Note that internet does not necessarily help education. Most people waste their time on the internet, including most of us on HN.
You can have as much info available to you as you want, if you go in the wrong direction or take no real action then it will all be for naught.
Well, in that case nothing necessarily helps education. Even books or teachers, people waste so much time in school. I for myself must admit that I tend to think of HN as very educating. I get exposed to information that I'd never find otherwise and to opinions of people I'd never meet otherwise. That's certainly much more educating than a lot of facebook.
Maybe, but the one thing a poor country can't do without are schools for fundamental education. You can do without internet for everyone, you can do without tv. But if you don't have schools and teachers, which some countries don't have (what they have only passes as schools and teaching) you're pretty much doomed as a country.
Whoa, I didn't know that was a thing. Now I've got a handy little reference available when the girlfriend complains that I "stay up too late" (past 10pm!).
Yes, but who gets the better time spots? People are already pissed that time zones are based on England's time, how angry do you think they will be when they get some illogical time zone while the anglo-saxons get to keep the am in the morning and the pm in the actual afternoon?
Why redesign the watches? This problem doesn't exist in the places that use the 24h format (like most of the world around North America). We can use both time formats. I can either say 9 in the evening or 21 and everybody gets it.
Well, when someone asks me what time it is now, I don't say, "The minute hand of my watch is pointing at the 1, and the hour hand slightly past the 3." Instead I translate it to "three-oh-five". Wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say 15:05 instead.
(My point being that many watches and clocks already don't give us the literal time as it's spoken, just a representation.)
Edit: although just to be clear, I don't actually think we should switch to a single time zone. It would cause all kinds of headaches. I just think if in some universe it were to happen, it would necessarily go along with a switch to 24h time.
You can say 15:05 because you know it's the afternoon and so 3:05 translates to 15:05. Now think through how that works when the whole world is on a single timezone.
You've got it the wrong way: with his billions and fame, he is more likely to be honest and to mock others. People will listen to him and respect no matter what he says.
Disclaimer: I am not a STEM guy so don't go calling me an elitist.
This might seem like a callous view but I think it's better to invest money on helping the scientist caste (wherever they might have been born) than to simply cure a bunch of random people. In the movie Elysium (2013), they send magic machines to help the masses, which achieves nothing since they are just as poor as before but a bit healthier. I left the movie theater feeling depressed and angry.
What we need is real technological progress. If we could for example synthesize objects or food easily à la Star Trek, we would solve poverty and inequality more efficiently than thousands of years of social programs.
Consider the fact that Isaac Newton's scientific output was worth more than 99% of the work of every other intellectual in the world in the past few centuries leading up to his birth. What's even more amazing is that Newton spent only a tiny fraction of his time doing actual science; he was obsessed with mysticism and other pseudo-scientific doctrines. So giving a billion dollars to the next Newton will be many order of magnitudes smarter than spending that same billion curing laborers. However, it's not politically correct, so I doubt it will be feasible.
There is more than enough money and resources to go around. It isn't a supply problem. We have heaps of everything. So being able to synthesise it wouldn't change that fact.
The problem is we suck at distributing it. We have a system that allows the super rich (and thus super poor) to exist.
If we could magically create any object we like, the rich/powerful would make sure they had a monopoly on that technology so they could maintain their richness/power. There is a great talk given by G.A Cohen against capitalism that illustrates this point wonderfully[1]
Sorry just saw your strange reference to Newton as well. You are saying technological advancement is more important than people, and we should prioritise advancement over people... why? Why should we advance technology for technologies sake?
>Sorry just saw your strange reference to Newton as well. >You are saying technological advancement is more important >than people, and we should prioritise advancement over people...
>why? Why should we advance technology for technologies sake?
That's not what I said at all. On the contrary, I'm saying that if you want to help people technological progress will be vastly more efficient than anything else, and particularly aid programs. I don't care about progress for its own sake, nobody does. I'm saying that some people are objectively more valuable than others in the long term and that we should help them instead of helping huge numbers of less productive people. A single great invention could save all those people better than any amount of aid money.
