People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scientists-185601411.html <comment><USER2> This is what happens when one person writes an article, and another writes a link bait title.

Here is the concise version. The well-known Dunning-Kruger effect says that the less competent people are, the less they are able to recognize competence. Someone named Mato Nagel used this as the basis of a toy computer model of democracy. The result of his simulations is that the leaders selected by democracy are only slightly above average.

Of course there has been no testing of how accurate this model is. It is just a toy, and appropriate skepticism should be shown.

However I wouldn't say that evidence is against particularly against his conclusion. For instance 3 of the 4 remaining Republican candidates for President actively disbelieve the scientific consensus on topics such as evolution and global warming. (The exception is Mitt Romney, and even he is not convinced enough about global warming to say that we should spend any money on the issue.) Conversely surveys of Democrats find that most fail to accept basic economic theory on a number of subjects. For instance economists broadly agree that rent control decreases the supply of rental housing, but in surveys the majority of Democrats think that this is wrong.

I could start a debate by multiplying examples of widespread misconception on both sides, but these two are enough to support my point. My point is that it is easy to demonstrate that someone who actually understands and supports the best view of the world that experts from different fields have come to would be totally unelectable. That person might run the country very well, but will never, ever be selected by a democratic process.

<comment><USER3> And so we have come to realize that soon, very soon, we will have to pioneer another form of government. We humans have had kings and queens, dictatorships, anarchy, communism, socialism, republics, democracies, and now it's time to move on to the next one.

A few years ago when I was a young teenager who believed in the good of the world and the wisdom of people I would have thought the next government would naturally be more democratic than the last, taking more power away from individuals (who's human flaw is greed and control) and giving it to the masses (who's human flaw is stupidity and not knowing what to do with power in the first place). But after a few years of studying history, voting, reading, I've changed my mind. Democracy will never work because it can only work if EVERYONE is educated enough and by default humans are notoriously stupid and unaware of their own stupidity. We are also delusional greedy and evil by nature so dictatorships also do not work out for us.

I can't help but feel that the problem is us. Our human way of thinking is just too primitive. We have to constantly look for ways to prevent "us" from fucking everything up. This is why I await the zombie apocalypse with a smile. At least the zombies can work together to reach a common goal and the world will be a much more peaceful place after their rise to power.

<comment><USER4> _Democracy will never work because it can only work if EVERYONE is educated enough and by default humans are notoriously stupid and unaware of their own stupidity. We are also delusional greedy and evil by nature so dictatorships also do not work out for us._

See, for most people, this is a surrender. "Give up!" they say, "The world can never get better!"

To me, though, it's a challenge. I'm a hacker and an entrepreneur and "impossible" means "interesting".

<comment><USER5> _I'm a hacker and an entrepreneur..._

Exactly. Our inability to accurately evaluate people extends to ourselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
        "Many forms of Government have been tried and will be
        tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that
        democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been
        said that democracy is the worst form of government
        except all those other forms that have been tried from
        time to time."

Churchill, 1947

[http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parli...](http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parliament- bill#column_206)

<comment><USER7> I honestly think this is the best piece of rhetoric to keep our old system in place.

The system is awful, but its the best we got. I'd prefer if we brought back our philosophers and started to have large debates on the writing of new law.

We are to afraid to change our old old system. Depressing.

<comment><USER8> The bigger problem is that the only folks who can improve the system(the people in charge), have an active self-interest not to do that since they are likely to lose power and influence with the changes.

That's why the US Congress has an approval rating worse than herpes [1] and still most people will keep their jobs thanks to lack of reform, redistricting and gerrymandering by the only people who can fix it.

[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/21/opinion/obeidallah-congress- fa...](http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/21/opinion/obeidallah-congress- failure/index.html)

<comment><USER9> One of the best Italian artists of all time, Giorgio Gaber, said once that "Democracy is Participation", or "taking part". Check the number of active voters in the US at most levels: it's depressingly low. Low participation means less democracy, it's as simple as that.

Most people thought it would have been impossible for a black man to be President of the United States of America, but for once "the people" thought differently, you got the highest turnout ever for a presidential race, and lo and behold, change happened (at least for that particular thing).

Try to imagine how things would change if you could add another 10 or 20% to that 63% who elected a black President. Now repeat that at any level: Congress, State, City, even school board. All of a sudden you have a decisive element that can change majorities and express real power.

The problem, of course, is that "taking part takes time". Politics is a very slow game, and most people have a life outside of politics, so they drop out (me included). Even voting every few years is a problem, if you can't afford to take a day off; most European countries recognize that, and vote over the weekend. I find the US stance on this incredibly maddening, and clearly a legacy from the dark times of slavery and "gentlemen" landowners who didn't have to work for a living.

The problem, going forward, is how to give people the opportunity to take part more and more, while minimizing the time they have to spend in order to do so. One of them is having a good set of impartial media who can summarize honest arguments in a faithful way, providing different levels of analysis that don't contradict themselves. Another one might be some sort of collaborative service where people can contribute to the work of their representatives. Another might be a way of making representatives more accountable and in tune to the wishes of their electorate. And so on and so on... but nothing of this can happen unless we _take part_ and move our ass, so to speak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The elephant in the corner of the room of course is that the ancient Athenians quite deliberately didn't have a universal franchise. Property-owning tax- paying full citizens who fulfilled their military obligations voted, because they were the ones that would pay for, implement and generally be responsible for whatever was voted for.

<comment><USER11> This was the dominant form of voting in most democracies until about 100 years ago. E.g. in the UK, only men who owned property could vote (can't let the common man vote!). This didn't always produce a good democracy.

<comment><USER10> Alexis de Tocqueville: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

This is the one crucial defence of a restricted franchise - if the only people voting are the ones paying, they are much more resistant to this kind of corruption.

<comment><USER12> His book is free on Amazon Prime by the way! [http://www.amazon.com/Democracy- America-1-ebook/dp/B000JQUY7...](http://www.amazon.com/Democracy- America-1-ebook/dp/B000JQUY7E/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1330972523&sr=8-3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Democracy isn't about putting the best people in power. Its about being able to get rid of the worst ones.

<comment><USER14> That sounds nice, but put into practice is, at best, marginally effective.

Democracy is actually quite good on a small scale without the element of compulsion, like your chess club or picking the most able-bodied man to lead the local volunteer fire co.

People are both more familiar with the people being voted for and can see a payoff for voting. There's more chance of dying in a car accident on the way to the polls in the US than of your individual vote mattering though.

Democracy such as in US politics, in comparison, creates a perverse incentive structure where it is more often the most suave liars rising to the top. The millions spent on Super PACs or stroking the media is chump change compared such things as awarding gov't contracts or the power of politicians and unelected bureaucrats to shape industry-changing regulation.

Can we vote out the worst ones? I guess, as long as we are talking about a more legitimate democracy than Russia or Venezuela. Still, even in the US people are going to elect pretty much the same thing every time they switch. There's very little difference between a Romney (or clones) and Obama.

What needs "voted out" is democracy as a whole. I realize that this cuts to the core of most Americans' religious worship of democracy, but hopefully people can at least consider the options—I suggest libertarian anarchy—and educate themselves about some serious criticisms of the system we have. I suspect I am going to get more downvotes than coherent objections, but oh well. See Hans Herman Hoppe's Democracy: The God that Failed or Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter

<comment><USER15> Marx and Engels are a good place to start if you look for a comprehensive debate against capitalism.

Of course, I would expect Adam Smith and his disertation to say something akin to "we've not seen 'real capitalism'".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One thing that I am reminded of in the current zeitgeist with respect to capitalism and democracy is the 1930s and its condemnation of democracy as outdated and how fascism was the progressive way forward.

<comment><USER17> Also, that time gave rise to the Technocracy Movement, which proposed an allegedly new way to run society other than by dictatorship or democracy.

<comment><USER12> From this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy#Technocracy_movemen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy#Technocracy_movement)

The idea of currency based on energy units is quite intriguing. It makes me wonder how our world would change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I see fallacy upon fallacy here. In reality, political systems are complex; there often is no objectively "right" or "best" answer; it's not about smart vs. dumb.

