I'm gonna talk about something besides game design. You probably don't want to read this post.
Some of you might realize that as I've gotten older, I've gotten steadily more anti-corporate. I think this is probably the opposite of a normal progression, where a college student is anti-corporate and, as he gets older, he realizes corporations are an important part of blah de blah de blah.
I'm the opposite. I thought that they were part of blah de blah in college, and now I think corporations are tied for the second worst thing on the planet. The reasons I think so are complex, and since it's such a common sentiment, I won't go into them. But I will talk about the issue most people have with naive, anti-corporate college students. That is, that they are naive.
After all, we all use corporate goods every day. The clothes we wear, the water that we drink, the computer you're reading this on, everything is brought to us by our complex web of corporations. So how can you be anti-corporate?
But that's a bad argument. After all, it's the same argument slave owners made about their slaves. How can a slave be anti-slavery? Everything he has is provided by his owner. He would be starving and dying of malaria in Africa without us! How hypocritical!
The question is not whether or not I use corporate goods, but is whether or not there is a better solution. Not some pie-in-the-sky solution that requires all humans to act inhumanly good and caring and perfect. Some solution that understands that even decent humans are dicks.
I think there are a variety of partial solutions. Like any paradigm shift, I think the future will be made of a patchwork combination of these new solutions burning away the old guard.
One solution is that it is growing ever more possible for corporations to transform into very transparent entities. For some corporate-like entities, this is a huge advantage. The recent climate change email scandal would never have happened if the scientists were publishing all their emails publicly at all times. Not because they would have avoided conspiracy - there was no conspiracy. But because the emails would be part of a clear context chain that is openly available to anyone. The "conspiracy" vanishes when you realize that these emails are cherry-picked, out of context, and rely on a misunderstanding of scientific terms and data sources.
Other corporate entities would be slaughtered by this change, or at least whine. For example, a transparent news room would reveal the sordid underbelly of what stories get shown in what light, and why. A transparent bank would reveal what advantageous trades they're going to perform, when.
But these are businesses that exist specifically in the cracks of imperfect information. They make money not by providing value, but by wedging themselves into any gap they see and pulling as hard as possible. In many ways, they make money specifically by reducing value. This is not a method of doing business I find ethical or sustainable - the steady increase in connectivity and information processing has put them on a path of leveraging ever smaller and riskier information gaps to make their money, since the largest gaps have been erased due to other people's enhanced information processing.
Obviously, transparency is a difficult thing. If a government required emails to be published, then a lot of people would simply gather in person to discuss their shady deals. But I'm not suggesting that the government step in. After all, governments are tied for second worst thing on the planet, and are already too buddy-buddy with these monsters. I'm simply suggesting that in the upcoming years, some small corporations are going to begin publishing a lot of details about the internal workings of their company and technology, especially in fields where leveraging information inequalities isn't the point of the business. These businesses will be more successful for two reasons. A) talking about stuff openly always generates more good ideas and more energy. B) your prospective customers and clients will feel they can trust you.
Because these open businesses are more successful, they will begin to dominate their field, slowly spreading a "transparency movement" where any business that does not publish is considered untrustworthy.
I think this is very likely as we enter a world where information is so easy to discover, so tightly integrated, and so carefully parsed. Imagine walking into a store and looking at fifteen brands of toilet paper. Up pops your AR: this brand is a company that is rated as 57% transparent by DougsTransparencyIndex, that one is rated 12% transparent. While neither have any grossly immoral acts proven, Doug says, the one that is more transparent will have fewer swept under the rug. Which toilet paper will you buy?
No need by the consumer to actually go out and research these companies. The computer collects and displays information automatically.
And if you think that's unlikely, stop reading this blog and go start reading on technology trends, because you're about to become painfully obsolete. It's not only going to happen, it's happening already.
That's just one solution - transparent companies. I think it's important to remember that the growth of this information web in which we live in also enhances several other methods of creating wealth.
The most famous is the start-up, which is a risky proposition but can be extremely lucrative. A relatively small group of people pitch in to deliver a new product that makes them all rich. I think that start-ups are just starting to enter their really powerful phase, and I think that over the next twenty years, start-ups will be the name of the game. After that, I think that they might start to decline, because start-ups actually operate on information inequality, and I think that twenty years from now we'll start to see the information web becoming so efficient that even the kind of inequality start-ups use will be corrected away.
That's a little hard to imagine, so let me explain. Remember that this is in your old-and-gray years.
