The World's Most Innovative Economies - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-17/sweden-gains-south-korea-reigns-as-world-s-most-innovative-economies <comment><USER2> >The Swedes themselves promote an atmosphere of great personal ambition — unlike some European neighbors that emphasize the collective — and that's a boon to innovation, he said.

>"In the culture, people are super individualistic — this means that people have ideas and are very interested in pursuing them in this way in order to become wealthy," said Henrekson.

This is very true, and a thing which is often misunderstood about the Swedish mindset. The sterotype of Swedes is frequently that we're a bunch of socialists who all believe that everyone should work for the collective good. That's totally wrong.

Sweden is perhaps one of the most individualistic countries in the world: we value the individual over the family or community, and we believe that everyone should have the same opportunities regardless of the circumstances of their birth. This is the reason we have the social safety net we have: it is a substitute for family and community and other more traditional support systems.

<comment><USER3> > Sweden is perhaps one of the most individualistic country in the world: we > value the individual over the family or community, and we believe that > everyone should have the same opportunities regardless of the circumstances > of their birth. This is the reason we have the social safety net we have: it > is a substitute for family and community and other more traditional support > systems.

I think this has its costs; humans are social and they need the social context. The state certainly can't deliver a social context on a limited budget care & support machine. (Example: Your grandmother will meet 100 different caregivers for home care in a year, if she has that. That's 100 strangers instead of having a personal relation.

That can be solved either with a more expensive consistent employment regime in elderly care, or care from family.)

<comment><USER2> Oh, yes, I totally agree! There's a very steep cost to this model of "Swedish- style individualism", and it's exactly the one you describe. Swedes have much weaker bonds to their extended family, their community, their religious institutions (etc.) and it's clearly not a good thing. Humans are social animals.

I'm not necessarily arguing that Sweden is a model society and all other countries should adopt our ways. What I'm arguing against is the idea (fairly common, at least in the US) that higher taxes and a more generous welfare state is always antithetical to individualism and the entrepreneurial spirit. It can be, certainly, but it is not necessarily so.

<comment><USER4> Read somewhere that the chance of having higher intelligence is reflected in how self-sufficient you are. People with higher intelligence tend to manage just fine with a small social group with weak connections. The more social you are the more likely that you have lower intelligence.

Sort of suggests that following the collective, being an ant in a colony may have negative effects on intelligence over a few generations. Natures law: "What you don't use you lose." You don't need higher intelligence because so many are chipping in to compensate.

Then again, balance is a fickle thing.

<comment><USER5> Except its because the collective has given smart people these entitlements. "Hey this guys pretty smart, lets give him tenure." Did you personally pay the taxes to run that university? Did you make those policies? How much of an island do you think 'smart' people really are?

Or "Hey this guy is pretty good at business, lets give him low taxes to reward him and keep him happy."

I think its difficult for successful people to see how much they're lifted up by everyday people in society doing their best to incentivize meritocracy and creating an even playing field where the smart people can succeed.

Lets remember, the idea of the meritorious succeeding is rare in society. Up until recently you had to be a non-woman, non-slave, and at the very least come from a wealthy or political family. Or perhaps sidestep this by having powerful political patrons but then still be under the gun of, say, the inquisition.

Also when we look at many of the enlightenment thinkers and supporters, we see a slew of milquetoast intellects and ordinary people fighting against the old order of theocracies, monarchs, and dictators. Why did the smart need them to build the society they needed to succeed in? Newton wasn't writing about the freedom of man, instead he was obsessed over his place in the kingdom of heaven and went a bit mad about non-violent coin counterfeiters, advocating for their death, and often delivering it using the power of his position in the mint.

I think there's an Ayn Rand sized fallacy hole that you're falling into here.

<comment><USER6> >Lets remember, the idea of the meritorious succeeding is rare in society. Up until recently you had to be a non-woman, non-slave, and at the very least come from a wealthy or political family. Or perhaps sidestep this by having powerful political patrons but then still be under the gun of, say, the inquisition.

In most historical human societies, the way to "succeed" was to threaten to kill other people unless they gave you what you wanted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Fresh ideas tend to pay off big in Sweden, even as the current government is > less business-friendly and has imposed labor taxes that could crimp business > investment

Maybe it is that high taxes and citizen friendly social system the responsible for the success of the country. I moved to Sweden to work in the tech sector because I like how socially advanced is the country.

Taxes are used to invest in society, and that's how you get a competitive environment. If you don't invest in your citizens how do you expect to grow? I really proud of paying taxes in Sweden and help society with my fair share of the cost. :)

<comment><USER8> I think Americans tend to over-estimate the tax rate in Europe.

California's top marginal rate (including state and payroll taxes) comes out to about 47%. It looks like Sweden tops out at 56%. But for that extra 9%, you get lots of services (health care, education, etc). I'd guess most Americans would take the tax hike to not worry about insurance, school loans, etc.

<comment><USER9> Marginal tax rates mean nothing unless you know what the actual income brackets are.

The US's hughest tax brackets kick in at almost $400K. If Sweden's kicks in at $100K, the tax burden is MuCH higher.

<comment><USER8> Looks like top tax bracket in Sweden is $90k -- at $90k, CA marginal is 42%. So a delta of 14% -- still probably worth it, especially at lower incomes where student loans and health care a higher percentage of earnings.

<comment><USER10> The question for me is if our government doesn't provide any of those services why aren't we paying half that number?

<comment><USER8> Well, you can look at the numbers here: [http://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_371px/...](http://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_371px/public/atoms/files/3-4-16bud- policybasics_2.png?itok=fqita01H)

        Medicare, Medicaid, etc: 25%
        Social Security: 24%
        Military: 16%
        Safety Net Programs: 10%
        Federal / Veteran Benefits: 8%

Looks like some people get services, just not everyone.

At the state level, California: [http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/California_state_spendin...](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/California_state_spending_pie_chart)

        Health Care 35%
        Pensions 18%
        Education 16%
        Welfare 9%
        Protection (?) 7%

The US does not seem to get a great return on healthcare spending.

<comment><USER10> So then the question is are our elected officials corrupt or incompetent?

<comment><USER11> The biggest problem is that the electorate doesn't trust the elected officials in this matter. To bring down healthcare costs you need to be able to reject treatments that are much more expensive but only provide slight benefits. Organizations like the NHS in Britain are very good at this. But whenever someone gestures in that direction in the US you have people up in arms about "death panels" and the idea is quickly dropped.

I don't know though. Maybe if politicians just came out and said "This proposal will produce 10 extra deaths per year but we'll be saving $50bn so we think it's worth it" then people would be willing to embrace that.

<comment><USER10> I don't even think you are talking about more net deaths. Every percentage point you raise taxes or healthcare costs pushes a group of people underwater. A certain percent of people who have bankruptcies will commit suicide/beat their wife to death/yell at their children until they develop mental issues etc. Economic policies have consciences that are diffcult to measure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder: what's the point of a ranking like this?

It's got China wedged between Canada and Poland. On the one hand, on _average_ this is probably correct: there are vast swathes of inland China that are undoubtedly quite stultifying and wouldn't rank highly on any "innovation" metric. On the hand, if you're interested in this kind of innovation, then what does rural China have to do with anything? The innovations happening in Shanghai and Beijing and Shenzhen and Chengdu are _very_ innovative indeed, and ought to rank near the top of any global list. Certainly much higher than anything you could find in Poland or Canada (meaning no disrespect).

I'd suggest that it's problematic for a ranking like this to even be based on countries. Countries, per se, don't produce innovation: urban economies do. A ranking of innovative _cities_ would be a much more interesting and realistic metric.

<comment><USER13> > I wonder: what's the point of a ranking like this?

To drive mouse clicks by stoking nationalist sentiment and feelings of superiority.

> A ranking of innovative cities would be a much more interesting and > realistic metric.

I agree. The chauvinism would still be present and is inevitable when making comparisons between locales, but at least the locales would make sense as economic units.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This makes 0 sense to my heavily biased brain. As a Swede that is keeping a close eye on the domestic market, I can't find that many "innovations" taking place in most commercial sectors. R&D means quack-all if you cant translate that research into good and services that the citizens of said country can take advantage of.

<comment><USER15> Everything is relative. How many other countries had systems like BankID, Swish, doing their taxes online as well as with Skatteverket, etc etc when those came out? how many of those countries have populations smaller than Sweden? How much innovation comes out of Ohio which has a larger population?

<comment><USER16> It was not recent but a century ago Ohio came up with chewing gum, light bulbs, the first gas powered auto, flight, the, the first vacuum, and founded the first coed and interracial college.

A little more innovate than online banking stuff.

