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You are taking two very completely different situations to create a false equivalency. The people of Bangladesh fairly elected Sheikh Mujib but for some reason

by 1971genocide 12y ago

You are taking two very completely different situations to create a false equivalency. The people of Bangladesh fairly elected Sheikh Mujib but for some reason the government didnt want a bengali as the president and that was a good reason to overthrow the government. If Obama won the election by a decisive victory and someone said "hey! that was joke - we are putting Mitt Romney in power". That would be a good cause to rebel against the government don't you think ? My concern is that the american people are able to elect their representative and the same time seem to have a deep mistrust towards them. That is what I am brining up. Having distrust towards your government is healthy - but just like everything, taking that ideology too far can be problematic as things needs to get done. Roads cannot be built if people think the government is up to something nefarious. I remember a paul graham article where he talks about "putting checks in a system" , it reminds of software systems that have validation set up. Do you think any software system can run with having validation every-time you pass an value to a function ? We put validation only in cases where the cost of putting it ( time-efficiency , memory ) is lower than the cost of security. I hope that analogy makes sense.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
I'm very much pro-Bangladeshi independence, and pro-secession/revolution in general. I didn't mean to suggest any pro-Pakistan sentiment whatsoever. I'm just citing it as an example of why governments in general can't be trusted. But I don't know why you cite Obama's election favorably. He ran on a platform opposing an individual mandate and then personally pulled the "hey! that was a joke - Obamacare time." Before him, Bush ran on a platform of humble foreign policy and limited government and then pulled "hey! that was a joke". I'm not sure why "hey! that was a joke" is horrible when applied to a person, but acceptable when applied to policies. But then again I don't really go for identity politics - e.g., I don't care if the president is a Bengali or not, I care what actions he takes. (I'm also not pro-democracy.) Do you think any software system can run with having validation every-time you pass an value to a function ? We put validation only in cases where the cost of putting it ( time-efficiency , memory ) is lower than the cost of security. I believe the future of computing will be in dependently typed languages (e.g. Idris) which do exactly this sort of thing at compile time.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  > I'm not sure why "hey! that was a joke" is horrible when applied to a person, but acceptable when applied to policies. Let me quote Bret Stephens' take on the matter, writing in the (Republican-leaning) Wall Street Journal -- "Sometime in the 1990s I began to understand the Clinton way of lying, and why it was so successful. To you and me, the Clinton lies were statements demonstrably at variance with the truth, and therefore wrong and shameful. But to the initiated they were an invitation to an intoxicating secret knowledge. What was this knowledge? That the lying was for the greater good, usually to fend off some form of Republican malevolence. What was so intoxicating? That the initiated were smart enough to see through it all. Why be scandalized when they could be amused? Why moralize when they could collude?" -- http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-and-the-liberal-way-of-lying-1428968021 http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-and-the-liberal-way-of-l... Disclaimer. No representation is made in this comment as to the exclusivity or generality of this manner of lying to any particular political parties, politicians, or nations -- that is left as an exercise to the reader.

yummyfajitas 12y ago

I'm very much pro-Bangladeshi independence, and pro-secession/revolution in general. I didn't mean to suggest any pro-Pakistan sentiment whatsoever. I'm just citing it as an example of why governments in general can't be trusted. But I don't know why you cite Obama's election favorably. He ran on a platform opposing an individual mandate and then personally pulled the "hey! that was a joke - Obamacare time." Before him, Bush ran on a platform of humble foreign policy and limited government and then pulled "hey! that was a joke". I'm not sure why "hey! that was a joke" is horrible when applied to a person, but acceptable when applied to policies. But then again I don't really go for identity politics - e.g., I don't care if the president is a Bengali or not, I care what actions he takes. (I'm also not pro-democracy.) Do you think any software system can run with having validation every-time you pass an value to a function ? We put validation only in cases where the cost of putting it ( time-efficiency , memory ) is lower than the cost of security. I believe the future of computing will be in dependently typed languages (e.g. Idris) which do exactly this sort of thing at compile time.

fennecfoxen 12y ago
> I'm not sure why "hey! that was a joke" is horrible when applied to a person, but acceptable when applied to policies. Let me quote Bret Stephens' take on the matter, writing in the (Republican-leaning) Wall Street Journal -- "Sometime in the 1990s I began to understand the Clinton way of lying, and why it was so successful. To you and me, the Clinton lies were statements demonstrably at variance with the truth, and therefore wrong and shameful. But to the initiated they were an invitation to an intoxicating secret knowledge. What was this knowledge? That the lying was for the greater good, usually to fend off some form of Republican malevolence. What was so intoxicating? That the initiated were smart enough to see through it all. Why be scandalized when they could be amused? Why moralize when they could collude?" -- http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-and-the-liberal-way-of-lying-1428968021 http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-and-the-liberal-way-of-l... Disclaimer. No representation is made in this comment as to the exclusivity or generality of this manner of lying to any particular political parties, politicians, or nations -- that is left as an exercise to the reader.