A visual representation of Paul Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement, also called the Argument Pyramid. Each layer in the pyramid can also be referred to as a numbered Disagreement Hierarchy level. For example, name-calling is sometimes referred to as DH1, while refutation is sometimes referred to as DH6.

In his words and from his essay, How to Disagree:

The web is turning writing into a conversation. Twenty years ago, writers wrote and readers read. The web lets readers respond, and increasingly they do—in comment threads, on forums, and in their own blog posts.

Many who respond to something disagree with it. That’s to be expected. Agreeing tends to motivate people less than disagreeing. And when you agree there’s less to say. You could expand on something the author said, but he has probably already explored the most interesting implications. When you disagree you’re entering territory he may not have explored.

The result is there’s a lot more disagreeing going on, especially measured by the word. That doesn’t mean people are getting angrier. The structural change in the way we communicate is enough to account for it. But though it’s not anger that’s driving the increase in disagreement, there’s a danger that the increase in disagreement will make people angrier. Particularly online, where it’s easy to say things you’d never say face to face.

If we’re all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So here’s an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy

See also: solving disputes.

Not to be confused with arguments that rest on the shoulders of other arguments, ala, an Argument Pyramid where an argument is an explanation, reasoning, rational, or story.

While I agree with the majority of Graham’s points, I do disagree with one of his main rationales (i.e., arguments). Graham says:

[W]hile DH levels don’t set a lower bound on the convincingness of a reply, they do set an upper bound. A DH6 response might be unconvincing, but a DH2 or lower response is always unconvincing.

If I’m reading Graham correctly, he’s saying that disagreeing by using ad-hominem and name-calling tactics are “always unconvincing.” However, then he says:

The most obvious advantage of classifying the forms of disagreement is that it will help people to evaluate what they read. In particular, it will help them to see through intellectually dishonest arguments. An eloquent speaker or writer can give the impression of vanquishing an opponent merely by using forceful words. In fact that is probably the defining quality of a demagogue.

I’m left wondering: If an eloquent speaker or writer does successfully “give the impression of vanquishing an opponent merely by using forceful words,” does this leave the opponent or, often more importantly, the unnamed third party in any dispute (the observer) convinced of their argument? Often, at least in my experience, the answer is yes. In fact, the widespread “successes” of demagogues are a testament that it’s not always necessary to be correct—that is, to be truthful or, in Graham’s words, intellectually honest—in one’s assertions to either realize a particular intent or to sway people’s minds, but rather one merely be right—that is, to be perceived as the winner of the dispute.

I both personally appreciate and sympathize with Graham’s clear and noble intent to bring more happiness to more people. I even agree that using higher DH levels will generally achieve more happiness during dispute resolution, but I remain unconvinced that higher DH levels are always more convincing (or, “useful,” or “effective”) than lower ones. This is not to discount the usefulness of understanding DH levels. After all, one must know the rule to break it well.

Perhaps the most useful example of situations where lower DH levels are, potentially, more useful is applicable to leadership. For example, David Logan speaks of 5 “tribal” stages of leadership. Stage 1 tribes are, in his words, “a group where people systematically sever relationships from functional tribes, and then pool together with people who think like they do.” People in a “stage 1 tribe” may be gang members, prison inmates, or anyone else who, effectively, believes that “life sucks.” Logan describes “tribes” from stage 1 all the way up through stage 5. A stage 3 tribe, he explains, “is the one that hits closest to home for many of us because it’s in stage 3 that many of us move. And we park. And we stay. Stage 3 says, ‘I’m great and you’re not.’”

Indeed, Logan’s not just talking about some nebulous notion of community, he’s talking about the way people move between communities, and, moreover, how they talk to each other when they do that—he’s talking about communication. Now, it should almost go without saying that convincing people of something is simply one part of communication, and if one is to communicate convincingly with others, one ought know how others communicate. Moreover, one ought identify these others explicitly: opponent(s), comrade(s), and observer(s).

How do each of these groups communicate? In what “tribal stages” are these three groups? In my experience, and in many disputes, one is attempting to convince one’s observers rather than one’s opponents, and the more observers there are—such as is afforded by the Internet’s development, as Graham states—the less likely it is that all of these observers are in the same tribal stage.

So Graham is correct when he says that “you find there is a lot more meanness down in DH1 than up in DH6.” But if we are willing to accept Logan’s conclusion that “leaders need to be able to talk at all the levels so that [one] can touch every person in society,” then Graham is incorrect when he asserts that “[y]ou don’t have to be mean when you have a real point to make. In fact, you don’t want to. If you have something real to say, being mean just gets in the way.”

I think, actually, it’s quite the contrary. Sometimes, being “mean” is the point. Moreover, depending on the context and, yes, perhaps counterintuitively, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As Walt Whitman once famously said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then: I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

For antagonism, dearest loves, is not in fact the inverse of intimacy.