[https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/technological- innovation...](https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/technological-innovations- origanating-in-ohio)

<comment><USER15> I didn't mean to start some kind of innovational penis-waving contest. Just trying to show that it's easy to be blind to local innovation when it's around you. I'm not saying that no innovation is coming out of Ohio. I'm saying that the parent poster "as a Swede" probably doesn't see any innovation that comes out of Ohio. Just like an American doesn't see any innovation coming out of Sweden. Hence the "everyday" kind of examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Density in a country-wide scale means little in terms of technology. LIke how much more farmland and wildlife does USA have over Korea? Quite a huge amount. The comparison should really come at a similar scale. SF vs Seoul would be a better comparison.

</comment><comment><USER18> Could the ranking of a country like Switzerland be heavily impacted by Pharmaceutical companies registered there and filling patents there?

How many of those innovations are actually tangible in each of those countries and how many are just technicalities?

Not to discredit the ranking, I'm actually curious about the balance.

</comment><comment><USER19> And as happens all too often with these lists, they left out one of the top economies and one that would have made its top bracket—Taiwan.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting, the global competitiveness report of the WEF lists South Korea as rank 20 for innovation.

[http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2016-2017/05FullReport/TheGl...](http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2016-2017/05FullReport/TheGlobalCompetitivenessReport2016-2017_FINAL.pdf) [PDF] page 50

<comment><USER21> The good thing about rankings is that you have many to choose from.

<comment><USER22> Yes, there is always at least one where each city/country can claim the first place, so that local newspapers can make an article about how that piece of land is better than others and local political leaders can show that they achieved something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why to i get the impression that this has less to do with out and out innovation and more to do with the startup circus?

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder how they measure patent activity given the vastly different patent systems. Software patents being the most obvious example. Is a country penalized for being "less active" if there are no software patents in that country (the explanation in the footnotes has me believe the answer would be yes)?

I'm also skeptical of the weights that were used (equal weights). My instinct (as a non-US citizen) would be that the #1 spot in high tech of the US is worth a lot more than other categories (and the gap to #2 is probably also substantial). I'm fairly surprised that the U.S. is only #10 in R&D intensity.

I'd like to see some correlation to some education rankings (+imported workers) as well, could be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER25> > South Korea remained the big winner, topping the international charts in R&D > intensity, value-added manufacturing and patent activity and with top-five > rankings in high-tech density, higher education and researcher concentration

None of these are really all that relevant to true innovation. As a European, it's clear to me that no country comes even close to the US in terms of innovation. Almost all really new technologies come out of the US.

<comment><USER26> _> Almost all really new technologies come out of the US._

I would add: Almost all really new technologies _in the market_ come out of the US.

US is the best at transforming research in $.

<comment><USER27> This seems like the true approach.

<comment><USER28> And arguably, the more valuable one. Bringing something to the masses

a) which used to be expensive but is now cheap or

b) which is new but affordable for most

is what changes people's lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Looking at the ranking, I am flabbergasted South Korea is picked #1. South Korea getting picked even in top 20 would've been shocking. But #1?

Let's consider some of the odds that were in the way.

1\. no modern education or social institutions were in South Korea until early 1900s. The Korean peninsula of 1900 was little different from 500 years ago, when the Chosun Dynasty was formed.

2\. What little gain made during the Japanese occupation (1910-1945) was razed during the Korean War.

3\. the country faced a massive refugee crisis during the Korean War. Granted Syrian and other current refugee crises are tragic, but the Korean refugee crisis was just as bad, if not worse. Cold winter than can freeze you to death. No overland escape route for South Koreans.

4\. no natural resources like oil to sell

5\. massive military expenditure commitment, including 2-3 year military service every young male has to go through.

And yet they kept at it and moved up the list.

</comment><comment><USER30> The article says Russia was 26th this year, down from 12th last.

I am very surprised it was so high before. There is a ton of innovation going on in recent years, like renewable energy, AI, nanotechnology, and so on, but almost none of it seems to be coming out of Russia. Certainly not what you would expect from a large industrialized nation with an educated public.

</comment><comment><USER31> French Guiana is colored around 15th place in the map, but isn't listed at all in the top 50 list.

I wonder what happened there.

<comment><USER11> It's part of France and so it would make sense to give it the same color as the rest of France. But on the other hand the don't color Greenland as part of Denmark, so who knows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> South Korea just steals and takes credit for everything Japan makes.

They're like China, but they get away with it better.

<comment><USER29> Japan is also infamous or famous for stealing ideas from the West and then put their spin on it and improve upon it.</comment></comment>


What neurons tell us about the 'hipster effect' when contrarians look the same - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/11/11/the-mathematician-who-proved-why-hipsters-all-look-alike/ <comment><USER2> This is a funny rephrasing of "systems thinking". Donella Meadows, stocks and flows, etc. When you introduce a delay into adjusting flows, oscillations happen. The classic example is the shower faucet when the hot water heater is too far away from the spigot - you find yourself making it too hot, then too cold, etc.

<comment><USER3> [OT/Pedantry] The shower faucet thing is caused by a large distance between the spigot (where the hot/cold mixing happens) and the shower head, not between the water heater and spigot.

<comment><USER4> [Pedantry^2] Both effects are important on different timescales. When first starting a shower, the distance between the hot water tank and the spigot is what matters, and this tends to produce a long-period oscillation that manifests as just a single over-shoot at the start. Then there is a short- period oscillation due to the tap/spigot distance.

The initial transient is still technically an "oscillation" in the sense it is described by the same mathematics, even though it's a one-off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to me the reason hipsters all look the same is because we tend to lump things together that resemble each other 'close enough'. If a person has thick glasses but is wearing a backward cap, are they a 'bro' or a hipster? It will probably depend on whether there are other hipsters around--if there are, you'll define that person as hipster. If that person is in a sports bar with bros, then you might say that person is a bro.

<comment><USER6> We also tend to make comparisons between ourselves and things that are not ourselves as if they are discrete entities.

<comment><USER7> This. For example, I thought bros were hipsters and vice versa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The idea that any identifiable subculture could be composed of nonconformists seems obviously false. The subculture as a whole could represent a break from the mainstream, but it could only be identified as a subculture once its members have conformed to a set of common traits.

It's interesting that the article was written in 2008, at which point hipsters were already ripe for critique, but we're still talking about them. There may be more microbrews and less PBR, more thick-rimmed glasses and fewer keffiyehs, more discussion of Kanye West than indie rock -- but it still is distinctly "hipster." Maybe a subculture based on cooption and ironic detachment is particularly well suited to evolve with changing environmental conditions.

Another possible reason for its staying power is that other subcultures have typically made a person look increasingly ridiculous / marginalized / unemployable as they aged (goth, punk, gangster rap, rave), whereas hipster style trends play it relatively safe.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is similar to a common experiment you can program. Create a grid, and fill it about 95% full with random black and white squares, leaving about 5% empty. Each square has 8 neighbors. If a square at least N neighbors of a different color, it moves to a randomly selected empty square. Iterate this for a while, until stability occurs.

You're watching segregation happen. Try different values of N. Even with N=8, meaning nobody moves unless every neighbor is the opposite color, you'll still get a mostly segregated world.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't remember there being any actual proofs in that paper although I only skimmed it. There were a couple of equations and some hand-wavy "it can be shown using... it is not hard to show" remarks. This is the kind of paper that my pure math friends would deride as "physics math" :-)

<comment><USER11> The whole paper is a proof with the displayed equations representing the key points and solutions. The 'remarks' that seem to annoy you are merely the author adjectives to qualify the underlying approach, and to avoid the trivial (for the author) intermediate steps. I highly doubt that you and your 'friends' are going to find a single mathematical mistake in this humoristic paper (the actual work of the author being quite full of your standard Lemma/Theorem/Proof sectioning without which you seem to be lost).

<comment><USER10> I did not claim that the paper contained any mistakes. Rigorous proofs do much more than simply eliminate the possibility of mistakes (though they do that too); they make the argument accessible to a wider mathematically literate audience who may not be familiar with techniques which are standard in the author's field. I know a not-inconsiderable amount of graduate-level probability and a bit of stat phys and yet still this paper is not a trivial read. I'm sure if I stared at it for a day I could figure out the entire argument, but the point is I don't have a whole day. Theorems and Lemmas are a protocol for mathematicians to communicate efficiently. Considering the level of offense you have summoned up, I assume you must be in some mathematical field, so I am surprised you do not appreciate this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> His premise that hipsters are nonconformists is false.

AdBusters has a great article on this: _Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization_ [https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html](https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html)

<comment><USER13> that was an interesting article, though i dont understand the grave tone. what are the actual problems and harm that come of it? people want to feel special, unique, original and authentic... or at least look the part. so what? trying to achieve that by dressing the right way and going to ironic parties is silly, and kind of pointless, but i think thats just "kids being kids". people are usually more shallow when they are young, and deepen as they get older. the writer seems to be committing the bigger mistake by thinking all the hipsters discussed in the article aren't just normal kids looking for a social group. he treats them like a disease- thats a shitty way to talk about someone who hasn't done anything actually harmful.

