I agree that a disturbed person with more power is a bigger problem. To go straight for the Godwin's Law example, there have probably been people more evil and messed up than Hitler in the history of Earth, but very few had the power and opportunity to act on that evil to the magnitude he did.

However, you brought up magnitude of problems and compared the two as "equally disturbed". The Republican Congressman (with admittedly more power/influence) "body-slammed" a reporter. The Democrat nutcase shot up 6 people and (I think) didn't manage to kill any of them, but not for lack of trying.

We don't really know what was going on in either persons' heads when they did these things. What led up to them, etc. Maybe the reporter had been doggedly following and questioning/harassing the Congressman to such an extent that he snapped. Happens quite a lot with paparazzi, and we tend to give the celebrity targets a lot of benefit of the doubt in those cases. The only long-term result of the bodyslam incident that I know of is that the reporter's glasses were broken. Glasses can be repaired or replaced. Bullet wounds are rather tougher to fix.

However my main point isn't to get into a dick-measuring contest about who did more harm or who is more fucked up. My point is that the person entirely responsible in either incident is known. GOP Congressman physically assaulted a reporter of his own volition. Democrat nutcase shot up that baseball practice of his own volition. Those individuals are 100% responsible for what they did, no matter who or what they might claim drove them to their actions. Just like it isn't Ozzy Osbourne's fault when some nutter offs themselves after listening to his song "Suicide Solution", or John Carmack's fault for Columbine even though Klebold and Harris liked playing Doom.

Awesome comment. I wish I could upvote it twice. I threw up a little in my mouth watching the grandstanding going on here and how apparently most Sifters are eating it up.

Fraud? Cross-selling is perfectly legal and in fact practiced regularly in many industries besides banking (like when Best Buy tries to get you to purchase a protection plan for any electronics you buy at their store). If she has an issue with it, as a legislator she is free to bring a bill to the floor to do something about it. The problem is, she didn't give a shit about cross-selling until she realized she was going to have an opportunity to stump for future votes in these hearings and she apparently doesn't give a shit about it now because despite those strong-worded pleas for action she's done nothing personally to make anything she said happen.

Stumpf should give up his money? He isn't the one who opened fake Wells Fargo accounts nor is there any evidence he directed his employees to do so. And as he tried to explain before she cut him off to grandstand some more, those fake accounts only represent 1% of the total cross-selling that happened, which means the stock price was not unduly inflated--people were in fact opening of their own volition more accounts with Wells Fargo than any other bank and Wall Street loved them for it.

The real issue here is that there were not adequate controls in place to prevent the fake accounts from being created in the first place (or detected quickly after being created). And for that Stumpf probably does have some small amount of responsibility, although it sounds to me more like whoever was in charge of compliance is the person who likely should be the one left holding the bag.

But let's not let reality get in the way of a politician's dreams of future offices.

That statement is really a reflection of your own cognitive dissonance.

Chomsky doesn't pontificate about right/wrong or problems.

He's describing the applied game theory present in society.

If you think that's 'bad', then that's your own personal judgment of the matter.

Like 'the prince', his message is a conveyance of the relationship between intelligent actors manipulating perceptions, and intelligent actors acting on perceptions.


Imagine a fish seller, with too many fish. The fish will go bad soon if he does not sell them quickly.
Should he :

A) Ask people to buy more fish, before they go bad, please.

B) Go speak with the distributor that's buying fish from the fisherman and get him to spread the rumor that there is an incoming fish shortage.

(A) may be honest, but (B) will sell faster and for higher prices.

The idea is not to get what you want the most direct way - the idea is to get what you want the most efficient way.
You can be direct about getting what you want, or you can give people information that makes them come to a conclusion for themselves that makes them do what you want.
More abstractly : If it takes less energy to 'persuade' than to 'do for yourself', then use information to 'get people to do for you'. Let others spend their time and resources for you, and save your own.


