Via capitulation, it's always possible to avoid a power struggle. Game theoretically, this has some pretty obvious suboptimal outcomes for the capitulating player. I think it's an interesting question to figure out when the power struggle is worth it, and when it isn't. But I think necessarily this is going to be a question that boils down to values that every person is going to have to evaluate for themselves.
of course it's rational for an individual or subset of society to fight for something that's very important to them, if they can't get it through persuasion. but if most things are settled this way, it's not going to end well for the less powerful members of society.
That's kind of a rude thing to say, and not really necessary to the rest of your comment.
> Framing the conversation of controversy around an anecdotal one involving someone arguing against someone else's right to exist seems like missing the forest for a very specific tree
Depending on where you stand in the forest, some trees are larger than others. For example, if you are LGBTQ, the LGBTQ tree is going to tend to be more important to you. It is also sadly a continuing source of national controversy in the United States. Because that group is still fighting for equal treatment in many respects.
I think the GP's point is that the question of whether something is a "scissor statement" is secondary, for certain important issues. Coding style is probably not one of those issues, and it's probably better to avoid being too caught up on one answer versus another. Fundamental rights are a different category.
I mean, you're right, it is a fascinating piece of fiction! Indeed, if controversial statements are indeed generable as suggested, that would be a fascinating observation on the human condition. The comment you're responding to even acknowledged that, but with reservation. I don't think it's right for you to make rude accusations because someone stated their reservations.
I think it speaks volumes that your comment is more about a "rude" tone than substance -- neither you nor GP directly address the lede of the story, which is the fictitious construct of "Scissor statements" and what they mean. The whole idea of some trees being bigger than others or that the question of whether something a "scissor statement" being secondary is the whole idea behind using "Scissor statements" to turn identity politics into a lucrative media business, and it's an idea as old as time. The Southern Strategy, at least, is at least as old as the 60s.
How do you defeat the Southern Strategy? Well, it's not by calling it rude, or talking about how one of the parties pitted against the other is fighting for equal treatment. That's playing right into the strategy itself, which is to talk about the same things from different perspectives, or micro analyze perceived slights so you can never have class consciousness or coordination.
> neither you nor GP directly address the lede of the story
I didn't intend to address the lede of the story. I intended to address what I viewed as an important, common, and contextually incorrect viewpoint in your comment. :) If I wanted to address the story as a whole, I would have engaged in the form of a top-level comment.
> your comment is more about a "rude" tone than substance
This characterization of what I wrote is factually inaccurate. I addressed the rude tone in a single sentence, and the substance of (a specific part of) your comment in multiple paragraphs.
Also, from newsguidelines.html:
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
The specific applicability of this to your comment is to delete the first, rude sentence. Your whole message is conveyed much better without it!
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
When I say "what a strange lack of curiosity" I meant it literally -- it goes against the spirit of this forum, and furthermore I find it intellectually dangerous. I find that as dangerous as your own admission that you "didn't intend to address the lede of the story." Curiosity, as pertains to these stories (and I would say regarding most dystopian fiction in general) allows you to fully engage with the world that is being constructed.
Its opposite, which is a reactionary kind of incuriosity, allows you to project a presumption into a full response without fully engaging with what it's trying to say. To cherry-pick broad "Alexanderisms" that could equally apply to any other elements of Alexander's work is to risk missing specific details or the point of the specific piece. Sadly, your admission that you didn't intend to address the lede of the story indicates that this might be exactly what's happened.
> Sadly, your admission that you didn't intend to address the lede of the story indicates that this might be exactly what's happened.
Here, and throughout, I think you're confusing two different things. One is choosing a specific, objectionable point to discuss. The other is being unable to engage with the story as a whole. You are assuming, as far as I can understand what you've written, that because I disagreed and focused on a specific thing you said, I was unable to engage with, understand, or appreciate the story as a whole. I don't think that assumption is well-founded.
Dystopian fiction often serves as a critique of the real world. In this case, it's pretty obvious what's being critiqued, and there is certainly some merit to questioning aspects of cancel culture, furious debates over ever more marginal aspects of identity politics, etc. On the other hand, critique invites response. It's totally in bounds to respond negatively to aspects of a given critique. That's part of what comment sections are for. As far as I can tell, you accused someone of incuriousity essentially for responding to a critique with further critique.
As for how you meant that first sentence, I can only tell you how it came across to me. (As an unnecessary, insulting interjection.) That's all I have to say about it.
Thanks for clarifying what you mean. That's helpful.
> Here, and throughout, I think you're confusing two different things. One is choosing a specific, objectionable point to discuss. The other is being unable to engage with the story as a whole. You are assuming, as far as I can understand what you've written, that because I disagreed and focused on a specific thing you said, I was unable to engage with, understand, or appreciate the story as a whole. I don't think that assumption is well-founded.