<comment><USER8> _that was an interesting article, though i dont understand the grave tone._

Most likely, the grave tone is intended to be ironic. The article adopts the perennial complaint that "the new generation is the worst generation." But Adbusters has a hipster readership, and magazine targeting their fan base is ironic. Hipsters thrive on irony.

The article even describes a woman who fits every hipster cliché, including being critical other hipsters and refusing to self-identify as a hipster, and the magazine/article does exactly the same. Oh, the irony. Finally, a Google image search of the author reveals a young mustachioed man who is, to judge a book by its cover, himself a hipster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This quote: "That's the real role of mathematics," Touboul said. "To abstract things. To see what is really important." Is concentrating on things like this really important?

<comment><USER15> In this case, the whole "hipsters" angle was just a cute hook to make the paper more interesting. In reality, it's a neat model of _many_ different dynamic system and a useful mathematical abstraction in and of itself. Even if we didn't have an immediate application _now_ , it would be useful as math and clearly increase the "sum of human knowledge". It's impossible to predict exactly where this idea will lead in the future, whether interesting applications or more math, so it's worth working on just speculatively.

Of course, in this case, it also has an immediate application in neuroscience, which is useful in a visceral sort of way that's easier to appreciate.

<comment><USER16> I totally agree. Replace "non-comformist" and "conformist" in this paper with "predator" and "prey," and you can speculate on some more interesting biological ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So a random imbalance in a binary pattern triggers an oscillation, if the delay is big enough, because the hipsters all try to be non-conformists.

I don't think the delays in real life fashion cycles are what is causing lookalikes, I think people do try to conform to fit a certain subculture. Con- conformist hipsters are a rare breed, as it takes lot a of effort and style savvy. Always happy to see one!

</comment><comment><USER18> This is interesting, but surely not the reason why group X (for any X) all look alike. Members of any group X will look alike because they decide to in order to be part of that group.

X can be hipsters, goths, British bankers, Roman Catholic parents from Versailles, programmers living in San Francisco, ...

<comment><USER19> It's even simpler than that- the word "hipster" is meaningless by itself so you choose a bunch of people who all look the same, categorize them as "hipster", and they all look the same by tautology.

<comment><USER20> Of course. The word derives its meaning from the thing it is assigned to. Doesn't make bearded, tracksuit-wearing, mechanical video camera-wielding men talking way too much about authenticity look less like clowns, though.

<comment><USER21> Except that clown makeup patterns are considered a form of trademark among performers, and are registered with Clowns International by painting them on goose eggs, or egg-shaped ceramics. It's very bad form for one clown to design a look that is too similar to another.

I suppose if an enterprising performer designed a character-type clown based on a caricature of hipsters, they might all look like that particular clown, but I don't think it's fair to slight a profession that encourages _authentic individuality_ in that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a mathematical model with no experimentation behind it. Basically, a hypothesis. The next step would be for social scientists to device some field experiments.

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8556253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8556253)

</comment><comment><USER24> so bringing it back to the brain, does this suggest that certain cases of epilepsy are due to neuron signalling delays relative to non-epileptic brains? if so.. that certainly is interesting. It may explain why some epileptics "grow out" of it, as their neurons build new connections, and signal delays get lower.

</comment><comment><USER25> This type of work makes me wish I were a mathematician instead of a programmer.

<comment><USER26> At their base level both have similarities: Expressing and parsing the world in a funny language.

But seriously, there's a lot of math in programming that we wouldn't even consider to be "math" in the general sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Didn't we just have this on the front page a few weeks ago?

</comment><comment><USER28> This reminds me of Belousov–Zhabotinsky reactions, which can be modeled by cellular automata, or realized by chemical reactions, slime molds, and coral reefs. (Of course, after staring at them for as many hours as I have, everything reminds me of Belousov–Zhabotinsky reactions! ;)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_reaction)

The essence of a cellular automata rule that exhibits BZ reactions is:

There are two forces at work playing off against each other: stimulation and inhibition. Stimulation is implemented by observing your local surrounding neighbors. Inhibition is implemented by a delay. The result is beautiful spiraling oscillations!

A cell can be stimulated or quiescent (one bit). And it has a timer to remember how long ago it was stimulated (typically another bit). When it's quiescent, and the stimulation condition is true, it becomes stimulated, and sets the timer. In subsequent steps, it finishes being stimulated, then the timer expires, and it can't be stimulated again until the timer expires.

The stimulation condition is usually a counting rule, like Life: it sums the number of stimulated neighbors, and then uses that to index into a look-up table to decide its next state.

The effect is that waves of stimulation spread out throughout the medium, and the wave's leading edge propagates into areas that are not stimulated, until it hits another wave, and they cancel each other out or reflect waves in other directions.

The trailing edge of the wave is caused by the inhibition, and consists of cells that have just been stimulated and won't be stimulated again immediately -- that way the wave spreads in one direction instead of all directions at once.

By changing the stimulation condition, you can generate different shapes of waves, which usually develop into interlocking spirals forming around stable nucleation patterns.

One metaphor for how this rule works is to the worm-like animals in a coral reef, who come out of their shells to feed, then pull back inside their shells when tickled by adjacent worms pulling back, only to come back out after a short time. That's why this particular CA rule is called "WORMS" (in Toffoli and Margolus's "Cellular Automata Machines" book).

Here's some JavaScript code that implements three kind of worms, with three different kinds of stimulus conditions (alarms), which I call "Yuppy Worms", "Hipster Worms" and "Bohemian Worms":

[https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM...](https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM6.js#L5293)

The "Yuppy Worms" are all uptight, geometrical and diagonal. The "Hipster Worms" are more relaxed and rounded. And the "Bohemian Worms" are all rough and fuzzy and organic.

            // The personality is a key into the dict of alarm arrays,
            // which are indexed by the count of excited neighbors,
            // and contain 1 if the cell should be excited or 0 if
            // not.
            var alarms = {

                // This results in spirals with tight straight diagonal diamonds.
                yuppie:   [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],

                // This results in spirals with loose smooth rounded diamonds.
                hipster:  [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],

                // This results in spirals with looser rustic fuzzy spirals.
                // That is due to the anneal-like discontinuity in the alarm table.
                bohemian: [0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]

            }[personality];

The Yuppie and Hipster look-up tables vote with the majority (for different definitions of majority), while the "anneal-like discontinuity" in the Bohemian alarm table is kind of like a non-conformist tie-breaker voting the other way when the vote is almost even (which is the essence of the "anneal" CA rule). That causes turbulence and roughness, so it looks much more organic than geometric.

<comment><USER29> Great observation! Those state-transition diagrams had me instantly thinking of The Game of Life.

<comment><USER28> [http://donhopkins.com/home/CAM6/](http://donhopkins.com/home/CAM6/)

Click the gray rectangle in the upper left corner.

Click "Rules" on the bar.

Select "Eco Heat" from the "Rule" menu.

Click and drag in the cells to draw!

Use the mouse wheel or drag two fingers up and down the trackpad to add and subtract heat from the system. (You might tweak "Rules" / "Frob Scale" towards zero to make it less sensitive.)

The "ANNEAL" rule running in one plane defines where land and water are, and the land and water areas quickly congeal into continents and oceans like the spots on a cow.

The "BRAIN" rule runs in the water.

The 1's complement of the LIFE rule ("DEATH") runs on land.

They interact along the shores, stimulating each other where they meet.

The higher 5 bit planes are running a heat diffusion, which the ANNEAL, BRAIN and DEATH rules inject heat into.

So it's like the little organisms generate pollution that diffuses into the environment!

Play around with "Rules" / "Frob Target" to continuously add or subtract heat (pollution) from the environment.

Look at the histogram below and see if you can adjust it to get an equilibrium.

Once the pollution rises (or lowers) to a certain level in a cell, it wraps around to zero and kills any organism in that cell, and toggles between land and water, which can cause some interesting phase transitions and disasters of biblical proportions!

Oh, and you can click in the histogram to set the cell drawing value!</comment></comment></comment>


EU must adopt 'EU English' as its official working language after Brexit (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.european-views.com/2018/07/eu-must-adopt-eu-english-as-its-official-working-language-after-brexit-heres-why/ <comment> Al-Khwarizmi I don't think English will stop being EU's lingua franca any time soon. Agreeing on a replacement would be politically impossible (the Germans wouldn't accept French, the French wouldn't accept German, the Spanish would have good arguments to make in any of both cases); and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical (you cannot realistically expect every EU citizen to know their native language, French and German, for example).