Politically, this means ruling not by telling citizens what you want, but ruling by nurturing an environment where the media provides information that makes citizens ask for what you want of their own volition.
Then you aren't telling citizens what to do, you're merely obliging their wishes. You not only avoid appearing overbearing (which is not sustainable on account of eventual public disdain) - you actually appear obliging (which is perpetually sustainable).


If you want examples in an a-political environment (if in fact the political backdrop is foiling your ability to take the message in an impartial manner), you should look at Boyd's OODA loop and the Conceptual Spiral.

Analysis, synthesis, etc, etc, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_fjaqAiOmc&index=8&list=PLDB0DF43AA0B67552
http://www.iohai.com/iohai-resources/destruction-and-creation.html

Related matters :

Game theory (life/politics/economics is a game)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Lo2fgxWHw
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lro-unCodo

Persuasion (use tools [real or perceived] to apply influence)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFdCzN7RYbw

*keep in mind that "from the responder's perspective" there is no difference between you doing X, or the responder thinking you did X - because in both cases the responder is acting on his personal perception of what happened (be it real or not).

-scheherazade

This video lacks a lot of salient details.

Yes, the F35 is aiming at the A10 because contractors want jobs (something to do).

However, the strength of the A10 is also its weakness. Low and slow also means that it takes you a long time to get to your troops. Fast jets arrive much sooner (significantly so). A combination of both would be ideal. F35 to get there ASAP, and A10 arriving later to take over.

It's not really worth debating the merit of new fighters. You don't wait for a war to start developing weapons.

Yes, our recent enemies are durkas with small arms, and you don't need an F35 to fight them - but you also don't even need to fight them to begin with - they aren't an existential threat. Terrorist attacks are emotionally charged (well, until they happen so often that you get used to hearing about them, and they stop affecting people), but they are nothing compared to say, a carpet bombing campaign.

The relevance of things like the F35 is to have weapons ready and able to face a large national power, should a nation v nation conflict arise with a significant other nation. In the event that such a conflict ever does, you don't want to be caught with your pants down.

Defense spending costs scale with oversight requirements.

Keep in mind that money pays people. Even materials are simply salaries of the material suppliers. The more people you put on a program, the more that program will cost.

Yes, big contractors make big profits - but the major chunk of their charges is still salaries.

Let me explain what is going on.

Remember the $100 hammers?
In fact, the hammer still cost a few bucks. What cost 100+ bucks was the total charges associated with acquiring a hammer.
Everything someone does in association with acquiring the hammer, gets charged to a charge code that's specific for that task.

Someone has to create a material request - $time.
Someone has to check contracts for whether or not it will be covered - $time.
Someone has to place the order - $time.
Someone has to receiver the package, inspect it, and put it into a received bin - $time.
Someone has to go through the received items and assign them property tags - $time.
Someone has to take the item to the department that needed it, and get someone to sign for it - $time.
Someone has to update the monthly contract report - $time.
Someone has to generate an entry in the process artifacts report, detailing the actions taken in order to acquire the hammer - $time.
Someone on the government side has to review the process artifacts report, and validate that proper process was followed (and if not, punish the company for skipping steps) - $time.

Add up all the minutes here and there that each person charged in association with getting a hammer, and it's $95 on top of a $5 hammer. Which is why little things cost so much.

You could say "Hey, why do all that? Just buy the hammer".
Well, if a company did that, it would be in trouble with govt. oversight folks because they violated the process.
If an employee bought a hammer of his own volition, he would be in trouble with his company for violating the process.
The steps are required, and if you don't follow them, and there is ever any problem/issue, your lack of process will be discovered on investigation, and you could face massive liability - even if it's not even relevant - because it points to careless company culture.

Complex systems like jet fighters necessarily have bugs to work out. When you start using the system, that's when you discover all the bits and pieces that nobody anticipated - and you fix them. That's fine. That's always been the case.



