Post 9iZIs1N88eBopZk16e by alrs@lsngl.us
(DIR) More posts by alrs@lsngl.us
(DIR) Post #9iYl3yXl5Ghj5kF0tc by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T07:12:28Z
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Where do good ideas come from?Wait, hold that, where do BAD ideas come from?What are the worst ideas in world history? How would you rank them? What are reasonable judging criteria? How did they arise?We see much discussion of coming up with good ideas, far less on avoiding or suppressing bad ones. Kind of like how there's much study of inteligence but little of stupidity.#BadIdeas
(DIR) Post #9iYlGWzepFILPZHHOa by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T07:14:44Z
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And this from thinking:What was so great about Usenet.Like, what did Usenet PRODUCE? Are there any tangible goods that came from it?Or, for that matter, bads?
(DIR) Post #9iYnwUJFOXVb9qZhtw by temporal@mastodon.technology
2019-05-07T07:44:43Z
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@dredmorbius bad ideas are like broken machines or bugs in code. They fail to achieve good goals, and/or they create bad things of their own.Do you rank "the most broken car part in the world"? "The most mistaken idea in code"? No (sans entertainment). But there's plenty of knowledge about how car parts, abstractions and reasoning go wrong.Key phrases: be "unintended consequences", "second-order effects".Where do bad ideas come from? In space of possible ideas, there's much more bad than good ones.
(DIR) Post #9iYoFdBUcdbIBX4m6y by Baggypants@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T07:48:11Z
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@dredmorbiusUsenet produced communities, a place where people could share interests and ideas across the globe. It bore the concept of Eternal September, and Godwin's Law. What was good about Usenet is reflected in every online social space available today. Everything bad too.
(DIR) Post #9iYqVsdp7ZgAfKCfwG by alrs@lsngl.us
2019-05-07T08:13:31Z
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@dredmorbius The joy was in the clients: proper threading, killfiles, pgp signatures, history of messages already read.
(DIR) Post #9iYqYpZuxwI42Cmdl2 by ansugeisler@scholar.social
2019-05-07T08:14:01Z
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@dredmorbius I operate with complementary terms, wisdom and intelligence.Intelligence is the ability to find effective paths.Wisdom is the ability to avoid harmful paths.Nothing about an effective path precludes it being a harmful path.
(DIR) Post #9iYxqqW0v68FpfUk1A by rook@hackers.town
2019-05-07T09:35:44Z
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@dredmorbius tangible? indirectly... some people did get work done with its assistancebut I'd have to go McLuhan on this one and say the medium is the... good
(DIR) Post #9iZ0qhW6fxyHmpA1SK by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T10:09:21Z
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@rook Consider the question itself open to interpretation.
(DIR) Post #9iZ12v3c9tZRFxeyHY by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T10:11:33Z
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@alrs What of the bad clients / client nonuniformity?Was part of Usenet's problem excess diversity?Related: what killed Usenet.(Presupposes: it's dead.)
(DIR) Post #9iZ1AdvLkAZaR2TdOy by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T10:12:57Z
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@temporal Thomas Midgely might make an interesting study, and unintended consequences definitely play some role.
(DIR) Post #9iZ1ho3F6yWfOtyy9I by temporal@mastodon.technology
2019-05-07T10:18:55Z
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@dredmorbius there's also a temporal horizon aspect here. Could he have predicted the marginal negative impact of leaded gasoline on health? Probably. Of CFCs on the atmosphere? Not really, research on the mechanism of action causing damage to ozone layer came much later.Could he have predicted the scale at which both inventions would be deployed? Given that most of the growth happened well after he died, I'd say: not quite. No one living then could.
