If he reached the same position as you did in with less effort, chances are he'll continue reaching the targets he has faster and with less effort. Learn from it, or you're going to be angry and resentful the rest of your career, and as the biggest companies in the industry are run by drop outs you may very well end up working for them.

To some degree it may become a requirement if your competition is willing to spend money lobbying. At that point it may become the case where not investing a certain amount of money to represent your interests will result in the government passing laws that will hurt your business at the expense of a competitor or another industry.

As an analogy, if there are no criminals it is not necessary to spend much money on security. However, if security is generally weak, it may encourage criminal activity. At some point it becomes less costly to spend money on some amount of security to prevent criminal activity. Eventually it reaches an equilibrium where spending more money on security will not provide a similar reduction in cost due to losses from criminal activity and criminal activity will become risky enough that fewer people view criminal enterprises as profitable. It's a little fuzzy as the parties involved don't always have perfect information and external factors will have some influence on the system, but on the whole it tends towards an equilibrium.

Like almost anything else in life, if some action is more efficient or profitable than the alternatives, people will gravitate towards doing it. The real question is whether there is an alternative form of governance that results in some net increase in overall efficiency such that there is less overall money being tied up in lobbying without an increase in negative outcomes for the involved parties for investing in other endeavors. Until we can answer yes to that question and validate it such that we can be quite sure of the answer (not to mention being able to develop a means of smoothly transferring to such a system) what we have now is probably more efficient than most other systems given the existing constraints.

Lobbying could certainly be made more transparent, but it beats some of the outright bribery and corruption that goes on in other countries. It might not be ideal, but it's probably a little bit closer to it.

As opposed to... ?

Shachar

Or ... get a free dynamic DNS hostname (there are still plenty available) and take a few minutes to learn about SSH/SFTP (and SSHGuard if you are using passwords) and set up your own personal file server. It doesn't have to allow shell access.

Now the companies can do whatever they want because you did the little bit of learning it took not to care.

It makes perfect sense. What if your concept of absolute determinism as implied here is actually not absolute and has limitations? That's what he was saying, at least as I understood it. That would mean that some subset of everything would be steady, regular, unpredictable, and unsurprising. The rest wouldn't.

An analogy could be a program that takes certain actions based on the output of a high-quality random number generator of some kind. The compiled program code itself is completely deterministic, behaving as designed each time it is run. The randomness adds an unpredictable element; it determines which of the predetermined (that is, available or achievable) outcomes actually ends up happening. You can't break fundamental rules of physics but plenty of other things could play out in myriad ways.

Huh?

Don't get me wrong. If that's what gets you through the night, go right ahead in thinking that. Otherwise, my profile page has previous comments I've written on many subjects.

Click with care, however.. That link might prove you wrong.

Shachar

... caused by a false belief in an inherent benevolence of government, compounded by this denial-apathy thing concerning the casual lies coming from every major institution and corporation on a regular basis.

If you imagine for a moment that there were aliens observing the earth, you could not blame them for refusing to initiate first contact.

What I meant, and I'm fairly sure it wasn't as hard to understand as you make it out to be, is that you do not refrain from raising a true point merely because it seems to weaken your case.

If you do so, your best case is that you will be ignored, and your worst case is that you will be no more right than the people you are arguing with. Constraint yourself to making any and all relevant true points, and then pick up your opinion so that it is still correct. Otherwise, how do you know you are right?

Shachar

The longer you spend arguing with an idiot, the higher the chances he's doing the same thing.

Playing aggressively is OK. Being offensive is counterproductive for the team, period. Apparently Riot tracks game outcomes and correlates the win loss percentage with reports of offensive behavior toward teammates. Games that have good team dynamics (no trolling/flaming of teammates, etc.) result in a higher percentage of wins.

And from what Riot is saying, what I think you are calling "playing aggressively" is an anomaly, relegated to infrequent outbursts on a "bad day" potentially by any player. A profile system wouldn't account for this one-off behavior because it is so intermittent and rare. That being said, if you did implement a profile system, would a flamethrower wielding troll with a hair temper want to play with 9 other similarly foul tempered combustonauts? That is an interesting question, and I think the answer is no. I can even imagine the game devolving into a chat room, with everyone so busy insulting each other they hardly even play the game.

I have played LoL for quite a while and the efforts they have made toward improving player conduct have had an undeniably positive effect on the game experience. Are there times I would like to unload with both barrels on a teammate? Sure there are, and I actually have. However, with the reward system, the player-run Tribunal punishment system (I have never been banned or even reprimanded BTW), and Riot's conveyance of the idea that cohesive teams result in better game outcomes, the knee-jerk reaction to flame someone is tempered and delayed enough to permit a different decision tree to be considered.

So instead of the usual flame related decisions ("Hmm which would be better to use? Talk about their mom, insult their sexual prowess or orientation, or go for the nuclear option and blast them with n-bombs?") the thought process is subverted to "Should I encourage them, provide positive constructive criticism, make suggestions on team oriented strategies to prevent the same problem, or just let them and the team know its OK and we will recover." This is good thing.

In some ways, their efforts to use social engineering with a reward and punishment system have made me into a social engineer as well. I look for ways to elicit positive responses from other players that will result in Honor rewards for myself. I also look for opportunities to make bad situations better, make good situations great, and generally help my team with the words I use. Does the team need a leader? Well then I step up and with positive encouragement and proper deference assume that role. Is there a possible conflict developing on the team between players? OK, what can I do to put myself in a position to neutralize that conflict to ensure the health of the team dynamic?

In summary I will say that their in-game controls have resulted in a much better gaming experience for me and many others. I commend them for their efforts and as a direct result of these efforts I will continue to spend my hard earned coin on frivolous skins, buying champions, and other assorted digital trinkets they offer in endless profusion and permutations. Looks like Riot has revealed in this story the step just before 3) PROFIT!

TL;DR.

Seriously, though, I agree with your objectives, but not with your suggested methods.

I think the trend of never conceding anything for the sake of winning the argument is one that hurts our ability to conduct actual conversations. I also think that, when the numbers are tallied, it is a counter-productive one. People will see you as a zealot and disregard you. I refuse to participate in it.

Shachar

Nobody in their right mind would insist on reading it literally (and, yes, I am suggesting that people who read it literally are not in their right minds). It was not written that way, and was not interpreted that way until fairly recently.

Shachar

The bible does not disagree with reality. Certain religious interpretation of religious concepts disagree with reality. It has been over two decades since the Vatican officially apologized for that particular incident, without the Pope renouncing God or the bible.

Rather than claim there is a fundemental conflict between religion and science, it would be more correct to say that there are some assholes who find modern times too confusing to keep up, and thus try to bring everyone back.

At least, that's the case for creationism. In this particular case, it might just be attention whoring.

Shachar

... and as long as that never changes in the future, and nothing you do today that is considered harmless enough is later perceived to be suspicious.

Can you please provides citations to the "agreed to stop" claim?

Shachar

Considering how *ahem* clear and reasonable copyright law has always been, perhaps I can understand why someone might not be eager to do this...