I've worked for three start-ups now. Each was built on the expert knowledge of two or three people, leveraged together to create a product that provided value that didn't exist on the market. For example, the one I currently work for is leveraging a combination of solar thermal expertise with data mining expertise to provide some ridiculously overpowered and easy to use analysis systems for green energy installations.
The reason that the start-up is possible is because the expertise can't be effectively applied without a start-up. Once we've done this, the expertise will be available for anyone to see and use (and duplicate). However, we'll have developed further expertise we can leverage and so on and so forth. That's the theory. But the point is that start-ups exist specifically to make your expertise/genius/skill available to the market in an efficient manner.
In twenty years most of us will be deeply immersed in an ambient data network. Distributing expertise will be extremely easy. I think that start-ups will begin to find more and more of their opportunities are made too trivial by the network. You don't need a start-up to do something if you can just go out and do it.
In addition to the transparent-corporation and start-up paradigms, there is one more method I can think of that supports my theory that being anti-corporate is viable. That is the personal work theory.
As mentioned, our network is getting stronger and smarter every year. It is getting easier for an individual to self-employ. Or, if the product she wants to distribute is too big for her alone, she can form a temporary group to release a single product. You see this enabled by the network more and more. We have things like Etsy and Kickstarter that are just coming into their own. I can foresee a time not too far in the future where the structure and safety a corporation provides will be replaced by the ambient structure-forming nature of the network.
This will make things like ZipCar obsolete. I love the company, but it exists on a mountain of data imbalance. Specifically, it exists because there aren't loads of cars just lying around for you to borrow. ZipCar will find itself competing with a steadily rising number of free and easy solutions that help people find rides/cars just out of nothing. The advent of a widespread set of reputation systems and a connective "friend-net" will give us the power we need to automatically determine whether someone can borrow our car or tag along for a ride. The seeds of this required data underlayer can clearly be seen in things like Facebook.
Now, to some extent it might sound like I'm talking about some kind of socialist fuzzy-wuzzy paradise, but I'm not. I think life will be better and richer because, historically, life has been getting better and richer with every generation, although not always by the same measures. That doesn't mean there will be no hardships. I expect reputation will come to be as important as money for many people, and that raises its own sticky questions. Depending on what kind of projections you make, it could be that many of the people in question will be pretty poor, although somewhat alleviated by their strong network of connections that they rely on.
I'm trying not to make any specific predictions about the future outside of the ones specifically related to my anti-corporate stance. I don't want to predict the world will be glorious. I just want to point out that the rise of a dense and intelligent data network is making the staple of corporate evil - maintaining and abusing information imbalance - increasingly tenuous. Simultaneously, it is promoting some alternate ways of getting things done. I expect the transition will not be sudden, and it will probably be economically bloody. But it's going to happen.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Monday, December 14, 2009
Thursday, February 05, 2009
The Body Politic
I have a fair number of blogs on my feed, and a lot of them are armchair activists on the side, political idealists of the least dangerous sort. My own views on politics tend to wander a bit more because I pride myself on at least TRYING to get my opinions to reflect the facts, rather than visa-versa.
The thing about CHANGE! is that people think of the government as some kind of... assortment of disconnected pieces. Like we can swap out our banking system for another as if plucking a lego off a stack and putting another one on.
The truth is that the government is more like a complex, living organism. Like, say, a human.
A patient walks into the emergency room complaining of dizziness and fatigue. Examinations reveal he has a weak heart. Perhaps not THE problem, but certainly a factor. What do you do?
Well, our armchair idealists chime in with "we should just replace the heart with a turbine. Increased, smoother bloodflow. It's way better."
Of course, this idea is just dumb. Even if increased, smoother bloodflow was actually a) what we wanted and b) could be created with the turbine, it doesn't take into account the fact that this is a very complicated system.
Where does the turbine get its energy? Where does the heat dissipate to? How long before it breaks, especially in the wet and nasty environment inside the body, and how do you fix it when it does? Will the body's immune system reject it? Is the turbine going to give off any toxins from its casing? Is the vibration going to cause detachments?
If it was as easy as simply popping in a machine, then we would all be cyborgs by now. The reason medical research takes so long is because the body works in very complex ways.
Well, a government is roughly the same. If our economy comes in complaining of dizziness and fatigue, we can't simply pop in a new heart. There's a lot of long-term, highly balanced, highly evolved systems that will suffer on every level, and that's assuming that the new heart actually works well for a long period of time without tying us to a wall socket.