(DIR) Post #9iZ4T74YPPO3udHUG0 by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T10:49:54Z
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@temporal So, that gets into other areas -- definitely interesting -- though I'd like to focus on what are bad ideas and *how* were they bad.Lead's neurotoxic effects were known in antiquity, and were manifest as leaded petrol was researched, developed, and produced. The long-term pervasive public health and criminal behavioural espects might not have been as patent.But the institutional resistance to realising, publicising, and regulating based on this is most interesting.1/
(DIR) Post #9iZ4t1KMOKHtcj1mrY by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T10:54:35Z
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@temporal For CFCs, a principle attraction was their nonreactivity (contrast R-1; ammonia). Which turned out to be a problem on the basis that *things which don't break down accumulate, to the point at which a breakdown threshold and mechanism is reached.*Which suggests a precautionary principle to be applied to any pervasive agent (see plastics similarly).Is there a general taxonomy of such negative interactions which might guide awareness and risk assessment?2/end/
(DIR) Post #9iZ5ZQZUvNVC4zKUxE by temporal@mastodon.technology
2019-05-07T11:02:14Z
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@dredmorbius RE lead, reminds me of something I read last night:https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/12/02/more-dakka/TL;DR: one problem of both individuals and institutions is that even when we know that doing X helps solve a problem, and doing more of X helps more with no negative effects in sight, we're still reluctant to apply *enough* X to just solve the problem.Here, it seems an inverse applies: we know doing X is harmful, more X = more harmful, and yet we're reluctant to nip the growth of X in the bud.1/
(DIR) Post #9iZAesE81tQj4Nkaye by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T11:59:15Z
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@temporal The history of invention, resistance, and unintended consequences is INTERESTING.Bernhard J. Stern, Robert K. Merton, Charles Perrow, Naomi Oreskes, for starters.Asset value preservation, model symplicity, "do more of same" even on failure, agnotology, amathia, motivated ignorance, and more.
(DIR) Post #9iZDrGzw3a7FEWiSA4 by temporal@mastodon.technology
2019-05-07T11:10:46Z
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@dredmorbius RE CFCs and taxonomy, I don't know of one (but I'd really love to).One thing that comes to my mind is a need for more detailed accounting around inventions. Inputs and outputs should be accounted for; if your invention is "leaking" matter - even inert - it should be known (and tracked in publicly available sources). A principle should be to always minimize such leaks.It's already a principle recognized in software design - you try hard to avoid code making "non-local" changes.2/end/
(DIR) Post #9iZDrHETBXk3xbW3oe by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T12:35:06Z
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@temporal Closed-loop processing / manufacture / product lifecycle is all but impossible. Though the tracking could well be useful.Consider, say, the consequences of tyres and brakes. Each effectively degrades with time, leaving a stream of residue over the environment.
(DIR) Post #9iZIaYN0iJatxaM83s by alrs@lsngl.us
2019-05-07T13:28:06Z
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@dredmorbius First problem was PC people flooded the Internet with web-only communities. Most people today havr never used a listserv, let alone a USENET group.
(DIR) Post #9iZIs1N88eBopZk16e by alrs@lsngl.us
2019-05-07T13:31:15Z
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@dredmorbius Second problem is that PGP UI was so bad that people didn't understand that signatures existed to build a WOT so that we could ignore unsigned posts or signed posts from keys with no reputation.
(DIR) Post #9iZJ2mR60igJh1j6OG by alrs@lsngl.us
2019-05-07T13:33:11Z
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@dredmorbius Closed web forums are easier to moderate, same effect that is killing IRC.
(DIR) Post #9iZJUZEaghSGrC7wbw by temporal@mastodon.technology
2019-05-07T13:38:14Z
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@dredmorbius yup. And we should be able to account for that - by at least knowing what exact chemicals get released and at what rate, which we can model mathematically.Closed loop is obviously out of the question for individual pieces (but not for larger systems, for practical definitions of "closed loop" - think e.g. long-term space habitation). But knowing what exactly leaks out and how much is useful.
(DIR) Post #9iZMOEzXKwbeCSlDlY by BalooUriza@meow.social
2019-05-07T14:10:41Z
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@dredmorbius Well, Linux, which runs about 65% of all computerized devices on Earth, for one.
(DIR) Post #9iZO8DWHF2FkuTYt9s by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T14:30:14Z
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@BalooUriza Good point. Much other SW development as well.And general infrastructure management.
(DIR) Post #9iZRjqDCeAKtUOGvs8 by BalooUriza@meow.social
2019-05-07T15:10:37Z
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@dredmorbius Heh, reminds me of the days when I was a regular on news.admin.net-abuse.email and I remember a few curmudgeons failing the move from alt.fan.furry to rec.arts.anthropomorphic by 8 votes back in the day. Heh, bad thing that came from NANAE: had my brakelines cut by a spammer because I was good at my job.
(DIR) Post #9iZS2vwTZAT4lNYIBE by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T15:14:05Z
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@BalooUriza No shit.I forget, what's the first rule of spammers again?
(DIR) Post #9iZYapDFgxURSlwWbg by BalooUriza@meow.social
2019-05-07T16:27:25Z
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@dredmorbius Spammers are stupid.
(DIR) Post #9iZYl5zSAVwkORO02K by dredmorbius@mastodon.cloud
2019-05-07T16:29:18Z
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@BalooUriza That's it!