A "neutral" language like Esperanto is a nice idea, and I would also like Latin as the EU language, as it can be argued to be the language that historically shaped Europe the most. But let's not fool ourselves, no one is going to stand for learning a new language from scratch (even if it's easy) when English pretty much Just Works(tm), and provides a lot of utility also outside the EU.

Personally, I'm from Spain and I'm not annoyed or upset about English being the lingua franca. I think we should abandon the idea of English "belonging" to its native speakers. When I talk to people from Germany, from China, or from Vietnam, for example our common language is almost always English, even if neither of us are natives. English is useful for us and belongs to us, as much as to someone from Gloucestershire.

<comment><USER3> French here, I absolutely agree. Specifically, American English would be preferable because it is what's spoken widely outside Europe, and its spelling is somewhat more regular (as well as historically accurate!).

I wonder to what extent coming up with a new name for it would help adoption.

<comment><USER4> The differences are trivial though?

The main difference is the accent (when I was staying in California as an Englishman they couldn't understand me when I said "Kettle" and their pronunciation sounded more like "Keddle")

But accents will always be an issue regardless of which language is chosen.

I think they should continue using English as it's pragmatic but also introduce Esperanto as another working language and encourage its use (I used to speak Esperanto and my Grandfather is fluent so I'm a bit biased I suppose)

<comment><USER5> Also the differences between American English and British English are significantly smaller than the difference between Italian English and French English or Chinese English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > It will rid the French or the Germans of the temptation try to make their > language the dominant one in the post-Brexit EU

It really won't, especially the French.

<comment><USER7> Spain will fight tooth and nail as well. And Germany too. So no it really won't.

<comment><USER8> I'm from Spain, and it is surprising to hear someone say we will do that.

We have a huge inferiority complex, and our own cainistic version of the black legend, that makes us revere anything foreign as better than the local version. We have petty fights re. official languages about whether traffic signs should read "A coruña" or "La coruña"; or whether the national news anchor should say "Gerona" or "Girona" when speaking in spanish. We have regional governments that push spanish out of their regions. We as a nation obsess over english; we dream of speaking it better, we make it sound cool in the ads. We mock our leaders for not speaking it properly.

No one seriously pushes in a coordinated manner for spanish being used in the EU as seriously as the french or german do. At most, we aspire to be the proxy for latin america relationships.

As soon as anyone proposes to use english, we will see it as the opportunity to not have half of europe speak in french.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > the rest of the EU will be freed of the British veto and able to get as > integrated as it wishes

Anyone who thinks that EU skepticism is exclusive to the Brits is in for a nasty nasty surprise.

<comment><USER9> I think that by now everyone realizes that there are EU skeptics in all member countries. There will always be.

Around 25 percent of Americans want their state to secede (1). A lot of Italians want Northern Italy to part with Southern Italy. Spain has Catalan and Basque separatists. The UK has Scotland, and perhaps even Northern Ireland.

There are many people in many places that think they would be better off in a more (formally) independent state.

For now, the EU skeptics are a small minority in most EU countries. I for one hope it stays like that. The EU has shown remarkable unity when met with Brexit.

1: [http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in- four...](http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in-four- americans-want-their-state-to-secede-from-the-u-s-but-why/)

<comment><USER10> Once upon a time Amsterdam was at war with other cities. What those people do not realize is that the only alternative to further European integration is another war, the more and the smaller the slices are the more certain that future becomes. Just the UK seceding from the EU increases the chances of such a thing happening tremendously.

<comment><USER11> > the only alternative to further European integration is another war

False dichotomy. Surely the _same_ level of integration, or even a slightly lower level of integration, will not necessarily lead to war. EU members were already quite peaceful before the adoption of the Lisbon treaty, for instance.

And you should also at least entertain the possibility that integrating populations further than they're willing to go increases the odds of conflict.

<comment><USER10> The same level would be fine but it is either the top of the hill or the beginning of the downslope.

The EU made several critical mistakes in the way they approached their growth and integration issues and those in turn could very well lead to a final desintegration or split of the bloc. The UK leaving is a very bad sign, given that they already had one of the most exceptional positions within the EU.

Time will tell.

Of course the integration 'by force' (Maastricht for one, Lisbon for another) was utterly dumb, it feels to me as though they thought 'now or never' not realizing that they may be planting the seeds for the eventual dismantling of the union.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This doesn't really make sense. American English which they propose adopting is removes more of the European roots of words.

For example removing the 'U' from words like Colour.

Ireland is also an English speaking country in the EU.

And I don't know how much of the sentiment of "Let's Americanise!" Would be popular.

<comment><USER13> You probably don't know that 'u' in colour is a more recent British development than the standard US English is based on. US English is more original than the current British one.

<comment><USER14> Is it? Color was already spelled "colour" in the typical Middle English [1]. AFAIK the US development happened later to make all color-related words consistent (since it was spelled "color" in Latin, and English has lots of Latin-derived words).

[1] [https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english- dictionary/dicti...](https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english- dictionary/dictionary/MED8462)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Living in working in the Berlin tech world, English is already the official working language in most companies. Even as I german i have no problem with this, my only gripe is that it makes it very hard for my non-german colleagues to learn german.

<comment><USER16> Why exactly is this? Are there really that many non Germans speakers that you need to use English? And would you use English to have a chat at the water cooler, or down the pub (or locally relevant alternative).

<comment><USER17> > Are there really that many non Germans speakers that you need to use > English?

I'm not OP, but also at a Berlin tech company. I always say I'm glad I learned German (in a much smaller city elsewhere in Germany) before moving here. You absolutely _can_ learn German here, and I know people who have, but I also know people who've lived here for years and don't know enough to buy a loaf of bread in a bakery. The problem is that you can get away with it: your colleagues can all speak English (and some of them can't speak Germany, in some workplaces, including mine); as an expat, you probably live in a neighborhood with lots of other expats, where the staff in restaurants and shops speak English (and it's not uncommon for waiters to be unable to speak German); you can make your friends exclusively in expat communities, and if you arrive in Berlin speaking no German, that's a lot easier than integrating into the local community without yet knowing its language. It's especially bad if your accent gives away that English is your native language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The language of our time is English. There's just no disputing that. You can argue that it's because US won the cold war, and then indoctrinated the world via music and movies, and so on, and so on, but it doesn't change that fact.

We should adopt English and move on; majority of people know it and study it. Why regress?

The point of using a language in the first place is to understand each other.

Everyone learning a new language that will just substitute English would be an immense waste of time.

<comment><USER19> It's vital small languages are preserved and that the world doesn't become monolingual. Communication is a funny word -- we often mean it to commuincate with others but often we communicate with ourselves in the present -- and to our furture selves -- e.g. code comments are often for your future self as well as other programmers.

People who speak different lanaguges litteraly "think differently" and diversity of thought is absolutely essential to humanity progressing.

It's been positied that "Asians are better at math" because their languages have a more logical naming system for numbers giving many a small early advantage that accumulates over time. Other languges possess other attributes that impart such advantages or disadvanges giving us diversity of thought so that we can have new ideas about things and new perspectives.

<comment><USER20> We could all cherish and love our own native languages internally while relying on English abroad (and online). Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER19> What I'm saying is it's better that "some" people don't know English. I don't know what number constitutes or what % of people but by having some people -- for lack of a better word -- "corrupted" by English will have new perspectives. We need lots of languages and lots of combinations of these languages for a healthy world.

I say this as a monoglot English speaker. I have some French and Irish but both are very poor.

<comment><USER21> Languages drift apart, split and evolve. Even if by magic wand the whole world would start speaking perfect English now, in 100-200 years we will most likely have numerous versions of English. Each version would evolve depending on different enclaves of people around the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm sorry, but this opinion piece sounds pretty dumb. It almost reads like a troll post. The fact that so many in this comment thread seems to be concurring with its suggestion is troubling enough.

If you really want to alienate the EU from the average EU citizen, make English its official language. And adopt a version only a tiny minority really speaks too, just to salt the wound! I'm not sure whether to be scared or laugh.

The fact that the EU has 24 official languages isn't meant to make its proceedings cumbersome or to necessarily facilitate national pride (although, it's certainly also that!), but to make it available to the general public. The official nature of all the member states' languages means you can submit documents in all those languages.

Everyone on Hacker News speak English, but it's not a majority in the EU who speaks or understands English comfortably. But it's easy to forget our privilege. Even as younger generations get more and more accustomed to learning, reading and speaking English around Europe, most are still more comfortable reading technical, political and legal texts in their own language.

They may understand the dialogue in Game of Thrones well enough, but can an Estonian farmer understand an EU agriculture subsidy determination, if it was written in English?

<comment><USER23> > Everyone on Hacker News speak English, but it's not a majority in the EU who > speaks or understands English comfortably.

But a majority is comfortable with German or French?

Also, I can promise you that at least for Sweden, a vast majority of population would prefer English being the official language of the EU to something like French. We may not always be completely comfortable speaking English, but it's a language just about anyone will understand with a little effort.

