Unrealistic goals need to be reconsidered. And to avoid blindness, every goal must be considered allowed to fail.

The creation of good leaders is every bit as part of human nature as the corruption of bad ones. Trying to wish away that fact is futile - and wishing away is all that's happening here.

For meaningful discussion, some form of top-down moderation absolutely is required. That does not mandate imitating any particular other site's manner of top-down moderation, however. So ask yourself, what about top-down moderation is harmful?

If you want to ensure that no central party can cause harm, the only possible answer is for each cluster of users to host it themselves, e.g. like Diaspora - and likely also exchange the data over something like Tor to prevent ISP-level meddling. You can't just pretend that any single host or network is infallible. (And related - currently, on Hubski, whoever is the first to post a certain link gets unquestioned moderatorship over that thread, which is clearly worse than subreddit moderators who have to post at least some sort of rules).

If you want to create communities under the fundamental requirement, there has to be something better than following users (who won't share everything I want to read) or following tags (which offer absolutely no moderation). Think about how small communities work on Reddit - someone has an idea for a subject, they create a new subreddit, act as its (usually sole) moderator, people post/view content there. Since the moderator only has localized power, corruption is minimal, and since they do have localized power, abuse is also minimal. To expand from that smallness, remember that there are often multiple small communities with a similar focus, with some number of overlapping subscribers, but completely unrelated moderators.

To actually produce a workable system, we need something like: every user is the moderator of their own personal subreddit on every single subject, but anyone can post in that provided they have appropriate ranking (settable per user+tag to either "whitelisted" or "not blacklisted"). Allow anyone to add tags to any posts, but the tags will only be relevant to people who (directly or indirectly) trust them for that tag - have something similar to "upvoting the fact that a tag applies". Do not make it possible to follow users, except in a specific tag (but do provide a standard tag for "follow me in this for when I start a new tag"). But do have the sense of tag relationships - perhaps a "suggestions" stream from any particular stream you're viewing.

Maybe, just maybe, the whole "no moderation" thing is a doomed experiment.

From the numbers I've seen, if we seized all that money, it would pay off the entire national debt and a third more ($20 trillion illegal money, $15 trillion debt).

Of course, I'm not sure if it's legal to seize all the money, or just the unpaid taxes. My instinct is that it's legal to at least freeze it all.

Also, who would have guessed I'd one day be cheering for the PATRIOT Act?

TL;DR: you can no longer unpublish your own packages, but we can still do it against your will.

But if the moon was the result of a collision between some proto-moon and the proto-Earth, how do we know the magnetic readings weren't from the proto-moon?

And do we have any idea what that collision would have been like?

I can't find "more" in that context in the original article.

If anyone thinks Microsoft wasn't aware of this possibility and didn't do this on purpose for more publicity, think again.

She [Dr. Flammang] wanted to study the fish more closely, but the species is rare and protected, and she could not bring any of them into her lab.

He [Dr. Suvarnaraksha] scooped two of the fish into an aquarium and made videos of them walking at different angles.

Did I miss something?

Of course on-demand won't last. It's fundamentally inefficient.

What it does do is force established quasi-monopolies that work in traditional batch operation to move closer to the balance point of the capitalist ideal (e.g. rational actors, free entry/exit to the market - the latter is the relevant issue here).

Do we know whether the moon has been tidally locked since the time of its creation, or whether it waited a while?

If the impact hypothesis is correct, would that explain the location of Procellarum?

I didn't mean fear of homosexuals as individuals, but fear of homosexuality as an act - and an act that becomes acceptable.

For example, I bet that far more people find tobacco smoking (physically and morally) repulsive, but don't have a phobia of it.

Which is why I think terms like "homophobia" are literal definitions.

I'm also reminded of the original justification for "an eye for an eye" - to limit the revenge for some crime to something just. And I do think that the perceived lack of even that (in favor of rehabilitation) is another driving factor here.

Mu.

Humans are social creatures, and the social effects far exceed the technological ones.

I think this is the k-tuple conjecture that the article talks about, but:

Look at the odd numbers: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, ... every third one is a multiple of 3, every fifth one is a multiple of 5, every seventh one is a multiple of 7, etc.

The same exact pattern holds with any stride: 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, 51, 61, 71, 81, 91 ... because if α is a multiple of β, then α+βγ is obviously also a multiple of β.

I originally thought of this in the context of twin primes. Since every third odd number is a multiple of 3, twin primes can only happen in the gaps, but the gaps are more likely to get hit by being a multiple of some other odd prime the further you go.

Now, with a stride of 10 (but still considering multiples of 3), we know that adjacent primes are much more likely if they don't have to cross the multiple of 3 gap (or rather, don't have to cross it very often). But, at the same time, there are many other smaller strides which might generate a prime even closer. While each of them is also vulnerable to the 3, their strides are smaller so they are more likely to have something* escape.