Here are some other headlines we could run.

> Neurons Aren't Smart Enough for Brains to Flourish

The system as a whole either works or doesn't; the burden is not on each part. This is just an empty way to blame the parts for the functioning of the whole.

> Investors Aren't Smart Enough for Good Companies to Flourish

Maybe it feels that way sometimes (ha), but what is a "good" company or a "smart" investor? There are many kinds of investors, and they can make up their own mind how to spend their money. This is just an empty way to blame whoever is making the decisions for the outcomes; yet we could just as easily assume the decision-makers are doing the best they can, or even could do, depending on what we assume the goal (i.e. definition of "best") to be.

> Movie Critics Aren't Smart Enough for Good Movies to Flourish

Again, what makes a movie critic or a movie "smart" or "good"? Not that we don't each have our opinions about this, but it's not anything so objective as skill at tax accounting. More importantly, do movie critics even have that much influence in shaping what movies are made? We may be looking in the wrong place.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Strangely though, in these experiments, people tend to readily and accurately agree on who the worst performers are, while failing to recognize the best performers."

So we know incompetence even if we don't recognize competence. This appears to be good enough for government work.

</comment><comment><USER20> If 90% of the population randomly picks between two candidates and 10% makes an informed decision, the better candidate will win. If the most informed are also the most engaged via volunteering, donating, etc. their influence will be amplified.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is not a new idea, it's why almost nobody took Democracy seriously before the U.S. I like Jefferson's answer to this problem:

"if we think [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." --Thomas Jefferson

Democracy is really the only reason that we have universal education in the first place. If the elite are forced to allow the people to make decisions, then they're going to make sure the people are educated enough not to do anything too dumb.

<comment><USER22> Indeed, the whole theory falls down on this point. In areas where people are generally competent, they can judge to skill of others and can select the best leaders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."

No. Democracy is the best form of government discovered so far because it allows voters to _remove_ incompetent leaders and bad policies without violence.

However competent a king or dictator is, most of his competence will be directed towards remaining in power through military force, rather than addressing his country's real problems. He cannot be removed without risking civil war, which is the worst kind.

However incompetent a prime minister or president turns out to be, and however dull voters are, incompetence is easier to recognise than competence.

Besides, one doesn't necessarily need to personally recognise it: one can be persuaded by other people. It's easier to reach agreement about things that _aren't_ working.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is a very old argument against democracy. It's also divisive in the sense that you have the "competent" folks on one side and the "incompetent" ones on the other. Who decides who is "competent" to vote? About a century ago it was believed that women were not competent to vote. Before then it was thought that people who didn't own land couldn't possibly be responsible enough to vote. Also, there is no such thing as an objectively "best leader". That way lies tyranny and ruin.

Democracy isn't about voting for candidates anyway. In general it's about having some say in decisions which affect your life, and as such I think it's still more of an aspiration than a reality.

</comment><comment><USER25>
      The democratic process relies on the assumption that
      citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize
      the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when
      they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed
      an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem
      to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic
      elections produce mediocre leadership and policies.

Unfortunately, the researchers in question aren't intelligent enough to realize the best form of government is a mediocre one.

A government that is competent enough to survive and incompetent enough to be unable to interfere in the lives of its citizens.

</comment><comment><USER26> Democracy is not about choosing one "Great Leader" and everyone else just follow. If that was the case, we don't need the congress, the high court and free press. Democracy is about "putting power into cage" and splitting cake in a way that everybody has a say.

In a democratic system, "Great leader" or not, it really doesn't matter that much in the long run, we will always get there. What important is the system makes sure that "Great leader" won't have the power to destroy our civilization.

On the other hand, "smart" leader may not always yield better outcome than an "average" leader. Complex policy from "expert" may bring more disaster than "no policy".

<comment><USER27> "Democracy is about "putting power into cage" and splitting cake "

Well, no. What you're describing is a Republic.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic>

It's often confused because most democracies are also republics.

<comment><USER22> A constitutional monarchy does all those things.

And they are not republics, but can be democracies.

<comment><USER27> True, I stand corrected :) .

What I wanted to say is that the OP was describing a divison of powers as commonly seen in a Republic, it was not something inherent in a democracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Democracy is flourishing when free elections occur. Hitler was democratically elected.

Democracy is not everything that is good about a state. Modern liberal democracies in Europe and North America also have traditions of rule of law, divisions of power, individual rights, collective rights, property protection, public education and welfare, etc., etc.

Fareed Zakaria has written very interesting things about illiberal democracies and why democracies sometimes produce populists or repressive governments.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is definitely true. Representative Democracy systems (and bodies like the Electoral College in the US) try to ameliorate the stupidity of the average voter, but ultimately add complexity and beauracracy to a simple idea (democracy).

Let's say I spend a lot of time prior to an election trying to understand the ballot measures and issues and candidates. Come going day, my decision is weighed just as highly as someone who watched Fox News the morning of the election, heard one of the candidates was the next Hitler and made an uninformed, fear-based decision. Ours votes are worth the same; why should I even do research then? (That's a different rant though).

I'm unfairly picking on Fox News. The vast majority of "news" is bullshit that is a distraction from the issues that an intelligent, informed electorate should care about. By turning news into entertainment, the purpose is no longer to inform and thus little of any substance is discussed by most news outlets.

So why not have a meritocracy, where only those deemed informed/an expert/smart enough get a vote? Or what if it was not one person = one vote, but rather a system where people's relative intelligences are reflected in their say in the process.

Perhaps finishing HS could earn people a second vote. Finish college, you get a third vote. If you serve in the military, you get an extra vote. Experts in a particular field could get extra votes, etc.

This seems like the rational successor to democracy. Of course this system I'm describing would need to be carefully crafted to remain fair, but I believe we can't do much worse at picking leaders and making policy decisions than we currently do in the US.

<comment><USER5> I wish people would respond to this. Why did someone downvote me?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is just funny and ironic on so many levels. What exactly does it mean for Democracy to 'Flourish'? Does that mean that the 51% get to do whatever they want, and the 49% have to go along with it? The whole premise of the article seems to assume by default that Democracy is, somehow, a good form of government, and that if only people weren't so dumb, everyone would be happy under this tyrannical form of government.

Democracy is, by definition, a system wherein the minority suffers at the whims of the majority -- mob rule, if you will. Most people seem to think the United States is a democracy, but it is actually (supposed to be) a Republic. Our elected officials are not (supposed to be) able to do whatever the majority wants at the expense of the minority, but rather their actions are strictly limited and restricted by the constitution so as to prevent the majority from violating the rights of the minority -- which is virtually _always_ what results from a true democracy.

</comment><comment><USER30> The point of electoral government is people's right to govern themselves, not the superiority of their decisions.

In the U.S. we mediate "democracy" through a republican government of divided and checked powers to guard against the dangers of any unified and unchecked political power. But the point of all that is to secure that right to self- government, not thwart it.

<comment><USER31> That may have been the intent but the reality is that the poor stay poor and the rich now dominate resulting in a government that is increasingly dominant and intrusive.

Consequently, you lose unless you happen to be one of the few in charge.

<comment><USER30> Consider the course of governments dedicated to "the poor" and you may see the problem.

I'd also point out that the intrusions of our current government aren't motivated by their advantages for the rich.

<comment><USER31> Do you think people that fly on private jets go through the same process that most people do while flying commercial?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> David Dunning and Justin Kruger - aren't these the guys who proposed the idea now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect?

<comment><USER33> Yes. The new research builds on that work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Democracy" is a fairly amorphous term. We don't have anything like a democracy in the United States. We have elements of democracy mixed with elements of republicanism mixed with elements of rule by a technocracy. Mediating all of these elements is a system of referees (the legal system) that is anything but democratic.

If you look at how hard governance is, and how badly most countries do it, it's actually a pretty great system. Baroque, complex, inefficient, sure, but there is little to suggest that any system of governance for 300 million people would be anything other than those things.

</comment><comment><USER35> >> Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."

Of course they don't elect the "best" leader. What is that, anyway?

