We have bred a culture of anger and jealousy toward anyone with money. The mainstream media is responsible for this as much as many of the politicians that don't believe a person should be able to obtain any sort of wealth.
It's no surprise that the wealthy don't really want to socialize with people that have less money.
The music industry is so large, nobody will be able to defeat them or their pack of lawyers in court. Napster was supposed to be a revolution, but all it did was put all of the indy artists out of business and create the environment we have now where music is virtually worthless and the only way to make a living as an artist is to sign with a big company and tour.
Music sharing took away all of the power we had to defeat the music industry. You need big money to make big changes, and now it's way too late.
The only real way to change the music industry is to start your own label, get the rights to all of the musicians' work, and then charge what you feel is right for the music and give them their fair share.
Nobody wants to do this because it will take years of sacrifice and money. I suspect that most people that start out with this intention, end up becoming the exact company they aimed to stop in the first place, because they didn't realize the cost and risks involved with the music industry.
>The music industry is so large, nobody will be able to defeat them or their pack of lawyers in court. Napster was supposed to be a revolution, but all it did was put all of the indy artists out of business and create the environment we have now where music is virtually worthless and the only way to make a living as an artist is to sign with a big company and tour.
It also halved or even less the revenues of the music industry.
It was indeed a revolution, but not necessarily good for the indies. Plus, technology lowered both recording and distribution costs to nearly 0, and so everybody and his dog is an indie now and people just don't care. If you have 10.000 indie artist, each might have a following. If there are 200.000 of them, it's much more difficult.
>Music sharing took away all of the power we had to defeat the music industry. You need big money to make big changes, and now it's way too late.
Only if the idea of "defeating the music industry" was "and get to make a living as indie artists".
If it was "fuck the industry part, let's just have music from people who don't do it for profit" then it was a wild success. We now have more music from people who couldn't give a rats arse for profits than ever before -- all over Bandcamp, CD Baby, personal sites, small vanity pressings and more.
> Napster was supposed to be a revolution, but all it did was put all of the indy artists out of business and create the environment we have now where music is virtually worthless and the only way to make a living as an artist is to sign with a big company and tour.
Maybe that's fair. Maybe digital music is virtually worthless, because software is virtually worthless. When music came pressed onto a plastic disc or magnetic tape, paying for it made sense. Why should anyone pay more than a few pennies, or anything at all, for arbitrary bits downloaded from the internet - the way most people consume music now?
>charge what you feel is right for the music and give them their fair share.
As coldtea mentions elsewhere, the cost of production is approaching zero, the cost of distribution is zero, and the market is flooded with far more mediocre products than anyone can consume in a lifetime. Charging what "you feel is right" will bankrupt you if the market disagrees with you as to the actual value of your product. You don't have to worry about fighting the music industry because its collapse is inevitable. Fortunately for indie artists, there are already alternatives to the old media models and it is easier to directly reach an audience and be directly compensated for your work.
edit: well, I'm out. I realized that on HN, after you go against the main liberal narrative enough, all of your comments are down voted by bots from then on...even when you are trying to have a conversation with adults.
If you read the whole thing, that is in fact the whole point of the article. The comedy show thing was just the trigger/segway but certainly not something to get caught up on. ;)
Just like with music and file sharing, this will not hurt the large corporations. It will only hurt the researchers that depend on these papers for funding and make it more difficult for them to make a living in the future.
It will also push companies to keep research more private and proprietary. Why would I spend millions of dollars on research, only to have it freely distributed to everyone, including my potential competitors?
I've never witnesses a time where more people fight to give up more and more of their own power and hand it over to governments and large corporations on a silver platter...and then complain when it's all gone.
Are you aware that unlike musicians, academic researchers don't get paid royalties on their publications? A list of prestigious publications on one's cv leads to funding and job opportunities regardless of whether anyone pays to read them.
Of the 100 academicians I know (applied math), only a dozen published books and collect royalties. Some of them joke about getting the occasional check of a few dollars every year. These are senior US professors whose salary is good enough that they can joke about the royalties.