That isn't to say you should ignore the weak heart. But it is to say that you need to be careful. You can run around willy-nilly, especially when the system is weakened. You need to consider the kinds of treatments that will help, and consider the factors that might affect both short and long term outcomes.
To do this well, it's important to understand how both the government and the economy function, which isn't something ANYONE can claim at the moment. But a decent substitute would be to study the various systems that have evolved over the lifetime of the government, why they evolved, and what they do. Something that none of the politically radical folks I've ever talked to have bothered to do.
See, the thing is that replacing the heart with a turbine pump could be good in many situations. If, for example, our economy already had a turbine pump heart, and we're just switching out for a better model. In order to know that sort of thing, you need to have, actually, you know, STUDIED THE ECONOMY.
Every government is somewhat unique, too. What works for England (or whoever) may not work for us. There are certain common trends: if arsenic is fatal to most creatures, we can rule out arsenic as an option pretty quick. But there are a lot of things that seem to work, or almost work, in other governments. Our government evolved differently. It has a different layout, a different immune system, a different everything. We need to take that into consideration.
Of course, this is just as pointless and idealistic as these silly idealists, because NOBODY EVER CHANGED A GOVERNMENT TO FIT THEORY OR FACT. Governments are always assembled and destroyed following the fads of the population and the drift of political sentiment. Ugh.
UGH.
The thing about CHANGE! is that people think of the government as some kind of... assortment of disconnected pieces. Like we can swap out our banking system for another as if plucking a lego off a stack and putting another one on.
The truth is that the government is more like a complex, living organism. Like, say, a human.
A patient walks into the emergency room complaining of dizziness and fatigue. Examinations reveal he has a weak heart. Perhaps not THE problem, but certainly a factor. What do you do?
Well, our armchair idealists chime in with "we should just replace the heart with a turbine. Increased, smoother bloodflow. It's way better."
Of course, this idea is just dumb. Even if increased, smoother bloodflow was actually a) what we wanted and b) could be created with the turbine, it doesn't take into account the fact that this is a very complicated system.
Where does the turbine get its energy? Where does the heat dissipate to? How long before it breaks, especially in the wet and nasty environment inside the body, and how do you fix it when it does? Will the body's immune system reject it? Is the turbine going to give off any toxins from its casing? Is the vibration going to cause detachments?
If it was as easy as simply popping in a machine, then we would all be cyborgs by now. The reason medical research takes so long is because the body works in very complex ways.
Well, a government is roughly the same. If our economy comes in complaining of dizziness and fatigue, we can't simply pop in a new heart. There's a lot of long-term, highly balanced, highly evolved systems that will suffer on every level, and that's assuming that the new heart actually works well for a long period of time without tying us to a wall socket.
That isn't to say you should ignore the weak heart. But it is to say that you need to be careful. You can run around willy-nilly, especially when the system is weakened. You need to consider the kinds of treatments that will help, and consider the factors that might affect both short and long term outcomes.
To do this well, it's important to understand how both the government and the economy function, which isn't something ANYONE can claim at the moment. But a decent substitute would be to study the various systems that have evolved over the lifetime of the government, why they evolved, and what they do. Something that none of the politically radical folks I've ever talked to have bothered to do.
See, the thing is that replacing the heart with a turbine pump could be good in many situations. If, for example, our economy already had a turbine pump heart, and we're just switching out for a better model. In order to know that sort of thing, you need to have, actually, you know, STUDIED THE ECONOMY.
Every government is somewhat unique, too. What works for England (or whoever) may not work for us. There are certain common trends: if arsenic is fatal to most creatures, we can rule out arsenic as an option pretty quick. But there are a lot of things that seem to work, or almost work, in other governments. Our government evolved differently. It has a different layout, a different immune system, a different everything. We need to take that into consideration.
Of course, this is just as pointless and idealistic as these silly idealists, because NOBODY EVER CHANGED A GOVERNMENT TO FIT THEORY OR FACT. Governments are always assembled and destroyed following the fads of the population and the drift of political sentiment. Ugh.
UGH.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Transition Team
As a side note, I'd like to point out that Obama's various transition teams contain a nobel-prize winning chemist and two people who actually know something about virtual worlds/the internet. This so far makes his teams the most qualified we've had in eight years. (Actually, any one of them makes his teams the most qualified we've had in eight years.)
What bad news! I'm not happy about him assigning people who actually know their business to the FCC transition team. I prefer my oppressors inept, you know? ;)
What bad news! I'm not happy about him assigning people who actually know their business to the FCC transition team. I prefer my oppressors inept, you know? ;)
Friday, November 14, 2008
Crossing the Geographical Wires
Here's a thought experiment. I'm not suggesting we do this, but it's an interesting thought experiment.