Democracies exist only to have an obviously legitimate system to replace the current leaders by new ones every few years, and thus avoid corruption from growing too large and damage the society/economy.

The difference between the "best" or an "average" leader is much less than the difference between "little" and "a lot of" corruption.

</comment><comment><USER36> _"The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas."_

This seems to overstate the actual results of the experiments. More here: [http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the- dunning-k...](http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning- kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Is this new? To offset this somewhat, many democracies have few to no directly elected officials, just elected representatives. Officials are then appointed by those representatives, to ensure a better process of vetting and appointing public officials.

It's by far not a perfect solution (in fact, it sometimes leads to a serious democratic deficit), but it prevents ridiculous popularity contests like the US presidential elections.

</comment><comment><USER38> _"In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters' own leadership skills were distributed on a bell curve — some were really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre — and that each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a political candidate as being better than his or her own."_

That seems like an utterly simplistic model. "Leadership"?

</comment><comment><USER39> This is 15 year old research, sensationalized in a headline to sell advertising on Yahoo. Which, I mean, if you think about it, is kind of ironic.

Here's some good info on the Dunning-Kruger effect: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>

</comment><comment><USER40> as long as stupidness causes people to vote randomly instead of being biased towards bad policies then it isn't harmful to democracy. the stupid peoples votes will cancel each other out and just leave the smart peoples votes. you need research which shows that people are systematically biased towards bad policies.

</comment><comment><USER41> I am surprised that a normal distribution was used for the distribution of "leadership skills". I imagine this could be similar to income distribution which has fat tails. I wonder if the result would change if such a distribution was used.

<comment><USER2> As long as you maintain the assumption that you cannot recognize relative abilities of better leaders than yourself, the result will remain the same.

If you relax that assumption even slightly (thus you do not reliably recognize relative abilities, but you tend to prefer the better leader), then the conclusion will change dramatically.

That is why this is a toy model. And people should not give it much weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Critiques of this sort are incredibly daft.

Just like you or I can't possibly read every EULA and privacy policy that pertains to us, an individual in a democracy can't even begin to have sufficient knowledge to make the correct choices. Most politicians never even read the bills they vote for!

That imperfect knowledge will exist in every possible form of government. So, um, what's the argument? Are we arguing against scaling ignorance from small select groups to the population?

The conclusion is, "Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders?" Aggregating responsibility to narrow (and possibly wilfully ignorant) self-interests is not a solution.

Edited: removed references to a certain political candidate.

</comment><comment><USER43> Maybe it is becoming clear that the age of the generalist government is over. In science and industry the age of the generalist ended a long time ago. While it was, at one time, possible for someone to know almost literally all that there was to be known, that didn't last too long. Specialization in various fields led to significant improvements and progress within those fields.

Could it be that a new form of government needs to emerge in this model? One where policy on a specific subject area is handled by those better equipped to understand it and, more importantly, with a good degree of isolation from others?

Wouldn't it be better if, say, education policy was crafted in total isolation from the political goals of any party, special interest group or unions? Or how about energy policy?

I firmly believe the basic premise of the article to be true: Most voters don't understand what the hell they are voting on. They are easily swayed by a barrage of numbers and pretend-facts and probably vote on what sounds good or believable far more so than what might have merit based on facts.

Take the arguments on manufacturing, for example. Everyone from the President on down to Congress and GOP candidates are talking about bringing manufacturing back. Both parties at all level do it. Now, there are two possibilities here: One, they know the truth and realize that the masses might not be able to handle the truth. Or, they actually don't understand what's going on.

Manufacturing, folks, isn't coming back to the US or Europe in massive numbers any time soon, if ever. The standard of living of the average manufacturing worker would have to be reduced to revolution-inspiring levels for this to happen. Environmental and worker safety laws would have to trashed by the thousands. Virtually all labor unions would have to be dissolved. And more. The loss of manufacturing jobs has taken place over sixty years of making the wrong decisions. This did not happen overnight. And this cannot be fixed overnight, if ever. Just try to manufacture a consumer good in the US and see how far you get. Sure, there are outliers that might buck the trend, but, for the most part, its a done deal: Mass manufacturing of consumer goods in the US is dead.

Anyhow, I believe that voters do tend to vote people into office for entirely the wrong reasons. From religious groups to unions and special interest sectors. All seek to place puppets in office that will protect and further their interests. Virtually none --due to the nature of their egocentric focus-- act with the long term interest of the country in mind.

Not an easy problem to solve as it would require a nearly complete change in the form of government we have known for so long. The problem is that the US Constitution does not provide for a mechanism through which these kinds of changes could be made. The only way is for a massive and very disruptive revolution to take place. This is unlikely to happen unless things get so bad that people are compelled to "take up arms against their oppressor". And, this is highly undesirable as well because it would probably result in half a century of uncertainty and turmoil before reaching a new stable state.

And this takes us full circle to an inevitable conclusion: As much as we might hate the fact that the lunatics are running the asylum, it is probably the best option we have. The job, then, is to try to be as creative as possible in bringing issues to the masses in order to make it easy to understand what can sometimes be very complex.

The day we elect politicians that, for example, laugh at the idea of rejecting something like the theory of evolution will be the day that we'll know that we are on the right path. That's because you'll have people in office that will be smart enough to consider evidence rather than indoctrinated ideological drones.

This is a big topic.

<comment><USER44> I think, of all the manufacturing jobs available in the world in 20 years, a large fraction of them will be in the U.S. I'm talking like 5 or maybe even 6 of the 30 jobs will be here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I've never consistently rated myself as "above average" on anything but a few things. Does that make my ignorance and knowing it half the battle?

</comment><comment><USER46> Democracy isn't about selecting the "best leaders" - democracy is about self- determination and freedom.

<comment><USER47> How is democracy not about selecting leaders?

<comment><USER46> _Democracy_ means "rule of the people (demos)", and it was opposed to traditional _Aristocracy_ , the "rule of the best (aristos)". Even if modern democracies are mostly representative, and not direct like the original Athenian democracy, they are still based not on the idea that we should elect "the best" leaders to make "the right" choices (as if there was an objective metric for any of the two), but on the idea that each citizen has the right of self determination even in collective matters - and that democracy (one head, one vote) is the best approximation of that.

So, my point is that measuring democracy ("power to the people") against the purposes of aristocracy ("power to the best ones") is pretty misguided...

<comment><USER47> My point is simply that whatever the intentions, democracy has devolved to selecting leaders, and for the most part they aren't even representative.

I'd say measuring the ideal instead of the reality isn't all that useful.

<comment><USER22> Democracy is significantly about an expression of preference, rather than identification of quality.

Think about it as voting for the dinner choices. It is not about finding the best chef, it is about getting Spaghetti Bolognese, because that is what you feel like tonight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Constitutional Republic yes, Democracy no.

Democracy isn't desirable. Mob rule is a terrible system of government. Democracy != voting; Democracy != freedom.

America and many other systems have long since proven that freedom through constitutional protections with representative government does flourish. Those systems specifically flourish by protecting the weak from the powerful, the minority from the majority. The 'people aren't smart enough' is a fascist, asinine argument. The only time I see that used, is when someone has a complex to dominate others.

<comment><USER49> What about Peter Thiel wanting to make a sea-based libertarian country that doesn't have a democracy because people arn't smart enough to keep it libertarian? (Granted, they could leave by relocating somewhere else, but that is true of most countries anyways.)

<comment><USER50> the seasteading institute is not only for libertarian countries. The point is to enable experimentation and competition in governments. One group of seasteadders can create a commune, one a voluntary society, one can create a dictatorship...

<comment><USER51> Come visit Weaselia for the climate, stay because we didn't say you could leave[1].

[1]Weaselia is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Weasel Brand sweatshops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Democracy isn't about putting the BEST people in power, or taking the BEST decisions.

It's about WHO choses what it's "the best".

The majority should choose, period.

Everything else is "I know better than other people what they SHOULD want".

Even if you "know better" by some objective criterium, it should not be up to you to decide.

Because government is about choosing what people WANT not what is BEST for them.

