I agree with you, artists should not starve and deserve our appreciation. Even with piracy, Beyoncé, Jay Z, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence, Steven Spielberg, Justin Bieber, R. R. Martin and many, many other artists and creators are pretty safe from starvation though. Actually, if "to not starve" means being as wealthy as them, I'd say more than 95% of the world is starving right now.
Copyright is making a very privileged portion of the world very, very rich. That's completely unecessary. Artists should earn their living, sure. But they don't need to be filthy rich. To be filthy rich isn't really a "need" for anyone, in any time.
Ever seen the credits for a movie? Hundreds of people. Yeah, hes talking about those people. Lets lookup some numbers. BMI lists around 500,000 composers/songwriters/music publishers. The NEA lists around 2.1 million people employed under the artist category (Actors,Directors,Authors, Musicians, Photographers,etc,etc)
Lets take a nice round number. One Million. How many "rich" artists can you name? 500? 1000? 10000? Thats still 0.01%.
>Artists should earn their living, sure. But they don't need to be filthy rich.
The article should have linked to the original Simulation Argument by Nick Bostrom, since the physics part is just one of many possible tests to verify the hypothesis. Here is Nick Bostron's argument: http://www.simulation-argument.com/
There's no pure technological achievement. Politics permeate engineering all the time. I'd rather say I despise Apple's misguided approach to patents than say its techinical merit is "more important". Because given Apple's position, both its techinical merits and its stupid litigations have been shaping the industry.
Life is not a game. And that's because, unlike any game, life has no rules. By following this strategy guide, there's absolutely no guarantee you will succeed (btw, what exactly is it to succeed in life?).
People might get a sense of comfort in thinking that life has a recipe, that it has some sort of inherent quest you must conquer. But there's isn't. Religion, technology, culture and art are our way to deal with that.
Life is open for you to make whatever you want of it. And this is the beauty of it all. Do you want to make it a game? Go ahead, lay some rules, build a strategy, get your achievements. But I think there's more to life than following rules and managing your resources. I wouldn't be surprised if the rules changed without warning or if my resources were suddenly depleted without apparent reason. Because life doesn't care about the rationalizations you came up with.
Life is a unique experience that, fortunately, cannot be framed within a metaphor. There are many ways to live (life as a game, life as a movie, life as a story, life as a poem, life as a checklist, life as a tough math problem) and all of them are right. So maybe we shouldn't bother too much about living the right way and instead just enjoy the ride.
Yeah, this was more or less my reaction to this article too. Much before infinite scrolling in apps, there were libraries so overwhelming in sheer volume of content that lead Borges to conceive the universe in the form of "The Library of Babel".
Simply putting a stop to scrolling will not end the feeling of unsatisfaction, it will not end the fear of missing out. Infinite scrolling is the consequence, not the cause of our dissatisfaction.
We can't avoid applying human paradigms to animal behaviour. Cats strike us as introverted and cynical so they serve well the purpose of criticizing humanity; by playing the role of a cat, people can disclose about the pointlessness of life without sounding too bitter or too philosophical (much like dogs facilitate talking about how humans can be loyal, friendly and honorable).
Nonetheless, opinions about dogs and cats really are homogeneous. Maybe this means our ideas about those animals have been constructed over time. We wouldn't be so eager to call an eagle "loyal" or "smart". Our relationship with dogs and cats is so long that we've had enough time to carefully craft their images.
A lot of that has to do with a cat's expression, which we assign human significance to. If a human looks at you through half-closed eyes, it can be a sign of suspicion; whereas if a cat looks at you through half-closed eyes, it usually means the cat likes you and trusts you, and feels comfortable around you.
The NY Times has been running an automated haiku experiment for some time now. I think it has a lot to do with your comment. Check this: haiku.nytimes.com
>Politics contaminate our universities and research centers so deeply that it masks any selection for actual competence.
This is a serious claim backed by no evidence whatsoever. It's an idea that permeates brazilian academia, it's understandable to some extent, but fails to accomplish anything other than undermining ongoing researches.
After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn’t know what anything meant. When they heard “light that is reflected from a medium with an index,” they didn’t know that it meant a material such as water. They didn’t know that the “direction of the light” is the direction in which you see something when you’re looking at it, and so on. Everything was entirely memorized, yet nothing had been translated into meaningful words. So if I asked, “What is Brewster’s Angle?” I’m going into the computer with the right keywords. But if I say, “Look at the water,” nothing happens – they don’t have anything under “Look at the water”!
(...)
Since I had gone to Brazil under a program sponsored by the United States Government, I was asked by the State Department to write a report about my experiences in Brazil, so I wrote out the essentials of the speech I had just given. I found out later through the grapevine that the reaction of somebody in the State Department was, “That shows you how dangerous it is to send somebody to Brazil who is so naive. Foolish fellow; he can only cause trouble. He didn’t understand the problems.” Quite the contrary! I think this person in the State Department was naive to think that because he saw a university with a list of courses and descriptions, that’s what it was.
I wouldn't be surprised if the same criticism could be applied to several institutions throughout the world. When I think about how U.S. is one of the countries where creationism thrives the most, it's clear to me that the problem Feynman is talking about affects everyone and every science.
Also, this is not proof of politics masking actual competence.
C'mon, the Latin America's biggest and most populous nation remains a long way behind the OECD average and in most cases lags behind most of its Latin American neighbors.
Research in Brazil is a joke, as anything else related to education. Privately funded research is almost non-existent and public universities have typically a 2:1 relation between staff and students - all of them are pretty inefficient. Private universities are expensive scams.
With all its deficiencies, USP is a top university and produces valuable researches. That's no joke at all. Just look at the Lattes curriculum of both its faculty and graduates. MIT, Harvard, Princeton —those are awesome universities but they are expensive too, not a thing most people can afford. Studying at USP costs nothing. That's quite an achievement.
I don't mean to be overlook the problems. I'm just pointing out an important difference.
Given how heavy taxation is, how many chairs it offers (10k) for the whole country, and how unequal is the access to those chairs for the average citizen, I don't find it as remarkable.
Wait, careful with the strawman there. Yes, USP is funded by taxpayers but the students themselves don't have to pay anything. The reasoning behind this choice is that the cost of a student in that University can be shared by everyone because the value of the knowledge produced there is also shared by everyone. People who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford college-level education are given the chance to study.
It's a decision that is aligned to the principles of social democracy. You could argue against it, take a more neoliberal stance, but that's not the point. My point is that USP is trying to do something different.
I wish I knew more about how private universities in US are funded. I have a feeling that aside from the tuition students pay they still receive some sort of aid from the government.
True, everything has it price. But it's also true that free market is not really free.
Copyright is making a very privileged portion of the world very, very rich. That's completely unecessary. Artists should earn their living, sure. But they don't need to be filthy rich. To be filthy rich isn't really a "need" for anyone, in any time.