Yes, that's a fair point. I was thinking only of journal articles and conference proceedings. One way of making money off textbooks is to be a professor in an institution with a large number of students and make them a requirement for the course. It also helps to make a few small changes every year and call it a new edition, so each year the next class of students has to buy new ones instead of used copies from the previous year's class. I question whether this practice is worth defending.
> Yes, that's a fair point. I was thinking only of journal articles and conference proceedings. One way of making money off textbooks is to be a professor in an institution with a large number of students
Yeah that behaviour is detestable. Absolutely utterly unethical and everyone who engages in this type of behaviour should take a long look in the mirror and realize that there's an Evil person looking back.
I've lost so much money to f*ckers like this and I have no recourse, it makes me so mad I can spit.
The professors don't actually make much money. The publisher takes a huge commission. I've heard 5-10% royalties in some cases. Usually if they use the book for their own course they'll waive even that to avoid having the appearance of a conflict of interest.
They could make a ton of money doing it this way: Physics textbooks can sell for hundreds. But many don't.
Using your own book for a course(separate from the money) has its benefits: The book has exactly the content that you want to teach off of, and you can also choose good problems.
When I took a Differential Geometry course in college, the professor had a translated version of some paper from a Russian mathematician back in the 1950s that he taught off of. It was cheaper to get copies from Kinko's, and it's not like the math changes. The old pioneers can sometimes give better intuition too.
On books, not papers. I've searched for books on sci-hub, but have never found one. I'm pretty sure it's all papers, which researchers make no money on.
well, the same thing happens when people would like to discuss alternative theories to the causes of climate change. The BBC, for instance, outright bans anyone that talks about it (and so do many other forums), which is outright censorship.
We should be fighting for the freedom to discuss any topic, not just a select few that matches up with the current narrative.
That's funny, because in 2014 the BBC was admonished by independent reviewers for giving too much airtime to climate change deniers under their 'too rigid' impartiality guidelines [1].
From the Telegraph [2]
> The BBC’s determination to give a balanced view has seen it pit scientists arguing for climate change against far less qualified opponents such as Lord Lawson who heads a campaign group lobbying against the government’s climate change policies. Andrew Montford, who runs the Bishop Hill climate sceptic blog, former children’s television presenter Johnny Ball and Bob Carter, a retired Australian geologist, are among the other climate sceptics that have appeared on the BBC.
I think I agree with the BBC's own comedian's take on this, which is to give each side time proportional to the amount of support they have from experts in the field. In other words, for every ten minutes of airtime for climate experts on climate change caused by humans, we can have 18 seconds, or 3% of climate skeptics speaking.
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'
Except anti-intellectualism is hard to define. Not too long ago saying anything critical of communism got you put in re-education work camps for life, jailed, tortured, or killed in many countries. Now it just gets you downvotes from true believers. Afterall, communism was run by the intellectual class quoting Marx, and if you disagreed with Marx then you were an uneducated person.
Everyone thinks they're the intellectuals. Even the people prescribing thalidomide to pregnant women. A strong sense of skepticism should be encouraged, not mocked, and appeals to authority should be seen as invalid on their face.
It actually is not that complicated, at least on the "everyone thinks they are intellectuals". The moment you think you are so right you should be suppressing other peoples right to speak on the matter, you are immediately not the intellectual, you are just a tyrant.
I'd second the appeals to authority argument, if only on the grounds that science (the institution) is exactly that: an institution. It is also a game:
To be fair, experts in a field that's whole existence is being criticized (e.g. saying modeling isn't accurate/whatever) shouldn't be given more weight in that regard.
Consider how many 'experts' there are in numerology. Should we restrict a person from speaking out against them because he/she isn't an expert?
Some might compare that to allowing atheists only a few micro-seconds to make the case for the non-existence of deities due to the overwhelming number of experts in the field of religion.
Well, considering the scope of the world's religions and that it's a matter of opinion, it would be difficult to give anyone the floor for very long if we were using that metric (least of all atheists and anti-theists).