I don't think I'm assuming you're unable to engage with the story, but more that your actions and what you choose to discuss are placing emphasis in one area, and your lack of actions or discussion are conversely placing no emphasis there. You've placed a ton of energy into responding to this entire thread. Why put that energy into responding to this thread but put so little into responding to the topic post itself?
> Dystopian fiction often serves as a critique of the real world. In this case, it's pretty obvious what's being critiqued, and there is certainly some merit to questioning aspects of cancel culture, furious debates over ever more marginal aspects of identity politics, etc. On the other hand, critique invites response. It's totally in bounds to respond negatively to aspects of a given critique. That's part of what comment sections are for. As far as I can tell, you accused someone of incuriousity essentially for responding to a critique with further critique.
I don't think it's at all obvious what is being critiqued, and that delightful ambiguity is part of what I like about it. The scissor statement is a Pandora's box -- who is being critiqued, exactly? The characters who stumbled on to it? The ones that understood what it was capable of and enriched themselves from it? Society within the story for being so easy to game? The colonel that unleashed it on Mozambique? One could make a compelling case for some or all of them. It feels much more open to interpretation than I think you may be giving it credit for.
> As for how you meant that first sentence, I can only tell you how it came across to me. (As an unnecessary, insulting interjection.) That's all I have to say about it.
It's ironic that you say that it's "all you have to say about it", because you expounded upon it for an entire thread, while still spending comparably little time commenting on the ideas in the topic post. My question is, why not engage with the topic post? Is it really the case that you're getting more out of critiquing someone's tone than by offering your own thoughts about scissor statements, what they mean, and their suitability as a metaphorical vehicle for digital media in society? I find it puzzling, but also ironic -- again, isn't that exactly kind of derailment the story is trying to point out and warn against?
You are clearly right that responding to you was unproductive. I had hoped that you would simply see that what you had written was unhelpful, and acknowledge the same. I didn't intend a long discussion. But I can see that my hopes were in vain. I will not make this particular mistake again. :-/
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree there. Whereas you find what I had written unhelpful and I found it useful in communicating specific details, you found what you wrote a helpful critique and I found it the very opposite. I would say that the unproductive part was the presumption, but your mileage may vary.
OK, but in that case is there a distinction between index funds and actively managed funds? Is this a risk that index funds are uniquely exposed to?
Also, another thing to keep in mind is that this only affects people who are trying to sell at the bottom. Buy and hold investors care little for liquidity issues during a crash.
> in that case is there a distinction between index funds and actively managed funds?
Yes. Active managers can choose what to sell based on prevailing market conditions. Index funds must sell across the board. That could involve getting hosed on names in a short-term squeeze.
> this only affects people who are trying to sell at the bottom
There are lots of index funds. For a broad-market fund, you're probably right--a patient investor can ride out the bloodshed. For leveraged or specialized funds, on the other hand, a rout could permanently impair the portfolio.
Equity market collapses, furthermore, have a habit of transmitting into the real economy. A sustained downturn could impair funding conditions, which in turn could affect the fundamental characteristics of a portfolio.
There are some escape clauses in Vanguard's index funds:
The fund may temporarily depart from its normal investment policies and strategies when doing so is believed to be in the fund’s best interest. ... Vanguard funds can postpone payment of redemption proceeds for up to seven calendar days.
And a lot of index fund investors are buy-and-hold so it's unclear if a recession would even cause a liquidity / redemption crisis.
> And a lot of index fund investors are buy-and-hold
But index funds themselves aren't. They have to sell stock when units are destroyed and vice versa. In addition to other factors, this can result in weird tax effects as well as tracking error to the index.
1) To track the actual index, index funds must continually rebalance their portfolio. In a liquidity pause they may not be able to do this, thereby becoming a non-index fund. Actively managed funds have the portfolio they have -- unless they're defrauding the public somehow. An index fund that becomes a non-index fund would fall in this latter category.
2) The index (not the funds) is assumed to reflect all the information that can be used to make some money by arbitrage. This process is referred as "price discovery". But in a liquidity pause, price discovery grinds to a halt. Actively managed funds have their own idea of what are the fundamental prices beyond what the public leaderboard says; their price discovery is not beholden to the existence of a liquidity market. Actually -- if the market goes for years with very low liquidity, it becomes more likely that people who, say, are shorting Herbalife for fundamental reasons, have more knowledge than the index. In this way the index is like an AI that can become starved for data.
I mostly agree, although it's worth noting that there are probably some fixed overheads of being employed that eat up some of the otherwise expected benefits. Let's consider a scenario where there are 4h average fixed overhead for working at a company. Now let's run the 0.6 time vs. 1.0 time scenarios.
1.0 time. 40h - 4h overhead = 36h. Pay = 1. Work-to-pay ratio is 36h:1p.
0.6 time. 24h - 4h overhead = 20h. Pay = 0.6. Work to pay ratio is 33h:1p. You'd have to suppose that the 0.6 time worker is at least 1.1x as productive per hour just to break even. If you provide benefits that don't scale with fractional work you need even more of a productivity edge to justify it.
