hoopd's comments

> What the... where on earth did this come from?

It comes from the same place all flamebait comes from: they're picking a fight.

Abusive ranting isn't healthy communication but neither are personal attacks carefully disguised as constructive criticism.

The post raises the question as to whether passive aggression or active aggression is the worse offender.

"Everybody else is doing it" isn't doing it for me right now. Facebook has ~1.4 billion monthly active users and, somehow, no real competitors at the moment.

Facebook's COO, Sheryl Sandberg, has tried in the past to change how society functions by limiting vocabulary[0].

Facebook's product is their userbase, they make money by monetizing their userbase.

Ideally there would be enough competing chat/message services that you could always switch when you're unhappy. That's not the case here. Facebook has an enormous amount of power over how the world communicates and I think the intentional and unintentional effects of any bias they introduce should be discussed.

[0]-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_Bossy

I'm not sure it's a middlebrow dismissal, it's well-timed sarcasm which points to an important issue: Facebook deciding which emotions and expressions are first class citizens and which aren't is troubling.

> Of course you have to resort to calling names when you can't make a good argument, who's really the child here?

I didn't call you a child. It was a metaphor suggesting you're being shortsighted and entitled without understanding that the things you want don't just magically appear. A child just wants ice cream, they have ice cream at Johnny's house so why can't he have ice cream at home? The child stomps their feet and says "It's not fair!" An adult grows out of this mindset.

> In many countries you can disrupt traffic because of a protest without the need for a permit. Now you have your one thing. I'm guessing you're now going to tell me how it doesn't matter?

That's great - which countries? They don't get arrested for it over there? You're sure you're not idealizing them because it supports your feeling of outrage?

That's the one concrete thing you're upset about and it's ridiculous. Other than that you're upset Americans don't just blindly go support protesters because they're protesting. Key word there is 'blindly.' That's the protesters fault for not knowing why they're there, not being able to express themselves clearly, and frankly for being so idiotic so much the time. Protesters have trained us that protesters are idiots.

I looked up the Quebec protests you linked - that's the point right, to raise awareness for an issue? - and it looks like a temper tantrum that happened to work.

So in Quebec there was no physical harm, detention, high bail, etc? I think you like Quebec's way because the protesters "won"

You've yet to name, specifically, one thing you can't do in the US that you think you should be able to do. You just use a blanket term "protesting" like anything under that umbrella should magically be OK. You're like a child complaining that the ice cream isn't there. But when you're talking about intentionally damaging property (spraypainting, breaking windows, burning cars and buildings) or disrupting infrastructure yeah you don't get to do that.

If you want to deal with the paperwork you can get 10,000 people and walk down major streets with a police escort even if the police don't like what you stand for. But you can't do it on a Tuesday when other people need to go to work. You can't force people to listen to your ideas.

In the history of the entire world has it ever been easier to have not only a voice but a LOUD voice than in modern day US? In the 1800's maybe they'd shut down your printing press and literally prevent you from distributing information. Today that's not the problem. Today people are sick of hearing it.

Plus Canada has a much smaller population than the US. You have 35 million people total - we have 46 million people living below the poverty line. We have more illegal immigrants in our country than you have people in Quebec. Quebec doesn't have problems America has because it's 90% white people with the same religion living in a large area. Our major cities have 4-10 times the population density of Quebec City. Overall the US has 5 times the population density of Quebec. We have one state (of 50) with a GDP as small as Quebec's. It's an apples and oranges comparison.

Oh I see, it was a figure of speech not intended to be a comparison. I see greater than/less than primarily as comparison operators.

If all you're trying to say is that women did more than nothing during WWII then obviously that can't be argued. Grandparent comment has been deleted but I'm guessing it had something to do with a comparison of contributions?

BTW it's not quoting you out of context when the context is like 200 pixels away, I quoted you for emphasis and brevity trusting that anybody who wanted the full quote had complete access to it.

The pepper spray incident you linked was just about the best thing that could happen to those protesters. It was the plan, and then after it happens you go "oh my god we never saw this coming!" It's political theater - they got pepper-sprayed while trying to get arrested. Yeah, the cop was a jerk, but I'm not sure what linking the article is supposed to prove.

I have no idea why the Quebec students were even protesting - you're getting tuition subsidized so much that it's cheaper than the areas that are subsidizing it? Unless it's a remarkably worse education that doesn't any sense to me.

Seriously, don't just wave your hands at somebody asking you to back up a serious claim you made. This is why you're so easy to write off. You said we're so far beyond a reasonable protest culture that we shouldn't protest at all. You posted two links - one showing political theater is alive and well in the US and the other showing what look like some unreasonable students getting their way in Quebec. If that's your idea of "reasonable protest" then why should we even want it?

> Of course the US is so far beyond any reasonable protest culture that you might as well not protest at all.

Really? It seems like it's all some people do anymore. You can even become a professional activist and monetize your own victimhood. In the past year we've had people literally rioting and burning down buildings while the intelligentsia provided apoligies for them. "This is self-expression of a voiceless people, that burning car is a statement...."

Are you upset that you're not allowed to stop traffic during rush hour and chant slogans at people? Name one thing you can't do in the US that's part of a "reasonable protest culture"

> ...they weren't forced to fight in the front lines and did not die by the millions....Is that any less a contribution...?

Yes. It's a smaller contribution. How is that even a question?

And any criticism of militants is always framed and dismissed as coming from "power" or "the establishment".

Oh is that what happened to Tim Hunt?

I don't understand why you think it's an improvement. If the grandiosity was just a quirk of the writing style I'd have more patience for it but the field produces an endless stream of condescension and disrespect.

After re-reading your comments and the intro to the holes article multiple times I'm only convinced that the SEP has a horrid writing style.

The world has moved on from this type of grandiose intellectualism for a reason.

How exactly is naive a term of the trade in philosophy? You, and the article in question, seem to be using it in a way that any grade-schooler would recognize.

I'm not aware of any "naive accounts" of physics or computer science. You might be thinking of "naive algorithms" and "naive approaches" but in those cases the word has a specific meaning which doesn't fit in the context of the above quote.

> Speaking of holes, the SEP has a rather detailed entry on the topic of holes, and it rather nicely illustrates one of Wikipedia’s key shortcomings. Holes present a tricky philosophical problem, the SEP entry explains: A hole is nothing, but we refer to it as if it were something......If you ask Wikipedia for holes it gives you the young-adult novel Holes and the band Hole.

This is plain dishonest. Wikipedia has dozens of pages on holes, some of which are cultural items and the author cherry-picked two in order to make his point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holes

Moreover, the SEP's description of a hole is so arrogant and condescending it's painful:

> Naive, untutored descriptions of the world treat holes as objects of reference, on a par with ordinary material objects....

Spare me.

I'm arguing that many small companies who have to organize and form a lobby will be far less efficient at regulatory capture than a well oiled monolith like Uber.

Investing heavily in multiple new markets doesn't exactly count as losing money and it doesn't mean their business model isn't wildly profitable.

This is a strange argument and I don't know how to take it. Uber's shown they're experts at lobbying and even steamrolling local governments to get what they want. If the current regulatory structure is corrupt the solution is to fix it, not let it be corrupted in a different direction that looks nice in the short-term.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-06-23/this-is-ho...

Your critique fails because taxi companies and Uber have wildly different cost and operational structures. Clearly Uber is turning a healthy profit.

I agree that stable prices are important for public transportation and that people like them, but stable prices require regulation or an extremely healthy market. In this case we're seeing a change of regulatory powers.