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Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way - as, I hope, we are all aware.
The main problem isn't whether we're talking about government or private enterprise, but what measure of power is concentrated in individual hands.
The unspoken assumption you are making is that a free market will keep the balance of power between the individual participants, but we know from centuries of observations that this is not the case. Based on purely evolutionary movements, those who are more successful will consolidate their market shares and increasingly start to push out their weaker competitors. The bigger they are, the easier it is for them to do so, with the end result being a monopoly or oligopoly.
This process takes longer if everyone is starting at roughly the same level, but we also know that this doesn't happen in real life. If your family has been rich for generations, you are in a much better competitive position through no achievement of your own, before you actually do anything.
That is why it's important to remember that free markets of the kind you describe exist only in the land of rainbows, unicorns and spherical cows.
Except what you are talking about isn't really free market, it's capitalism. Sure, market forces and human nature would probably drive a true free market into capitalism, but we aren't talking about that. We're talking about a free market.
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capitalism
Which is apparently bad, because it's equivalent to slavery. Or something. That's the most coherent argument I've been able to pull from what @GOG has said so far.
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It's not that I can't explain it, it's that it would serve no purpose to do so; you would either dismiss the explanation as somehow wrong, ignore it, or change the subject.
Therefore, I use your own "can't be fucked" response against you.
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ISTM that no matter how TDWTF might change, that change will do little to bring more women on board unless/until there is a larger pool of women in IT from which to attract participants. TDWTF changing won't change that.
That's a solid point.
However, based on my experience of women in IT, I don't think this community would change if more women started showing up. The inner geek tends to win out.
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Therefore, I use your own "can't be fucked" response against you.
That's fair. No one is forcing anyone to participate. I'm used to leftists being unable to string an argument together. Too many people accept what they say at face value, but I'm happy to reveal you guys for what you are.
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I don't think this community would change if more women started showing up. The inner geek tends to win out.
The women would either fit in or not post much or leave.
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We're not talking about "acting like a man" (which would be pretty silly), but rather complaining about not being treated like a man in some respects, while at the same time declining to be treated like a man in all other respects. Which is it?
To try and bring it back to the OP: why should a community like TDWTF change its ways - which most of us seem to enjoy - in order to bring more women on board? What's in it for us?
I guess I see a fundamental issue with having the discussion framed as being "treated like a man" or not being "treated like a man". It could be more productive for the discussion to be framed as being "treated equally" which would, hopefully, be unconcerned with gender.
I'm, of course, referring to institutional sexism, in general, here, and not the character of these forums, in particular.
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We're talking about a free market.
Which I claim, based on historical evidence, some intuitions of human nature and a predictive model that would probably be too long and boring for everyone to explain (not that we haven't hijacked the thread already) cannot exit, ever. I'm open to counter-claims.
Filed under: keeping two flame wars going is hard work
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That's fair. No one is forcing anyone to participate. I'm used to leftists being unable to string an argument together. Too many people accept what they say at face value, but I'm happy to reveal you guys for what you are.
I think all they did was get you to admit your beliefs, and they are so close minded they see that the same as admitting you're wrong and are all like "Oooh, burn!!1!"
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Only in a very narrow pedantic dickweed sense. Unless you think having stuff like food isn't good
So your argument is:
"Having stuff good, ergo: enterprise good, government bad"?
To that I say: nego consequentiam.
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It could be more productive for the discussion to be framed as being "treated equally" which would, hopefully, be unconcerned with gender.
I'll be the first to agree, as soon as we define what "treated equally" means. I'm very much in favour of equality.
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Which I claim, based on historical evidence, some intuitions of human nature and a predictive model that would probably be too long and boring for everyone to explain (not that we haven't hijacked the thread already) cannot exit, ever.
I never claimed that they did. I liberally sprinkled [theoretically] in my example. You'll have to check with @boomzilla on this one.
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So your argument is:
"Having stuff good, ergo: enterprise good, government bad"?
Close. I mean, yes, having stuff is better than not having stuff (duh). In general, more free enterprise supports this more than more government. It doesn't seem that complicated. But no, I didn't say "government bad," the way your strawman does.
