On Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:53:15 +0000, Stephen wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:42:09 +0000, Stephen wrote:
>> 
>>> Remind me again Jim, what part of Cloud-Cuckoo-Land do you live in?
>>> :-P
>> 
>> The western USA. ;-)
>> 
>> 
> Ah! The western part of Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, I remember now.
> 
> Apologies to both of the sensible Americans ;)

LOL

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> You are assuming that only useless and naive people who can't find other 
> work would be the only ones to do public service.

The vast majority of all military people I've spoken to are in it because 
they want to "serve". Certainly Schwartzenegger didn't need the money either.

>> If I can legitimately make $1M a year, why would I take a $10K bribe? 
> There are plenty who do.  Why?  Because they can.

And people are stupid. Like people who take bribes in the form of real 
estate.  Consider: the only way to give someone real estate is to record it 
publicly in the county recorder's office where, by definition, everyone can 
see it.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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On Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:04:14 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> You are assuming that only useless and naive people who can't find
>> other work would be the only ones to do public service.
> 
> The vast majority of all military people I've spoken to are in it
> because they want to "serve". Certainly Schwartzenegger didn't need the
> money either.

Exactly.  Though it's debatable what the Governator's motivation is.  I 
think power is a powerful siren call as well....

>>> If I can legitimately make $1M a year, why would I take a $10K bribe?
>> There are plenty who do.  Why?  Because they can.
> 
> And people are stupid. Like people who take bribes in the form of real
> estate.  Consider: the only way to give someone real estate is to record
> it publicly in the county recorder's office where, by definition,
> everyone can see it.

Yep, true enough.

Jim

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On 2/13/2010 1:39 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Where did I say they would make $10K a year?  I said make sure their
> needs are provided for.  Don't pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars
> a year.
>
> There are more ways than "cash in pocket" to pay someone for public
> service that don't compromise the integrity of the system.
>
> Jim

I think you are missing a major issue here. Its not just about what they 
are payed. If you select for only those who are unbribable via 
corporations, you *assume* you are going to end up with those that 
support the people. All you have to do is look at the nutcases fighting 
over who the *real* Republicans, or even *real* Tea Baggers, are, to see 
what you could end up with instead. Many of these people truly believe 
that their side holds the truth, the other side is all liars, and that 
their tactics of harping on 1-2 key issues, to get elected, is a way to 
"get around" all the evil roadblocks, media bias, and liberal control, 
that might otherwise keep them from representing "the people". They 
could live in a bloody hut in a frozen snow field, and they would 
**still** imagine that the majority of Americans where anti-gay, 
anti-liberal, bible thumping, creationists, and that 90% of everything 
taught in history and civics classes are lies, unlike their 
**certainty** that the constitution references God, and probably even 
once had the Ten Commandments in it, before liberals hid this "fact".

What you, potentially, end up with, when you elect people who claim to 
represent the people, with **no** other alterior motives, is complete 
wackos. At least someone in the pocket of, say, a pharmaceutical 
company, is **marginally** less likely to cut their own, and their 
special interests, throats, by declaring that research on Stem Cells 
should completely halt and biology classes should stop, even badly, 
teaching about Evolution. Get someone whose only interests is either a) 
believing, without cause, that the country **wants** that, or worse, b) 
got elected by a state filled with idiots that actually think its true, 
and... the result would be an even worse damn mess than we have now.

Certain assumptions are flat out naive. Jefferson's assertion that his 
neighbors beliefs where not a threat to anyone, no matter what they 
might be (while ignoring the obvious fact that the neighbors neighbor 
might want to both rob and murder you), is one example. Another is this 
assumption that you can "cure" corruption in governments. The very thing 
you propose almost *guarantees* that are larger than normal number of 
people will have ideas that are disengaged from reality, the public 
interest, or anything else that might produce a useful result. And, 
ironically, the very thing that could stop such people, outside 
interests apposed to how those ideas might upset their wallets, is, by 
nature of your solution, absent. Its certainly not going to be some 
loser, who got into it to help people, isn't good at speeches, has no 
audience presence, and never had a job, or stocks, etc., that conflicted 
with doing their job. Such people are rare. The sort with personal 
agenda, huge stage presence, and a total disregard for right and wrong, 
in any sense, including the willingness to lie their way into power... 
those are **way** less rare, since they spend most of their lives 
practicing how to con people.

Bets on how many of which we would end up with?

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:07:14 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Bets on how many of which we would end up with?

There's nothing wrong with being an idealist, as long as it's tempered 
with some reality.  I've only been talking about an ideal situation so 
far.

