PUNISHING THE LIAR ELITE
—“The job of our elite is to identify lies and punish liars. Unfortunately, they’ve joined in. Now we must punish our elites.”— Eli Harman
If that isn’t a mission statement, I don’t know what is.
Source date (UTC): 2014-07-24 03:14:00 UTC
WHY IS IT IRONIC?
WE: “The People Who Tell The Truth”
THEY: “The People Who Taught Us To Lie”
(Using very elaborate techniques I might add.)
We are a trusting and naive people.
The worlds best warriors are the most trusting and naive people.
Why is that ironic somehow?
Sigh.
Source date (UTC): 2014-07-24 02:37:00 UTC
DEAR MICROSOFT : SELLING TRUTH
I have never been able to get you to take my advice. Nor have most of the major advertising agencies succeeded in getting you to take their advice. We all fail because you think you are smarter than we are. Thats why we all agreed a long time ago to give you what you want until you fail, and become desperate enough to listen to us.
Good advertising is the truth, spoken succinctly and elegantly. There are many other kinds of advertising, on which to ride your brand, but while beer can sell with something as simple as sex, and snacks with farcical humor, the more complex, expensive and serious the product or service, the more important is selling the ‘truth’.
The truth is that Microsoft products help you get your work done. And if you want to make a living, then you need to know how to use them. Everyone else is selling cheap entertainment. You can’t play in the entertainment space unless you sell hardware, and even if you sell hardware, to take advantage of your brand, you must market to serious people doing serious things.
There is margin in business products that can NEVER exist in consumer products. So stop trying to be fashionable for consumers, and be excellent for people who want to have a job, get work done at their job, associate with people who have jobs and get work done. And enjoy life with people who have jobs and get work done.
The way to succeed is to tell this truth and trivialize all other products on the market. The global recession continues and will continue since the world economy has rebalanced its labor pools and today we live in that ‘normal’ state which we will live in for a very long time to come.
As such, Microsoft products are for people who REALLY want a better life, and everyone else’s products are for people who want to pretend they have a better life – for a few moments at least.
You would fare much better with TV ads showing EMPLOYED young people and unemployed people using non-microsoft products. Because honestly, that’s the truth.
So please stop making a fool of yourself. You succeeded. You’re now IBM. So sell to grownups on the one hand. Sell to gamers on the other. Because those two audiences you can speak the truth to.
Truth works, always and everywhere.
Curt Doolittle
Source date (UTC): 2014-07-24 01:41:00 UTC
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2014/07/18/new-york-city-is-the-most-unhappy-city-in-america/DENSITY DECREASES HAPPINESS
But people willingly trade happiness for consumption. Does this sound like a drug addiction to you? 🙂 Stimulation over happiness?
—“That’s according to data coming from a working paper by Harvard professor Edward Glaeser, Vancouver School of Economics professor Joshua Gottlieb and Harvard doctoral student Oren Ziv. They used data collected in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey called the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and then adjusted it for age, sex, race, income and other factors. (Such adjustments are important — women, for instance, are happier than men; the married are happier than single or divorced respondents; and so on.)”—
Source date (UTC): 2014-07-24 01:18:00 UTC
http://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdfPolitical Diversity in Social and Personality Psychology
Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers – Tilburg University
—“A lack of political diversity in psychology is said to lead to a number of pernicious outcomes, including biased research and active discrimination against conservatives. The authors of this study surveyed a large number (combined N = 800) of social and personality psychologists and discovered several interesting facts. First, although only 6% described themselves as conservative “overall,” there was more diversity of political opinion on economic issues and foreign policy. Second, respondents significantly underestimated the proportion of conservatives among their colleagues. Third, conservatives fear negative consequences of revealing their political beliefs to their colleagues. Finally, they are right to do so: In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists said that they would discriminate”—
Source date (UTC): 2014-07-23 14:43:00 UTC
Owe Val a response (note: consistent sets vs correspondent sequences). Two categories of method.
Source date (UTC): 2014-07-23 13:27:00 UTC
(Biz)(personal)
The team says they will return from cyprus at the end of month.
We covered the social messaging streams today. Three levels: just comments. Plus state changes. Plus everything else. The Ui sees everything but we only display what the user requests or some people would be flooded.
Looks like we might have our analyst. But I need to write up the job requirements.
Still need a pm/analyst to figure out work remaining and save me from getting buried again. Especially use cases for conversion to help.
List all pages (ui elements) so we can add components and track text/help by component.
Need editor / writer to deRussify our text everywhere. Then add help. Then task based help ( and videos). And to develop personas for each so marketing is implicit in the training.
Still need designer. Minor but we do need it. Good overall but not yet elegant.
Must design few UI widgets to improve ui for: time, schedule, approval, like/dislike/promote/demote, personal ratings. Small stuff but I want to be sure its right.
Source date (UTC): 2014-07-23 13:26:00 UTC
http://tiny.iavian.net/2lxj
Source date (UTC): 2014-07-23 12:49:00 UTC
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2014/07/why-philosophers-should-stay-out-of-politics/Bas:
Great piece. I would state the argument a bit more analytically:
1) In a democracy, political debate has nothing to do with truth and everything to do with obtaining power by marketing, rhetoric, and ideology. Policy preferences are secondary to obtaining power to enact what must result in compromise policies.
2) A philosopher’s only special function is to act as professional judge of reasoned arguments on logical or moral grounds. We can claim no other skill. Just as judges do NOT act on moral or logical grounds, but on legal grounds. (Law abides by a lower logical standard than philosophy.)
3) If we determine the truth or falsehood of statements, arguments, and policy preferences, then we are performing as judges of reason.
4) if we perform as advocates of policy then we are not acting as judges.
5) Academia is corrupted by activism. This is the unfortunate consequence of competing for funds and attention.
6) Since by necessity democracy imposes monopoly rule, models of government represent irreconcilable differences by which to make judgements: we must assume a particular good as a theory or a preference in the choice of political models to make judgements within. Now it is possible to make a judgement from each point of the ideological triangle, and that is perhaps the position we all should take in rendering our judgements. However if we are asked to choose one or the other it may be that the optimum solution to any problem is satisfied best by one model, and the next optimum solution to any problem satisfied best by another model.
7) Therein rests the problem of philosophical neutrality under democracy: democracy imposes monopoly rule under which we cannot easily construct the best solution to any given problem using different forms of government.
8) It may be possible to make use of all forms of government, but only under libertarian government is such institutional diversity possible. Why? because only fully atomic property rights allow for rational calculation of voluntary exchanges necessary for the construction of contractual government that provides the features of any form of government.
As such is it is most logical to construct a libertarian government, but to advocate an administrative structure for any given policy problem best suitable to its execution.
We can model the universe in mathematics because a number system consisting of individual units can represent any combination of units. We can model any political economy in libertarianism because individual property rights allow us the same logical freedom as unitary mathematics. The difference is that in math, we use an equal’s sine to test for truth, whereas in libertarianism we rely upon voluntary exchanges free of externalities.
Cheers
Source date (UTC): 2014-07-23 12:48:00 UTC
http://youtu.be/E_dZCDbX7QM?feature=autosharec
Source date (UTC): 2014-07-23 12:48:00 UTC