Stupid multiples of 7

I came over in one of those migrations, but still spend a lot of time at Reddit.

I spend a lot of time frustrated with Hubski's nonstandard markup (at least Markdown is somewhat of a standard, even if Reddit/StackOverflow/Github all have their own flavors).

I also observe that despite attempts at technological differentiation, Hubski's only advantages and disadvantages are those of any smaller user base.

Wait, did people not know this? I thought it was obvious.

Favorite out of context quote:

Chance has some special properties. It is a swift, consistent, and (unless your chickens all die) relatively cheap decider.

But consider also http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html#id3141241

One of my favorite quotes ever: "People will believe anything, if they want it to be true, or they fear it to be true."

From Wizard's First Rule, written by Terry Goodkind. The series starts to go steadily downhill after the first book though.

Again, you're reading something I haven't written.

If a man is only looking at you, you don't have grounds for assault.

If a man is actually assaulting you, you have every right to defend yourself.

Don't conflate different cases.

I don't think there's anything wrong with forming an opinion based on incomplete knowledge.

The problem lies in refusing to change your opinion when exposed to additional knowledge, which is probably tied to not wanting to flipflop after making an initial statement that turned out to be inaccurate.

There's also the problem of not actively educating yourself if you need to make a decision with significant consequences.

Forgive my generalizations, but women are taught from a very young age to be compliant. Neat. Quiet. Courteous. Don't make a scene. Don't draw any attention to yourself. It's just easier to be passive because that's what we're told to do from a very young age. It's a pervasive historical stereotype, and you'll be hard pressed to convince me that it has disappeared in our society. As an example, just look at how many women are terrified of asking a man out because it's not "proper."

Do remember that there is some component that is genetic (or rather hormonal, which is merely initiated by genes and may be altered) - testosterone is definitely related to both aggression and muscle growth, and is likely related to the way the brain track objects. In lower animals, estrogen will actually force the females to submit to copulation.

That said, I agree that the societal effects predominate in humans. But while it hasn't disappeared (and likely won't ever completely), it is significantly decreasing, and in Western society isn't enforced by law.

I posit that women are more likely to condemn themselves (and perhaps each other) than men are to condemn them. In my personal experience, men tend to respond very favorably to women who act definitively.

assaulting someone because they ... grabbed your tit does not qualify as "self defense."

You're giving many disparate examples. The one I quoted certainly counts.

I live in something known as civilized society.

You do realize, there is no such thing as rights. The things we call rights only exist as long as individuals take actions to defend them.

I do agree that women should have the "right" to their own body. So, which individuals do you think should be responsible for defending that right?

Do note that the author isn't talking about ... physical attacks here

Many of her examples are physical, or are threats of physical attacks. In these cases, a physical reaction is perfectly justified.

She focuses on men who talk to her for ...

That doesn't seem to be the focus of the article to me. Talking may be mere rudeness or actual harassment.

Harassment is usually defined as something like "continuing after being told not to". If you smile and nod, then no harassment is actually taking place. If you make a clear disinterest, then the offender is forced to either quit forever or cross the line into harassment, at which point you have more options.

The concept of "male entitlement" does not include "all men."

You might not denote it as such, but it definitely connotes it, and is quite harmful if you want to work for a solution. (Names and symbols do matter, no matter what we try to tell ourselves about roses).

It's like that article that was posted on Reddit (and likely elsewhere) with the title something like "Lesbian tourists arrested in Dubai". It's technically true, but gives a completely wrong impression - they were arrested for drugs, and trying to use their sexuality to cloud the issue.

I don't have any disagreement with your statistics FWIW.

I've heard that, but I assume that's mainly from hearing-only distance, not once there is visual contact with the assault.

I know there's a real problem somewhere, but I can't help but be irritated by this author.

As a man ... aggression is the language we speak; escalation forces the other party to either back down or extend themselves to an untenable position.

Half of the author's examples are cases where either punching or pepper spray would be an appropriate reaction; the other half would merit a retort of "I can do better than you" if anything.

I know I'm hardwired to pay attention to nearby women (you won't get mad at me for just looking, will you?), so I'm fairly certain I haven't witnessed most of these things happening (maybe I don't spend enough time around drunk people?). But I probably wouldn't even notice there was any problem if she was smiling.

And I'm not nearly pessimistic enough to believe that we live in a society where if a woman screamed and started struggling, no one would help her, or where we believe that men have a "right" to women's bodies. So don't call it "male entitlement" (as if it is the belief of all men) please. Call it "the negative actions of a few, which affect many".

That ... sounds better than the status quo, and is at least imaginable. But who are you going to trust that the state will protect, not persecute, the minority?

Of course, if the state's protection disappears, would that be any worse than the status quo? I'm not personally involved enough to be able to answer that.

Er, it's the proposal for how that you observed the article was lacking.

Sending in manufacturers is how we "won" Vietnam after the military lost.