Day: February 15, 2019, 3:59 PM

Cosmac Mistake

Chill Regular-ass Post

I refer to this sort of thing as the Cosma Shalizi approach to objecting to something.

What you do is that you observe that you cannot point to an object in the physical world that has reified or exemplifies your chosen concept, and then proclaim it doesn’t exist and isn’t worth discussing. He used IQ, but many people (stupidly) use the tactic in many other areas.

I always ask them things like, “When you look at a single water molecule, where’s the wetness?” Or, “So tell me, where is love, or honor? You say you love your wife/husband. I don’t see any love anywhere. Point me to this ‘love.’ Therefore you do not and cannot love your wife.” That’s usually when the whining starts.

It’s shocking in ways that smart people can be so terribly stupid, but the STEM approach is that if you can’t measure something it does not exist. And to many in the field, “measuring” means with an actual ruler. Alas, that ethos has infected much of the rest of the world as well.

Now, to defend Shalizi a little, maybe he’s right about IQ. But his “proof” of his correctness was an atrocious bad faith hoodwinking.

Seeing the Real Deal

Chill Regular-ass Post

It does pay off, and help desk experience, too. You see more strangeness and learn more about computers and systems (if you’re trying) on the help desk than you’ll experience anywhere else, including in college. I already knew a lot about computers before I ever worked helpdesk but after I did I knew more than god.

Then becoming a sysadmin, you actually get to apply that knowledge and see yet more strangeness that further deepens your knowledge.

People always ask, “But how did you know that was the problem? We’ve been working on this for a week.”

And the answer is always something like, “Back in 1999 or so, I saw something very similar that reminded me of this. Did some searching to confirm it and then was able to find an old registry hack I saved from ages ago.”

It seems like a magic power, but really it’s just a lot of trial and error, experience, and thinking hard about things for a very long time.

Private Law

Chill Uncategorized

I was lucky to have a computer in the house, even though we were dirt poor and lived in a trailer with holes in the floor. Fortunately, my dad was completely obsessed with computers despite being a shade-tree mechanic for a living (along with other jobs, none that paid well), so I am not sure you’d really describe me as “privileged,” exactly. Certainly lucky, though.

Sometimes, there’d be nothing in the fridge (and I mean NOTHING), and the car would be repossessed, but the computer always stayed. At the time it made my mom supremely angry but I’m glad for it. Without that computer I likely wouldn’t have my current career and my life would be much different and worse.

I never did much with assembly, though. Played with it a little when I was 6-12, but mainly copied BASIC and programs in hex out of computer magazines, tediously and by hand, and wrote some of my own.

Just not sure how useful it is to scream “privileged” all the time as some kind of invalidation of experiences. Without actually changing the systems in place, I don’t think it helps much.