<comment><USER22> I am not arguing for another language than English, but rather to maintain the status quo and keep all 24 languages official. Including English, even if no member state technically provides it. Which is probably what is going to happen anyway, Brexit or no Brexit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm surprised this document wasn't mentioned so far: [https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOG...](https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION.pdf)

Also, I would rather propose using Irish English as an official EU English dialect after Brexit. Not as boring as the American one.

</comment><comment><USER25> Great idea, and I'd be more interested in EU English Locale. I'm Ukrainian, and whenever I choose to have an English UI, I have a problem because U.S. and GB are using a non-metric system. Canadian locale works, but it would be nice to just have a common EU English one.

UPDATE: just checked, Ubuntu's United Kingdom uses Metric system actually, no idea why was I thinking it'd be Imperial before.

<comment><USER26> Try the Irish one; it is mostly sane, apart from not having dates in ISO format.

<comment><USER25> Thanks! Also, just checked, Ubuntu's United Kingdom locale uses Metric system actually, no idea why was I thinking it'd be Imperial before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What problem is this trying to solve? Is it the cost of language interpreters? That will probably soon be solved by technology. Is it the lack of a "demos"? That would only be solved if everyone in the European demos also learned English and all local politicians only spoke English, which is, ahem, unlikely to happen ever.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is that English is the de-facto single working language of the EU, and the de-facto business and scientific language of Europe, and so it might as well be made official.

If countries offered Government services including education in English, it would hugely assist the movement of people and capital throughout the continent.

Consider: you are from Spain, and have been offered a job at a great company in Germany. You will speak English at the office and probably get around the city speaking English. But: your children need to learn German, fluently and immediately, in order to continue their schooling?

An official EU English would help pave the way for National Governments to offer services in both the local language and English.

<comment><USER28> There's nothing stopping national governments from offering services in English right now. For example, [https://www.nelson-mandela- schule.net/](https://www.nelson-mandela-schule.net/) is a bilingual (German and English) public school in Berlin, where you could send your kids, assuming they speak English well enough.

If on the other hand you want all services to be available in English _everywhere_ , then I don't think that's a realistic expectation, since it would require all public-facing government employees to speak decent English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is _brilliant!_ Finally there's the opportunity to adopt an _equalizing_ language that will also help _free us from national culture isolationism_ :

\- a language that is _nobody 's mother tongue:_ YEEEY!

\- language that is not attached to _any one culture:_ 10x YEEY!

Think about it! This could help _global_ not just European unity: all the people of Asian and African origin who already speak fluent English could instantly embrace and join in and start _building_ the new _pan-European_ culture that will grow into a _new and rich global culture_. Freed from the tyranny of national-language-culture, this could be _the first truly global culture Humanity has the chance to produce!_

One thing Globalism 1.0 did wrong was trying to _destroy_ culture. We know now that this leaves a void that attracts trash like racism, xenophobia and isolationism to get filled by these - _culture too abhors vacuum!_ Now Globalism 2.0 can start right in the EU by _constructing_ a _new culture_ around a language that is nobody's own, at least on the cultural front. If this would ever work it will coagulate around it a new literature, then media etc. And finally we'd have a non-trash _global culture_ that will be able to keep us united enough to properly address global issues like pollution and climate change!

</dream>

<comment><USER30> The part I like best about your utopia is the irony that it leaves all native english countries out by design.

"Thanks for giving us this tongue that has allowed us to transcend as humans, now GTFO"

<comment><USER29> Anglo-american culture did enough appropriation itself... no reason to feel bad for appropriating its language :P

(Though, tbh, "international high-English" as spoken has a very _latin_ vocabulary, with non-native-English speakers often choosing the latin variant of words instead of the "native UK/US" phrasal verbs and such, eg. _" we're accelerating"_ instead of _" we're speeding up"_ or _" we're gaining up speed"_, _" inadequate"_ instead of _" unfit"_, _" superfluous"_ instead of _" useless"_ etc. Not sure if to love or hate it, mostly loving myself it I think, but it's interesting and sort of contributes to more precise/explicit communication.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pick a language, any language, but adopt it as official. It won't happen though. Germany, France, Spain, Italy and even Belgium are all way too proud. I am, for instance, a big fan of the Flemish language and the German language, but it is just not practical to keep them if you want to promote a united EU. But being Dutch I am for cooperation/trade; many people do not think like that and think their language and ways are vastly superior and should be adopted instead.

<comment><USER31> Fellow Dutch speaker here. Why in the world are you a big fan of our language? Just because it's your own? And German, just because it's so close? Both languages are horrible to learn compared to English.

<comment><USER7> I am a fan because I like them in a literary sense. I enjoy reading Flemish writers (Hubert Lampo, Hugo Raes) and German writers; I like the way sentences are built up and how they sound. I like Dutch less than Flemish, especially A.B.N. I find quite horrible these days. We bastardized our language too much in my opinion and our Belgian neighbors have always tried to prevent that.

But my point was (typing on mobile so maybe I skipped a beat there) that although I like these languages, I think they are indeed impractical and we should just adopt English or Mandarin.

Edit: also, where does that statement 'horrible to learn' come from? Honest question; I'm not sure how it works; not trolling here. We (the Dutch) are quite lenient with languages and I know why I am anyway; my German is as good as my English and my French and it did not take much effort learning these. I was not a very smart or particularly hard working student but when I grew up there was UK television, German television (the best of the bunch), Dutch television, Belgian television (was very good and original compared to Dutch tv as well, and with shows like Undercover very much back in the game) and French television; I learned most of my practical languages from watching scifi and horror when I was a kid.

<comment><USER31> > where does that statement 'horrible to learn' come from?

I had French, English, German, and Dutch in school. I'm a native Dutch speaker. English was easier than any other language. I'm pretty sure my English grammar is better than my Dutch right now. I mostly understand the d/t rules in Dutch by now, but I'm not always certain. French, German, and Dutch classes kept introducing lots of random rules that serve no purpose. At the end of high school, the only language I could hold a grammatically correct conversation in was English and my native language, and write a grammatically correct text only in English (not Dutch, or at least not without avoiding certain rules by rewriting sentences).

English classes also introduced some silly random rules at first, but once you get beyond the a/an, learn a hundred or so irregular verbs, and a few other such things, you're mostly done and it's just vocabulary and expressions/sayings left. You can't really get around the latter, but the former can be kept as small as possible (only the useful features like indicating possessiveness or plurals, not differentiating between whether the object you're speaking about is {male, female, neuter} × {active, idle, giving, modifier}). And the German sentence structure is more convoluted than necessary (I forgot most of my French, maybe theirs too), plac[1] the second part of a split verb so far at the end of the sentence with lots of words and qualifications in between that you lost track of what came before when you finally reach the end of the sentence especially if you can't really read German fluently [1]ing, but maybe that just takes some getting used to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Adopting English as the main working language would save a lot of costs in EU from translations. Also one could have German, French and Spanish as side languages. The smaller EU countries will have to accept English as main working language.

In many international business settings in Europe English is the norm. Why should politics be different?

<comment><USER33> There are many reasons why using English makes sense, but saving costs on translation is just not that.

Unless you are bilingual the lost productivity of having to use non native language in business context would easily dwarf any cost savings, due to misunderstandings, miscommunication, not "Punkt genau" documentation etc ...

Heck, anyone can just try to do an IQ test in non-native language and see how the score drops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If we want to use only one official working language, it should be Esperanto. This would be neutral for any country (including Ireland and Malta). This would not be a threat to other languages and cultures.

Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language. Its benefits are clear, it only needs a political support to thrive.

<comment><USER14> Let's get your facts straight:

> Esperanto is easier to learn than any naturally evolved language.

...only for many Indo-European speakers.

<comment><USER35> Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn and to lack many of the special cases and "gotchas" present in every natural language.

There are probably many cases where it would be easier for a native of some language to learn a specific similar language (i.e. for a Dutch speaker to learn German, or a Portuguese speaker to learn Spanish), but I would not be surprised if Esperanto minimizes the cost function for the net effort required for all native speakers/all second languages.

<comment><USER14> (While Zamenhof tried hard, unfortunately,) False.

\- The vocabulary is a big part of the language learning and it is hard to even begin with when the target vocabulary resembles nothing in your original tongues. It can be probably argued that ESL learners can learn Esperanto more quickly, but it still represents only about 1/4 of the total human population.

\- Rhotic consonants are particularly hard to pronounce correctly even for many ESL learners, and yet Esperanto retains them.

\- Esperanto by itself does not have a word order, but it does have a preferred word order of Subject-Verb-Object which is equally probable as Subject-Object-Verb but much more familiar to Indo-Europeans.