As an airplane example, imagine if there's an issue with a regulator that ultimately causes a system failure - but that issue is just some constant value in a piece of software that determines a duty cycle.

Say for example, that all it takes is changing 1 digit, and recompiling. Ez, right? NOPE!

An engineer can't simply provide a fix.

If something went wrong, even unrelated, but simply in the same general system, he could be personally liable for anything that happens.

On top of that, if there is no contract for work on that system, then an engineer providing a free fix is robbing the company of work, and he could get fired.

A company can't instruct an engineer to provide a fix for the same reasons that the engineer himself can't just do it.

So, the process kicks in.

Someone has to generate a trouble report - $time.
Someone has to identify a possible solution - $time.
Someone has to check contracts to see if work on that fix would be covered under current tasking - $time.
Say it's not covered (it's a previously closed [i.e. delivered] item), so you need a new charge code.
Someone has to write a proposal to fix the defect - $time.
Someone has to go deal with the government to get them to accept the proposal - $time.
(say it's accepted)
Someone has to write new contracts with the government for the new work - $time.
To know what to put into the contract, "requrements engineers" have to talk with the "software engineers" to get a list of action items, and incorporate them into the contract - $time.
(say the contract is accepted)
Finance in conjuration with Requirements engineers has to generate a list of charge codes for each action item - $time.
CM engineers have to update the CM system - $time.
Some manager has to coordinate this mess, and let folks know when to do what - $time.
Software engineer goes to work, changes 1 number, recompiles - $time.
Software engineer checks in new load into CM - $time.
CM engineer updates CM history report - $time.
Software engineer delivers new load to testing manger - $time.
Test manager gets crew of 30 test engineers to run the new load through testing in a SIL (systems integration lab) - $time.
Test engineers write report on results - $time.
If results are fine, Test manager has 30 test engineers run a test on real hardware - $time.
Test engineers write new report - $time.
(assuming all went well)
CM engineer gets resting results and pushes the task to deliverable - $time.
Management has a report written up to hand to the governemnt, covering all work done, and each action taken - documenting that proper process was followed - $time.
Folks writing document know nothing technical, so they get engineers to write sections covering actual work done, and mostly collate what other people send to them - $time.
Engineers write most the report - $time.
Company has new load delivered to government (sending a disk), along with the report/papers/documentation - $time.
Government reviews the report, but because the govt. employees are not technical and don't understand any of the technical data, they simply take the company's word for the results, and simply grade the company on how closely they followed process (the only thing they do understand) - $time.
Company sends engineer to government location to load the new software and help government side testing - $time.
Government runs independent acceptance tests on delivered load - $time.
(Say all goes well)
Government talks with company contracts people, and contract is brought to a close - $time.
CM / Requirements engineers close out the action item - $time.

And this is how a 1 line code change takes 6 months and 5 million dollars.

And this gets repeated for _everything_.

Then imagine if it is a hardware issue, and the only real fix is a change of hardware. For an airplane, just getting permission to plug anything that needs electricity into the airplanes power supply takes months of paper work and lab testing artifacts for approval. Try getting your testing done in that kind of environment.



Basically, the F35 could actually be fixed quickly and cheaply - but the system that is in place right now does not allow for it. And if you tried to circumvent that system, you would be in trouble. The system is required. It's how oversight works - to make sure everything is by the book, documented, reviewed, and approved - so no money gets wasted on any funny business.

Best part, if the government thinks that the program is costing too much, they put more oversight on it to watch for more waste.
Because apparently, when you pay more people to stare at something, the waste just runs away in fear.
Someone at the contractors has to write the reports that these oversight people are supposed to be reviewing - so when you go to a contractor and see a cube farm with 90 paper pushers and 10 'actual' engineers (not a joke), you start to wonder how anything gets done.

Once upon a time, during the cold war, we had an existential threat.
People took things seriously. There was no F'ing around with paperwork - people had to deliver hardware. The typical time elapsed from "idea" to "aircraft first flight" used to be 2 years. USSR went away, cold war ended, new hardware deliveries fell to a trickle - but the spending remained, and the money billed to an inflated process.

