[PLUG-TALK] reliance on technology (was: Redhat changes, fedora)

Jeme A Brelin jeme at brelin.net
Fri Nov 7 23:00:05 UTC 2003


On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Russ Johnson wrote:
> Add to that knowledge of your relative age that fact that I've watched
> you spout your beliefs for over a year here. In that time, I've gathered
> an informed opinion about you.

Right... and exactly what did I say that made you think I believed
learning something in class was directly equivalent to real world
experience?

> If I was in error, and you do agree with me on that point, I appologize.
> If not, well, we'll see in a few years if you change your mind or not.
> Shit happens, and people change.

I do believe I went on in that same post to not only express an agreement,
but futher elaborate exactly what I saw as the difference.

Short-term memory problems?  Maybe you're older than I thought.

> Well, peace, love and understanding work for me too. However, I'm a big
> believer in karma too. At least in the sense that what goes around,
> comes around.

Karma is just an excuse to not feel bad for others' suffering.

What goes around comes around only in so far as you get more good if you
give it.  You make the world in which you'd like to live.

Getting bad is NOT the direct result of giving bad.  It is the fault of
the person who gave you the bad regardless of what you gave them.

> It's a proven fact that younger folks are more idealistic than their
> older counterparts.

A proven fact?  Wow.  Can you cite the proof?

> That's also why most young folks should listen to their elders.

So they can lose their ideals and conform to the broken world they did not
create and would not like to perpetuate?

Sounds like the best reason to NOT listen to your elders.  (Not that there
aren't plenty of good reasons TO listen.)

> Experience is a great teacher. Sometimes, it's best to learn from others
> experiences.

But the same experience can teach different people different things... not
to mention slightly different experiences.  So the lessons learned by the
elders are not necessarily those that should be taught to the new
generation... especially not if those lessons involve compromising your
ideals.

[snipped bit about respecting and honoring all people]

> Until one proves himself a fool.

As you wrote above, "Shit happens, and people change."

If someone said or did something that you didn't understand or on which
you have a differing opinion at one time, they may still have many things
to say and do that could teach you and help you understand.

A fool is just a person you don't understand yet.

> It's like many of those "protesters" downtown.

What is?  People that you don't respect?

> I listen to what they say, and then, when I disagree with them, I'm the
> enemy.

We're not talking about them, we're talking about us.

> Last time I checked, I'm allowed to feel differently from someone else.

What does that have to do with your inability to respect an honor all
people?

> That's what makes this country what it is.

No, once massive amounts of natural resouces, a pliant former native
population, and a deep anti-social sentiment is what makes this country
what it is.

[Learning from your elders.]

> That's something that comes with age.

No, that's something that came to you with age.

> Maybe I wasn't taught the correct way.

That's seeming increasingly probable.

> I do know that most of the time, my 18 year old thinks I'm pretty smart.

Well, you know what they say, people who were raised poorly tend to raise
their children poorly...

> I also know that sometimes, he thinks his dad is a doddering old fool.

...but sometimes we can rise above the way we were raised.

> I'm hoping he doesn't go through the stage I did where I thought my dad
> was a complete idiot.

I'm hoping he turns out to be a better person than you are.  And that
is NOT a crack about you.  I hope that everyone has children that are a
million times smarter and more compassionate than their parents.

> > The concepts of "earning" and "deserving" is stupid and harmful.
>
> You are looking at it backwards.

Let's keep this sane and relative.  I'm looking at it the opposite way.

> I believe everyone must earn respect.

Then nobody can get respect.

> At the same time, they start out with positive respect on the
> respect-o-meter.

Then they do NOT have to earn respect.  They get it for "free".

> As I interact with them, the respect level can go up, down, or remain
> the same.

That's your problem.

Why bother letting it go down?  Why show anyone less than the most
respect?  To give them grief?

> I would agree with you, if everyone started out with no respect or
> negative respect.

If they had to "earn" respect, then that's exactly how it would work.  If
they start out with it, then they didn't "earn" it.

> But that's not how it's supposed to work.

It's not "supposed to work" at all.  But it works best if everyone just
gives full respect to everyone else all the time.

> There are many politions that I have very little respect for.

I don't know what a "polition" is.  Position?  Pollution?  Politician?

> I figure they don't respect me either, even though they don't even know
> my name.

So you return the grief they give you with more grief?  Is that the world
you want?

> Without having been in the military, you have zero frame of reference,
> and can't possibly know what you are talking about.

I know exactly what I'm talking about.  I don't have to live as a slave to
know that it's shitty and degrading.

Are you pulling some military pride bullshit?  You are aware that the
military is nothing but a pack of hired killers, right?

Sure, they're brought in when they're not killing people to help the
citizenry from time to time, but killing foreign people is the top
priority (see Southern Califiornia last month), but that's just PR to
make the idea of this enormous mercenary force palatable..

> And this goes to prove my last statement. You obviously have zero clue
> as to how the Air Force works.

Oh, so it's not a hierarchical organization?  They've democratized?

It's a killers co-op now?

> > It's all very ugly.
> How would you know?

I know authoritarianism.  It's the same everywhere, be that a public
schoolhouse, a bad family, or a military institution.

> I don't necessarily think that's a success.

