Legislation from fear is the death spiral of freedom.
#politics #philosophy #opinion
Denmark seeks to legally prevent burnings of Quran or other religious scriptures
apnews.com
About Non Sequiturs
Non Sequiturs is the personal blog of Michael Argentini.
I'm a software developer and Managing Partner for Fynydd and Blue Sequoyah Technologies, the project lead for Coursabi, and Āthepedia founder. I also have several nerdy open source projects on Github.
I'd describe myself as an Oxford comma advocate, autodidact, aspiring polymath, and boffin, with a mechanical keyboard addiction. You can also find me on Mastodon.
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Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker’s 2023 commencement speech at Northwestern hits the mark.
The best way to spot an idiot? Look for the person who is cruel. When we see someone who doesn’t look like us, or sound like us, or act like us, or love like us, or live like us — the first thought that crosses almost everyone’s brain is rooted in either fear or judgment or both. That’s evolution. We survived as a species by being suspicious of things we aren’t familiar with.
In order to be kind, we have to shut down that animal instinct and force our brain to travel a different pathway. Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being. They require the mental capacity to step past our most primal urges. I’m here to tell you that when someone’s path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty, they have failed the first test of an advanced society. They never forced their animal brain to evolve past its first instinct. They never forged new mental pathways to overcome their own instinctual fears. And so, their thinking and problem-solving will lack the imagination and creativity that the kindest people have in spades.
Over my many years in politics and business, I have found one thing to be universally true: the kindest person in the room is often the smartest.
With regard to popular culture, the word woke is the new gourmet. Semantic bleaching renders words meaningless.
"Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." — Voltaire, Questions sur les Miracles, 1765
The current political climate in the United States is certainly stress testing this axiom.
Another amazing life observation by The Oatmeal. Please get this in front of everyone you know.
You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you - The Oatmeal
theoatmeal.com
Software Development is Not Coding
When asked, most people think that software development is about coding; the physical act of programming apps and platforms for servers, computers, and mobile devices. This is not the case.
Software development is the process of solving problems through software. It's a creative process that is centered on discovery and adaptation which uses tactics like programming (coding) to accomplish its ends. Likewise, software development is not the act of reusing existing software for a new purpose. That's just copying bits.
So it is important for those involved in the software development process to understand and acknowledge the following key aspects.
Discovery and adaptation is the focus.
Understanding the problem domain is the key to a successful software development process. And we know the least about a problem domain at the outset. So it doesn't make sense to plan everything out at the beginning. Software development is an exercise in learning. We learn more and more about the problem to be solved as we move through the process. And as the problem domain comes into focus we should be refining or redefining what we should be building as we learn.
Mistakes will be made.
Mistakes help us solve problems and are one way in which we learn. Embrace them. Plan for them.
We cannot predict the future.
Perfect plans are usually perfectly wrong. It is impossible to perfectly know the steps, mistakes, discoveries, interruptions, and goals for a project, nor the time impact of each, all in advance.
Estimates are guesses about the future.
Great software doesn't just manifest in one go. It springs forth in a deficient state and evolves over time. This makes guessing about its future state with any accuracy a fools errand. It also means that creating precise specifications for those guesses can be a waste of time.
Accuracy and precision are not the same. Something can be very precise but horribly wrong. This has been shown by various studies, including those in the Microsoft Press book Rapid Development by Steve McConnell. According to the book it doesn't matter how diligent or thorough an estimate may be. The data shows that when compared to a more broad, high-level, or piecemeal approach based on past experience, the error bounds are largely the same.
Right-fit planning works.
We must understand the level of precision that makes sense. For example, it doesn't make sense to plan an entire project with the same precision as planning next week's work. Likewise, planning specific deliverables for dates far out into the future is also problematic. Small time horizons increase the accuracy of our guesses.
Release often.
By deploying changes frequently, we allow the entire team to steer the direction of the project early and often. This agile approach will ensure that the final product performs as it should for its users.
Argentini’s law states that the number of people annoyed by a car’s size, appearance, and/or sound is inversely proportional to the number of hugs the driver received as a child.
A great user experience is the happy byproduct of technologies that delight with deference for user and business goals.
Ironically, though children have better hearing than adults, they don't understand nearly as much of what they hear.
My 7yo says inanimate objects inherit the gender of their owners. By extension, they can get married. Even children understand equal rights.
Remember that one cannot learn without making mistakes. Make sure your children are aware of this fact.
Be wary of taking a disagreement personally. A counter-argument that's salient and presented with respect is a welcome part of discourse.
Homosexuality isn’t a moral issue among consenting adults. Don’t confuse being incompatible with reproduction with being amoral or immoral.
I respect your right to believe what you choose. But I do not have to respect the belief you hold, especially if it's ridiculous.
Some care more about political correctness and respecting delusional beliefs than the irrelevancy of book burning compared with mass murder.
The Christian faith has the benefit of inertia powered by numbers. But so did the idea that the earth was flat.
The entirety of our populous cannot be adequately categorized within two parties representing narrow ideological extremes.
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About Non Sequiturs
Non Sequiturs is the personal blog of Michael Argentini.
I'm a software developer and Managing Partner for Fynydd and Blue Sequoyah Technologies, the project lead for Coursabi, and Āthepedia founder. I also have several nerdy open source projects on Github.
I'd describe myself as an Oxford comma advocate, autodidact, aspiring polymath, and boffin, with a mechanical keyboard addiction. You can also find me on Mastodon.