<comment><USER47> Why should the majority always have power over minorities?

<comment><USER52> Only in cases where you can't have it both ways.

If the majority wants to build a bridge, and a minority doesn't, well, the majority gets their say.

For one, this makes the most people (the "majority", nudge nudge) get what they want.

For another, if it all comes down to raw power struggle, i.e hitting each other, the majority will win anyway. Voting is a way to ensure you get the above effect without the blood.

Consider also that for different courses of action, what is a majority and what is a minority changes. You can be pro "more taxes" and a majority, and also pro "legalize marijuana" (and a minority at that --just an example, doesn't mean the maj/min it talks about is accurate).

<comment><USER47> You originally said 'the majority should choose period', not 'the majority should choose only in cases where you can't have it both ways'.

If democracy somehow limited itself to cases where you can't have it both ways, that would be great.

It doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> It is anarchy that requires real smarts, not democracy.

</comment><comment><USER49> Democracy is also the only way to effectively stop armed revolutions. From Ron Paul to Che, the entire spectrum says "no" to armed resistance until all democratic means are exhausted.

<comment><USER54> >Democracy is also the only way to effectively stop armed revolutions.

You phrase that as a positive, but it could also be phrased as a negative: Democracy allows evil people to rise to power without having to fight anyone to do it. Hitler was elected democratically.

<comment><USER55> _Hitler was elected democratically._

That's not really the case. He got a fair amount of votes organically, but at some point he was just using violence and force to take power.

Despite what I see as a flawed example, I agree with your point.

<comment><USER54> True, but I'm sure that using violence to gain the trust of the voters was substantially easier and less costly than using it to overthrow the German government would have been.

<comment><USER55> _to gain the trust of the voters_

More like, to intimidate them.

But yeah... the Nazis definitely did leverage the democratic process until they had sufficient power to take the rest.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ink CSS Framework - <AUTHOR> http://ink.sapo.pt/index.php

<comment><USER2> Seems like bootstrap, whats different about it?

<comment><USER3> I thought that too. I like some of the JS stuff they have though. Like the pagination and date picker.</comment></comment>


Googler Paul Adams Heads To Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/20/paul-adams-googler-whose-presentation-foretold-facebook-groups-heads-to-facebook/ <comment><AUTHOR> The discussion of Adams' presentation: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867807>

<comment><USER2> Yes, as mentioned in the very first line of the linked article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great guy. Worked with him briefly at Google.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why is it that every time there's an article about people leaving Google for Facebook it makes it to HN's front page?

<comment><USER5> To answer your question generally (that is, not specifically related to this particular departure)

Google was the coolest place to work for the last decade. All of the sudden, high profile people are leaving for Facebook. I'm not arguing that this is proof of some underlying flaw of Google or anything conspiratorial like that, but it certainly qualifies as interesting to people who might end up making a choice between the two companies (either as an employer or as a platform on which to develop).

Additionally, it's not completely unlikely that there's a small group of Facebook employees who are very happy when high-profile people join Facebook. It certainly makes _me_ happy, and I haven't even started yet.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious, though, why it's never reported when Googlers go to FaceBook and then _back to Google_.

<comment><USER7> It is: [http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080818/the-curious-case-of- face...](http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080818/the-curious-case-of-facebooks- benjamin-ling-and-sheryl-sandberg/)

Do you know of others?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone out there who can tell if Google is a terrible place to work or is Facebook just a awesome place to work? I really don't get it.

I would love to know why people are leaving Google for Facebook. I really don't think it is because of the money.

Is just more interesting these days?

<comment><USER6> Google is an awesome place to work, though like any big company, your experience will vary a lot based on your manager.

FaceBook, I've heard, is also an awesome place to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What does a person in this type of position do on a day to day basis?

<comment><USER10> Good question.. I am also eager to find out..

<comment><USER6> I work with a bunch of them. A UX _designer's_ basic job is to figure out how a product should work: who is the user, what do they want, how should they interact with the product, and how should the product's UI be laid out to accomplish that? They use a bunch of tools, from Macromedia Fireworks and Photoshop on the static side down to JavaScript and Python/PHP on the dynamic side. At Google at least, it's very common for UX designers to be able to code in rapid prototyping languages, though they usually know nothing about large- scale software engineering (beyond what engineers tell them).

A UX _researcher's_ basic job is to figure out how users behave and what they want. This is basically applied social science. They work directly with users - sometimes through usability studies and one-way glass, sometimes through focus groups, sometimes through going out into the community and talking with people who use the product, and sometimes through logs analysis and quantitative data. This is not usually a technical position, but it requires someone with familiarity with the scientific method, a curiosity about people, and often good statistical/quantitative skills.

Since he's a UX _lead_ , however, my guess is his day job came down to two things: hiring new UX people, and prioritizing requests for the skills of his reportees.</comment></comment></comment>


History of the Internet in ship years - <AUTHOR>

Years ago I read about TRIZ in HN. (I couldn't find the article now but it was this article http://www.triz40.com/aff_Principles.htm)
The Principle 27 of the 40 principles is "Cheap short-living objects" eg, replace an inexpensive object with a multiple of inexpensive objects, comprising certain qualities (such as service life). This is the philosophy behind Google's building their servers from cheap components and allowing for their failure. I was wondering if with their Russian background Google founders were familiar with TRIZ.
Then I thought about another notion of TRIZ: the constants of evolution (or patterns of evolution, as TRIZ calls it). If we can recognize the constant of evolution in two systems we can use the known stages of one system to predict the future stages of the other system.
To test this view I compared the history of ships with the history of the Internet. http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/history-of-the-internet-in-ship-years/
This is topical because with Google Super Bowl ads it seems that we reached the "cruise ship" consumerism stage of the Internet.
Comments are welcome. Thank you. <comment><AUTHOR> [http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/history-of-the- inte...](http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/history-of-the-internet-in- ship-years/)

<http://www.triz40.com/aff_Principles.htm></comment>


Verizon Nears "the end" of FiOS Builds - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/verizon-nears-the-end-of-fios-builds/

<comment><USER2> I've been surprised at their choices of communities for FiOS. They built out FiOS in sprawled suburbs around my city, but never in the city itself, where they could have had double or triple the customers per foot of fiber laid.</comment>


Mountaineer Ed Viesturs on Making Mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/06/14/into-thin-error-mountaineer-ed-viesturs-on-making-mistakes.aspx <comment><USER2> _A mistake is a mistake even if you get away with it._

So true.</comment>


A Harvard Scientist Thinks He Has a Gene Test for Heart Attack Risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2018/08/13/a-harvard-scientist-thinks-he-has-a-gene-test-for-heart-attack-risk-he-wants-to-give-it-away-free/#a57fa8b5959d <comment><USER2> Should we click on the article to learn more? Does he have a clever trick that seniors are dying for?

No. The article is basically a press release for an unpublished paper. At best, it's not even wrong.</comment>


Microsoft tells IT admins to nix 'obsolete' password reset practice - <AUTHOR> https://www.itworld.com/article/3391365/microsoft-tells-it-admins-to-nix-obsolete-password-reset-practice.html <comment><USER2> Microsoft is actually making their software easier to use at the cost of "performing" security operations. This is an interesting pivot.</comment>


Ask HN: How to recruit great hackers in a remote location? - <AUTHOR>

I work for a small company based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, a few hundred kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. The company, ssimicro.com, is a great place to work, has many qualities of a startup (although we've got enough funding that we pay very well), has opportunities for entrepreneurship from within, and desperately we need great hackers.
The problem so far has been that most of the people we've contacted or who've contacted us are unwilling to move to what they perceive as the cold, dead arctic. All the people we've interviewed said they loved the job atmosphere and what we're doing (the fully-loaded bar/beer fridge, pool table, huge TV + PS3 tend to help with that). But they feel like they won't enjoy Yellowknife at all, so they don't respond.
How can we go about more effectively finding great hackers to help us build software services that make use of our unique, satellite/microwave-last-mile network? <comment><USER2> I would love to move out there as long as there is a powerful internet connection and easy access to vegetarian food. Though I'm out in Hong Kong ;) How about simply telecommuting - if it is software development.

