Hey now, no insulting northern California #notallnortherncalifornians
(really sorry, couldn’t resist, please continue)
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Haha, yes! True. I love my Northern CA buddies, but, particularly when it comes to tech and culture, I’m against Silicon Valley. Don’t like what’s going on in that area. I just didn’t want to ask too specifically.
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So I’m guessing that the enthusiastic rightwing and tea party support that Gianforte received (including a flood of last-minute campaign dollars after the news of the assault hit) is an indication that some are blaming the messengers for all of us negative coverage that Trump is having to endure. This may just be the first act.
Yep. As an engineer, I think logically. Like, people who break the rules should be punished. If someone physically assaults another person, they should be arrested and charged with assault. I also understand that statistically, this is highly unusual behavior from a state level political figure, and thus newsworthy. It is also part of a worrying uptick in similar incidents, as well as antijournalistic sentiment.
What @andybaldman is doing isn’t in line with any belief system or philosophy or educational training. It’s bootlicking, plain and simple. “Me like power, me like strongman”. It’s as transparent as all those fake libertarians I work with, who want the free market to decide only because the “free market” is historically biased toward them.
I also wonder if the journalist being named Ben Jacobs (wink wink nudge nudge) has anything to do with how @andybaldman feels about this.
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There’s no rationalizing here. I never implied all men act a certain way. If that’s how you read it, you are misinterpreting what I said, and I apologize for not being clearer. I was stating that they were exemplifying behavior that is found in males across species (which is why I personally find the story uninteresting). Not every male does it, but it is a thing that some males can (and do) do.
I also never implied @chogliz was being irrational. Please indicate what statements you are referring to, and I will clarify.
I’ve got to run at the moment, but hopefully this thread will stay open long enough for me to address the other comments later (and design a high-amperage power supply for @john_c). 
(I’m in NH btw, not CA.)
Amperage?! No self-respecting electrical engineer says amperage. It’s current. Even I know that.
When we talk about the concept, we say current. When referring to a rating, amperage is an acceptable usage.
I’m really unclear (and curious) as to how you’re drawing this conclusion, when I specifically stated I wasn’t interested in right or wrong, good or bad, judging, attacking, or defending either side, and that none of that was of interest to me. That includes liking or disliking either side. Whose boots am I licking here, exactly?
And what significance does Ben Jacobs’ name have? Being an appreciator of language, I find humor in the wacky wordplay aspect of a guy whose last name translates loosely to ‘John strong’ being all over the news for assaulting a guy, (and that no news outlets, late-night shows, or other commentators have made note). But I never said I liked or disliked either him, or Jacobs. No value judgments on my part have been made (or even implied) either way, as they don’t exist.
Wait, and I’m the one being accused of generalizing?
I don’t know what fields of engineering you guys work in, but in my experience, engineering has no monopoly on people with strong or difficult personalities. I worked in high-speed data communications for 20 years (you can google my name, if you’re really that interested), with with plenty of people in Silicon Valley, India, Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. And there was no significantly higher percentage of difficult people than in any friends’ or girlfriends’ other professions. If anything, the people I worked with in a global market tended to be, as a whole, more accommodating than usual, due to the diversity of cultures in my particular field. But to each workplace his own.
I’m also interested to know what about my views, @john_c, you find infuriating. I find it ironic that an intentionally objective, unemotional, non-aggressive view can bring out such strong reactions. (And I do not mean that in a sarcastic or snarky way.)
Okrent’s Law:
The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true
So, not decrying something as outrageous when it clearly is outrageous gives that thing legitimacy. In this case, it gives violence, especially against reporters, legitimacy. It’s also disingenuous to say that you don’t know that there’s been strange trends of antijournalistic sentiment, right wing political figures advocating violence, and even violence toward reporters, unless you landed from outer space yesterday.
FTFY. Don’t pretend you don’t know.
