If the gov't made bad decisions letting us get to some situation, it doesn't make sense to reward the government and give it even more authority.
That's got perverse consequences. Just like with the corporate leadership, you're encouraging bureaucrats to make bad decisions because (a) they don't have to answer for their bad decisions, and in fact (b) they'll get to expand their authority should their decisions go bad.
The corporate leadership that got us to the problem should suffer, but so should any bureaucrats who had a part it allowing it to happen.
It's kinda like taxes. Who among us would say their tax dollars are and have been well spent? Then why on earth would any of us want to give these idiots more of our hard earned dollars.
I actually like parks and roads and fire departments and social services. I'd happily pay more in taxes for things that are worthwhile. If you don't want your tax money spent on bullshit maybe you should vote for democrats since they're promising not to use your tax money to bail out AI companies.
Everybody can find some government programs they like, and some they hate. I would rather my tax dollars were spent differently than they are. This is normal.
Yeah. They are going to have to do something about it eventually. The Republican party used to care, or at least claim to, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside. Clinton was the last president with anything even close to a balanced budget.
Isn't using age as a proxy for technical literacy rather fraught? It seems to me just as much an abuse of stereotypes as other sexist or racist comments.
I agree that the demographics are probably correct, but we're not supposed to assume that all individuals conform to group stereotypes. And that ought to be doubly true when we're not selecting those individuals at random, but we're (putatively) selecting them for their wisdom and other skills.
While it's certainly a minority of America's Congress, there are lots of people there that clearly have strong skills in technology or the sciences: Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL), Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA), all of whom are over 50 years old, just to name a few.
No, it's not particularly fraught. There are plenty of old people who love technology and stay current. They are also a tiny minority. It's pretty reasonable to expect that an octogenarian is not going to be technically literate, on average. The reverse is not true, of course. You can't assume that because someone is 30 years old they are technically literate.
USA has age limits for the executive and that isn't considered an issue. We should have age limits at the top end as well. It isn't only technology. I don't think 80+ year olds should be driving a car or even operating a McDonalds much less making sweeping long term decisions across dozens of disciplines with little to no research.
True, but that prevalence is not a constant. In fact, across the broader landscape of human history, that appears to be a relatively recent development, and almost certainly environmental/toxins related. For example: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2479344-dementia-cases-...
Until last year (when he was 95), he was operating the world's largest holding company by assets and revenue.
It was also the first non-tech company to reach $1T market cap.
And, its class A stock was by far the most expensive stock in the world at $740,000 per share, more than 100x more expensive than any other US stock.
So, yeah, I think he'd be qualified to operate maybe even two McDonalds. Maybe he could even be driven to them.(Coincidentally, he is a HUGE McDonalds and Coke fan and has eaten there almost every morning for over 50 years.)
Disrespecting older people seems to be a hobby as old as Father Time.
Can you articulate a clear rule that allows me to use age-focused stereotypes, but prevents me from using race- or sex- or gender- focused stereotypes? Why is one OK but not the other? Is it just that you perceive that the age ones are true in a greater proportion of cases, and if so, how do we determine where to draw that line?
These old people started their career when computer use became a job requirement for any office work. A few years more and homes got saturated as well. A 52 yo was 20 thirty years ago, in 1996. Have you heard about Napster, MS Office, Netscape, Windows 95 / NT, Hotmail, AOL, Messenger, ICQ, Doom, C&C, .... hundreds more. And everything else since. They had to live through those every day, keyboard+screen instead of pen+paper.
...aren't you confusing them with the generation above 80?
You're right, and as someone north of that age, and who self-assess as mildly competent with technology, I didn't mean to imply a linear correlated.
I'm aware our (AU) representatives & senate average age is relatively low compared to US / UK, and I think that figure (52 ish) is probably relatively healthy in terms of a spread of younger + experienced minds.
But OTOH, our government has form on this front (of doing as our friends over the pond instruct, and of not really understanding the technology around which they are formulating laws) and I should probably have pointed at that aspect, but it's harder to succinctly convey that track record.