<comment><USER2> are you sure most people are unwilling? especially when they contact you and you don't respond?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Getting to know more of the world and working in a remote location close to nature are actually huge pluses for a lot of people (myself included). You just need to find those people and keep the hassle level as low as possible. Relocation assistance is important.

Damn, you're making me seriously consider submitting a resume...

</comment><comment><USER4> Being flexible might help. Hire part-time. Have them stay over for few months and also allow working remotely. Make them visit once in a while. That's the mode I engage with companies who have good problems to solve and it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are currently working on something like this. We call it "Incubator Projects". How it works is we're setting up a recruitment website, and on it contain various projects we hope you're interested in.

After interviewing (on site, on our dime, sparing no expense) and acceptance, we provide candidates with free accommodations, free car, and some sort of pay otherwise (we figured between $800 and $1000/week). Then you can come up and take a no-risk paid trial, during which you can find out if you like us and we find out if we like you.

We're still working on it, but it's very expensive and we're hoping to find other ways (hacks?) that might get us some visibility.

The thing is, we are doing really cool innovative stuff. We don't lack interesting work, we pay well... We're just in the North. It seems like that last little detail shouldn't make recruitment so difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I were in your shoes, I would try to find out what gets people to go live in Antarctica. Here is a super short article about life as a "Polie": [http://www.worldhum.com/travel- blog/item/life_as_a_polie_at_...](http://www.worldhum.com/travel- blog/item/life_as_a_polie_at_the_south_pole_20080324/)

And I would do some web surfing about The Mojave Desert and Barstow California. I lived on NTC for a while. The High Desert and Barstow had some phenomenal info on the web at that time about all of it's "assets": Natural beauty, solitude, etc (ie it's remote and there's virtually no sign of civilization). It used to crack me up. Funny personal anecdote: My spouse tried to get out of going there because he was sure I would divorce him over it. Then we (the whole family) loved the place and tried to extend our stay. :-D

You need to figure out what would motivate someone to go where you are and you need to figure out where to look for people with that type of motive. I would work on developing that understanding by looking at similar examples elsewhere as best I could.</comment>


Amazon says wage hike 'more than compensates' for loss of bonuses - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/11/amazon-says-wage-hike-more-than-compensates-for-loss-of-bonuses/ <comment><USER2> I can understand some of the frustration, especially for those making just shy of $15 before the raise, but even if the raise is only from $14 to $15, that still is around $2,000/yr (assuming 40 hour work week) that is guaranteed the way a bonus generally isn't.

I would almost always prefer a raise over a one-time bonus for that exact reason. In my experiences, I can't always count on my company giving me a yearly bonus.

<comment><USER3> That's all well and good, but Amazon replaced their bonuses for raises and then pretended like they were giving everyone an actual raise when in fact, some people could end up getting a pay cut.

<comment><USER4> Their claim is that everyone affected by this is getting a net raise. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

<comment><USER3> According to the article:

"Those making, say, $14 an hour prior to the increase may only receive a $1 raise, which fails to make up for the loss of benefits."

<comment><USER5> And the Amazon statement in the article says "more than compensates for the phase out of incentive pay and future RSU grants."

The conflict is probably due to the fact that RSU grants were very lucrative over the last few years. If you assume that the stock is going to quadruple in the next 3 years, then yes, a RSU bonus is probably better than a raise, but I don't think Amazon will be a 4 trillion dollar company in 3 years time...

<comment><USER6> correct. For companies with heavy RSU based compensation they assume a certain % of growth every year. Say 10%. Let's say Amazon did 50% year over year. You did better than you expected. However, next year you will get less RSUs since you made a lot more than planned in the previous year.

Having a very good year, as I imagine most Amazon employees did, does not mean you should get the same windfall money next year. I'm sure that is not properly understood.

<comment><USER3> Not properly understood? No, the bonuses were taken away and the pay rate was raised instead. However, Amazon said people were just getting a raise because of the poor pay they've been getting. They weren't promised a different way of getting paid. They were promised a raise

<comment><USER6> I read an article that said a lot of employee's look at their RSU as a bonus of when it vets. But in reality, it's part of their compensation. Not sure what Amazon told employees vs what was in the press "starting wage of $15". I can understand the frustration if they said "everyone is getting a raise" and then the math doesn't check out. We need more math.

I've been in a situation where I worked for a company where a large portion of my comp was RSUs. We had a really good year and I probably made $30,000K more than they were estimating (assuming the stock grew at x%). The next year and two, I got a ~5% raise. I took home less money those two years since I had a windfall the the first year and then our stock leveled out. So despite performing well, and getting healthy raises, I took home less money.

I would imagine the hourly workers might have just a few RSUs at best at Amazon's share price of $1500-$2000 per stock. Since that is such a large percentage of their annual income and if Amazon was trying to level it out to make it less spikey, people probably thought money was being taken away because Amazon's stock did so well the previous couple years.

Basically, Amazon Employee's got really lucky with RSUs and got paid more than Amazon was planning for. So now Amazon wants to bump them up in "planned/target" compensation -- which may be less than they made previously because the stock did wildly good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the past 5 years, Amazon's stock has gone up almost 6X. Anyone who got paid in RSUs almost certainly made out well. But, as Amazon points out in their statement, past results are no guarantee for stock performance going forward. I can pay you $500 in cash or I can give you $500 worth of stock (which vests over a period of time). Generally speaking, the cash (which you get right away) should always be valued more since you can spend it as you want, including using it to purchase stock (which these days can be purchased for nominal trading fees).

Furthermore, salary increases are always worth more than equivalent end-of- year cash bonuses, since you lose out on bonuses if you leave your job mid- year.

<comment><USER8> They'll be comparing the instantaneous value of the stock with the value of the raise.

So if you previously got pay for the month of let's say $2,000 plus $400 in RSUs (the value of the RSUs at the moment they're assigned), then you might lose the RSUs but get paid $2,500 per month -- a $100/month raise.

If you then feel that Amazon stock is a good investment, you can buy $400 of Amazon stock on the public market, and you'll be where you were before, plus $100 in cash.

<comment><USER9> Not to mention that owning stock in the company you work for is not a very diversified portfolio. If Amazon crashed and filed for bankruptcy for some reason, you would lose both your job and your savings. That doesn't seem very likely given Amazon's size, but look at Sears.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Bezos is no fool. He will reduce his headcount, and step up his automation effort to eliminate as many low-skilled jobs from Amazon. Then he will lobby Congress to increase the minimum wage for his competitors that still employ lower-skilled workers. As these competitors will lack the resources to automate, they will be driven out of business, and all their workers will lose their jobs. Less competition will make it easier for Amazon to raise prices." \- Peter Schiff

I'm all for voluntarily raising wages for your employees; that's a great thing. But if we see that Amazon is backing efforts to raise the minimum wage, we'll know Schiff was right.

<comment><USER11> The problem I have with this argument is that it sets up Amazon in a caricature that always makes them look evil and anti-labor:

1) Don't support lowering the minimum wage = Democrats + labor groups hate on you for not paying workers, even if you can hire more of them = anti-labor 2) Support the minimum wage nationally + across their international workforce = "This is an automation ploy + competitive advantage = anti-labor

There seems like no ideal approach for low-skilled labor here that won't seem anti-labor in the short-to-medium term

<comment><USER12> Amazon is anti-labor. Someone posted a leak of their union-suppression policies not long ago[0], and they're quite vocal about their anti-union stance being a part of their "ownership culture."

You're right that they're damned if they do, damned if they don't though, but let's not pretend they haven't earned that mistrust.

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18077434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18077434)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I kind of think Amazon botched this from a PR perspective. It could have been a total win for them. Instead, it looks like a scam. Even if it isn't a scam, and employees will truly be better off (which is probably true), it at the very least failed to capitalize on the opportunity to look like a progressive company that cares about its employees.

</comment><comment><USER14> This sort of hand wringing seems like a distraction from the likelihood that Amazon has moved up the date* in which these jobs will be eliminated. Whether employees are netting out the same or not is going to be moot. If it's similar though then that really doesn't seem like a good deal longer term.