Here’s the Ten Commandments as listed on Wikipedia:

1. I am the Lord your God
2. You shall not make for yourself an idol
3. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God
4. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
5. Honor your father and mother
6. You shall not murder
7. You shall not commit adultery
8. You shall not steal
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife

Well, it certainly sounds like Insert-Your-Favorite-Deity is having a bit of a power trip. Let’s take a closer look at these commandments, but this time let’s phrase them all in the affirmative.

1. I am the Lord your God
2. You shall identify falsehoods and treat them as such
3. You shall respect the power of words, names, and language
4. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
5. Honor your father and mother
6. You shall let other living beings live
7. You shall honor the relationship contracts that you enter and those of others
8. You shall honor the property of others
9. You shall uphold truth as you have seen it
10. You shall strive for your own happiness

Doesn’t that sound infinitely better already? Interestingly, I feel that this rephrasing not only covers more ground (e.g., “You shall honor the property of others” turns “You shall not steal” into protections against stealing and vandalism), but it’s also a lot more inclusive of diversity.

Now let’s take this one step further and rephrase even the ones that were originally affirmative so that they not only reflect positive ideals, but also engender self-empowerment in the reader. Now my ten commandments read as follows:

1. I am lord over my own body and mind
2. I identify falsehoods and treat them as such
3. My power comes from words, names, and language
4. I honor my memories and choose my traditions
5. I honor my chosen family
6. I protect and create free life
7. I demand respect for the relationship contracts I enter and grant respect to those of others
8. I gift wealth to others
9. I uphold my own convictions
10. I spread joy

I wonder what kind of world we would live in today if this list had been the Ten Commandments so fervently adhered to. Since nothing in life is unchangeable, I’m going to start believing that these self-empowering words are the Ten Commandments for me.

See all On Bullshit videos.

Millions of dollars that are supposed to fight terror are actually going to the very worst kind of pork barrel programs. Meanwhile, many real homeland security needs – like those in New York City – remain unmet.

Unfortuantely, this is usually what happens in any large organization. Money is budgeted, then siphoned off for supposedly useful purposes. The problem is that the people doing the grant-giving for certain purposes don’t know the first thing about what is needed to fulfill that need. The result is the worst of human nature: people apply for “free money” in the name of the grant-giver’s ideals.

See the report (PDF).

AboutUs claims to be

a wiki whose goal is to create a free and valuable Internet resource containing information both about websites and other related data. The site was pre-populated with information about many different websites and thousands of updates are now being made by people each day.

This strikes me as an interesting (and vague) concept, not because of its novelty (after all, Yahoo! did very much the same thing before even Google got into the information harvesting frenzy) but because of its methodology. The site bears an obvious resemblance to Wikipedia in more ways that one. It runs the same software (MediaWiki), is a wiki, and openly calls for help from the global community to keep its information accurate and growing.

But really, how meta can we usefully get, right? How long do you think it’ll take before a web site proclaiming to be a valuable resource for information on web site directories pops up?

Trial by Journal

I was called once, sent to the jury box and spoke a little bit about myself, answering questions from a sheet of paper in a narrative form. Ultimately, I was excused from the trial and that was the furthest towards being a juror I got. I spoke to several other people, all of them women and all of the older than I am, during my time at the courthouse. One of the women I spoke with, a graduate student studying neuroscience, was selected for the same case that I was excused for.

A few folks have asked me why I wasn’t selected. I can only say that I don’t really know, and I’m not really concerned with the matter. If I had to hazard a guess, however, I’d say that it’s because very few people know what to make of me when they hear me present about myself.

Case in point, during the voir dire (French for “see and say,” the part of juror selection where you speak a bit about yourself), plenty of folks turned their heads at me in surprise. First, when I mentioned that I have completed neither college nor high school, again when I said I am barely making a living doing web consultancy work, building, maintaining, and developing web sites for clients, and finally when I mentioned that My brother was mugged once and had his glasses stolen.

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And yes, we were under oath. The only semi-direct question I was ever asked was by the (very creepy looking) defense attorney who said, Mr. Moscovitz, you have no prior jury experience, and I answered a very plain, No, I have not.

So why didn’t they pick me? Who the hell knows. They didn’t pick a bunch of other people either, so perhaps they didn’t like my hair for all I know.

What I do know is that I am supposed to be compensated for my time with eighty dollars from the State of New York sometime in the next eight to twelve weeks. Even better, I spent the vast majority of my time reading my tech books and working on my web site. If I could keep getting paid forty dollars a day to do that, I’d volunteer for jury service! (Um, provided I don’t actually get selected to sit on a case.)

Some New Furniture

Anyway, that is that, as they say, and it was certainly an educational experience. On Wednesday afternoon, after we were released for the day I went to see my father who offered to buy me some cheap cabinets. I have two of them now, each with four shelves, one white and one black, leaning against the wall waiting to be assembled.

He also bought me a demented laundry hamper (its legs are twisted out of shape and for all I know it’s almost broken already) and a toaster oven. I’m looking forward to utilizing the toaster oven, but I don’t know exactly what for yet. First comes groceries, then comes toasteries, then comes the maymay with the dinner…cabbage?