Jim

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On 14-2-2010 3:07, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 2/13/2010 1:39 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Where did I say they would make $10K a year?  I said make sure their
>> needs are provided for.  Don't pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars
>> a year.
>>
>> There are more ways than "cash in pocket" to pay someone for public
>> service that don't compromise the integrity of the system.
>>
>> Jim
> 
> I think you are missing a major issue here. Its not just about what they 
> are payed. If you select for only those who are unbribable via 
> corporations, you *assume* you are going to end up with those that 
> support the people. All you have to do is look at the nutcases fighting 
> over who the *real* Republicans, or even *real* Tea Baggers, are, to see 
> what you could end up with instead. Many of these people truly believe 
> that their side holds the truth, the other side is all liars, and that 
> their tactics of harping on 1-2 key issues, to get elected, is a way to 
> "get around" all the evil roadblocks, media bias, and liberal control, 
> that might otherwise keep them from representing "the people". They 
> could live in a bloody hut in a frozen snow field, and they would 
> **still** imagine that the majority of Americans where anti-gay, 
> anti-liberal, bible thumping, creationists, and that 90% of everything 
> taught in history and civics classes are lies, unlike their 
> **certainty** that the constitution references God, and probably even 
> once had the Ten Commandments in it, before liberals hid this "fact".
> 
[etc]

In the Netherlands the vast majority of members of parliament (150 in 
total) are either politically motivated (started as a member of a 
political party in their neighbourhood and had a career within the 
party) or were intelligent enough to complete a study at a university 
but did not choose a subject that could get them a job in industry and 
had a career either directly in politics or starting as a civil servant.

The number of nutcases as you call them is generally at most one or two 
and they generally don't last long. At the moment we have more because 
Dutch politics is a little unstable ATM, but I expect most of them won't 
be reelected.

Perhaps we do have the most optimal amount to pay politicians. Not 
enough that people who are in it solely for the money enter. Elsewhere a 
sociopath can make more money. Yet high enough to attract intelligent 
people that love to think and debate about how the future of the country 
should look like. Sometimes even people come from industry later in 
their career and take a step back in salary (though still being able to 
live comfortably), just to feel they are contributing to the country and 
its people.

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On 2/13/2010 7:59 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:07:14 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> Bets on how many of which we would end up with?
>
> There's nothing wrong with being an idealist, as long as it's tempered
> with some reality.  I've only been talking about an ideal situation so
> far.
>
> Jim
Hmm. Prefer being a realist. Its like building security systems. An 
idealist expects to be able to "train" people to use the new system. A 
realist designs the system to deal with human nature, since anything 
that you put into the system that works different than people "normally" 
react **will** break. A lot of human psychology you can't change, 
without breaking the people you want to make do something. The result is 
usually not terribly pretty. Like the, "everyone has to use their 
keycard to open the front door", type things. Its fine, if only 1-2 
people every go through the door. The only "solution", if a lot of them 
do, is to only hire assholes that don't open doors for people, or 
destroy their compassion, so they never make the mistake of opening it 
to be nice to someone. The "proper" solution is to not install that kind 
of thing on the bloody front door of the building in the first place.

Politics is much the same. Optimal is never going to happen, and human 
nature is such that the result will be as far from optimal as possible, 
given the conditions, so... your best option is a non-optimal one, 
where, hopefully, most of the flaws balance themselves out, due to the 
cost being distributed among a larger number of interested parties, and 
not just the one guy with a shitty pay check. It can still fail, if you 
also refuse to place limitations, checks and balances, or counters, in 
place against those influences. And, that is *precisely* why we have a 
problem. There are almost none, and the supreme court just erased 
another one of them.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On 2/14/2010 7:57 AM, andrel wrote:
> On 14-2-2010 3:07, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> On 2/13/2010 1:39 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> Where did I say they would make $10K a year? I said make sure their
>>> needs are provided for. Don't pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars
>>> a year.
>>>
>>> There are more ways than "cash in pocket" to pay someone for public
>>> service that don't compromise the integrity of the system.
>>>
>>> Jim
>>
>> I think you are missing a major issue here. Its not just about what
>> they are payed. If you select for only those who are unbribable via
>> corporations, you *assume* you are going to end up with those that
>> support the people. All you have to do is look at the nutcases
>> fighting over who the *real* Republicans, or even *real* Tea Baggers,
>> are, to see what you could end up with instead. Many of these people
>> truly believe that their side holds the truth, the other side is all
>> liars, and that their tactics of harping on 1-2 key issues, to get
>> elected, is a way to "get around" all the evil roadblocks, media bias,
>> and liberal control, that might otherwise keep them from representing
>> "the people". They could live in a bloody hut in a frozen snow field,
>> and they would **still** imagine that the majority of Americans where
>> anti-gay, anti-liberal, bible thumping, creationists, and that 90% of
>> everything taught in history and civics classes are lies, unlike their
>> **certainty** that the constitution references God, and probably even
>> once had the Ten Commandments in it, before liberals hid this "fact".
>>
> [etc]
>
> In the Netherlands the vast majority of members of parliament (150 in
> total) are either politically motivated (started as a member of a
> political party in their neighbourhood and had a career within the
> party) or were intelligent enough to complete a study at a university
> but did not choose a subject that could get them a job in industry and
> had a career either directly in politics or starting as a civil servant.
>
> The number of nutcases as you call them is generally at most one or two
> and they generally don't last long. At the moment we have more because
> Dutch politics is a little unstable ATM, but I expect most of them won't
> be reelected.
>
> Perhaps we do have the most optimal amount to pay politicians. Not
> enough that people who are in it solely for the money enter. Elsewhere a
> sociopath can make more money. Yet high enough to attract intelligent
> people that love to think and debate about how the future of the country
> should look like. Sometimes even people come from industry later in
> their career and take a step back in salary (though still being able to
> live comfortably), just to feel they are contributing to the country and
> its people.
Well.. One of the US problem is a) a belief that elites and thinkers are 
"dangerous", and b) a population of people that think stupidity, so they 
don't do/say something that might confuse the general populous, is a key 
indicator of "good politics".