I would think you're too quick to dismiss the number of philosophers of religion, humanists and naturalists, many of whom are experts in the 'field' of religion, as you call it.
climate change is a fact, not a theory. just like earth is round as irregularly shaped ellipsoid, not flat. if you want to have an irrational theory against a fact, at least you should work on your evidences and experiments about your crazy theory to proof it, otherwise you're just lazy and crazy.
I've always taken the position that the totality of climatic conditions on this planet are not a designed systemic whole, so there is no teleological purpose to it. If this were not so, then we might best be aimed at setting it back to a past condition (such as the Hadean, right after the heavy bombardment stopped and the crust solidified); since anything else is an alteration to its factory default setting.
Yes--the Earth's climate does not have an objectively "correct setting" that the universe prefers.
However, we prefer the settings we have now. We like our cities where they are, we like the sea level where it is, we like polar bears and the Great Barrier Reef the way they are.
Selfish? Yes! But it is relevant because we are the ones who are changing the climate right now! So we are entitled to have an opinion about the changes we are causing.
There aren't settings, only observable conditions. The drivers are non-linearly correlated. My suggestion there is that even if you managed to return the size of the human population to pre-industrial levels in roughly the same geographic distribution as the 18th century (good luck with the eugenics programs on that) you'd still not get the results of that time frame, and you'd probably have to live with pre-industrial technology (no lithium ion batteries that destroy various foreign countrysides, and no cheap power apart from maybe localized hydro-electric). I believe if more people understood that trying to control climate change by political means is a sure-fire way to yield political control, or gain it, they masses might stop preferring any of it and would let cities on alluvial planes (such as Venice and New Orleans and Galveston) sink locally rather than try and convince India and China to undergo environmental austerity measures.
You're the one who introduced the concept of settings, above.
If you think it's not fair that China and India have to deal with climate change, I agree with you. But life is not fair. As you point out above, there's no greater purpose to the universe, it just is.
If China and India don't want massive civil unrest, they better work on the problem. If you think moving billions of people away from the coast is easier than reducing fossil fuel emissions, fine, we can examine that idea with data. But political control is not a useful yardstick. Government is an important tool no matter what the plan is.
I also put the concept of settings on the opposing end of non-teleologic identification.
I have no expressed opinion on whether the attempt to make China or India conform to green western politics is fair or not; but those two nations probably do, and that's what's really relevant. They'll most likely experience bouts of massive civil unrest without regard to local atmospheric quality.
Teleology is the idea that something has a purpose. I don't see climate as having a purpose (in that it wasn't designed with a goal in mind). I also don't see climate as a system (mainly because I don't see it having a teleologic character), it is the simplification and summarization of somewhat cyclically driven (though definitely non-linear) phenomena.
After that, the Hadean is a period about 4 billion years ago named mainly because (to life) it was hellish, but otherwise relatively self-contained (in comparison to the epoch immediately preceding it when space debris continued to pummel the planet).
Although my middle of the night crisis was that I meant the Archean, not the Hadean. sorry, was shooting from the geologic hip, and I'm more of a geographer than a geologist.
Nor in the early Archean. Kind of my point. If someone wants to undo or revert bad influences on the planet's supposed homeostasis, why just roll back mankind? why not roll back all life? then the earth will be truly pristine. I chose the boundary where the geologic mass stabilized because it makes an identifiable thermodynamic boundary (the system is relatively closed)
Climate change is a fact. The causes are just theories based on computer models.
To say that it's a fact and needs no further study is not only anti-intellectual, it’s criminal.
I worked in academia for over a decade. Knowing what I know about the process and how much ego, money, and politics are involved, it really makes it difricult for me to believe any study isn't biased.
Thw entire system needs to be scrapped and started over.
> "Climate change is a fact. The causes are just theories based on computer models."
That's not what you said in your now flagged statement. You specifically said "Climate change is a theory." Your statements are just not consistent. 97% climate scientists agree that climate warming in the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. Numerous conferences have similar conclusions of that. There is even a Wikipedia page for that.