\- I think Esperanto, in spite of its original premise, has picked idioms and phrases up as well, as common in every old enough language.

It is now widely accepted that the difference between the native tongue and the target language greatly impacts the learning curve. If Esperanto does succeed, it would not be due to the easiness, because the easiness would be highly subjective.

<comment><USER36> > \- The vocabulary is a big part of the language learning and it is hard to > even begin with when the target vocabulary resembles nothing in your > original tongues.

While this is true for Esperanto, it is also true for any other language, natural or constructed. And the idea of Esperanto is to reduce the effort learning vocabulary not through familiarity, but by deriving its vocabulary from a minimal set of roots and a system of suffixes. In Esperanto, if you know the word for "big", you automatically know how to say "small", "huge" and "tiny". This is not the case in most natural languages.

Of course Esperanto will be much easier to learn for someone who already speaks some Germanic or Romance language than to anybody else on the planet. But even to a monolingual Chinese (or whatever) speaker, I believe building a working vocabulary in Esperanto is going to take less effort than in English, Spanish or German.

> It can be probably argued that ESL learners can learn Esperanto more > quickly, but it still represents only about 1/4 of the total human > population.

But far more than 1/4 of the total population of _Europe_, which is the only thing that matters in the context of this discussion.

<comment><USER14> > In Esperanto, if you know the word for "big", you automatically know how to > say "small", "huge" and "tiny". This is not the case in most natural > languages.

Oh? I have heard that "granda" means big, "giganta" or "kolosa" means huge and "eta" means tiny... :-)

Of course I know what you want to say. One can derive "malgranda" (non-big, i.e. small), "grandega" (more-big, i.e. huge) or "malgrandega" (tiny) from a single root "granda". But that alone does not explain all other words! For example, the Zamenhof's original dictionary [1] lists both "grand-" and "et-" as root words while "gigant-" or "kolos-" are missing (probably later additions, haven't checked). Why the heck do you need to know both "grand-" and "et-" when one is an antonym to the other? [2]

I'm not an esperantisto and I'm not able to discern the nuance behind all those different words, but I see a sign of the mature language here: once regular, now naturalized. It is not necessarily bad and the artificial origin can still help learning, but I would be rather careful to claim that it is "easier to learn than any naturally evolved language". And that leads to...

> But far more than 1/4 of the total population of _Europe_, which is the only > thing that matters in the context of this discussion.

You have said universally, even though you didn't seem to realize it. And even when we concentrate to Europe, the actual number of ESL learners is not too different: 38% [3].

But yeah, most Europeans can speak either Romance, Germanic or Slavic languages [3] that form the Esperanto grammar and vocabulary. Still, in the same census most Europeans seem to be much more interested in ESL than others [4] and it would be very hard to convince them to learn Esperanto instead.

[1] [http://www.akademio-de- esperanto.org/fundamento/universala_v...](http://www.akademio-de- esperanto.org/fundamento/universala_vortaro.html)

[2] Of course, the answer is that it isn't. "et-" is described as "marque diminution, décroissance" i.e. "marks decrease or reduction" and not strictly an opposite of "grand-". It is therefore a fault of fellow esperantistos to use it as "tiny"! </joke>

[3] [http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/e...](http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/ebs/ebs_243_sum_en.pdf) (2006, p. 4)

[4] Ibid., p. 9

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Be encouraged by other countries such as Pakistan and India in which English is already 'co-official':

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

Please also combine anglic with a conservative spelling reform: color, beautyfull, burocracys, enouf, allready...

Basically look at the most common spelling mistakes and chose those variants which are more logical than the current spelling.

The language should be called Anglic/Anglish, after the

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

It's already more of an ethnonym than a loconym. And ethnonym more in the sense of shared language and culture than common genes.

<comment><USER30> Man, I would vote for life whoever proposed to fix english spelling. The fact I can't use in conversation many words I have learned reading because I have no idea how are spelled is my biggest grudge with the language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I was raised to use British English spelling. Honestly, without any offence intended, whenever I see words like 'color', 'organize', 'oriented' and so on my mind sees it as a lazy (for lack of a better word) interpretation of the original word's spelling that has evolved in the US. I don't think the content has any less merit because of it, the authors are following the American convention. Just saying that because I'm curious as to what American's think when they read British spelling?

Also, whenever I write CSS and type 'color', I think, this was developed in America so they have complete right to spell it however they damn well please.

<comment><USER39> > _whenever I write CSS and type 'color', I think, this was developed in > America_

Well just so you know, it was mainly developed on the Franco-Swiss border (at CERN) by Norwegian, Dutch and English citizens.

The largest role of America in CSS is influencing the spelling because of its cultural weight, but not developing the language.

<comment><USER38> Interesting, thanks for the correction!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Better to stick with Irish English, which is ready the transition point. We could rename it European English jf that helps, but creating a new one would not be in anyone's interest and practically impossible: e.g. who would be the "European English" trainers? And would the EU just adopt the English dictionary and grammar the same way the UK adopted all EU legislation as own legislation for post-brexit? Just doesnt make sense.

</comment><comment><USER41> Great idea actually. There is also "Eastern EU English" extremely popular in Ukraine, Poland etc, should probably be adopted officially as well.

<comment><USER42> We also have Dunglish [0]! Actually we get around easily using it in Eastern Europe!

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunglish](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunglish)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Looking into the history of American English hints at why it's so powerful. It was _designed_ for pragmatism over elitism, to favor a broad adoption of a writing system for a population of then recent immigrants, many of whom were not native English speakers or had had little access to education. Its original purpose is practicality. It only gradually became considered a viable intellectual alternative to British English with the output of American literature, from writers who were educated with it.

Most of that revolution is attributed to Noah Webster. To give some example of how it just made sense, he favored "or" over the British "our" in words such as "color" and "odor", "ter" over "tre" in "theater" and "center", "z" over "s" in "civilization" and "analyze", "e" vs "ae" in "archeology" (Brits write it "archaeology") and "paleontology" ("Palaeontology"). And many more.

<comment><USER11> I don't get it. How is a word like "civilization" less elitist / more pragmatic than "civilisation"? How is that a revolution? Is there any evidence that these minor spelling difference had an effect on the success of American English?

<comment><USER43> Because 'z' is unambiguous. If it sounds like a 'z' it must be a 'z'. Especially from the perspective of a non-native speaker, or someone who needs to learn to read and write as an adult.

As for your other questions? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English- language_spelling_refo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English- language_spelling_reform). Also feel free to look up specifically Noah Webster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't understand why they didn't try to unify the English language across the borders. Why are there different official variants of the same language?

I'm from Belgium and speak Flemish, our neighboring country is the Netherlands. We officially speak the same language. We have the same spelling, same rules, etc. Of course there are dialect variations, but the official language is exactly the same.

I always wondered why other countries don't try to do the same. For example Slovakia and Czech Republic. It almost is exactly the same language, and I know Slovaks were able to understand Czech. But it seems newer generations are unable to do that. So it's weird that these languages evolve away from each other, instead of towards each other.

The world is becoming smaller every day, so why not try to standardize at least the English language, which is mostly used in international settings?

But I guess it's also an ego thing, where neither UK or US (No idea which official variant they use in Australia/New Zealand) want to adopt the other countries rules.

</comment><comment><USER10> It should, but as recently as April last year a French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him:

[https://www.politico.eu/article/english-only-try-au- revoir-f...](https://www.politico.eu/article/english-only-try-au-revoir- french-ambassador-tells-council-philippe-leglise-costa/)

Petty squabbles such as these diminish the EU.

<comment><USER45> > French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him

You left out one important word: "only". Traditionally, all important meetings and records in the EU are translated into the major languages, some of them are available in most, if not all official languages. That makes it easier for all european citizens to read the actual records. English might be widely spoken, but fluency varies massively among the population. There's an argument to be made that this makes sense. I certainly wouldn't trust quite a few german politicians to negotiate in english, given the lack of grasp on the language that some have repeatedly demonstrated.

<comment><USER46> It is pretty known that the parliment have an army of translators. Both live translating and translating law documents into most languages.

<comment><USER45> Absolutely. But the decision that the Ambassador objected to was to use english-only for the records. And citizens don't have access to that army of translators and might be interested in the records too.

<comment><USER10> The same held for _all_ the other countries. Except for the UK of course.

<comment><USER45> Well, I have no objection on english being the de-facto lingua franca. But my position on english being the only official language is certainly not as simple. And the same is true for german, french or any of the other official languages of the EU - neither of them are or should be the only official language in such a multilingual construct as the EU. So I share the ambassadors rejection of the notion to only use english and I do not regard that as pettiness harmful to the EU. Sure, translation costs money, but it also makes records more accessible to the citizens, and I regard that as a good thing.