Imagine that voting for president works the same way it does right now, with one tiiiiiny little difference: any citizen can cast their vote in any one state (or county, or however you divide it).
So I could cast my vote for MA, where I live, or I could cast my vote in, say, Texas.
Put aside the idea of ideal behavior: people aren't ideal. Instead, think about how many people of what types you think would take advantage of this "switched voting", and what you think the effects might be as years pass and people get used to the idea. What sort of new groups do you think voters would create to try to leverage their votes?
I'll get things started: I think that most groups of independents (such as libertarians) would get together and agree to win a specific (low-population) state. "Green party wins Alaska!" would be hilarious...
Imagine that voting for president works the same way it does right now, with one tiiiiiny little difference: any citizen can cast their vote in any one state (or county, or however you divide it).
So I could cast my vote for MA, where I live, or I could cast my vote in, say, Texas.
Put aside the idea of ideal behavior: people aren't ideal. Instead, think about how many people of what types you think would take advantage of this "switched voting", and what you think the effects might be as years pass and people get used to the idea. What sort of new groups do you think voters would create to try to leverage their votes?
I'll get things started: I think that most groups of independents (such as libertarians) would get together and agree to win a specific (low-population) state. "Green party wins Alaska!" would be hilarious...
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
The Mandatory Political Post
Every blog's gotta have one, I suppose.
Personally, I don't like politicians. Even Obama. BUT, there is a lot of good to come out of this election, the least of which is that he'll do much, much better than the alternative.
Still, to me, the biggest thing about this election is that Obama is not just black... he's a halfbreed. All the racists I've met think that's even worse.
It seems like a long, long time to the human eye, but when you think about it: only 44 presidents went by. At the beginning, black halfbreeds were treated so terribly that it boggles the mind. Slavery at best! Now, we've got one as our main leader.
That's hopeful, don't you think?
To me, racism is one of the strongest examples of human faults. It's been with us since the beginning of time, an instinct that other peoples - even just another tribe - are not people. Inferior, animals, etc.
That we've come so far towards negating that fault gives me a lot of hope for the future. We have a lot of other faults I'd like to see gone. If it only takes 200 years to fix a fundamental human fault... well, let's get to it!
Personally, I don't like politicians. Even Obama. BUT, there is a lot of good to come out of this election, the least of which is that he'll do much, much better than the alternative.
Still, to me, the biggest thing about this election is that Obama is not just black... he's a halfbreed. All the racists I've met think that's even worse.
It seems like a long, long time to the human eye, but when you think about it: only 44 presidents went by. At the beginning, black halfbreeds were treated so terribly that it boggles the mind. Slavery at best! Now, we've got one as our main leader.
That's hopeful, don't you think?
To me, racism is one of the strongest examples of human faults. It's been with us since the beginning of time, an instinct that other peoples - even just another tribe - are not people. Inferior, animals, etc.
That we've come so far towards negating that fault gives me a lot of hope for the future. We have a lot of other faults I'd like to see gone. If it only takes 200 years to fix a fundamental human fault... well, let's get to it!
Sunday, August 31, 2008
The Joys of Politics
As you might have guessed, I've got a lot of opinions on just about everything. But probably my weirdest opinions are reserved for politics. So I was curious about this post on Skepchick, which essentially asks why diehard skeptics can have so many different political views.
I'd comment there, but I would have to register, so no dice. I'll comment here. Plus, it means I don't have to worry about length.
It is odd. If you gather us together and ask our opinion on, say, global warming, we'll come back with responses that agree 99%, and are only a little different about exactly what the results will be/what we should do about it. If we are asked, as a group, what we think about equality, or space travel, or any number of other things, we'll almost always be in almost full agreement.
But if you get us all together to talk about gun control, or universal health care, or just flat-out "which party is best", we're extremely diverse. We're more diverse than any other group I can think of. There are green party skeptics. Ngah?
I think it boils down to what a skeptic is. A skeptic is someone who, in theory, weights proof above their own opinions. If there's a group of us chatting, and one of us brings up an interesting fact that weakens another's position, there's a serious moment of thinking. More often than not, the other guy will say, "Hm, I'll have to think about that," or, even more likely, "I'll have to look into that some more".
Facts are pretty easy to come by on things like equality. There is such a strong correlation between equality and general economic progress that it's almost impossible to deny that the two are connected. There's a strong correlation between nations with good science education and nations that don't suck. You can argue that correlation does not imply causation all you want, but the truth is that, in the absence of absolute proof, correlation is much better than just making up whatever you feel comfortable with.