> "To say that it's a fact and needs no further study is not only anti-intellectual, it’s criminal."
I never said no more further study. Do not put your words in me. I specifically said bring your own data, your own evidence, your experiments. Where is your data???
> "I worked in academia for over a decade."
So where is the data? Maybe you're just lazy with a crazy theory.
> "Thw entire system needs to be scrapped and started over."
Hahahahaha, good luck with that. Just like a 5 yo crying for the system not fair. It's just another inconsistent statement. First you said you're in academia, which is part the whole system, right? Then you said the entire system need to be scrapped, that includes you. You're still part of that system even you're a system-reject. You're simply anti-social.
We should be fighting for the freedom to discuss any topic, not just a select few that matches up with the current narrative.
You have the freedom to discuss any topic. This has nothing to do with freedom of speech, it's purely a policy issue. If you don't like how government policy affects research, then stop advocating for the government to be doing so much of the research.
Private-sector scientists were not muzzled; this wasn't a censorship issue at all. If you're speaking on your own dime, or that of an employer who's willing to have their name on it, then there's no problem.
But the Canadian government decided that they weren't willing to let the scientists that they employed speak in that capacity. That's purely a matter of employer-employee relationship.
I'm not saying it was the right thing to do. I'm saying that we know that government is politics. When we bring government into any enterprise, we also bring in the politics. If you dislike politics, then you should be advocating to keep the government and their politics out of other affairs as much as possible.
"May be there's less violence, but the amount of suffering has skyrocketed over the years. A more than significant amount of people are dependent on tranquilizers and anti-depressants to make their life bearable, because for them it has become mundane and meaningless without."
I don't think this is very accurate. People get hooked on painkillers usually because they had some sort of accident and need them for pain...and since opiates are extremely addictive, continue to take them after they no longer need them.
"also these numbers don't show how much exploitation and environmental damage our alleged 'prosperity' causes in other parts of the world."
You can't blame us for countries that decide to have no rules and ruin their environment. When you compare the environment of the US to pretty much anywhere in the world, it's one of the cleanest (if not the cleanest).
..and 'exploitation'? We built the middle class of China. Before we started going overseas to build factories, the majority of people in China were in complete and utter poverty.
"I’ve had much luck in my life: being born into a middle-class family and having any natural ability nurtured by my parents and then by the education system"
This might be lucky on the part of the individual, but parents that sacrifice their own time, money, and life for their child's future definitely isn't luck. It's a choice. If more people saw it this way, we might have parents that actually cared about their child's education and less people in abject poverty.
..and 'nurtured by the education system' is kind of a joke in the US. The K-12 education system is terrible for everyone.
"Yet there is a dearth of thinking about how we can make these jobs more fulfilling, better paid and more respected"
The problem is that low-skilled jobs will always be low-paid in a capitalist system because pretty much anyone can do them. The only way to counter this is to artificially limit the amount of people that can actually do the job by limiting the supply or create some sort of union to force higher wages. Both bad ideas for the long-term.
"and to increase the relationship between effort and success."
Effort has never equaled success. You might put all the effort in the world into something and it you will still fail. You can always learn from your failures. I failed job interviews, businesses, and many other things before I succeeded. We should be stressing to our youth that you aren't entitled to success. You need to earn it.
"it is not uncommon to find graduates working in a bar on a zero hours contract"
What was their major? STEM majors have little problems finding work. Liberal arts? many can't find a job. We should be encouraging students to pick a major that at least has chance of being able to get a job that pays well enough to pay off their debt. Otherwise, it's just a gamble. They might as well start their own business and skip college altogether.
We should be talking about the trades. I know people that are carpenters and electricians and they can't get enough young people even interested enough to apply for the job.
Mostly because they don't want to start out from the bottom and work their way up. Many feel like they should be making $100K right away.
Those arguments are usually when in context of the rich not paying their 'fair share' in the US. When the stats come out and show that the top 10% pay 90% of the federal taxes (not including all of the taxes you mentioned), it really puts things into perspective.
It's no surprise that the wealthy don't really want to socialize with people that have less money.