the subject" are taken more seriously and have more ground to stand on than any shallow dismissals on account of a few factual flubs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wish people would think about the _format_ they use to present their ideas more.

If you're presenting arguments based on empirical evidence and logic, you are building a directed graph. Using long-winded prose to represent it is the wrong data structure, which makes working with it (comprehending and contemplating its merits) difficult.

<comment><USER15> Is there a movement, say Informational Philosophy, that embodies your thought on this? I find it interesting, but philosophers have typically used long form prose to build up their logical theories and arguments.

Your argument seems to be that language is not conducive to our brains forming the graph-like relationships the prose builds up. I do not know have an intimate enough understanding of linguistics to understand if modern theories support this view.

<comment><USER31> > Is there a movement, say Informational Philosophy, that embodies your > thought on this?

Not that I'm aware of.

This is one of few thoughts I consider novel and not yet implemented anywhere.

> Your argument seems to be that language is not conducive to our brains > forming the graph-like relationships the prose builds up

Right. A picture is worth a thousand words. There is a hierarchy of beliefs everyone holds in their head to make sense of the world and yet nobody is drawing diagrams to represent them.

If I ever make enough money for a 10 year sabbatical, I'll take a stab at this problem.</comment></comment></comment>


Within the next 50 years, Linux will dominate the OS market. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zk.gd/within-the-next-50-years-linux-will-dominate-the-os-market/

<comment><USER2> What a bold prediction!

<comment><AUTHOR> I get the feeling this is sarcasm, but I could be wrong.

<comment><USER3> Of course it's sarcasm. Why would anyone waste their time writing such a prediction? Right or wrong, it adds no value. In the year 2064...</comment></comment></comment>


Apple installed security backdoors on 600 million iPhones, iPads: Researcher - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Apple-installed-security-backdoors-on-600-million-iPhones-iPads-Researcher/articleshow/38894518.cms

<comment><USER2> Apple's rebuttal: [http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6331](http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6331)

TL;DR - user must explicitly approve such contacts, which are intended for remote support & diagnostics.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite podcasts? - <AUTHOR> Mine are Radiolab[1] and Hardcore History[2].  Have yet to find any others remotely as good, except maybe This American Life.<p>What are your favorites?<p>[1] - http://www.radiolab.org/<p>[2] - http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/ <comment><USER2> 1\. Skeptic's Guide to the Universe

2\. Bilingual News バイリンガルニュース

3\. Serial

4\. Radiolab

5\. StartUp Podcast

6\. Mixergy

7\. Planet Money

8\. Bootstrapped with Kids Podcast

9\. Lou Reads the Internet for YOU!

\--- why ---

For Skeptic's Guide I just really enjoy the chemistry between the hosts and how the show has continued strong for over 500 episodes, even with one host passing away.

Bilingual news is funny because the hosts choose bizarre news to cover and manage to get on strange tangents in their discussion. It's half English half Japanese.

I don't actually enjoy crime stories usually, but Serial was absolutely gripping.

Radiolab is the peaceful thing I would choose to listen to on a bicycle ride back from the beach while the sun is setting behind the mountains.

5-8 are the opposite, high-energy startup motivational podcasts to get you pumped up.

"Lou Reads the Internet" is a podcast where the host tries to find the most disturbing content on the net and reads it out loud. It's the 4chan of podcasts, I listen to it sometimes while shopping just to add a bizarre flavor to the otherwise mundane experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> \- Dan Carlin hardcore history \- The startup chat [Steli and Hiten] \- The Tim Ferris show \- a16z \- Stuff You Shuld Know \- Startup Podcast \- Zen Founder</comment>


Show HN: Aether, bittorrent for text - <AUTHOR> http://getaether.net

<comment><USER2> What is this, exactly? Is it an anonymous forum? The page isn't clear...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a decentralised network on which you can create a reddit-like forum. People are anonymous, and posts in forums are distributed from one client app to another.

<comment><USER2> Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up. I'll check it out.</comment></comment></comment>


Poll: What experiment to run on AWS mechanical turk? - <AUTHOR>

After our experience using the mechanical turk we've become a bit obsessed with trying to find a really awesome use case for the service - even if its just experimental.
We have some downtime right now and we are narrowing down the experiment between the following:
1. Some sort of cooperative art project - inspired by http://www.tenthousandcents.com 2. A massive chess game that forks every time a move is made (probably a poor idea) 3. Some implementation of the Prisoner's dilemma game. 4. Any time of game to get a sense of how risk seeking or risk averse the Turks are - possibly a tie in with the Monty Hall Problem.
Most of these ideas are centered around game theory but we are pretty much open to anything (within reason). Any votes or opinions on what would be the most interesting/entertaining?
-Thanks <comment><USER2> I'd love to see a prisoner's dilemma experiment via MTurk. These tend to be financial in nature, though; can you set variable payment rates per task, depending on external factors?

<comment><USER3> you can pay out arbitrary bonuses once they've answered.

so you could easily do single-round prisoner's dilemma, and have amazon pair up 2 (different) folks at a time, and when you get the results back, look to see what the folks in each pair did, and award bonuses appropriately.

i'm not sure if there is a way to do an iterated version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A friend last week told me about a business he's working with. They do Natural Language Processing to scan thousands of articles about a specific topic/product to see if they are positive, negative or neutral. They are then hoping to turn around and sell the business intelligence.

I was wondering how it would compare on a cost/effectiveness basis with the Turk.

Let us know what your experiment is and how you fared.

</comment><comment><USER5> See if you can use MT to provide the fitness function for some genetic algorithm, evaluate the results, tune it, and profit!

</comment><comment><USER6> Some months ago I tried to set up a project to transcribe Alexander Shulgin's Lab books but Mturk wasn't available outside US.

<http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/shulgin_labbooks/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Go meta - use Mechanical Turk to ask what would be a really cool idea to run using Mechanical Turk.

</comment><comment><USER8> Liar's poker. Ask 2 people to pick a number and the one that picks the lower doesn't get paid. The number of people that actually play the game is the result of the experiment.

<comment><USER9> How about a dollar auction?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How about creating an experiment and designing it right on turk? You create a rough sketch and then you auto-correct it using people?

<comment><USER11> You mean keep tinkering with the study until it "works"?

If you're not careful, you could get <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias> on a massive new scale...

It would be interesting to try to find scientifically optimal ways of doing study iteration, or approaches to interpreting the complete (experiment_rev, results)-list from another researcher...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd pay $.05 to get the them to up vote my site for certain search terms on Google's new "Search Wiki". See what happens.

</comment><comment><USER13> What was your previous experience?

<comment><AUTHOR> we used the Turk service to basically do OCR on about 3k images - [http://shout.setfive.com/2008/11/20/artificial-artificial- in...](http://shout.setfive.com/2008/11/20/artificial-artificial-intelligence- our-experiance-with-mechanical-turk/)</comment></comment>