*Robots will be able to do the jobs for $15 hour sooner than they'll be able to for $7 an hour. The math will accelerate the move to automation.

<comment><USER13> I don't buy this argument. The problem usually isn't that robots are too expensive to do the human jobs, it's that robots can't do the human jobs, period. If something _can_ be done by machine, it _is_ done by machine, and that's been true since the beginning of the industrial era. Entire job classifications get wiped out by new automation, all the time.

At this point, the jobs that are still done by humans are jobs that require judgment and intuition. Those things are very, very difficult to emulate in software, unlike repetitive motions and data lookups.

<comment><USER15> The Amazon of China, Jingdong, has a fulfillment center that handles hundreds of thousands of packages a day and employs just five people: [https://youtu.be/RFV8IkY52iY](https://youtu.be/RFV8IkY52iY)

Amazon used humans because the investment to build full automation was too expensive and take too long to build out compared to spinning up human labor. However now the logistics of the fulfillment center are well understood and they can be rebuilt with full automation.

It was clearly a matter of time and money, not "these jobs are impractical hard to do with automation"

<comment><USER16> Automation doesn't work for everything. Like when the product being shipping is of varying size and shape. Like clothing, books, pouches all in one box. Or stacking the boxes in a truck. Or look at something like car assembly. Tesla still uses people to route wiring harnesses through the car body because robots can't do it well. Many simple things can get automated but there is still a lot not yet possible.

<comment><USER17> Why does it matter if automation doesn't work for everything. There is a particular breaking point in unskilled labor where doing enough means lots of unemployed with little chance of being reeducated for the necessary jobs the future demands.

<comment><USER13> So what are we going to do about it as a society? "More jobs" isn't the answer, I don't think. Maybe getting rid of "jobs" entirely is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazon is correct. Equity is an inherently risky asset and is something better suited for those who can accept the risk.

If you're making $12/hr, adding Amazon stock on top is a feast or famine situation and would almost certainly cause issues in the next few years. We're on the end of a 10 year bull market, and the most likely situation is trending down.

As the saying goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not sure what to think about Bernie needing too go as far as naming the bill "Stop BEZOS"

[https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/the-stop-bezos- act-s...](https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/the-stop-bezos-act- summary?inline=file)

It was a political move, and it worked it got Amazon do respond. But seems a bit childish.

Remembering when I was making $7.50 / hour, bump in salary would have been better than bonuses or RSUs. I think in that salary range, this is still a good move.

<comment><USER20> While it is targeted at bezos I think the name is more of a joke if anything. After all even in the document that you linked it lists several other countries.

With that said I don't think Bezos' move is based on Bernie. In the current political climate there is no way a bill like that would ever pass. I would guess this is based off of public pressure but I'm not 100% sure what this move if for.

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it something like this?

For someone who worked at one of these jobs at Amazon for 3 years

Basic wage: X

Bonus Wage: Y

Total: X+Y

Under the new system

Basic Wage: X+Y

Bonus Wage: 0

Total Wage: X+Y

The net effect is zero but principly the value of the bonus has been reduced to nothing, after the loyalty of rhe employee and the benefits that come with that, have already been collected by the employer.

Seems somewhat unfair from that perspective, but they can do what they want I guess.

<comment><USER22> More accurate:

Basic wage: X

Bonus Wage: A

Market Appreciation: B

Total: X+A+B

Under the new system

Basic Wage: X+Y

Bonus Wage: 0

Total Wage: X+Y

X+Y > X+A

Sometimes, X+Y+Z > X+A depending on if you keep the RSU. But you can always also take Y (the increase) and invest it and it will always be higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are bonuses incentivized? What is that incentive and how will it impact Amazon's business now it's gone?

<comment><USER3> They were generally not incentivized, but had a 2 year vesting period. That kept people working at Amazon longer for that extra few grand.

<comment><USER24> The bonuses were incentivized. It was based on monthly attendance. The stock grant program was not though. You might be confusing them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm going to assume a lot of these warehouse workers would rather have more money in there pay packet now then a share or two which need years to vest with an unknown value.

<comment><USER26> That's true for shares, but NPR had interviews with Amazon warehouse workers that indicated the cash bonuses are monthly. One of the interviewees indicated his bonuses would sometimes equal his salary during busy periods like the holidays.

<comment><USER6> I wonder what % of the employees got bonuses though. are 95% of the employees better off, and the highest performers taking home less?

<comment><USER12> It depends on whether your entire building exceeds productivity by a certain amount, which isn't guaranteed. Also, employees lose half or all of their bonus for the month using UPT, which puts them one flat tire or traffic jam away from potentially losing out even if they would otherwise get VCP that month.

When it works, it works, the problem is you can't predict it, and since you can't predict it, you can't depend on it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How has the Covid19 pandemic affected your quality of life? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> If it is OK to answer my own question, Covid19 has been incredible for me. Ironically, with the drastic decrease in air pollution, my Asthma feels non- existent and I'm not even sure where my inhaler is at this moment, whereas some days I clench it with white knuckles.

Not ordering out has caused our energy levels to increase and our heads to clear, our productivity seems to have doubled. I've dropped 6kg in 3 weeks, and I seem to have gotten over a lifelong insecurity which used to tell me "you are a sysadmin, not a software developer" having learned golang and vuejs, building my first web-app in 22 years.

<comment><USER2> > _Ironically, with the drastic decrease in air pollution, my Asthma feels > non-existent_

You should consider moving somewhere outside a large city, if possible. You may find that it helps your asthma permanently. Remote jobs for tech workers should be easier to find in the future.

> _Not ordering out..._

> _having learned golang and vuejs, building my first web-app in 22 years_

Covid did not cause these things. I don't know why you avoided cooking at home or learning new skills in the past, but you could have made these changes with or without a pandemic.

I think you asked your question because you think there might be an under- appreciated silver lining to this pandemic, one in which drastic isolation measures have ironically made some people happier.

To me, this line of thinking comes off as incredibly callous. Many of the people reading this will be miserable. Others will lose family, friends, jobs, houses, relationships, mental health, etc. All of us will lose the prosperity of our home country, even if we don't lose our own jobs.

I'm glad that the major effect of the pandemic on your life is giving you willpower that you couldn't otherwise muster.

I don't see anything broadly interesting to the rest of us about it, and I think it's in incredibly poor taste to brag about how well a deadly disease is treating you. It just highlights how badly it's going to treat most other living humans.

<comment><USER3> So only focus on pain misery and death all the time until it stops?

Unless we are seeking out what works rather than what is broken all the time, we're going to miss a lot ways to make life better.</comment></comment></comment>


Patreon: Gittip like platform to empower artists and content creators. - <AUTHOR> http://www.patreon.com/

<comment><USER2> Here's an interview with Jack Conte describing the site in more detail. [https://soundcloud.com/nextmarket/pomplamooses-jack-conte- on...](https://soundcloud.com/nextmarket/pomplamooses-jack-conte-on-his)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seems to be like a gittip, but for artists and content creators. However, here you pledge an amount that will be awarded to whoever you support every time they upload new creations.</comment>


Samarium Hexaboride is an insulator and a metal at the same time (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/samarium-hexaboride-crystal-blurs-metal-insulator-line-20150702/ <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because I couldn't find any follow-up online. Does anybody have more recent news about this phenomenon?

</comment><comment><USER2> the date is a bit futuristic

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, fixed.</comment></comment>


Joel Spolsky, Snake-Oil Salesman - <AUTHOR> http://stochasticgeometry.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/joel-spolsky-snake-oil-salesman/ <comment><USER4> It's interesting that Joel purports to treat his programmer staff as professionals, yet has the same unreasonable tradesman-focused expectations that the cube farm managers have about education in Computer Science.

A graduating structural engineer has no idea how to marshal a design through the building inspector's approval process. A graduating lawyer has no idea how to actually engage in litigation. Yet those fields aren't dominated by managers whining that students should be learning "real world skills" instead of "theoretical stuff" like high physics or constitutional law.