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This is what happens when “rational” people have done absolutely zero study into structural logic which is primarily driven by fields outside of the sciences. While math provides a language to express observable phenomena, it doesn’t translate very well into applied reason. It’s why there is a decent possibility @andybaldman is just a jerk and doesn’t know it; he emotionally feels like he is expressing reasoned language but has no experience in the subject - which means that his sense of “balance” is distorted by forcing oranges into apples to make the apples and oranges equal. It’s how he doesn’t even possess the empathy to recognize fault by how his words are perceived because they were “technically” inoffensive from a single perspective he views as correct, which is how his circular logic functions “i know I said everything correctly, therefore no one can perceive my actions as incorrect.”
That or he is aware of what he is doing and you are correct. I mean he did just claim that engineering was more accomidating of people because of global markets, so it’s pretty hard to tell. I know from my experience in the global tech market it’s certainly not true in the Bay Area, Colorado, Texas, or in a few different countries in Asia.
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A lot of engineers have political beliefs that don’t really account for irrational actors. Libertarianism, for example. Then again, when pressed, most libertarians I’ve met say that the inequality libertarianism causes is a feature, not a bug. They’re basically soft peddled Republicans.
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‘Clearly outrageous’ is subjective on your part. (And it’s also coming from a place of emotion.) I choose not to jump on the hatewagon for either side, and look at this (and most situations) as objectively as I possibly can. If you want to fault me for that, that’s your gig.
You can quote how many examples of violence, in how many instances of reporters interacting with people? Whether or not it’s a trend is subjective. Statistically speaking, is it significant?
One can attempt to cast my objectivity as a lack of empathy, but in my view (which again is only mine, you need not share it), I know what it’s like to incite someone to violence (both intentionally and unintentionally). I also know what it feels like to be bothered by someone to the point of wanting to punch them (and I suspect you do too). So in this situation, I actually can empathize with both sides (can you?), which is why it was uninteresting to me as news.
I see this incident as two dogs in a dogpark. Dog 1 and Dog 2 meet. Dog 1 sniffs Dog 2, and Dog 2 doesn’t want to be sniffed then and there, for whatever reason, which ultimately is irrelevant. Dog 1 tries again a second time, and Dog 2 rebuffs a second time. Dog 3 tries a third time, and Dog 2 snaps.
The exchange that was caught on tape happens regularly, across all species, all over the planet. Hardly outrageous in my view. It can be two people in their cars, or two guys at a bar. It’s no different than the time Buzz Aldrin punched a guy for accusing him of faking the moon landing. (Was he attacking the media then?) Again, I’m not attempting to justify either side in either instance, so don’t go down the rabbit hole of trying to defend either as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, as neither had anything to do with the individuals’ reactions, IMO.
They’re both (in my view) simply examples of people getting annoyed at other people, to the point of snapping. And when it happens on camera, it becomes news. The psychology of the individuals and the situation is what caused this incident to happen, not party affiliations or larger trends of antijournalistic sentiment (again, in my view, which you needn’t share).
As Feynman once taught, fitting the data to the line you want to see, isn’t objective, and it isn’t science.
Again, you’re interpreting my words as generalizing, when I was specifically expressing my experience, in my field, with the groups of people I interacted with. Yours (or anyone else’s) need not be the same, and it’s probably heavily influenced by who you are. Feel free to recount your experiences here. (What field do you work in?)
I know from my personal experience, in the international standards bodies that I worked in and with, that the groups were very culturally diverse. But it caused people to have to be a little more patient and accepting of each other, in order to get around cultural differences in order to work together on the technical issues we were there to solve. Again, YMMV. Feel free to tell me more about you.
(Also, there’s no reason for the passive aggression of talking about me in the 3rd person. I’m right here.)
Why should I tell you? You don’t care. You’re just idly curious what variety of irrational ape you’re having to deal with today.
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make sure you concentrate real hard with it!
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Sometimes when an individual comes into a group and acts in ways they find awkward or controversial, they begin interacting with one another in ways that exclude that individual. You can’t possibly object to that; it happens in a lot of social animals.
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Oh, I’m aware, and you’re absolutely right on the behavior. Still doesn’t hurt to call it out.
Libertarianism is Exhibit A in the difference between theory and practice.
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