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Displayed name	*i
Member number	6
Title	The Establishment
Postcount	3726
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Registered	Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00

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No tag backs! in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Wednesday, November 1 2006 19:33 Profile #25 It just goes to show we need to start manufacturing more durable kids... :P -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Ghandi? You must be joking! in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Wednesday, November 1 2006 19:31 Profile #26 Never really liked this poll. I think the many of the questions could be written in a much more neutral tone. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
The SpiderWebWorld in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Tuesday, October 31 2006 19:50 Profile #28 I'd say I represent the Illuminati. ;) -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
The SpiderWebWorld in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Tuesday, October 31 2006 17:19 Profile #18 quote: Originally written by Tyranicus.: I challenge you to come up with a country with a decent allegorical equivalence to me. Andorra, small and unimportant. :P -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Wealth. in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Tuesday, October 31 2006 05:24 Profile #101 quote: Free Market: Do you think scientists would be better of under socialism? Capitalism versus socialism is a false dichotomy. You need not adopt the whole system, so I'm not going to fall into this trap of saying either yes or no. The answer I can give is, both. quote: i: I suppose I did say basic research was lame. I regret it, we were talking about something else at the time, and that statement was ignorant. I can't say I agree with you about offering incentives for scientists, however. They get paid well enough, as you said. Odds are most will not make a major breakthrough. Why reward something so fickle? Fair enough on basic research. The offering incentives part is sort of what happens now. Government grants pay for research and their salaries. The issue is whether society should* do this and to what degree. As for getting paid well enough, I said they get paid decently compared to other occupations. Fortunately, as I've also said, money is not the primary reason people go into fundamental science, it's for less tangible things. Otherwise all scientists would be engineers or applied scientists, they tend to make more. Additionally, fundamental science requires a lot more than money, it requires excellent rigorous training and education. Why reward something so fickle? Well, let's think about insurance. You pay for insurance in case something bad happens, you are not totally wiped out financially. You can, in principle, pay for one month and something happens, pay for five years before an event, or never have an occurrence. Either way you are paying a nominal amount to offset a big risk. Fundamental science is anaolgous to this. However, rather than pay for reimbursement if something bad happens, we pay for a possible benefit. Yeah, it's an expensive gamble, but the payoffs are immense. To use our example of quantum mechanics, had it not been discovered, life would be substantially different today. Entire industries would not exist, we would not have many modern appliances, it's likely that many lives are saved because of fast digital communication. The payoff is so huge, I honestly think it's immeasurable. Now all discoveries are not going to be huge, but the occasional discovery tends to have high yield. Yeah, I suppose we throw a lot of money at it, but I don't like the alternative of not having it. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Wealth. in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Monday, October 30 2006 22:36 Profile #95 quote: Sure, whatever. What exactly do you expect me to do about this? Should we have paid Einstein and those others for the future developments that would have been built upon their discoveries? Should we pay them retroactively? I don't understand what I am supposed to say to this. You had the same comments, i. My question is, how exactly are we supposed to compensate these scientists for something that we won't even know will be useful until decades later? What does this have to do with the economy anyway? Well, I don't expect you to do anything except admit that basic research is vital to the health of the economy in the long term rather than discounting those who do it as "lame". Otherwise, what you say is tautology: society does not value it therefore it is not worthy of being valued by society. As for what we can do, we can offer incentives to get people to use their talents to go into basic research. It's difficult to reward these things because we don't know what needs to be rewarded until long after the fact. However, we can, as a society, actively encourage such things. As for the MBA vs. PhD, I pretty much agree with Alec minus the vulgarity. Business' goal is to make money, as such they tend to have lots of it. Since there are no rules restricting how much individuals can be paid, it is in the best interest of the company to give a decent share to attract and retain the best people. Scientific ventures tend to not have the lucrative cash flows big business does. As such, they cannot really afford to give the same sized piece of the pie their MBA counterparts do. It's not advantageous to them. Sure they want to keep good people, but you cannot pay money you do not have. The problem is basic science is not a money maker. Fortunately, enough people care about science enough such that it does not matter. So where does this get us, well, this is a negative consequence to the pure free market. It leads to people with an MBA to making more money than those with a PhD, despite the skill discrepency. Paying MBAs a greater share is much more advantageous (as they have money) than paying a PhD more (where money is more scarce). Bottom line, the free market is not perfect and treating it as such is no more than religious faith. [ Monday, October 30, 2006 22:40: Message edited by: i ] -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Wealth. in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Monday, October 30 2006 20:38 Profile #79 Quoth the first definiton of inane at dictionary.com quote: inane: lacking sense, significance, or ideas; silly I would say some of his statements conform to this. Whether or not you agree is another matter. :P -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Wealth. in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Monday, October 30 2006 20:03 Profile #77 Alec, please don't resort to name calling. As inane as some of his statements are, there's no need to get overly personal, it only serves to justify his ego. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Wealth. in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Monday, October 30 2006 16:58 Profile #69 quote: i: I have never changed my definitions. I defined the strong as having both intelligence and charisma. Scientists can have all the intelligence in the world, yet it will only ever get them half way at the most. If this Schrodinger and Heisenberg were so great, how come they didn't sell their ideas better? A great idea is worthless if you can't apply it to the world we live in. Those that can apply it must understand it (intelligence) and also understand what people want (charisma) and thus they will make more money in the end. There should be no reason why someone can't partake in both areas of science, basic and applied. Your ideas depend on a very simplistic, monocausal, and linear view of the world. Unfortunately, science and discovery (and much of the real world) are inherently not so. You really should educate yourself (or at least do a better job of showing you actually know) on how the biological and physical sciences work before spouting this stuff. Why didn't Shrodinger/Heisenberg market their ideas better? Well, it could be there was little market at the time. The technology and the engineering of doing these things on an atomic level were not developed. That took billions of dollars and thousands of researchers. Now, had quantum mechanics not been developed, there would have been little motivation to invest the money to do the engineering. You cannot have incremental development as it makes no sense to go in that direction. It's a quasi chicken and egg problem if we demand the application come with the theory. While you could say Schrodinger should have done the engineering himself, I say, get serious. That's impossible even if all he did was work on that goal. There is no way he alone could have come up with the sheer resources to do it. Ironically, quantum theory did have a "market". It's called an atomic bomb and it is quite effective. Note that the Manhattan Project was a massive effort just to make an application. Einstein could have told you how to make a laser too, he posited the idea. He didn't have the technology to make one. We didn't have that until the 1960s billions of dollars later. That doesn't mean he is not a brilliant person. Basically, by your metrics there are no scientific geniuses I can see. I challenge you to name one scientist in the past 200 years who meets your criteria of strong. quote: Alorael: I dispute your claim that an MBA is more valuable than a PhD. It depends completely on what you do with said degree. Someone with an MBA could end up as a bean counter making mere tens of thousands a year, while someone with a PhD could get a decent job, write books, invent, anything. The same argument goes for teachers I suppose. Amount of education, while important, still comes second to overall skill. In fact, there are plenty of people with no education at all that manage to find success at the highest levels. On average an MBA makes more than a PhD, despite having less formal and rigorous training. Yes, we can look at individual examples and counter examples. However, that tells us little. Why, ET, does a person, on average, with an MBA make more than a PhD? [ Monday, October 30, 2006 17:05: Message edited by: i ] -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Xeon, The Beginning in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Monday, October 30 2006 16:26 Profile #11 All right, I'm going to step in here and say a few things: 1) What you are proposing is copyright infringement and is, for all practical purposes, illegal. I suggest you stop now. 2) The whole combining Avernum and Geneforge thing has been proposed before. For many reasons, it is not a good idea. Aside from being ridiculous, it reeks of uncreativity. 3) If you want to be a game designer, it's a lot harder than you think. C/C++ are not particulary easy languages to learn unless you have some background already. Start easy with Visual Basic, it will teach you how to program. Developing effective algorithms takes a decent mathematical background (think high school level at least) and a lot of practical experience. Writing effective stories is perhaps even more difficult. You see, as I grew older I came to realize the Exile series (yes, I started playing then) were not particularly effective masterpieces plotwise. Not to say the Exile games are bad, they have their own charm. However, we've seen them all already. My advice on writing a good story is this: focus on the individual characters, not large groups of faceless soldiers, a lot of good will flow from that. By all means, we want to encourage game developers here. We obviously like to play games. However, realize the difficulties and the pitfalls. What you have now will most likely not be well received. 4) Finally, let's not be too hard on the kid. Let's give constructive advice from now on. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Wealth. in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Monday, October 30 2006 09:43 Profile #60 As I said, you don't become a scientist for the money. There are far better ways to accomplish that goal. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Wealth. in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Monday, October 30 2006 05:20 Profile #53 quote: Teachers: As I said before, secondary school teachers do not need much education, thus they get paid little. If they are really good at what they do, they should get more education and become a college professor. Staying a high school teacher shows lack of ambition, a quality of the weak. They may really enjoy what they do, and that is great, but it still shows complacence. Complacence should not be rewarded. You act as if this is a one dimension scale where college professor better than high school teacher better than grade school teacher. This is NOT true. Each level has its own individual challenges. Would a college professor a great grade school teacher? Probably not. While it is true the number of facts that need to be taught are at a very low level, dealing with younger children in a classroom setting is not trivial. You need an entire different approach to things to be a great grade