They understand that a professional isn't an automation that gets precision machined by a training program to slide frictionlessly into their workflow. They know that when they hire a graduate, he isn't trained in the mechanics of his job (nor is he even licensed yet), and that the hire represents a commitment on the firm's part to take the theoretical knowledge he got in school show him how to leverage it for the real-world practice of his profession. They are fine with that because they have a culture -- as professions and as firms -- of respecting and investing in their practitioners.

The computing industry doesn't operate that way. All the lip service it gives about 'professionalism' is, as far as I can tell, entirely driven by a desire to ensure that programmers remain exempt. Why is it that the manager class at development firms is dominated by non-technical MBAs? Why are development firms not set up so that programmers are partner-tracked associates? I can't think of any real profession where that's not the default configuration for a firm. And most apropos here: why do they expect their supposedly professional workforce to receive trade skills from their university education programs?

I think people like Joel need to quit attacking universities until they can get some consistency in their own views of their employees. Either programmers are the skilled tradesmen we're currently treated as. In which case, the exempt status should be removed and the industry should come up with a tradesman's curriculum. Or they should accept us as professionals, and start treating us that way.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. I loathe the emphasis on being an 'X programmer' in the software industry. I've never met anyone who described themselves as an 'Autocad engineer'.

<comment><USER6> There is a management culture of referring to technical people as "resources", e.g. this person is a "Java resource" and we'll need 3 "Linux resources" on that project.

They sure don't like it when I call 'em "Powerpoint resources".

<comment><USER7> Tell me about it. The firm where I'm at used to be quite small, and MBA talk was non-existent. Now project managers use it a lot. We engineers used it ironically at first, but now it's starting to taint us ...

Powerpoint resources is a great way to put it. I'll be sure to use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While I don't always agree with Joel, it is a bit of headline grabbing to call him a snake-oil salesman. He is building a product that is shipping and the company is profitable. Not easy to do.

But I think if universities taught CS the way that they should, and not many do, in my opinion, the result might not be what he expects.

I think that many companies misuse programmer talent--one example is to employ thousands (not exaggerating) in enterprise departments that are reduced to moving one field to the other. If there were lots of well-trained CS grads with a better orientation, they might be questioning how things are done. Both in large enterprise situations and perhaps in Joel's company.

His strongest point is that students are not exposed to longer projects. I was once in a position to hire compiler people. Few graduates of programs that taught compilers were well-equipped. One large state university in Michigan taught a compiler course in a semester. The graduates that I talked to came away with the notion that compilers were very scary. Graduates from another midwestern school across the lake did very well. Their compiler course was a full year as part of their masters program.

I think that industry does not really know what to ask for. CICS as part of a CS program? (True). Really?

<comment><USER8> For interesting contrast, see [http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EW...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD898.html) recently posted here.

<comment><USER9> Wow.

 _"The fact that operating system design posed some at the time tough conceptual and logical problems was hardly allowed to surface. Consequently, those problems did not get the attention they deserved, and this had far- reaching consequences: I recently read a series of articles on the Shuttle on- board software and, though President Reagan has generously offered a teacher a free ride, I tell you I am not available."_

This talk was given at a conference in mid-November 1984. The flight with a teacher on board was, of course, the Challenger in January of 1986.

Of course, the disaster wasn't due to software... but still rather uncanny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a Computer _Science_ degree, not a _programming_ degree. If you want to learn a trade, go to trade school not a four-year university.

You wouldn't expect someone with a degree in English to know how to navigate a book contract, would you?

<comment><USER11> You may be "right" in theory, but it doesn't matter.

The vast majority of computer science students pursue a CS degree because it has become a prerequisite for being a professional software engineer. NOT because they have a desire to become a computer scientist.

The simple fact is that if you do not have a 4-year college degree you will find it immensely harder to work as a software engineer in the industry. It's silly to pretend otherwise.

The vast majority of today's CS programs do a disservice to all of their students. They are neither good engineering programs training students for industry (for which they currently serve as a proxy) nor good computer science programs. A recently minted graduate of a Chemistry or Physics program (from an accredited US 4-year college program) is, on average, much more versed in the relevant scientific findings and research techniques of their field than a CS graduate. They are so poor precisely because the vast majority of CS graduates do not go on to do CS research or utilize their CS knowledge but instead become software engineers.

<comment><USER12> I don't have a degree and I've never had a problem getting multiple job offers when I've been on the market. I've held some very high posts as well. I think people use the degree as a road sign or indicator of possible quality, among other indicators, to come to a hiring decision. When the candidate is demonstrably talented, the degree becomes worthless (not negative, but just not contributing to the decision anymore).

<comment><USER13> I've personally found that people who got into programming before the dotCom boom don't need to worry about a lack of degree, people who got in after absolutely need a degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just don't get where all the Joel-bashing comes from. You'd never know it from reading this rant or any of the comments but Joel is giving his software to these students for free:

"FogBugz would work great for tracking this: if you're doing a capstone project and need access to FogBugz, please let us know and we'll be happy to set you up for free."

More importantly Joel is paying for students to participate in the program, and providing one of his programmers as a mentor. He's also had well-known, paid internship programs at Fogcreek. To me that says he's taken the initiative to fill this void in academia himself, with his own money no less.

<comment><USER15> "Joel is giving his software to these students for free"

The last thing Joel needs is students getting used to and/or turning software like Trac or Bugzilla into direct competitors. Having noticed this, its pretty obvious why Joel would give away FogBugz.

<comment><USER14> I agree, it is very obvious that Joel would promote his own software. That's not really what I intended my post to be about though.

Joel has long said he only hires great programmers that know CS theory in and out. I don't think that's changed, he's just also identified that recent graduates are lacking in time-management and collaboration skills needed to be good industrial programmers. However, he isn't just having a debate about academic vs vocational education but offering paid internships, and now sponsoring one of these Capstone groups, in an effort to give students the skills he thinks they are missing.

<comment><USER15> Still, it's self interest. And not the enlightened kind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From Joel: _Where do they learn to write a program longer than 20 lines?_

Oh man, if I never had to write a program longer than 20 lines for my CS degree, life would have been a lot less hectic (and I also wouldn't have learned shit, which is not the case at all).

<comment><USER17> Joel's statement was hyperbolic. The average assignment might amount to 1000 - 3000 lines of code for the more advanced courses, but his point still stands.

Real products (products that actually make money) consist of a few thousand lines of "fun" algorithm code and hundreds of thousands of lines of "boring" code.

But code length wasn't even the main point of his essay - time management was.

<comment><AUTHOR> How many of those hundreds of thousands of lines of boilerplate code have concepts in them that the average CS student isn't taught in their "fun" algorithm code?

None.

The simple fact is that with the amount of things to teach in a CS course, boilerplate code is just not a good use of time to teach. Students come across it in any major project and know it exists in the rest of the course - <USER3> spending equal time on boilerplate and on algorithm code would be like teaching an artist a degree course in chemistry before letting him buy his first tube of paint. He'd be a great chemist, but a lousy artist.

As to time management, Joel's point was nonexistant there. He spent the entire article berating student's time management skills, suggested Scrum supported by his product could fix the problem, then quickly blurted out that industrial programmers have equally poor time management skills and in fact are solely differentiated from college students by the point that industrial programmers have managers to enforce time management on them, and that neither Joel's product nor Scrum can help that.

Leaving aside the point that he's not actually correct about time management skills (long-term time management isn't just down to the programmer, but to how stable project requirements are and other such factors), and leaving aside the query of just how bad the programmers he works with in industry are (because in six years of industry work, I never came across a programmer who both kept their job _and_ had poor time management skills), there's the query of what the hell his post was about at all in the first place if all it did was to create FUD, hawk his product as a solution, then indemnify himself from any failure by saying it probably wouldn't work (in a sufficiently roundabout way that it didn't discourage the sale)?

<comment><USER17> _How many of those hundreds of thousands of lines of boilerplate code have concepts in them that the average CS student isn't taught in their "fun" algorithm code?_

Remember, his article was about _time management_. The whole basis of his argument is that college kids assume "boring" code can be done quickly and thus can be delayed to last possible second.