When we get to politics, the facts are a lot blurrier.
We're going to talk gun control. Are you for or against gun control?
If you chose something, you're wrong. There's no really good evidence of correlation between gun control and violent crime. There's a lot of mediocre evidence in both directions, but all that's clear is that gun control is probably the least important factor, far behind things like freedom of speech or police to population ratios. Anecdotes are common on both sides, but usually they are misaddressed - guns are blamed or lauded even though the real issue was something else, such as poverty or cocaine or being-an-idiot.
Arguing whether gun control is good or bad is like arguing whether we should paint our space hotel gold or green. There's no real reason to choose in either way, and it's not like it matters much. In general, I'm against gun control because it's spending money for no particular gain - the same way I would be in favor of painting the space hotel gold if green paint was ten thousand times more expensive.
There are things that do matter, like universal health care. How can a skeptic believe that universal health care is (the opposite of your opinion)?
Well, again, the facts are very fuzzy. While we like to believe that universal health care is good, there is evidence that it slows medical research and provides a lower overall quality of care per dollar. There is evidence that the evidence I just mentioned is bullcrap. It's very fuzzy because it's difficult to analyze such a foggy situation with so many variables, especially when most of the people doing the analyzing are on a biased payroll.
So we tend to err in the direction of our gut. We like freedom, so we argue that gun control is bad. We like safety, so we argue that gun control is good.
Arguing from the gut is the same thing that nonskeptics do. It's not something we should be doing!
I don't know if universal healthcare is good or bad in the general sense. I do know that if Massachusetts provided universal healthcare, it would suck sucky suck suck sucky sucky suck suck. So, I'm against MA-provided universal health care, because the MA government is a stack of pandering imbeciles fifty meters deep.
I know this because the evidence on MA-provided government services is not fuzzy. Thus far, I haven't seen many MA-funded projects that've done any lasting good, and the vast majority of them have wasted millions (or billions) of dollars for no reason other than to secure some votes and skim a few hundred thousand (or tens of millions) off the top.
In this manner, I blatantly dodge the question. "Do you believe universal health care is good?" Well, no, because in MA, universal anything will drive itself into the ground and explode. But... in a mythical government that doesn't screw things up quite so bad?
Then I have to start addressing the lack of clear data. I have to say, if I'm an honest skeptic, "I don't know."
If a skeptic has a strong opinion that isn't backed up by equally strong data, they're not being a skeptic. So the answer to the original question is that skeptics disagree on things they can't prove. Basically, when we're forced to think like the rest of the world, we don't do any better than they do at figuring out what's best.
I'd comment there, but I would have to register, so no dice. I'll comment here. Plus, it means I don't have to worry about length.
It is odd. If you gather us together and ask our opinion on, say, global warming, we'll come back with responses that agree 99%, and are only a little different about exactly what the results will be/what we should do about it. If we are asked, as a group, what we think about equality, or space travel, or any number of other things, we'll almost always be in almost full agreement.
But if you get us all together to talk about gun control, or universal health care, or just flat-out "which party is best", we're extremely diverse. We're more diverse than any other group I can think of. There are green party skeptics. Ngah?
I think it boils down to what a skeptic is. A skeptic is someone who, in theory, weights proof above their own opinions. If there's a group of us chatting, and one of us brings up an interesting fact that weakens another's position, there's a serious moment of thinking. More often than not, the other guy will say, "Hm, I'll have to think about that," or, even more likely, "I'll have to look into that some more".
Facts are pretty easy to come by on things like equality. There is such a strong correlation between equality and general economic progress that it's almost impossible to deny that the two are connected. There's a strong correlation between nations with good science education and nations that don't suck. You can argue that correlation does not imply causation all you want, but the truth is that, in the absence of absolute proof, correlation is much better than just making up whatever you feel comfortable with.
When we get to politics, the facts are a lot blurrier.
We're going to talk gun control. Are you for or against gun control?
If you chose something, you're wrong. There's no really good evidence of correlation between gun control and violent crime. There's a lot of mediocre evidence in both directions, but all that's clear is that gun control is probably the least important factor, far behind things like freedom of speech or police to population ratios. Anecdotes are common on both sides, but usually they are misaddressed - guns are blamed or lauded even though the real issue was something else, such as poverty or cocaine or being-an-idiot.