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use the magical summary button that sucks ass works wonderfully
What's wrong with the summary button under the first post? Give it a shot on this very topic.http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/misandry-is-real/1092?filter=summaryOr, move to top (home key, click title, or use progress bar) then click the button manually.
One weakness of summary is that it tends to favor earlier posts which naturally have more likes, replies, views, read time, incoming/outgoing links, etc. I've talked with @eviltrout about weighting the bottom of the topic more to compensate.
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I'll be the first to agree, as soon as we define what "treated equally" means. I'm very much in favour of equality.
Agreed. Also, I'd like to throw in that equal treatment may not be fair.
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It's of no relevance in a forum that diverges so wildly within the context of a topic.
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Agreed. Also, I'd like to throw in that equal treatment may not be fair.
So you're saying that Equality is more important than fairness? I'm not especially surprised you believe that, but I am surprised that you're willing to admit it.
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What's wrong with the summary button under the first post?
It's of no relevance in a forum that diverges so wildly within the context of a topic.
Also, probably not very effective on threads like this.
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I liked the summary feature in theory. However, it seems the inter-message navigation (jump to quoted author, jump to reply) fails once you have parts of the page collapsed. That is, links don't know to unroll hidden posts and just end up throwing you to random spots within the thread. A barrier to reading if I ever saw one :-)
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What's wrong with the summary button under the first post? Give it a shot on this very topic.
http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/misandry-is-real/1092?filter=summary
Or, move to top (home key, click title, or use progress bar) then click the button manually.
One weakness of summary is that it tends to favor earlier posts which naturally have more likes, replies, views, read time, incoming/outgoing links, etc. I've talked with @eviltrout about weighting the bottom of the topic more to compensate.
The summary button is probably great in other forums. Especially if you make the tweak as you mention.
I'm one of those that likes infinite scrolling, and will openly admit that discourse is a dramatic improvement over CS. But the summary button, along with the lack of nested quoting, the loss of formatting when quoting, and articles not being able to be expanded in an article topic are a few of the things that fit poorly here.
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So you're saying that Equality is more important than fairness? I'm not especially surprised you believe that, but I am surprised that you're willing to admit it.
No, I'm saying they are different - sometimes equality is more important and sometimes fairness is more important and I'm proud that I know the difference between the two and that I'm willing to prioritize one over the other when the situation arises.
Edit: they are also sometimes contrary and sometimes coincident positions.
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Yeah, I try to follow reply links, and usually just end up at the top or bottom of the thread.
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No, I'm saying they are different - sometimes equality is more important and sometimes fairness is more important and I'm proud that I know the difference between the two and that I'm willing to prioritize one over the other when the situation arises.
This is interesting. I thought Equality was an absolute good for Progressives. So when do you prioritize fairness?
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This is interesting. I thought Equality was an absolute good for Progressives. So when do you prioritize fairness?
Am I a Progressive?I prioritize fairness and equality based on an entirely subjective set of mostly undefined and nebulous "rules".
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Yes, you're definitely a Progressive.
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Progessives will never admit to being progressives. They just claim they're pro "the people" by being pro-government.
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Yes, you're definitely a Progressive.
I'm guessing that being a Progressive is a bad thing, judging by @DrakeSmith's comment?
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They won't admit it explicitly, but there are sure tells. I mentioned earlier using the word privilege as an abstract noun. So is referring to institutional racism or sexism.
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Let's just say that I am not a Progressive and leave it at that.
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Let's just say that I am not a Progressive and leave it at that.
Oooh are you a Libertarian? I've [s]never[/s] always wanted to meet one of those!
Filed under: Trollin' it up
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Former Libertarian, though I believe @boomzilla is current, and @snooder for some reason has been calling himself a Libertarian even though he's never met a regulation he didn't like.
It's interesting that conservative wasn't your first guess. We don't have signatures here, but my signature on CS was a G.K. Chesterton quote:
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types -- the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution."
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I have no idea what I am, other than what I am and I refuse to be labelled by silly little words that will be endlessly redefined to enable trolling.
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It's interesting that conservative wasn't your first guess.
Because you cared about the difference between equality and fairness?
I'm actually more interested why you capitalize Progressive but not conservative. What's that about?
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the inter-message navigation (jump to quoted author, jump to reply) fails once you have parts of the page collapsed
The intent is to use expansion, not jump to, in that scenario.But yeah, if your "forum style" is to randomly intersperse massive 20-50 post digressions in your topics
Honestly, regardless of forum software.