The truth is "boring" code usually means API code, user interface code, and input processing code. They may involve concepts that CS students have already learned, but it certainly isn't a breeze. It's not whether or not a student can do it - it's how fast they can ship a working product.

As for the rest of what you wrote, you seem to have some grudge against Joel. Maybe it's just manufactured to produce traffic. But that's just my cynicism leaking through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm happy that my article is causing some conversation, but I was NOT advocating that there is anything wrong with the nature of CS education, other than the fact that it happens to be poor preparation for a career as a programmer. Anyone who got to paragraph 4 of my article would realize that I think CS degrees should stay CS degrees. That said, a lot of CS students do go straight into programming careers, so a lot of good CS programs include capstone/senior projects on a team, and they're never time-managed very well, which is what I was writing about.

<comment><USER19> But are there really all that many undergrad programs that prepare people to go straight into the associated careers? Why hold CS to a different standard? Maybe we just should have a programming school a la medical school :)

<comment><USER20> Schools should have separate programs for students who want to pursue academic research and who want to work in the industry. Recently graduated with a CS degree, I found that most school courses didn't help much me to land on a job. It's really the internships (which was part of my program) I did during my school years helped me most to land on a job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Through internships, open source projects, research, and real courses (Operating System Design and Implementation comes to mind), students learn everything they need to about version control, bug tracking, etc.

Students who don't are lazy.

Professors who don't gently push students in that direction are lazy too. Good courses have projects so hard that using version control is implicitly mandatory. Further, Fundamentals of Software Engineering at my school requires students to participate in an active open source project (for example: chrome, firefox, scala, eclipse, etc.) and actually have their patches accepted. [Edit] Also, group projects are only collected through subversion (yeah yeah, I know), so students don't have any choice but to learn to use version control.

Maybe it's time for a curriculum upgrade?

<comment><USER22> I can say the same for the University of Washington. A lot of my peers don't know or care much about real-world development, but those of us who realize its importance seek out jobs, research, and internships to fill in the gaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> While some of this makes sense... this "Undergraduate courses lose their technical currency in something like five years on average" sticks out like a sore thumb.

How well would we be served if C were taught in undergraduate programs? In depth. Add to that a Lisp and Java, and who knows what we would be capable of in a shorter timeframe? C and Java have not gone obsolete, and along with Lisp, many different paradigms of programming are taught. Not only that, but technical skill with important and oft-used languages would be transferred.

I add Lisp simply to include another paradigm and because it's an old concept that's never really gone away, and seems to be gaining traction (see this site, see Clojure, see the continuing development and expansion of Scheme and CL and Gambit etc etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> It does stick out... but apparently too far as it blocked out the following qualification "(obviously different sectors age at different rates – web programming has a very fast cycle, embedded systems a very slow one)". C is a systems language, it's been around forever and is not about to be replaced anytime soon, possibly anytime in our lifetimes. It's too good at what it does. And that's why it's taught in a lot of universities.

As is Lisp, for the reasons you mentioned. As is SQL. As are several others (though I'd disagree with Java myself because it's really more set up to do things than to teach things and there are too many shortcuts in there - <USER3> many others disagree with me on that point :) ).

I'm not for getting rid of established languages from courses. C is 37 years old; C++, 30 years; Lisp, 51 years; Objective C, 23 years - these are well- established languages that won't vanish in the four-year span of an undergrad course. Java at only 14 years (and so many releases that stability is a valid question) tends (to my mind at least) to mark the start of the gray area there. Some though, like Perl and C++, are really hard to teach in compared to others and that can outweigh their stability as a factor. Still though, I look at languages like Python and would love to work them into a course. But it is still a risk for the students. Maybe for the final year work though.

But teaching a four-year course using Ruby as a primary language, intellectually interesting as that sounds, is an unethical act at the moment. It's a beautiful language, a real joy even to read - but what the students start learning on day one may not be around, or be a useful thing to know for the jobs they'll pay their mortgages with four years down the line. That's the responsibility the university is taking on when it creates a course. The student invests four years of their life - the university must produce a return on that, and conservative thinking is needed for that.

<comment><USER23> And that's exactly the problem. In liberal arts educations (such as the one I'm receiving) or even at universities such as MIT, Python is the language of choice. It's great fun to teach, very easy to learn, but it's not an industry standard, and many would argue that it's too easy to use.

<comment><USER24> I don't think it's reasonable to claim Python isn't an industry standard. It's used heavily in industry by large and fairly conservative companies and is even more popular with startups.

<comment><USER13> I think it's reasonable because there are very rarely any such things as standards in software development. Municipal building codes are standards. Drug testing regimens are standards. Programming languages are not standards. At best they are conventions, and only insofar as certain niche subset industries are concerned.

As for de facto standards, I don't think we should be paying much attention to them. I think it's very important to draw the distinction that software development currently has _no_ standards (you _might_ be able to argue for TCP/IP, where alternatives are only ever used because they fulfill some unique use case not covered by TCP/IP), because for as much as we want to call this industry "software engineering", we sure as hell don't treat it like any other field of engineering, for many of the reasons already mentioned.

I think the first step is to sit down and agree on some terminology. You can't even get two programmers to agree on what "Object Oriented Programming" means. No wonder we aren't treated like professional engineers. We don't act like them.

<comment><USER24> Most "industry standards" are de facto standards. We're not talking about laws here, or even open standards like C or Common Lisp. An industry standard is simply a widely-accepted practice, which is perhaps defined by the fact that it would not usually be questioned by a casual observer from that industry. Painting interior walls some shade of off-white is an industry standard. Using Python for scripting and application logic is an industry standard in the same way.

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't say that using Python for scripting is even a de facto standard in that sense. Don't make the mistake of assuming your experiences are normative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The most important thing to learn is data structures, algorithms, complexity.

The languages and techniques are not that important and change all the time.

Just go into a course where you understand what a hash table is, what is a NP problem, what is a turing machine, etc.

Understand what an operating system is, what is virtual memory, how a program is scheduled.

See how a compiler works.

Learn with a functional programming language, learn a language where you need to manage memory and pointers yourself, learn an "object oriented language".

This will help you all your life.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think most people agree that universities should try to teach people how to learn, and not just the latest technologies and good engineering practices. But I've sat through too many university lectures on programming language syntax or introducing threads to believe the university is teaching me "how to learn".

Why not tell students, "here's an introduction to C++, read it before next week's lecture" or "for this project you must use a VCS, pick one and learn it" instead of making me sit through lectures where the professor reads documentation to me? Have other people had the same experience?

<comment><USER27> '"here's an introduction to C++, read it before next week's lecture" or "for this project you must use a VCS, pick one and learn it"'

My one modification would be "here is the problem, implement a solution however you choose" (with maybe a caveat that it must be in a language that the TAs can read well enough to grade your work). Maybe some suggestions as to which languages are appropriate, especially if libraries written in a specific language are required or recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think that learning the theory is more important than _the tools we use in industry_. Picking up a programming language is pretty easy, if you already know all the hard topics like different paradigms, computability, logic, mathematics and so forth. Sure, you can learn these on your own, but I think its much more valuable to have people who know how to learn, know how to program and have a good, solid theoretical background.

I don't think you can be a great programmer unless you can develop a non- trivial program in a programming language in all major paradigms. The best way to do this, is to know the more abstract details beforehand.

Having said that, I do believe its important to do a lot of hands-on programming experience and feel that universities need to be somewhat more hands-on too. I also think that they should put some focus on team work and collaboration, on tools like debuggers, source control and profilers and also things like unit testing, though it is much much easier to learn these later than it is to learn the theory later.

</comment><comment><USER29> This piece is a bit much, but I do think it's odd for Joel to be prejudiced in only hiring people from top schools and then complain about how top schools are too theoretical. You can't have it both ways.</comment>


Show HN: WebMD for Employee-Boss Relationships - <AUTHOR> https://leadingup.co/situations/#/ <comment><USER2> I like it. The answers to the management question are what I'd want a boss to do in that situation. If only bosses read this page and let it sink in!</comment>