-scheherazade

Hey Newtboy,

God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Issac; later, when it was clear that Abraham would obey Him, He rescinded the command. I don't know if you've ever read about this, but God was revealing a deeper truth here as to what He would do when He sent Jesus to the cross to die for our sins. Often in the Old Testament you can find what are called "types". There is a whole study of the scripture called "typeology", where certain events happened in the Old Testament which were foreshadowing events in the New Testament.

Issac then, in this context, is a type of Jesus. Issac, like Jesus, voluntarily submitted himself to be sacrificed. He was a young man whereas Abraham was close to 100 years old; he could have easily overpowered Abraham. This is a picture of Jesus voluntarily going to the cross by His own volition. There is also a similarity in that Issac, like Jesus, carried the wood for his own sacrifice. The biggest difference is, God the Father didn't ask Abraham to do what He ultimately would do, which is to give His only begotten Son as a sacrifice for sins. Here is some more information about typeology:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/larkin/dt/28.cfm

As Clint Eastwood said as William Munny:

Deserve's got nothing to do with it.

I feel like I've tried to make this rather fine point a lot over the years on the Sift: I'm not saying he *should* or *deserves to* be run over by a car for trying to pull a con.

What I'm saying is he put himself into a situation where he could get run over by a car and did so of his own volition with blatant malicious intent. The fact that his pretending to get run over by a car actually resulted in him getting run over by a car yields zero sympathy with me.

Plus, I'm not sure what country you're in or if you're automotively insured, but if you are at fault of hitting someone with your car, you'll be screwed with insurance and paying a significantly higher rater for several years to come. It's not like a bank where your money is insured by the federal government and a robbery of the vault wouldn't affect you; the victim of an insurance scam is directly, immediately, and significantly fucked.

(Someone used my name when they were apparently at fault in an accident before I'd ever gotten my first insurance policy, and when I did first try to get insured, my premium was something like triple what it would've cost me otherwise.)

Again, not saying that ^that means he deserves to be crushed by a car, but he did it to himself. (Likewise, if he was playing Russian roulette and shot himself in the head, I wouldn't feel bad for him.)

You reap what you sow.

Well, if you think about what you just said and the results of his "spying" you will probably conclude that he is not a traditional SPY in any sense of the word. He worked for no agency, he worked of his own volition, and gained nothing personally.

i'd rather people like this be the focus of attention:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Mack_(police_officer)

Hmm, so by your own volition, you got in trouble with cops for not paying parking tickets, and possession of a substance that you know is illegal (Not arguing whether or not pot should be legal mind you). And then when you got caught, you complain about police abusing authority? Cops generally just do their damn job, have some abused authority? Sure, but that is because there are some bad people in the world. I've seen a Walmart night manager abuse his authority, not because he had an abundance of power, because he was a damn jerk. What you are displaying is an issue with authority. Your own authority issues make you believe that those with authority are out to get you. I'd quote dalumberjack above, and let you know again how the cops are just trying to make it through another day, but you'll insist that your antecdotal evidence makes you right. So our cycle will continue. But I have one thing on my side, we all live with cops everyday, millions of encounters every day in the US, and we see a handful of videos every month of police encounters, some rather questionable about their "abuse". If their is an epidemic of dirty cops in the world, where are all the videos supporting it? Their should be a 1000 fold increase in these videos every month if only a handful of people actually posted their bad police encounter.

Tremendous amount of ignorance in here; not the faggoty liberal 'being a meanie' ignorance, but the dictionary definition 'you don't know what the fuck you're talking about' ignorance.

There's very little room for multiple interpretations of Islam. The Qur'an was written by a single (insane) author; with clear instructions on how to interpret it - literally; and how to resolve any inconsistencies within the text - the chronologically later passage supercedes the earlier.

