TheAgitator.com
The Case Against Stupidity
Monday, February 16th, 2004This graced the cover of the Washington Post’s Sunday Outlook section this week. I really wish I had time to thoroughly debunk it. But to do it properly would take a week, at least. And that would be an inefficient use of my time. I read it three times. There’s not an ounce of reason or reality to be found anywhere in the article. Several times, the author manages to make a single point, and still be wrong on about four different levels!
I understand that an opinion section is supposed to be a forum where folks from across the philosophical spectrum exchange ideas. But is “willfull ignorance” really a legitimate viewpoint?
Outlook is generally the most interesting opinion section in newspaper journalism. And the Post’s op-ed page, with the likes of Anne Applebaum, Robert Samuelson, and Michael Kinsley, passed up the NY Times’ pages a long time ago.
That said, it’s awfully disappointing to see such a loathesomly craptacular piece of opinion writing get front-page treatment.
UPDATE: So I did end up Fisking the piece, for Tech Central. Because, of course, debunking it for money is a much more efficient use of my time. It will likely run next week, provided TCS doesn’t ding the piece for its length. It’s pretty damned long.
In the meantime, Micha Ghertner did an excellent job Fisking the piece himself. In fact, I’d say he did a better job than I did.
I almost looked up the definition of craptacular.
The key to understanding the problem with this article lies in this misstatement.
The concept of efficiency has been around for millions of years. Every organism evolves in a way that most efficiently enables survival.
Human beings have evolved in a way that allows us to survive using less than the full capacity of our brains for cognitive activities.
In some cases, FAR less.
Craptacular? I thought it was goiter-rific!
I’m not sure which term I like better, “Craptacular”… or “Ass Hat”. Oh well, they’re different parts of speech, so I don’t have to make a decision.
Another thing that’s “loathesomly craptacular” is a news site that makes you register (even if it’s free). I can never read New York Times, Washington Post, or Dallas Morning News articles online because I refuse to register my consumption of their otherwise-free content.
Not your fault, certainly, Radley. Just a peccadillo of mine.
What ticks me off most is the facade of investigative reporting, like he has uncovered some profound new evidence. His statement regarding PSAs, â??Positive screening tests for prostate cancer, for instance, are raising just such questions in older men who may not live long enough for their cancers to become life-threatening, and for whom treatments may be unpleasant without guaranteeing a longer life.â? This is not new or provoking, the medical community has known this for years; Physicians were the ones who did the research and proved that this was the case. Because of this research we usually donâ??t treat prostate problems in the elderly. As a matter of fact prostate cancer has a 95% occurrence rate in any man if they live long enough, but they usually donâ??t. And his airport hub analogy, asinine! How would it be more convenient for commuters to wait days to weeks for direct flights from one small town to another because the demand wasnâ??t high enough, than to wait few hours on an indirect flight??? Your right Radley, dissecting this garbage is more trouble than it is worth, unfortunately, many who read it wonâ??t have the brains to do it on there own and will read it as gospel.
To Peck, how dare those capitalist robber-baron bastards ask for something in return for providing you content which costs them money to compile, edit, and display for your consumption! For shame!
Jeb: It was never a moral question. Rather, I don’t like having to open myself to advertising and being tracked in someone’s database simply to view content that I could likely find elsewhere, or in this case, judging by Radley’s post and the responses thereto, is not worth reading in the first place. By all means, they are welcome to require registration, and more power to them if they do. I, however, will not patronize their site, which, if you understand the economics of the Internet, costs them money. Whether that loss is compensated by revenue gained through the registrations of other consumers is a business decision for them to make.
I’ll note, by the way, that the majority of respectable news merchants require no such registration, yet they have evidenced no ill as a result.
This may also be the most singular piece of awful writing I have encountered in a major publication in some time.
Ya’ll ought’a work down where the dirt’s at. We got people down here that will fight to the death to remain ignorant and further they will tear you apart if you try to get them more than minimum wage. We’re stupid and you ain’t gonna change it unless you want you head rearranged.
