pushingbits
Joined 17 years ago
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Comment · 14 years ago
Yes, it is obvious. So obvious that assuming that that's what the grand-grandparent is proposing is either disingenuous or extremely uncharitable.
Instead of a posting a glib response, a reasonable thing to do would be to read the wikipedia article on civil disobedience and realize that a single person randomly disobeying a law in public is not how it works.
Comment · 14 years ago
I don't think you're getting above DH3 here (http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html).
Aside from that: I wonder what would happen if all the people in the country who are using marijuana at least semi-regularly were to go to some very public place at the same time and light up a joint.
Comment · 14 years ago
> "Never, ever say that again. You should always try to relate the situation to something you do know. Saying I don't know just means you're lazy."
Series of tubes...
Comment · 14 years ago
This is why Knuth has stopped writing cheques, incidentally:
"Nowadays almost everybody knows that it's dangerous to reveal your credit card number, or to have that full number on a printed document that somebody might find in the trash. Soon people will learn that it is equally dangerous to reveal the numbers that are printed in plain sight on every check. Forget signatures; banks have no time to verify them. The once venerable system of checking accounts is irretrievably broken. Before long, companies will find it impossible to give out paychecks without exposing themselves to unacceptable risk.
One consequence of this debacle is, alas, that I can no longer write checks to reward the people who discover errors in my books. The system that I've been using has worked well for almost forty years; but recently I have had to close three checking accounts, and the criminal attacks on those accounts have caused significant grief to my bankers. (Certainly I do not believe that anybody who received one of my checks has been in any way a culprit. But all such recipients are entitled to bragging rights; therefore the numbers printed on those checks inevitably become known to random members of the public.) I cannot in good conscience continue to traumatize the people at my bank, who obviously have plenty of other things to worry about."
Comment · 14 years ago
This is supposedly happening all the time, yet no one has managed to catch it on tape for some reason. I can't think of a credible explanation for the lack of hard evidence (and lawsuits).
Comment · 14 years ago
"Because these people are paid poorly, they have a sense of living on a precipice and will do anything to avoid falling off."
This is actually a positive externality (well, depending on how you look at it) of providing some sort of social security net. You get to live in a society where people are less incentivized to stab each other in the back. Of course, they are also less incentivized to work themselves out of being-close-to-the-cliff.
On the other hand, in societies where, if you don't have any money, you are starving on the street as well as ostracized, you can hardly ever trust anyone not to carve you up if there is anything to be gained by it.
I once heard of a doctor working for an NGO in a major Indian city (I think it was Calcutta), who talked about how it was virtually impossible for a white person to make a friend there, because everyone he met was just trying to use him to gain status/money in some fashion.