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:29:28 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Hmm. Prefer being a realist.

Go for it.

I find that using the approach of "what would be the ideal place to be" 
as a starting point works quite well.  Then what you do is you apply 
realism to that ideal position and come up with something that's as close 
to the ideal solution as you can.

Starting from a "realist" position means that you start with a suboptimal 
solution, and then you whittle down from that (who ever starts with a 
"realistic" solution and then says "hey, we could actually go a bit 
further than this"?

IOW, starting with a "realist" position limits one's thinking to a lower 
bar, and there's a very small chance of trying something with a slightly 
*higher* bar because one limits oneself to the thinking that "that'd 
never fly".

So I prefer starting out with the ideal solution, but with the 
understanding that the ideal solution is never going to be implemented 
and there will be some compromise.  I find I tend to come up with better 
solutions that way.

Jim

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On 2/14/2010 1:54 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:29:28 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> Hmm. Prefer being a realist.
>
> Go for it.
>
> I find that using the approach of "what would be the ideal place to be"
> as a starting point works quite well.  Then what you do is you apply
> realism to that ideal position and come up with something that's as close
> to the ideal solution as you can.
>
> Starting from a "realist" position means that you start with a suboptimal
> solution, and then you whittle down from that (who ever starts with a
> "realistic" solution and then says "hey, we could actually go a bit
> further than this"?
>
> IOW, starting with a "realist" position limits one's thinking to a lower
> bar, and there's a very small chance of trying something with a slightly
> *higher* bar because one limits oneself to the thinking that "that'd
> never fly".
>
> So I prefer starting out with the ideal solution, but with the
> understanding that the ideal solution is never going to be implemented
> and there will be some compromise.  I find I tend to come up with better
> solutions that way.
>
> Jim
Never said you *start from* a realist position. Sure, you start with the 
ideal, then work from there. The problem often is that some people are 
prone to start and end there, like gun advocates, for example. Had 
another one of them recently on a blog. They point out that people will 
still be violent, people will still attack other people with other 
things, etc. They then *leap* to the conclusion that more people armed 
will "prevent" the problem. Uh.. Run that by me again, because I think I 
missed something some place, and that is without including, "How do the 
people with the guns know, especially untrained, and undisciplined, who 
to shoot back at, and who is just defending themselves?" The same 
arguments they make for why banning them is a problem - which is that 
crazy, stupid, and violent people will still exist, is the *same* 
argument against making sure that 100% of the people in a room all have 
guns. The only people that won't have them are the people who didn't 
want them, wouldn't use one, and couldn't defend themselves with one 
anyway. **EVERYONE** else is someone that has already learned to shoot, 
one assumes fairly accurately, would use one, quite possibly believes in 
using one as a solution to the threat, and is **willing**, if not 
**intending** to kill someone.

Its like telling people that we would all be safer if everyone had a 
portable nuke. I mean, logically, its simply an extension of the same 
thing, right? And no "rational" person is going to get depressed, angry, 
violent, and/or suddenly snap, and set the thing off to get back at the 
neighbor for not returning their rake, right?

Oh.. And they are always willing to a) assert that their are "a lot" of 
cases where is improved the odds of people not dying, while b) their 
only evidence is situations that involved guns, and where there was no 
way to resolve the situation without more of them. Nothing is ever 
mentioned of the thousands of cases of cops, every year, which manage to 
avoid shooting people, as a solution to talking a hostage taker, or some 
other moron, out of a building, safely, and without people getting shot 
at, usually. Its almost like talking to the morons that think torture is 
"necessary" to get good information from people, despite every scrap of 
evidence to the contrary, including the huge amount that suggest that 
you get *bad* evidence from people, if they don't know anything in the 
first place, so you will stop torturing them. The failure of reality to 
match their assumptions just flat out doesn't register with them.

Anyway, point being, sure, you start with "optimal", then you try to 
work out what works at all. But, sometimes, there just isn't any. 
logically, "optimal" you can aim for.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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