school teacher. In other words, it's a different skill set, but your limited worldview for whatever reason sees this skill set as inferior. It's not, it's different. People don't teach grade school or high school because they can't teach college. On the contrary, I had several teachers who taught college and then came to teach high school. The people who taught high school often preferred its unique challenges. Many of them said teaching high school was more difficult because you cannot make a lot of assumptions about background that you can in college. ET: There's something called Teach for America. They would put you, as a recent college grad, in some of the most difficult schools in the US. I suggest you try it. If you can come out of that and honestly say that teaching high school is easy, then I would be impressed. quote: Science: I have always had the impression that all scientists were paid well, given the amount of education they are required to have, is this not true? Anyway, I can see why fundamental researchers would get paid less. Major developments are rare, and to make such discoveries requires little incite into the needs of humanity. Remember, understanding humans (charisma) is an important quality of the strong, and it is a quality not necessary to discover important things. Scientists get paid decently, typically 40k-120k US dollars per year. Some can make more, others less. Fact is people less skilled with a business degree tend to make more. You said everyone should be paid according to skill not utillity, now you seem to be changing your tune by adding new skills and shifting things around to fit your argument. Are you a flip-flopper? Sounds like shifting justifications to me. The point you still haven't addressed is that fundamental science makes all of the applications possible, requires more raw scientific talent, and still get paid less. Pardon Schrodinger and Heisenberg for not seeing all of digital logic when developing quantum mechanics. If not for them, Bill Gates would not be a billionaire. In fact, computers as they exist today would not. What I get from you is that applications are more important than the basic science itself. Under your logic, only the "weak" (or whatever warped definition you are using today) should go into basic science, a MUCH more difficult area of study. If this were true, we would hardly ever see advancement at a fundamental level because all "strong" minds would go toward using existing science and making it applications. Really, I want to know your justification for this. Applications are easy, yet make more. How does this jive to getting paid according to skill? -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Wealth. in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Sunday, October 29 2006 18:34 Profile #48 quote: Teachers: I suppose secondary school may have failed me. But hey, I seem to be doing fine in college despite my poor educational history. I blame my inherent intelligence. Nothing like ducking an argument by braging about yourself... :rolleyes: Seriously, in light of what we've said, I'd like you to respond to the part about how teachers should get paid less. quote: Scientists: I must have more information, then. What is the difference between all the different kinds of research you guys are mentioning? And how much do scientists in each one of those field of research get paid? Give me something to work with here. That's a difficult question to answer because science is so large and by no means monolithic. My perspecive is that research and development comes from two primary sources: government grants/contracts and industry. Research itself can be (not perfectly) broken up into two categories: fundamental science and development. Industry largely focuses on the latter. They develop and sell a product, be a new medicine, a more efficient automotive engine, etc. These scientists tend to make the most and are more focused on shorter-term, get a product to market goals. As such, one can argue that they are most productive. Industry tends to do little basic research as it often does not pay off in the short term. Universities tend to do a lot of the fundamental science with some application. This includes things like protein folding studies, quantum chemistry, chaotic/non-linear behavior, etc. The payoffs for these are dubious, but when they succeed, open up whole new areas of science allowing for application development. University researchers tend to make less than their industry colleagues. Primary funding is from government and some from industry. Laboratories are more difficult. A place like Fermilab does a lot of fundamental particle physics, or pure science if you will. whereas Los Alamos does "mission based" science geared toward the nuclear weapons program and related projects of national security. They do some fundamental science, but usually geared toward an application. Pay depends highly on the laboratory but is typically more than a university and less than in industry. The main difference between a lab and industry is that the "product" is more abstract like national security. I know this is a very vague outline. One could write whole books on the subject because it is so diverse. Before I want to write more, I'd like to know your perception of how science works. To be fair, Los Alamos does a LOT more than nuclear weapons. However, a large share of its funding goes for that work. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Xeon, The Beginning in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Sunday, October 29 2006 11:17 Profile #15 No double posting, please. Consider this your warning. It doesn't matter. If I decide to make a game that's a thiny veiled game based on Super Mario Bros. then Nintendo has a right to take away all my profits. It's called copyright infringement. Jeff owns the Shapers, Serviles, and all those creations. You cannot make money off of them without his permission. Not that you probably will anyway. You are barely coherent on these boards, I doubt your game would be much better. Also, the basic outlines you've given (King Doom) sounds pretty weak. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Xeon, The Beginning in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Sunday, October 29 2006 10:40 Profile #3 Two things: 1) You are hardly coherent. I have bits and pieces of words, but no really clear flow of thought. 2) This game sounds like fodder for copyright infringement. For now, I'll leave this topic open and give you a chance to address these issues. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Serviles! in Geneforge Series