We've decreased overall pain and suffering.  That's not a success?

> More people living on the planet isn't necessarily a good thing.

Which ones should we kill, then?

> I believe you've said that yourself.

I've never said that there are too many people on Earth.  I may have
written that there are more people than could possibly be given a decent
living by our current standards in this country.  I may have even said or
written that we should work to decrease the number over time.

But I've NEVER said there are too many people full stop.  People are
wonderful.

> Lower the bar, you get more people. If those people are a drain on the
> system, rather than producers, then we all suffer more.

Human beings cannot be a drain on the system of human beings.  And
everyone sucks more than they give... that's just how it works.  But there
are cumulative generational effects that make it so that the currently
living can gain from the aggregate wealth of the previous generations and
overcome this seeming gap in the economics of life.

> I'm told that I look too young to have a 17 year old daughter, and I
> also have an 18 year old son.

You look younger than 28?  I find that hard to believe.

There are lots of people who cna procreate at 11.

Maybe they were being really charitable and thought you looked too young
because you don't seem that stupid.

> One woman even told me I look 27. I about asked her to marry me...
> (kidding!)

I'm sure she was.

> And just to remove all doubt, I will be 40, next month.

Doubt about what?

> > Don't be more foolish, Russell.  A hyperbolic curve will never touch it's
> > asymptotic line.  1/x will never equal 0, no matter how big you make x.
>
> What if you make x = 0?

Then you would have an undefined value.  If you put that in a computer
program, you'd get a big fat segfault.

And you DO know that as x gets closer to zero 1/x gets FURTHER from zero,
right?  1/x gets closer to zero as x approaches infinity.

> Good and bad are scales.

Good and bad have degrees, surely, but less good does not mean more bad
and less bad does not mean more good.  You're on one scale or the other.

> That's why we have crimes that are misdimeanors, and crimes that are
> felonies. Worse crimes are "more bad" than lessor crimes.

But neither of them are good.  That's required understanding to get my
point.

> So, you are arguing for failure based goals, instead of success based
> goals.

Well, "goals" was your word.  I would say that you should define your life
by what you do not do if you want to avoid depression.

> How does that work with say, saving for retirement? Regardless of
> whether you think retirement is a valid goal or not.

There's no "regardless" here.  A value system not only effects how you
make your decisions and answer your questions but which decisions you
choose to make and questions you choose to ask.

It should be no surprised that a system that does not ask a particular
question also does not answer it.

> It works for lots of people. If they continually fail, they need to
> re-think their goals.

Well, my philosophy isn't based on pragmatism, it's based on idealism.  I
don't care what works for lots of people, I care what is right.

> I don't see how this would work. Please elucidate.

I don't know how to state it more clearly, but I'll put it more simply.

Define failure.
Avoid failure.

This gives you maximum flexibility of behavior without feeling bad.

In real life, I also do this:

Define success.
Strive toward success.

Success is perfection and unattainable.  Failure is specific and
well-defiend and, therefore, avoidable.  That way you can work toward
success without ever failing.

Discrete success "goals" makes no sense because life is ever-changing.
What good is achieving a goal that is no longer relevant or good?
Instead, success should be unattainable moving targets.

> So you don't respect the man behind the muppet?

I didn't say I didn't respect the man, I'm saying that muppets aren't made
to say anything of value.

> There are lots of things we can learn from muppets.

Name three.

You could argue that there are lots of things we COULD learn from muppets,
but only if those muppets were made to do and say things above and beyond
everything they have in the past... or if we were grossly immature for our
respective ages.

> See, I'm distinguishing between something that is required for the bike
> to function, and something that affixed to the bike to train the rider.

A bike doesn't function AT ALL without a rider.

And if the rider can't operate a two-wheeled velocipede, then they can't
ride a bicycle.  And since the kid IS riding the bike, he CAN operate it,
so it can't be a bicycle.

> A motorcycle doesn't cease to be a motorcycle if you affix a side car to
> it.

Sure it does.  Look at the Oregon vehicle code. (ORS 41x... forget
which... I was just reading it the other day.  If you have a sidecar, you
no longer qualify as a motorcycle for that portion of the law.)

> A car does not cease to be a car when you attack a roof-top carrier to
> trailer to it.

But does a sentence cease to be a sentence when it's totally
non-grammatical and makes no sense?

> Training wheels are accesories for a bicycle.

No, they are bicycle->four-wheeler conversion devices.

> > Putting a camper on a pickup makes it an RV.  Just ask at a campsite.
>
> It's still a pickup too.

No, it's an RV that can become a pick-up.

> It also does not have to have a camper to be an RV. Throw a sleeping bag
> in back.

OK, if you want to pay more for your pick-up at the campsite because it's
an RV (since you're towing your camping gear in the back), go right ahead.
But the vehicular code would disagree.

> I would state that your kids would not know HOW to dismantle a bicycle.

What would you state, then?  How do you describe their knowledge simply?

> My parents threatened me with something similar. They said they would
> buy the noisy toys and send them home with my kids.

That's horrible.  Again, I think maybe you weren't taught the right way.

> Of course, some people need to learn when things are jokes.

And some people need to learn that there's nothing funny about causing
people pain.

J.
-- 
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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