Michael Sparks wrote: > Sorry to reply to the thread so late in the day, but I noticed (via > QOTW :-( ) that Anton got worked up at me suggesting that congratulating > someone with a new job was a nice idea (surprised me too - all the > Google employees I've met have been very nice people), read the > thread (got sad) and then saw this:
Strange, I *did* get worked up at you some (long) time ago, probably without you ever noticing, it was about your pythagorean proof about anyone being able to learn kamelia quickly because you had some student who had no problems whatsoever with it, http://www.atopia.tk/anamnesis/kittleren.htm while I could not find a clue what your software was supposed to do, except being something very exciting (and I think I know python well enough to not often have that problem), but I did not get worked up at you because of you congratulating Guido. To make it more clear : Congratulations Guido, with your new job! However I still maintain that I was never able to meet these fine people you speak about and which you seem to know because the cost involved (a few hundred euro to visit pycon for example) was too high compared to my food budget. What I was trying to explain was that the world gets closer and closer to the singularity (something I believe other people got worked up at *me* about) and the world is now at the stage where everything gets reinvented in about 5 years. This means that during the next 2.5 years some phenomenon like Google changing internet history (which happened in the last five years) will happen again (in a shorter time period). Since we are going to reinvent ourselves faster and faster there is no need to take old corrupt methods with us into the future. Some people (maybe suffering from a wierd kind of conceptual static typing) equate me talking about 'people having a backstabbing history' with implying those exact people actually stab other people in the back literally. 'Having a backstabbing history' can also be explained as having been into places where backstabbing was common, without implying any actual backstabbing of these people themselves, except maybe the greater whole they belonged to being instrumental to backstabbing, for example mathemathics professors helping to crack codes which are used to decipher or encode messages in a war situation. I've already mentioned somewhere that I meant it figuratively and I will further qualify it now by saying that Googles selection process does them and the world a disservice by using some kind of elitist criteria, or by hiring people who can prove that they -forced by market mechanisms no doubt- have in the past collaborated with or worked for companies that selected them on the basis of elitist criteria. The elitist selection process suffers from the same problems that for example IQ-tests have: Trying to scale something in one (or at least too few) dimensions, where that something is very, very, very multidimensional. It is insulting, inappropriate and denigrating when applied to humans. Of course, irony will have people using elitist selection processes being very personally offended by people pointing out that it is unfair. Just like those who stole my money and job opportunities now claim I'm a parasite or some wrathfull loser who doesn't want to work. In fact, although I still don't condone corruption, my vision has cleared up a lot by not eating its fruits anymore. I am not jealous at anyone still 'inside' and although I dream about trying to save people from places where people get murdered randomly (the dreaded backstabbing reference again), it gets less and less often as time goes by. My current worry is about how I can survive for another 2.5 years (the projected time period for the world to renew itself again) without me jumping off a ledge because I dont want to be (and possibly live forever without dying) with irrational people who don't deserve my company or get offed by someone who can't stand me not joining corruption. It's possible some next generation of people don't want the current population to survive because they are not advancing fast enough or lack compassion with lower lifeforms. If anything, my post was about trying to save the world from that fate by trying to induce that compassion into this newsgroup. I think it would be beneficial for our people working for google (and for google itself) if they freed themselves of any remaining corruption so that world evolution will be synchronized with social evolution and no unnecessary tensions will occur. Anton 'workout' -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list