The corollary of this is that you'd really better make sure you have little fixed overhead time for your workers if they are working fractional time.
>You'd have to suppose that the 0.6 time worker is at least 1.1x as productive per hour just to break even.
IMO that is easily achievable. Probably an underestimation. People who work for 6 hours, 4 days a week are going to be vastly more concentrated and rested. Physical labor might be different, but jobs that require mainly mental effort/creativity will benefit a lot from being rested.
Wasn't there a company that tried 30 hour work weeks for everyone and production stayed almost equal?
> The corollary of this is that you'd really better make sure you have little fixed overhead time for your workers if they are working fractional time.
That was one of the big things that me working part-time on a team helped with: they significantly cut down on the mandatory meeting overhead; early on a significant fraction of my time (40%?) was spent in meetings. We cut that down and everyone on the team benefited.
Not enough people are brave enough to just walk out of non-useful meetings.
By demanding an agenda upfront, attendees can decide if it's really useful to attend, and sending out notes afterwards means people who didn't attend can catch up. As a bonus, send the agenda beforehand with collaborative editing, and lots of things end up getting resolved before the meeting even happens.
Eh, we live in the center of NYC, and we have gotten like three or four in the last year. A well-sealed apartment (copper wool + silicone caulk in all gaps) will keep out cockroaches and rats pretty well.
Interesting. So if you buy such a device for a gift, not knowing that it has a secret camera, and then decide you don't want it and resell it on Ebay, you'd agree that now it is you who are liable?
That's how consumer law works nearly everywhere: every party has full (civil) liability over the outcome. The parties can then sue each other to settle it, without involvement of the consumer.
I'm not sure what to call allowing any old shit to run in your app under the guise of ads other than negligent. The fact that it's so common should not be an excuse.
I think it's a not uncommon view particularly about fine art as bought and sold in the galleries and auction houses of New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo.
unique_ptr is super useful for documenting the point in the code that owns a given object, and for providing some compile time protection against multiple deletions. (If you never write delete and only use unique_ptr, you have to do a relatively foolish thing to get double deletions.)
I've written some heap-heavy code and never used unique_ptr, but I don't remember ever causing a double deletion. What's a pattern which you figure makes one prone to doing that? (On that basis, I'm a little inclined to suspect that it may be more of an issue for programmers who came from a deeply memory-managed language like Java and therefore don't build mental models to keep track until when a given allocation is needed.)
(I have of course produced my share of memory leaks - praise be to valgrind - but they were all in scenarios where unique_ptr would have been too restrictive (without a Rust-style complete reconsideration of the code's ownership structure).)
One thing i like about using std::unique_ptr now that we have and use std::move() is to annotate in the API when you want to own the heap object being passed or to say that the api consumer should own the reference.
I get that if you just use it for usual the owning class, it doesnt provide that much, but it annotates lifetime, and its pretty cool when you get used to it.
if you see this:
class X {
Y* y;
};
Does X owns Y? or is owned by Z and X is just using it?
class X {
std::unique_ptr<Y> y;
};
Now you know for sure X owns y.
class X {
std::unique_ptr<Y> CreateY();
Y* CreateY();
};
Look how in the first example you know that X wont retain a copy of Y, and the caller will be considered the owner of the heap..
Now in the second example you are not sure if X retain and will handle the deletion of Y, and you should use Y, while in the first example its perfectly clear the api intention.
the same here:
void AddY(std::unique_ptr<Y> y)
void AddY(Y* y)
in the first you are aware you are passing the ownership of Y, in the second you wont be sure if you still need to handle the deletion yourself.
Before std::move() i get it, but after you can pass things by moving them, i dont get it why anyone would not like to use this.
For me this is basically the "lifetime annotation" feature, only that it is by convention, and not enforced by the compiler. Unlike others these are the reasons why i dont feel the urge to jump the Rust bandwagon, and prefer to use things like Swift when i need a more "chill" environment to work, as i didnt feel more productive in Rust than in C++, while with Swift it happened and it also has a pretty good story perfomance wise.
I prefer to mix C++/Swift as my perfect duo, than try to make it all fit in one language, as this always lead to frustation and a lot of headaches.
If code is completely under your control, then it's okay. But from my experience, these kinds of errors frequently stem from large code bases without a clear ownership. Think about a case that hundreds of people are working on the same code base. You may not understand 99% of code, and probably don't even want to understand all the horrors written by other programmers.
In fact, I have seen a number of horrific instances that someone decided to write clever tricks with object lifetime which leads to production crash and no one really understand (or even bother) what's going on there. The only way to deal with such code is looking into its implementation, probably for a week or two. And found that the original author has left the company.
In these cases, static type annotation helps a lot by serving as a formal contract. To reason about object lifetime, you don't need to dig into the implementation; all you need is looking into variable's type signature. Same thing can be applied to types other than those related to object lifetime.
