- E04 - Leadership! Google, Guido van Rossum, PSF

[Alex Martelli]

Anton Vredegoor <anton.vredegoor at gmail.com> wrote:
   ...
> Ah, I see. You're approaching this from a 'speaker' scenario. You
> already have a lot of contacts, know where you can sleep, where to eat

I am active in the community, and have long been, trying to help out to
the best of my abilities.  Should I travel to some place X "on a
shoestring", while I wouldn't necessarily know _beforehand_ where to
sleep or eat, I would be able to ask around and see if anyone can offer
me a place to sleep (and maybe some food), just as I've offered them in
the past to friends visiting me in similar conditions.

This is the way communities _work_: you always offer help, as much as
you can, and you may (if you ever need it) get some help in return.


> Now going back to my claim that elitism is bad, I think you are the
> perfect proof of my point. You live in luxurious (with respect to
> community, education and financial aspects of being a computer scientist
> or programmer) conditions and can just not understand why some people
> have problems entering that same environment and privileged conditions
> as yourself.

I currently live in excellent ways, yes, but have no problem at all
understanding why some (indeed many) people, at least at some times in
their lives, do not -- the reasons are many and varied, but I have known
and often befriended huge numbers of people in "down and out"
situations, and in a few cases been able to help them back up.  People
who attempt to *guilt-trip* me into helping have never been and will
never been in that lot: in this way, I'm definitely not a typical, guilt
driven "bleeding heart".  I try to help people who are trying to help
themselves, and the kind of mixed whining and attacks which you are
producing is a great example of the very opposite: you don't want help
getting up, you want to drag others down.  That's a game I don't play.

> This attitude is very common and needs only some kind
> Blair-alike kind of selfhypnosis in order to effectively not being aware
> of lying.
> 
> What is shunned is any form selfanalysis, because it would immediately
> reveal that you yourself are violently keeping all these people out of
> opportunities (the backstabbing), in your case for example by requesting
> certain degrees, without realizing that what you are selecting for is
> not what you think it is.

I am perfectly aware of what university degrees mean and don't mean: in
a situation of asymmetric information, they're signals (ones somewhat
hard to fake) about how much somebody believes in themselves and are
willing to invest in themselves.  The literature is quite vast and
exhaustive on this analysis, and I'm reasonably well-read in it, even
though it's not my professional field.

The mental jump from this to "violently" and "backstabbing" singles you
out as a particularly weird lunatic, of course.  But it's not quite as
laughable as your unsupported assumption about "lack of self-analysis",
resting only on your erroneous premise that "it would immediately
reveal" these absurdities.  The unexamined life is not worth living, and
I do examine mine, but what the examination reveals has absolutely
nothing to do with what you baldly assert it would.

> It is selection for socialization and
> belonging to some kind of social group, not any mental ability really,

Both: there are people who belong and are socialized but just lack the
mental ability (including sticktoitiveness and stamina) to stay the
course, and others who, despite coming from the most disadvantaged
backgrounds, still make it all the way through, bases on sheer ability
and determination.  Adding the "or equivalent", and "or equivalent
experience", clauses, as present in many of our job offers, tries to
widen the catchment area to at least some people who didn't make it but
can still demonstrate they have the "mental abilities" in question.

> not even the likeliness of being able to grasp Haskell which you somehow
> seem to link to having a mathematical education. 

My working hypothesis in the matter is that there is a mindset, a kind
or way of thinking, which helps with both grasping FP languages AND
grasping abstract mathematical disciplines.

> Seriously, this is just a fraction of a unit above craniometry and you
> would be wiser if you dropped this attitude.

And hired hundreds of thousands of people a year (that's about the
number of resumes we get now, WITH the current job offers) without
selection?  Sure, that would definitely ensure wisdom.  Yeah, right.

You're so pathetic you aren't even funny.


Alex