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Sunday, October 29 2006 10:19 Profile #25 Your post, aside from being in the wrong location, fails to answer much of anything. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Xeon, The Beginning in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Sunday, October 29 2006 10:17 Profile #1 Well, good luck, but this really should go in general. Also, rather than a game of 20 questions, why don't you tell us about it first? -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Serviles! in Geneforge Series
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Sunday, October 29 2006 10:14 Profile #23 You do realize, depending on what you do, that this may be totally illegal? -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Avernum 3 - HEEELP! in The Avernum Trilogy
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Sunday, October 29 2006 08:40 Profile #1 If you join the anama and change your mind, there's a price to pay for the power they give. You might be able to find some low level trainers in Upper Exile, Fort Emergence, and the Tower of Magi. Otherwise, it looks like you're stuck with the editor. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
When is the game coming out? in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Sunday, October 29 2006 06:06 Profile #3 quote: Geneforge 4: Rebellion is Spidweb's Software's next game in the Geneforge series, due out by the end of 2006 on Mac and early 2007 on PC. All speculation and hype goes here. If you are a Mac user, before the holidays. PC, probably three months or so after. It will be out when the game is ready, relatively free of bugs, and the combat has been balanced. When this occurs depends on what happens and you can't get a great estimate. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Wealth. in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Sunday, October 29 2006 06:00 Profile #37 quote: I said people should make money according to their skill, not according to the value of their job...Scientists, basic research is lame, so they get paid a lame amount of money. If they are truly skilled and they end up discovering something useful, like the cure for a disease, their wealth will reflect this. So basically Darwin was a moron, Einstein was such an idiot I bet that he couldn't button his own shirts, Bohr, Schrodinger, Tesla, Francis and Crick, all intellectual illiputians with no skill whatsoever. Make way for the real geniuses in the software, computer, and pharmaceutical industries. Clearly they have much more skill than those other ignoramouses and their pay reflects that. Not like anything they did supplied the foundation for all of the other real intellectual achievements. There is an inherent contradiction here. Developing fundamental science takes a LOT of skill. People who do fundamental research in quantum mechanics modelling to develop a basis for making better transistors generally don't make the big bucks as the team that actually engineers it. However, such an activity would not be possible without the basic research. Hate to break it to you, comparatively, the development part of R&D is generally the "easy" side, yet it makes the most money. Even "easier" is the business and marketing side. Generally the most money goes to the latter. Had I, as a scientist, wanted to make the most money the easiest way possible, I would not be a scientist, I'd be in business. quote: I said people should make money according to their skill, not according to the value of their job...Doctors, very skilled, and they get paid well. True, but I'm willing to bet if only a handful of people got sick and injured in a given year, then they would not be making a lot of money. Fact is, the value of the job matters in this case. * * * The problem with your worldview is that if everyone aspired to do what you say is good, we would get nowhere. There would be no good teachers, no fundamental science, because all the "skilled" people would be a bunch of doctors engaged in bloodletting and a slew of bankers. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Serviles! in Geneforge Series
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Saturday, October 28 2006 12:13 Profile #16 quote: Originally written by XxX: How how tell me how might it work? please tell me That's one thing you are going to have to figure out yourself. Do some research on how the scripts work, experiment with them, and then try modifying them. We can't help you out with every little thing. [ Saturday, October 28, 2006 12:14: Message edited by: i ] -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726* \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Libertarianism - yay or nay? in General
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Saturday, October 28 2006 04:51 Profile #66 quote: Gilded Age: A poor example of why libertarianism doesn't work. A major theme of this time period was the government scandals involving the contracting of large scale construction projects, such as railroads. High ranking officials in Grant’s administration were involved in such a scandal, and Cheney is probably engaging in such practices as we speak. I think this qualifies as government interference, and thus cannot be counted against capitalism. True, but not the only thing going on, the time was far more complicated than that. Businesses didn't, on their own, seek to improve the plight of the worker really. Not saying that business is inherently corrupting, it's not. However, business without any government to constrain it will likely lead to the same result of class division. The reason is there is little short term economic incentive to help the have nots. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Personal Flair in Blades of Avernum
*i The Establishment Member # 6	written Friday, October 27 2006 16:30 Profile #1 Well, depending on the situation, you could make them mention others and their feelings about those other individuals. That way, at least, they aren't all living in a social vacuum. Otherwise, write a few sentences on each character, their personality, likes/dislikes, occupation, etc. For instance, this person is a blacksmith, he doesn't really like the city he lives in and wishes he could go live in the mountains. His wife and child died from a plague about 10 years ago. Also, if you bring him some exotic spices, he will give you a discount on his items. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 \| Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00

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