Our goal is to help everyone achieve a better life, right? Then some people are more valuable to that goal than others. They aren't more valuable in an absolute sense (no one is) but according to our current problems they are relatively more useful. Governments are trying to spend their money in the smartest way possible. I'm saying that we should prioritize a certain type of spending over another. With enough tech, we will be able to achieve real equality that is today impossible. Once that is achieved, we can forget about tech or value of human beings. These will be problems of the past.
> Our goal is to help everyone achieve a better life, right?
No, I don't think it is. I don't think there is a collective goal that everyone subscribes to.
As my earlier point pointed out... we have everything we need to achieve "real equality". What are we missing? Which piece of technology are you waiting for, for "real equality"?
The problem it's that you don't know where the next Newton will come from. Better to give everyone the chance because, as you say, he was so influential.
Patriotism has many definitions. Some people are more than happy to serve the US as it currently stands. Why is that so hard to understand for you? Not everyone shares the usual Hacker News anti-government stance.
A libertarian anarchy will simply lead to another hierarchy being set into place. You can't have a society where there is no ruling class. It's unnatural.
This is a completely ridiculous statement. The lack of something doesn't imply it can't or won't exist, it just doesn't exist yet. The idea of liberty is relatively new and we're still learning.
Up until recently you could have made all sorts of arguments about the rights of women or minorities and how another form of segregation will settle into place -- because it's "natural"
People have tried building such societies many times: all have failed. The problem is that you've got ambitious humans and less ambitious ones. So how is it ridiculous to claim that a leader caste automatically appears in every situation? It doesn't have anything to do with gender or race. It's the simple fact that we are not born equal and have different abilities.
If you throw a bunch of mammals in a shared space, then generally a hierarchy and a 'ruling class' emerges. That is testable (and tested), and it is natural, literally, part of our nature. Now, wether it's unavoidable is a a different question, and wether its morally good is a yet different one; but it certainly is the natural order of things.
Orly, seriously? Find me the study that proves that for a group that is larger than a few million! Please just prove this point. It is sooo naive to just assume, "hey I saw 5 chick sand a hen, the hen ruled them, I think hundreds of millions of americans must be ruled by one hen too". Clever, clever... I am writing a scientific paper and just believe me (as you seem to believe easily, without proof) that Hierarchy is natural in small groups only, remember small groups. Absolutely NOT scalable!
I am sorry for my tone, sir. I didn't want to educate you or spray my opinion in your face. But please understand me, it drives me mad when people still believe that it's natural that the World, the Country, or the Cities must be ruled by one leader. To me it's as if somebody is truly believing that the earth is flat and want's to convince everybody else about that.
That statement said nothing about one person, but a ruling class. Look at every primate species. They all have a hierarchy of some fashion. Do you honestly believe that our ability to be really successful at breeding and exploiting the resources around us really make us exempt from natural selection?
Social hierarchies in apes and monkeys run a huge gamut of behaviors and structures. That a hierarchy exists doesn't say anything about social structure and how that hierarchy operates.
I honestly find that surprising. Germany is the place in Europe where there is the most white guilt. I stayed there for a few months and experienced zero problems.
I have a lot of (brown) Asian family relatives who've spent decades in Germany, they tell me America is basically a heaven in comparison. Canada is pretty much the only country that comes close to America (according to them -- and my experiences ring true here as well), in not being racist to non-white individuals.
That doesn't prevent a latent racism in big parts of the population.
Simply growing up with almost no non-whites makes everyone who looks different stand out a lot, and the step from standing out to shunned out is quite small, I'm afraid.
With regards to your female friend: I think what she meant by broke is that she isn't really broke, she just doesn't have enough money for the lifestyle she's accustomed to or desires.