The various Islamic sects differ over the authenticity of the Hadith, accounts of Momo's opinions and behaviour, which they are expected to emulate. None of them dispute the authority or the text of the Qur'an, which they imagine to be the infallible word of god.

There are peaceful, conciliatory passages in the Qur'an; which generally date from early in Muhammad's career, when he wasn't so secure in his position that he could afford to be a total cunt to non-believers. There are violent, xenophobic passages in the Qur'an; which generally date from later in Muhammad's career, when his success as a warlord left him far better placed to be a total cunt to non-believers. The chronologically later passages supercede the earlier.

The favorite example is At-Tawbah 5, the 'Verse of the Sword'; from the chronologically penultimate surah of the Qur'an it scrubs out any earlier peaceful passages by commanding that Muslims:

"fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"

THIS IS WHAT ALL MUSLIMS BELIEVE

There's a peculiar general tendency to conflate the violent historical practice of other religions, like Christianity, with the actual scriptural commandment to violence of Islam. These are not equivalent. In any case the big M positioned Islam as a continuation and successor of Christianity and Judaism, admitting the validity of their prophets and texts, so it has to inherit their crimes as well.

Ultimately, all the religious are criminals. In abandoning reason and responsibility for their own actions, in turning over their volition to the dictates of invisible spirits, they have disposed of ethics and their own humanity.

>> ^gwiz665:

Does this say something about Sir Patrick or you?

"My legs just sprang open of their own volition!"


Apparently guitars and creepy, bald men!

>> ^gwiz665:

Does this say something about Sir Patrick or you?

"My legs just sprang open of their own volition!"


...but by then, he'd seen everything.

Does this say something about Sir Patrick or you?

"My legs just sprang open of their own volition!"

@VoodooV

Have to say I agree with the assessment of the trial. I just simply don't see evidence that Zimmerman acted in a reasonable manner. That's coming from me as a non-gun owning person. On the other hand, the people who own guns and have carry licenses are the one's predominately taking up the other side. Saying that he should be able to provoke the incident and then use his gun when he goes too far and puts someone in a position where they feel they have to fight him off.

I still wonder why the 911 overheard help calls stop when the gun goes off. Wouldn't you want to save a young guy's life and continue shouting help? Or if you had just had your head bashed against concrete, wouldn't you continue to yell for help because you are gravely injured? Why would the person who was yelling help and fired the gun, stop yelling for help? He was just brutally assaulted and needs help.

That plus Zimmerman's own commentary during his 911 call that we can clearly hear, ignoring the under the breath comment.......he expressed concern that the kid was not right and still felt empowered to chase him on foot even though he "has something in his hand". No reasonable person is going to chase after a drugged addled person with a potential weapon in their hand.............unless they felt their gun would protect them. Which is not what a carry permitted gun is for, it's not to put yourself in a dangerous situation of your own volition and then shoot your way out. It's to protect you when other choices are gone, like calling the police, leaving the area, or otherwise just acting like someone not looking to start shit.

>> ^residue:

@dannym3141 agreed. I'm close to several teachers in the states and you're right, there's no accountability anywhere. It's a damn shame and the ones that suffer in the end are the students who never learn that you sometimes have to deal with your own poor decisions.
@Yogi do you advocate the guy riding for free? Why doesn't everyone get the same privilege of riding without paying fare? This guy clearly had no intention of leaving of his own volition and he was delaying everyone else.


No he shouldn't ride for free we have things called cops and they can meet you at the next stop if need be.

@dannym3141 agreed. I'm close to several teachers in the states and you're right, there's no accountability anywhere. It's a damn shame and the ones that suffer in the end are the students who never learn that you sometimes have to deal with your own poor decisions.

@Yogi do you advocate the guy riding for free? Why doesn't everyone get the same privilege of riding without paying fare? This guy clearly had no intention of leaving of his own volition and he was delaying everyone else.