I disagree.
I like the analogy of a magazine or newspaper publishing letters to the editor. There is a two way aspect, but clearly the editors choose what to publish.
No, the newspaper or magazine has clear editorial. It's very clear that this is what Fox News or The New York Times or Wall Street Journal is saying.
People think that Facebook is a place where their friends, and family post things. By extension, they think that Facebook trends are just "what's popular" not, what Facebook as a company is saying or endorsing.
No one holds Facebook responsible for a topic that is trending. Actually, I take that back, a bunch of people do but, they are dismissed out of hand as idiots.
Facebook really doesn't want to be in the publishing of ideas business. Their responsibility would be higher.
The air shouldn't have an opinion on the sound traveling through it.
Facebook has the means to manipulate ideas at scale. They have researched it. We are just supposed to blindly trust them because of a vaguely worded Facebook post? A post where to respond, I have to log in and identify myself?
I mean, it's hard to not to see this as Orwellian or just plain stupid. Other than choosing (and then doubling down on) PHP, I don't see Facebook as run by stupid people.
Either they think this thing will just blow over and no one will care. This much trust in something that isn't transparent is just bad for democracy. Facebook isn't the TV station, it's the airwaves. They have to be held to different standards.
>For the autodidact it is a time to begin choosing modules that make sense for their own career trajectory.
I think the end of his part 2 courses is a good point to pick a set of courses that will get you to your desired end state. I would also say that completing these courses would establish sufficient mathematical literacy for many purposes.
I would love to see similar guides for other subjects. Personally, I would be interested in guides for chemistry and mechanical engineering.
When researching for the article I was actually rather surprised that I couldn't find many MOOCs on aeronautical, civil, electrical, chemical or mechanical engineering.
While it's pretty straightforward to find open courses/content on Linear Algebra and Calculus, there's very little on, say, Compressible Flow/Gas Dynamics or Turbomachinery, for instance.
If anybody knows of any courses on topics related to the above engineering disciplines, I'd love to take a look.
I also agree that at the end of part 2, one would have sufficient "mathematical maturity" to handle most commercial environments.
I think a sunset on all laws would be helpful. It would probably require a change to other parliamentary procedures or the representatives wouldn't have enough time to vote on everything. I expect the US would struggle with this more than most countries. The alternative is less government due to political gridlock. Perhaps that would result in more of these programs being managed at the state or local level.
Initially, every time a soy farmer support bill died due to a sunset time it could be a media issue. Some big bills will continue to die or be renewed amid a media frenzy; however, our capacity for sensation is limited. Many bills would die quietly. A delightful side effect could be the generation of enough actual news to keep the media busy reporting on useful topics.
A maximum word length or similar requirement sounds good; however, it might not be practical. If you prevented disparate pieces of legislation from being voted on as a single law, a limit on length might work and promote transparency.
As a citizen of a democratic country, I love the idea of mandatory sunsets. I hate how easy it is for legislators to pass laws but how very difficult it is to repeal them.
But, beyond that, I'd like to see the law be self-repairing. There's a legal concept that goes back to the Romans that ignorance isn't a valid defense. Maybe it worked well back then, but not when the legal code expands as it does in modern democratic countries. The law should be a manageable size that is largely understood and agreed to by everyone. In that vein, I've always wanted a built in system to 'garbage collect' laws that were dated or misunderstood. In a simple implementation, a government department would poll the citizen body for understanding or agreement with a law. If the polling doesn't reach a threshold, then the law is purged.
Sunsets don't have any effect in practice. All sorts of US laws have sunset provisions, and unless they've become somehow politically contentious they get renewed without debate every year.
At least the legislature has to spend some time renewing them. Everyone bears the cost of having to know and follow all the laws; lawmakers having to spend the time to renew every law would be a better alignment of incentives.
I've been wanting to buy a Digital Paper from Sony since it came out for technical articles / textbooks.
Overall, I think the product is worth the price (around $1000 last time I checked), but I have other things to spend the money on right now. It seems to be marketed towards legal firms (possibly a source of the high price), but I don't need the collaboration software.
The idea of ads indistinguishable from content is troubling. I agree this is a probable outcome. It sounds like food for conspiracy theories. I see two paths. First, ads so good you seek them out knowing they are advertising. This would be similar to a good catalog. Second, you are looking for content and find something produced by a company without your knowledge. It would be easy to produce "Top 10" lists or other style of content that favors your products. In that scenario, trust becomes the valuable commodity.
Ads as content isn't that bad of a problem. Consider a review or a show that uses a product for legitimate reasons.
The (far) bigger problem will be using your friends against you[1]. Advertising by making various "credit scores" dependent on your friends using the "right" products will be very hard to counter. I suggest fighting it now.
How do you encourage full employment with fiscal policy?
Does the concept of full employment imply large corporations hire most of the people or do the fiscal policies also encourage small business and self employment?
You raise a good point. Economies are the collection of individual decisions. Perhaps what people are getting after is the short term vs. long term incentives or the potential for conflict between the incentives for individuals and those for the group.
Obviously, you would have to avoid the "Company Store" problem.
I think it could be a terrible PR move. If you effectively pay your employees less and justify by giving them discounts. A program that begins with good intentions could end badly. Especially if the program is conceived in an era of high profits. In low profits, management makes different decisions. Also, you often get new management.
I'm a bit confused, where does the effectively paying less come from? I suggested they increase their pay while also giving them a discount at the store to give them an incentive to spend their new income at the store.
I communicated poorly. Paying your employees more and giving them a discount is harmless. Lots of employees receive a discount.
I meant you run into problems when you end up effectively paying them less and justifying via a larger discount.
Management could end up doing this gradually as times get tough. For example, a company announces lay offs and pay cuts, but softens the blow with a larger discount.
I guess I'm recommending caution. I would avoid making a discount a major part of employee compensation. A worker deciding to apply for jobs at Walmart and Costco could end up weighing a better health plan against a higher discount on basic goods. That seems problematic to me.
I have a few ideas
1) Replace tuition with taking x% of income for y years following graduation. I'm not sure how this would work in regards to low-income degrees / departments. For example, would the low return on investment for an arts department mean it would get less funding? I suppose this would cause universities to optimize their education for earning potential of graduates. Could have interesting effects. Not all beneficial.
2) Could they use their endowments to essentially provide interest free loans? I'm guessing their would be lots of problems with this that I can't see.
3) You pay nothing while in school, but you pay a straightforward fraction of the school's operating costs for the next x years. I like this concept. If you make x long enough, your graduates have an interest in ensuring future students are able to contribute to the cause. Of course, they also have an interest in keeping costs low. That could create poor dynamics. Improvements would have to come from donations, not be a part of the budget.