Hey, I think she’s onto something. I long for the time when we all spent 3-4 hours a day preparing food, when air travel was only available to the wealthy, and when I couldn’t buy salmon on any given day at an Albertson’s in the middle of a desert for $5.99/lb.
Oh, yes. Let’s go back.
I pick titles on the principle that someone will like what I like, and I have time to prescribe for a customer who needs a book but doesn’t know which one.
And to top it all off, she’d rather “prescribe” titles to her customers than make every effort to supply people with the books they might actually want.
What a twit.
Thanks for linking to that, Radley. I’m going to feel very superior for the rest of the day.
He’s right, and the rest of you are wrong. Efficiency gives us more things and more options, but it gives us less of the things that we really want out of life: a sense of the value of our work, and good relationships with other people.
When a Problem Comes Along, You Must Whip Ban It
Radley Balko has better things to do than debunk this “craptacular” case against efficiency. Believe it or not, I don’t. Since the issue in question is efficiency, it may be helpful to begin by defining it. The late Paul Heyne,…
On the basis of this article, I would once again like to state my objection to the concept of universal sufferage.
Peck:
The Post is offering you a ton of information for free and you have a problem giving them your email address? They make no money advertising to you, what do they get $5 per thousand ads displayed, and you look at 50 pages all year. The information is for demographic purposes and similar things, plus the potential benefit that you might agree to receive their newsletter or end up buying something that they offer.
My company does the same thing and we offer our users content which has cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars to create and stream. The least someone who gets something for FREE can do is offer an email address and maybe one day that person buys a product through my company instead of someone elses and he repays me without having to dig into his own pocket as he was going to buy the product anyway.
As for your claims about sites not doing it, go to ESPN.com, that has become one of the crappiest sites on the internet. I stopped visiting it until I installed a pop up blocker, it was unusable. Now they know nothing about me and make no money on their high priced ads from me.
Just out of curiousity, if the Post offered to give you free content and come over and clean your house too would that be enough to give them your email address?
Oh, I forgot, I believe I am now dumber than I was prior to reading that article. Hold on a sec, I need to get this pencil out of my ear, it looked like that would be a good place to put it, the fit was right. Damb, I don’t think it’s supposed to go in my nose either. Where the hell do I store these stupid pencils? All this freakin’ efficiency has killed my ability to think properly!
Yes, we should go back to the old days of fishing, maybe pay $30 a pound for some salmon (because of course price has no place in an economic supply and demand graph) and that family fisherman can get back into business, bringing in ten fish a day so that he can support his family on $200 a week.
Note to people with absolutely no economic sense: economic efficiency is an improtant part of keeping Americans employed, if it were not for our productivity we would send 90% of our jobs overseas, but we don’t, cause the guy making $1 an hour produces 1/50 of what the American getting $20 a hour produces.
People who do not understand basic economics should go back to writing about flowers.
Dammit, Radley, you really have trouble spelling my name correctly. It’s not your fault, though – my parents are to blame. Why couldn’t they have named me “Bob Smith” or something?
Micha –
Sorry!
I have problems with spelling in general. And believe me, I can sympathize with the hassles that come with an unusual name.
Yours,
Bradley.
Peck: I apologize, as I believe I mis-interpreted the thrust of your argument. I’ve just been reading a bunch of neo-communist “the Internet was born free” type of crap lately and I was on a rampage.
To restate my point, if you place that little extra bit of privacy as more important than getting the content on your priority scale, more power to you. You are a market force that they have to deal with, one of many. Just don’t get on your high horse about a business that doesn’t cater to your preferred content-delivery business model.
I know contractors and auto mechanics whose customer service attitudes are inspired by this reasoning.
Bones, efficiancy affords us the time to spend on relationships with others and for doing quality work, when we want to. It provides for more freedom and more choices. Is good.
efficiEncy! stupid me