50+ year olds seen and used and made more than 30 years worth of constantly evolving technology, their life was saturated with it for 3 decades. Was this what the poster wanted to say perhaps? ; )
What's (probably) incorrect is drawing conclusions based on A without considering the Bs in the population.
Consider: the leading cause of death for young black men is being killed by other black men. Not all young black men! Lots of them are pretty good! Both of those statements are true. What's incorrect is to use it to draw conclusions like "so police should stop and frisk young black men" or "we should avoid endangering the rest of our employees by hiring young black men".
The top-level comment was using age stereotypes to "prove" that an older legislative body is going to misunderstand technology, and therefore produce bad regulation. Showing that the argument was wrong because stereotypes aren't universal, and because in this case there's reason to believe that the samples are selected in a way that would tend to avoid the stereotype, isn't "tone policing". It's directly attacking the argument itself of that parent comment.
no, you did not prove anything. Boomers are indeed bad in tech in general, and the presence of few tech literate does not change the general population
Nope, both statements are completely wrong because 52 years old, and thereabouts, is GenX not Boomer.
And yes it makes a difference. They would have grown up with the first home computers like the 8 bit C64 or ZX Spectrum, and later the 16 bit Amiga A500 or Atari ST.
I'm curious what you use for the ticketing. Theater has pretty specific requirements, to allow customers to see the theater layout and choose their preferred seats.
My non-Samsung fridge lets me change the temperature settings from my phone. That’s why the compressor answers to software. How else would I change the temperature remotely if it didn‘t?
I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic, so I'll bite: why on Earth would you ever want to change the temperature settings of your fridge?
I don’t really appreciate being assumed to be a troll just because I’m holding a contrary opinion. That’s very much against the guidelines of this site.
I think if you are the type who is interested in digging up comment history you’ll find plenty of comments from me that show that I’m pretty much a regular person who has respectful conversations.
I apologize if I didn’t follow the popular “corporation bad” narrative. Like, I do recognize that ink is grossly overpriced and all that. At the same time, I don’t really think we are held hostage by printer companies these days. I buy ink once a year or less and it’s not even a laser printer. It isn’t a significant expense or inconvenience.
This is what I'm wearing now, for this reason. But they keep messing with the products. They revised the 608 so the toe box isn't as big. The nylon 877 V1 seems to be my last choice.
> in Texas, where, from what I understand, if you catch someone in the night stealing you could just kill them even if they never threatend you.
It's worth pointing out that night is doing some of the work in this statement. Texas is unusual, as far as I know, that darkness makes a big difference in how self-defense and danger are viewed. It kinda makes sense, because in the dark, the would-be victim is less able to fully and accurately assess the situation. So Texans need to be aware that their actions may be interpreted more harshly in the dark.
Infeasible for a government would mean it is sufficiently expensive that it is not politically popular to spend that much money on public bathrooms.
Also, Buc-ees does not offer free bathrooms in urban, dense areas with higher proportions of mentally ill and drug addicted populations, so that comparison makes no sense.
I used Buc-ee's as an example because they're famous for their clean bathrooms. But there certainly exist clean bathrooms in urban areas. I'd venture to say that those aren't all in high-end establishments that exclude any "riff-raff". It's possible to find clean toilets in urban McDonald's or Wal-Mart; maybe not all of them, but certainly not none either.
And regarding expense on public bathrooms:
* San Francisco spent $1.7M on a single toilet
* Seattle spend $5 installing 5 toilets.
* NYC's public restrooms routinely cost $2M-$4M
Now, those are building projects rather than ongoing operations. But it shows that governments are willing to spend absurd amounts on toilets.
I don't know exactly what the problem is, but there's something about government (mis)management in the issue.
Sure, but why is it that government-run institutions are (we're being told in this thread) uniquely vulnerable to the problem? Why isn't it happening at Buc-ee's or at McDonald's in the same degree?
Just remember the golden rule of crypto is to never fool yourself into thinking you can write your own crypto libraries.
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