(Though ironically pure threading becomes highly useful in that scenario. I'd still argue it's generally toxic, but if you are all like "fuck all'a ya'll we love the toxicity of a dozen completely unrelated 20 post topic digressions in every single topic here" then threading is a much better hill to die on than infinite scrolling.)
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If you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room with an infinite number of typewriters and gave them an infinite amount of time, they still wouldn't be stupid enough to come up with this thread.
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You really don't know what capitalism (true capitalism) is do you? Capitalism is I earned and traded for honestly / built it, so it's mine!
But of course, Sir. Should I make the sheeps sing "Beasts of England" now?
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I think @codinghorror understands, finally, why Discourse is so much the wrong fit for this forum.
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I'm actually more interested why you capitalize Progressive but not conservative. What's that about?
I often capitalize words to provide a visual clue that the meaning isn't what would normally be expected. Progressivism is as much a belief system as a political philosophy, while conservatism barely qualifies as a political philosophy and is definitely not a belief system.
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So you're putting Progressivism in the same bracket as Christianity... no wonder people are having trouble with this stuff.
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This discussion about capitalism, the free market, and politics is idealistic to the point of being ludicrous.
The world is inherently unfair. It will be that way until we eliminate scarcity. Fat chance there.
Whether we allocate our resources one way or another is just a matter of ideology. Markets are efficient at allocating resources, except when they aren't -- the problem of externalities.
Externalities are a huge problem. And not just on a macroscopic level, but at a fundamentally personal level. I know I've had my unfair share of unfair relationships. Of course, I move on as soon as I identify the problem. But not before they manage to impose huge costs on me, my time, my money, my life -- for little gain on either side. It's just waste. Stealing is better than waste. I would rather my partner steal from me and put it to better use than I did than waste.
The problem is people not giving a fuck. At all levels of society. If put into a Buddhist framework, these people are on the "animal path" -- the unthinking, uncaring people who are here to work and burn off bad karma. But in unthinking, and uncaring, they make more bad karma.
Also, America has some seriously fucked up demographics right now. The boomers are another weight around our necks.
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The intent is to use expansion, not jump to, in that scenario.
I'm doing that too.
I use the summary feature to find a good post. Then I start expanding and following thread up and down, to see where it started and where it leads. Unfortunately, since some of these trails end up within collapsed blocks, I never get to find out how a mention of a local haiku poetry club ended up with everybody screaming at each other about Ayn Rand.
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Maybe, but it has zip to do with infinite scroll. Also, it wouldn't kill you guys to create topics that make sense, either -- it'd also be a lot easier for newcomers. And you do need new blood to survive long term.
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We create topics that make sense. They just rarely stay on topic.
In case you hadn't noticed, I'm new blood. I appear to have fitted right in. If this forum were to change to fit your idea of being amenable to newcomers, it would lose what makes it what it is.
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Methinks @codinghorror is appreciating TDWTF community less and less....
#@presidentsdaughter
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Ironically, I clicked @Arantor's name on your post, and it opened a series of posts in the order in which they were posted and with references reifying the "in reply to" relation.
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The intent is to use expansion, not jump to, in that scenario.
But yeah, if your "forum style" is to randomly intersperse massive 20-50 post digressions in your topics
[cropped some image]
Honestly, regardless of forum software.
(Though ironically pure threading becomes highly useful in that scenario. I'd still argue it's generally toxic, but if you are all like "fuck all'a ya'll we love the toxicity of a dozen completely unrelated 20 post topic digressions in every single topic here" then threading is a much better hill to die on than infinite scrolling.)
Say what? nobody said anything about infinite scrolling. We were saying that navigating to previous posts and replies to a post doesn't work in summary mode, or when filtered to a given user. Even if a topic stays on-topic, it could be useful to get the full context of a specific post. Or maybe you are filtering to try and find a given post (since searching is so broken in Discourse).
In any case, @cartman82 brought up a valid bug. Don't get all butt hurt and bring up another, unrelated issue.
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@codinghorror: Stop telling us what our forum needs.
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I find it sad that I'm new blood and I can see it at least as clearly as anyone else, if not more so.
