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> Should journalists be allowed to have opinions[1][3]? I'll play devil's advocate and say No. > Should scientists be allowed to have opinions? > Should prog

by columbo 14y ago

> Should journalists be allowed to have opinions[1][3]? I'll play devil's advocate and say No. > Should scientists be allowed to have opinions? > Should programmers be allowed to have opinions? No. You can't just -believe- that PostgreSQL is faster than MySQL or that ruby is easier to code in than java just like you can't just -believe- that our lifestyle is leading to the increase in global temperature. Would you trust a programmer who answers a question with "Well I feel like X is true, therefore that is what we should do." > Should journalists, scientists or programmers be allowed to have INFORMED opinions[2]? Yes. Of course. That's our job. "After doing the research there is no clear consensus on the performance differences between MySQL and PostgreSQL. However there are certain concrete and philosophical differences that lead me to choose PostgreSQL, they are as follows..." Journalists need to be smarter than the reader. They need to give an opinion that isn't just pandering to their readers (or their investors). They need to provide insight beyond the facts regardless of what that does to their own personal beliefs. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion [2] - “You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”― Harlan Ellison [3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im_entitled_to_my_opinion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im_entitled_to_my_opinion

randomdata 14y ago
> Would you trust a programmer who answers a question with "Well I feel like X is true, therefore that is what we should do." Absolutely. Preparing formal proofs for every possible option is logistically impossible. A good programmer will have an intuition and form an opinion about which options are better suited for the given problem. With that, even the best programmers can get it wrong sometimes - they too are only human.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  You're conflating two things - in one situation, an objective answer exists ('Which database is best for our purposes, for some understood definition of 'best'?), and the means for identifying that answer are clear (ie, performance testing/profiling), but it's logistically impractical to carry out that process. In the other, there is no objective answer: even the most debated political topics are inherently subjective, because the tradeoffs involved are value judgements (ie, whose satisfaction is worth more? is X/Y/Z immoral?) and there's no process - however slow - that will prove an 'objective' answer to, say, whether abortion/gay marriage is 'moral', or whether it is 'moral' to tax the rich to feed the poor.

by columbo 14y ago

randomdata 14y ago

> Would you trust a programmer who answers a question with "Well I feel like X is true, therefore that is what we should do." Absolutely. Preparing formal proofs for every possible option is logistically impossible. A good programmer will have an intuition and form an opinion about which options are better suited for the given problem. With that, even the best programmers can get it wrong sometimes - they too are only human.

chimeracoder 14y ago
You're conflating two things - in one situation, an objective answer exists ('Which database is best for our purposes, for some understood definition of 'best'?), and the means for identifying that answer are clear (ie, performance testing/profiling), but it's logistically impractical to carry out that process. In the other, there is no objective answer: even the most debated political topics are inherently subjective, because the tradeoffs involved are value judgements (ie, whose satisfaction is worth more? is X/Y/Z immoral?) and there's no process - however slow - that will prove an 'objective' answer to, say, whether abortion/gay marriage is 'moral', or whether it is 'moral' to tax the rich to feed the poor.