Arguing whether gun control is good or bad is like arguing whether we should paint our space hotel gold or green. There's no real reason to choose in either way, and it's not like it matters much. In general, I'm against gun control because it's spending money for no particular gain - the same way I would be in favor of painting the space hotel gold if green paint was ten thousand times more expensive.
There are things that do matter, like universal health care. How can a skeptic believe that universal health care is (the opposite of your opinion)?
Well, again, the facts are very fuzzy. While we like to believe that universal health care is good, there is evidence that it slows medical research and provides a lower overall quality of care per dollar. There is evidence that the evidence I just mentioned is bullcrap. It's very fuzzy because it's difficult to analyze such a foggy situation with so many variables, especially when most of the people doing the analyzing are on a biased payroll.
So we tend to err in the direction of our gut. We like freedom, so we argue that gun control is bad. We like safety, so we argue that gun control is good.
Arguing from the gut is the same thing that nonskeptics do. It's not something we should be doing!
I don't know if universal healthcare is good or bad in the general sense. I do know that if Massachusetts provided universal healthcare, it would suck sucky suck suck sucky sucky suck suck. So, I'm against MA-provided universal health care, because the MA government is a stack of pandering imbeciles fifty meters deep.
I know this because the evidence on MA-provided government services is not fuzzy. Thus far, I haven't seen many MA-funded projects that've done any lasting good, and the vast majority of them have wasted millions (or billions) of dollars for no reason other than to secure some votes and skim a few hundred thousand (or tens of millions) off the top.
In this manner, I blatantly dodge the question. "Do you believe universal health care is good?" Well, no, because in MA, universal anything will drive itself into the ground and explode. But... in a mythical government that doesn't screw things up quite so bad?
Then I have to start addressing the lack of clear data. I have to say, if I'm an honest skeptic, "I don't know."
If a skeptic has a strong opinion that isn't backed up by equally strong data, they're not being a skeptic. So the answer to the original question is that skeptics disagree on things they can't prove. Basically, when we're forced to think like the rest of the world, we don't do any better than they do at figuring out what's best.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Watson
So, there's a bit of a fervor over James Watson, one of the scientists who originally discovered the structure of DNA back in the day. Apparently, the 79 year old made some racist comments. As a result, he's basically been excommunicated. Speaking arrangements have been canceled, he's being not-so-gently forced from his job, etc.
I have mixed feelings about this, of course.
While I dislike racism as much as any desperately evenhanded white guy, I can't help but think that this obviously political ostracism is pretty silly.
People seem to forget that this guy is almost EIGHTY.
His racist comments aren't something I can take seriously. He's from another time, another culture. Hearing him be racist is sort of like hearing a old Japanese fisherman talk about leaving the first fish for the god of rain. It has no significant effect on what you think of mainstream Japanese culture, all it does is remind you where the culture is coming from.
In my mind, ostracism is brutal to the point of freakishly bizarre. He wasn't even trying to be mean. He was trying to be ethical and helpful, in his condescending old white guy way.
This guy devoted his whole life to making fairly good scientific advances, and then he says something dumb and out-of-touch about a political hot button and gets kicked out? Can you imagine how he feels? "Thanks for all the good times, but we hate you now. Get the fuck out!"
I feel ashamed for the British. They lost a chunk of my respect.
A better response would have been to play it condescending. Gloss over the comments with "ha, how out of touch..." Let everyone know that's not your culture anymore. This "BURN THE WITCH!" reaction is just silly.
I have mixed feelings about this, of course.
While I dislike racism as much as any desperately evenhanded white guy, I can't help but think that this obviously political ostracism is pretty silly.
People seem to forget that this guy is almost EIGHTY.
His racist comments aren't something I can take seriously. He's from another time, another culture. Hearing him be racist is sort of like hearing a old Japanese fisherman talk about leaving the first fish for the god of rain. It has no significant effect on what you think of mainstream Japanese culture, all it does is remind you where the culture is coming from.
In my mind, ostracism is brutal to the point of freakishly bizarre. He wasn't even trying to be mean. He was trying to be ethical and helpful, in his condescending old white guy way.
This guy devoted his whole life to making fairly good scientific advances, and then he says something dumb and out-of-touch about a political hot button and gets kicked out? Can you imagine how he feels? "Thanks for all the good times, but we hate you now. Get the fuck out!"
I feel ashamed for the British. They lost a chunk of my respect.
A better response would have been to play it condescending. Gloss over the comments with "ha, how out of touch..." Let everyone know that's not your culture anymore. This "BURN THE WITCH!" reaction is just silly.
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