<comment><USER10> My country (NL) isn't small enough to have a realistic demand that everything be translated into Dutch as well. That means that for us here adaptation rather than rejection is the norm. To see other countries' representatives storm out of meetings because their linguistic preferences are not followed is one of those things that show me that the EU still has a very long way to go.

To 'only use English' is not a dictate, if the French ambassador felt the need to have a French translation of the document then I'm sure he could have had one as fast as pens could write. The citizens of France have every right to access the proceedings but I really fail to see how they were denied that right by having the situation as sketched transpire. Besides that, leaving the meeting for sure had an effect against the French citizens' interest, effectively they were unrepresented and the damage of that action far outweighs the inconvenience of translation.

<comment><USER45> I see your point, but I'd prefer if that was resolved in a different way. I'm absolutely in favor of translating all important records to all official languages in the EU.

<comment><USER10> So am I, but that was not infringed on. The EU already gave French, German and English a head start. Your typical Czech, Italian or Spanish representative would have a much better position to make that case than the French ambassador.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> And make official the EU being just an USA colony (see IT companies), just as the American Empire itself is waning. Such a _wise_ move !

Meanwhile, Macron's proposal is impressively hypocritical(/real-political?), considering how much he has done to pump up English and diminish French...

<comment><USER48> Using a common language in the EU makes the EU a US colony ..? Because we share the same language as the US then?

<comment><USER47> No, it's not just about that, I mention it too (and the FA too, in a roundabout way). Why exaggerating what I said ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've had a similar idea for some time now, albeit without the unnecessary focus on American English: With the UK probably - and very unfortunately - leaving the EU the latter could adopt English as its main language without any unfair advantage to one of the larger EU countries or hurting national sentiment.

I'd even go as far as to propose adopting English as the main language for legal matters, public administration, business and education in each of the EU member countries.

The language barrier is the predominant obstacle preventing a closer integration between EU countries and collaboration between businesses across borders.

A single, unified language over time could remedy that problem.

<comment><USER50> > With the UK probably and very unfortunately - leaving the EU the latter > could adopt English as its main language without any unfair advantage to one > of the larger EU countries or hurting national sentiment.

This is exactly the point the article makes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Why not just adopt Esperanto? You can learn with minimal effort to read it in less than half a year. And I suppose listening skill would come naturally if one would have daily news programs in it.

</comment><comment><USER52> In case we move away from English, the only thing that makes sense IMHO is Spanish, because it is very easy to pick up for most other latin-derived language speakers, and has an amazing amount of speakers worldwide. Moreover is not very hard. If EU goes for English, I totally agree US english is the best. It's phonetically simpler and more understandable, and is much more in the artworks we consume: TV series, music, movies, ...

</comment><comment><USER53> It should develop its own language, easier to spell and write perhaps taking advantage of machine learning etc during development. Something like Esperanto that is not owned by anyone but is easier to learn by everyone(within EU).

English gives an unfair advantage to native english speakers not to mention that it has a lot of legacy stuff that makes it hard to learn. Non-native speakers will always be seen as outsiders/2nd class.

<comment><USER7> But everyone already speaks it. When I moved to Spain (from NL), I was flabbergasted about the level of English here; even the English teachers were impossible to understand. But now it is rapidly changing. Same in France and Germany. When I start speaking English to someone now in either of these countries, they generally understand.

> Non-native speakers will always be seen as outsiders/2nd class.

Not in my experience. But how would you measure that; in my personal experience, the Spanish and Brits treat my wife and me like their own.

<comment><USER53> >>> Not in my experience. But how would you measure that; in my personal experience, the Spanish and Brits treat my wife and me like their own.

Of course you can measure that! Try to get a job where communication and/or "presentation" skills are important(i.e lawyer, PR, media, investment banker etc)and see how it goes. Even the accent may cost you the job. The language skills are a handicap for any non-native speaker in the job market and not only.

<comment><USER7> That is still what you say; I do not see much proof of that. I work in banking and deal with much of what you say and I meet too many Dutch guys in those positions to think there is an issue. I was looking more for an objective measurement instead of a gut feel we both have.

<comment><USER53> What about this measurement: how many TV presenters speaking "broken english" have you seen in the UK? or broken spanish in Spain or broken dutch in Holland? I believe the number is close to zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I have wondered for awhile if it is possible to have a world language - <USER2> that the world couldn't all agree (or be forced) to choose a common language, but that any single language spoken by 7.5 billion people would immediately start to fragment or the pace of change would be so fast you couldn't talk to your grandparents.

<comment><USER55> It should be possible if all 7.5 billion are connected to a world-spanning Network and produce and consume similar media.

Hollywood movies and pop music already proved this after all. And for the youngsters, video games and memes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> _Jou känn pry mei näytiff djörmänn from mai cold däd häntz! Yawollja!_

Echt jetzt? Oh, really?

Why no fucking Esperanto, or Marain, Klingon, Elfish?

</comment><comment><USER57> Language is open source. English does not belong to the UK anymore as much as Tiramisu doesn't belong to Italy or http to Tim Berners-Lee. People created these standards, let people use them, improve them and have a better life. [Edit: spelling]

</comment><comment><USER58> If you think _Esperanto_ is the better choice for EU's official working language, sign the petition here:

[http://e-d-e.org/?lang=en](http://e-d-e.org/?lang=en)

</comment><comment><USER59> So what's the definition of EU-en, compared to US-en or UK-en? I know the differences between US-en and UK-en, but I'm lacking facts about EU-en.

<comment><USER60> Metric system, date formats, currency... are the first things they pop in my mind

<comment><USER59> Oh. I thought about written language, not about localization (as it comes up when being used in graphical user interfaces). As a non-native speaker in science, we always write out units (3 km or 3 miles), we write out dates clearly (July 2nd or 2018-07-02), the same with units (USD 3 or 3 EUR). As a non-application-writer, I don't see the point. As a programmer, I do, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I have long wished for a EU-en locale. Perhaps one day...

<comment><USER62> On Android, the language can be set to English (accented). Alas, that's just for testing Unicode support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Chinese would be even better

<comment><USER49> Just because it's spoken by more native speakers than any other language that doesn't automatically make Mandarin more relevant in a global context.

English is a global language due to its history (largely grounded in the British Empire's colonial history). Mandarin on the other hand in a global context as of today is still largely irrelevant because it's only spoken in one country, even as that country is as globally relevant as China.

That might change in the future but unless you specifically deal with China and Chinese businesses Mandarin is no more relevant on a global level than - say - Russian or German.

<comment><AUTHOR> Chinese is tonal and cannot be typed into a computer without going through the Pinyin intermediary stage. It is fundamentally ill-suited to being a modern global language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Finished the article but I haven't seen a single proposal of _what_ this actually would mean. EU English would be different how? And that's besides the fact that I also have yet to hear a single real advantage for forking the language and creating 15 competing standards.

Reasons like "then it's fair for everyone" doesn't make any sense when the UK is gone anyway, it would make sense _right now_ since one country has an advantage, but not after brexit.

> It will be taking advantage of [the current] situation [since it] is already > spoken by pretty much everybody.

Is the author saying it's more difficult to read or write british english than it is to read an as-of-yet-undefined EU english?

> It will rid the French or the Germans of the temptation try to make their > language the dominant one

Right, once we adopt a currently fictional en_EU, they'll know they lost the battle. But the same would be true if we adopt de_EU or fr_EU or keep en_UK. Whatever decision is made, it won't lessen any discussion until said decision has been made.

> It will rid the Europeans of some of the oddities of British English which > make it a tiny bit more complex

You mean adding silent letters to words like 'color' (colour) or 'no' (know)? To make the letters match the pronunciation, it needs an overhaul quite a bit larger than switching away from british english.

> It will give the Europeans some "closure" with the Brits

 _frowns_

> It will give the EU a chance [words words words] to finally make widely > understood some of the terms and notions that are specifically EU / European > but are nowhere to be found in British or American English.

Like what? I have no idea what the author is talking about.

> It will give the EU a chance [words words words] to gain a stronger popular > culture position on the world stage.

I think our various languages add a lot of culture rather than forking English. (Though I'd personally rather be rid of all the languages: fewer language is more convenient than yet another language.)

> It will further enable the EU's communication with the entire rest of the > world

Surely you're joking. Speaking a different language just for the sake of it helps international communication how?

> because guess what (working) language they already speak[: English]

... precisely, so why change it?

> expressions, idioms, etc. can be too specific, or "too British" [words words > words], quite often those might be misunderstood or even completely missed > out. Occasionally, that might be true of American English as well, but to a > substantially lesser extent.

This is approaching sense. So let's have some examples? Because I still have no idea what the author is talking about, even if 80% down the article I did find the first and only sensible reason, assuming the mentioned understood-by- the-British-only expressions, idioms, etc. exist.

I'm wondering if this post is satirical or serious. Could be that I'm playing amazingly deep on someone's joke, but the other comments seem to treat it as a serious idea... not sure.

<comment><USER64> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English#Examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English#Examples)

<comment><USER31> It's an existing thing? Interesting, I never heard of it. Thanks for linking.

The Wikipedia article isn't very clear on what the language officially is. I don't see where I can find a reference of the changes it makes, aside from a few examples of ways to make English mainly more like French. It honestly looks as though it is just an excuse for people to use words incorrectly just because they have words in their own language that sound similar but mean something else.

<comment><USER64> You are reading too much into the article.

The EU will never officially name this "EU English". They will just name it "English", and at most they might point to a "guide" of what some commonly used phrases which differ from British English mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> >> More specifically, Brexit's silver lining for Europe might have to do with unleashing the deepening of European integration in a whole bunch of areas where the Brits have been reluctant to go. After Brexit, they won't have to, and the rest of the EU will be freed of the British veto and able to get as integrated as it wishes.

Nice- a little controversial barb hidden in a larger, already controversial (but less so) article. Who is this Ivan Dikov? He sounds like a man who likes to stir the pot just to watch it boil over.

(Not that I don't fully agree with him, mind- but it's still a controversial and rather mean opinion).

<comment><USER66> I don't see anything particularly mean about that quote and it's definitely not the first time I've heard this argument brought up (that EU can continue with further integration without UK obstructionism).</comment></comment>


2 weeks after launch, and no real traffic. What should I do? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Edward - don't let the nay-sayers get you down. Here's a few pieces of advice. First of all, for all of the users who don't sign up and are merely there to look around and maybe catch some reviews, the site has no local focus.(I recently read somewhere that a typical site with user generated content can expect around a 10:1 ratio of readers to creators - so this group should be important to you). I'm not particularly interested in seeing a Google map of reviews from Connecticut when I'm in Portland Oregon. I feel like you would do well to pick one or two cities, and focus your resources on reaching critical mass in those markets. I think what you have is cool. Talk to your friends and enable them with digital cameras. A lot of people eat out once or twice a day and even a few of these people using your site will really rev up the user experience in a given city. After you have 100, maybe 200 reviews. Reach out to local bloggers, small local papers, and some of your favorite restaurant owners. Maybe even print up some info and go talk to some of the more interesting restaurants in your area. Restaurant owners love getting reviews, and many will be happy to speak your praises to their customers in hopes of a good review.

<comment><USER2> One last thing. When someone tells you that "people wont be interested in X", you need to seriously consider what they are really saying. For instance, "tx" says "is it so hard to accept that ppl dont' give a rat's a$$ about "blogging" about stuffing themseves with food? People like to talk about THEMSELVES. This is what drives social network sites." His claim that there isn't a mass appeal for restaurant blogging or reviews is legitimate. There probably inst. But there's definitely a market for consumption of that content, I won't even bother listing examples. He obviously doesn't know enough about content generation to understand the concept of power users and the influence they can have on a service like this. Anyway - You might even consider subsidizing meals to help generate content in the beginning depending on your available resources. Goodluck!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> After months of after-work-hours programming, I launched my site <http://www.mygrub.net> but haven't seen any traction. Any tips for getting traffic? How did reddit get its very first users?

I applied to YCombinator with this, but was rejected. Maybe for good reason =(

<comment><USER3> This is a very niche site. I would think that the type of people that would be into this service would be (mostly) over the age of 35. What type of marketing/market research have you done for your target demographic? Do you have an advertising campaign set up to reach your target?

You have to realize that the kind of people that would like to share restaurant experiences are probably not the same type of people who enjoy discovering the latest web 2.0 website just because it has been launched two weeks ago.

<comment><USER4> "What type of marketing/market research have you done for your target demographic?"

What kind of market research can you do on a shoestring budget?

<comment><USER5> you'd be surprised. i work for a market research firm for start ups, and most of it is knowing how to search online, figuring out who to call, and pounding the pavement to get feedback from people most likely to use it.

that said, it's a lot easier to build something catered towards a specific user first than to build something, and try to find a use for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I imagine people are just going to your front page and then leaving, so what I would do is experiment with the front page to see if you can get better engagement. Focus on getting users to make the next click. Add a 'Add a Location' textfield on the front page, so that I can add a restaurant right away. Defer registration until after they typed in the review. Make it easier to browse restaurants, it doesn't seem easy to explore anything beyond what was recently added.

Also, the content doesn't seem very localized -- I entered my city and state, but it seems to default to California every time.

btw, you have a bug when adding locations with a quote in the name (search for Rhea's or Provino's). I added a couple of locations for you, good luck. You should make a follow up post (after you fix that bug) asking everyone to post at least one location for you. Or maybe you can turk it (<http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome)?>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the comments and suggestions! It's all been very encouraging and I now have a lot of new ideas as a result.

There were a couple suggestions about linking my site to other existing food sites, like eGullet. I have a hard time thinking about how to do this without having it appear like shameless self-promotion or even spam. I posted something on chowhound.com about my site, only to find that it was quickly removed as spam.

As for marketing, I'm working with a shoestring budget, which consists on spending about 50 cents a day on google adwords. I guess I really just need to go out there and tell more friends about it. For whatever reason, I tend to be a little shy when it comes to making a big splash among my friends about my startup.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool site. I co-founded a startup that was doing a very similar thing in 2002 (it failed). Here are some ideas that will hopefully make your site successful.

\- Start off with a really niche site. For example: Vegan food in Portland, Oregon. It's the niches that sites like Citysearch aren't serving very well.

\- Don't code any more features. Spend the next 3 months on marketing. Making this site successful is an exercise in savvy marketing, not programming.

\- No one cares about keeping track of restaurants they visited. Everyone cares about going to good restaurants. Same features, different message.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think you want to focus, focus, focus. Ex. become the absolute authority on Pizza places on the lower east side of Manhattan (or whatever your thing is). Be SO important to a tiny 'slice' of the world that restaurant owners are encouraging their customers to review.

Definitely post your own reviews and talk about the idea an insane amount = as much as you can. How did CL grow - there may be ideas there.

All the easy ideas have been taken. Build it and they will come just isn't easy anymore. You have to immerse yourself in the market to get traction.

If all else fails, hire some hot girls.

</comment><comment><USER9> It reminds me of one problem that actually needs solving: have you ever worked for a company in a remote location, where takeaway is the only food you can get? There are usually loads of leaflets from takeaway restaurants lieing around, and it is hard to remember which ones were good, and which of their meals didn't suck. Maybe if your blog became more fine-grained (which menu did I choose), it could be used for that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hi edawerd, reddit creators created :) fake contents in early stage to have something on their site.

<comment><USER4> I hate that - I don't think it's quite dishonest, but it doesn't feel real, either. Unfortunately, I think it's also a good idea:-(

 _Edit_ \- hate is too strong a word, but still, it annoys me - see below.

<comment><USER11> Have fun basking in your honesty, all alone on your fantastic new site.

(if you were against it, that is.)

<comment><USER4> I said it's a good idea, and think it's probably effective. I still don't like it though, even if all things considered, there are a whole lot of worse things going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The OP explanatory comment has drifted down the page by now. This feature request would be useful to stop this. <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1149>

</comment><comment><USER13> I think menuism.com is doing something similar. They are based in Chicago and are targeting only select cities at first.

</comment><comment><USER14> make something you want to use

</comment><comment><USER15> PATIENCE, grasshopper. Give yourself longer than two weeks to build up 'traction'. The more stuff that builds up on your site, the more people will want to go there. And that takes time.

I would not worry about yelp or any other sites people are comparing you to. Google emerged after the problem of internet search was 'solved', and Flickr appeared and succeeded after photo sites had been around for years.

You might want to concentrate on (and emphasize) what differentiates you.

If you have not already, use every channel you have available. Tell everyone you know, and remind them. Link to other food sites (even competitors?) and post on restaurant forums and sites.

<comment><USER15> More anecdotal info: Digg didn't have very much traction until Paris Hilton had her Sidekick hacked, and someone posted a link to her photos. All of a sudden everyone went to Digg to see Paris kissing girls, and apparently the traction started there.

Even with a Digg/Reddit effect, there is no guarantee of traction. It takes time and persistence.

<comment><USER16> No, it was the number one or two result on Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Ever wanted to keep track of all the great restaurants you've been to?"

The answer is NO. This is why you dont' have any visitors. Is it so hard to accept that ppl dont' give a rat's a$$ about "blogging" about stuffing themseves with food?

People like to talk about THEMSELVES. This is what drives social network sites.

<comment><USER18> I guess you've never used yelp. Or read one of the many popular food blogs.

tx: just b/c you don't want something doesn't mean no one does.

<comment><USER4> This food social site is quite popular in Italy:

<http://www.duespaghi.it/></comment></comment></comment>