Random Thoughts and Impulsive Musings

Tired

Bah, I’m tired. I’m pretty much convinced I have DSPS (an acronym for Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome), a condition which basically fucks with your ability to get to sleep at any reasonable hour, despite exhaustion. This is very different from insomnia, which never really rung true for me.

Supporting a Friend

Another noteworthy point to mention is that an acquaitance from the Bipolar Disorder Meetup Group (who is quickly becoming a friend) called me Wednesday night at around nine o’clock. I could instantly tell that something was wrong. She told me she needed to talk to another bipolar, someone who won’t think I’m just totally crazy, y’know and I happily obliged.

We spoke for a half hour about mood swings and triggers and other people’s perceptions and ways to deal with it all. In fact, I wish I would have recorded that conversation because it would have made a great podcast. Which reminds me, I should learn more about podcasting.

More Website Donations

On another front, my father donated an incredible fifty dollars to my web site fund through my PayPal donation form. He said, part jokingly, that he was so embarassed not to have been the first contributor that he put in extra cash. (See how great your donation was, Chris?)

Snail-Junk-Mail

Last and probably least, I keep getting weird mail addresse to various different people in my inbox. It started off a week after I moved in here with a single, small letter. Then there were two letters, then three and a magazine, and it has continued to grow until now I’m getting a full-sized cardboard box that I’m somewhat leery of touching.

Which also reminds me: Find out how to forward mail. I don’t want to keep getting this stuff because I keep hoping it’s for me and then it’s not. The only mail I get are bills, which is more than a little depressing.

Photos of The Gates and More

And on that note here are a few recent photos fresh off the compact flash card.

• College is a business, not an educational institution.
• Scientists love porn.

• According to one legend, Apple Computers is named Apple Computers because: It was the favorite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn’t suggest a better name by 5 o’clock.

  Update: Tom of AtomicBird.com has just informed me of another story about the origins of the Apple Computer name and logo:

  It comes from the legend about how Isaac Newton discovered gravity. The legend says that Newton was sitting under an apple tree, and an apple fell on his head. This caused Newton to think about why it fell, and why things should fall down and not some other way, and eventually led to his theory of gravity.

  When Apple computer was started, they hoped that it would be not just an electronics company but a force for inspiration that might change the world. They adopted “apple” as a reference to the apple that fell on Isaac Newton, suggestign that their computers could serve to inspire people in the same way that the apple inspired Newton. At first, the company logo was not the rainbow-colored Apple, but was instead a picture of someone sitting under a tree, with an apple in the tree looking like it was about to fall on their head. You can find this logo online, for example, right here.

  Very interesting.

• Noah Wyle confirms the legitimacy of RSS.

O. K.

Then one day, as she was showing a friend some photos she ran Windows Update in the background. When Windows Update had finished, it requested a restart. Normal enough….

But Windows XP never finished loading. After 10 minutes, it was still running that ugly green progress bar across the screen. So we did a hard reset and waited. BIOS starts, and suddenly we get our message from hell: “Windows did not start up properly on its last attempt. Revert to the last known good configuration. We are sorry for the inconvenience” or something like that. Fine, we can be good Micro$oft $uckers and follow directions.

No good, it hangs at the progress bar again. Okay, hard-reset, error message, this time we try normal mode. No good, okay, hard-reset, error message, let’s try safe mode. No good, okay, hard-reset, error message, let’s try command prompt.

Eh, I’m not so sure how useful this is because, as a commenter on the post pointed out, it sounds more like a chain letter than anything else.

If small blogs (like myself, by the way!) want to get noticed, we’ll probably go around commenting on other people’s blogs. These are, as you know, links back to our own sites! Using the simple read-and-comment method is even easier nowadays with TrackBack and PingBack functionality built into most weblogging tools. Furthermore, it lets us control with far more precision which sites link to us.

No offense is intended at the originator of this so called “technique,” but I can’t really see the real usefulness of this. Sure, it might give me more links than simply commenting on posts will, but I doubt that’s the only thing that really drives Google’s rankings. Furthermore, it’s not all that helpful for real visitor click-thrus.

In the end, I’d much rather be a small blog with a small but human audience than a large blog with an entirely robotic audience.

The “Dating” Situation

There is a glaring disparity in the way men and women use technology to attract members of the opposite sex for any and every purpose imaginable. This is most apparent in the romantic realm and so that’s what I’ll be discussing, but it doesn’t end there. Everything that follows applies to any situation in which gender is an issue, including platonic social networking. That fact especially is likely one reason why it upsets me even more so.

1. There are many more men than women using the Internet as a means to a social networking end, like dating. Available females who are publicly advertising themselves as available are so few and far between when compared to the male population of the same that the disparity is partially simply one of numbers. With so many men to choose from, women need not try very hard to attract one (or many). Contrastingly, with so few women available, men must work much, much more to interest and attract the woman.
2. Furthermore, and this is true even of a real-life situation in a bar, club, or at Starbucks, men are far more likely to approach a woman to express interest in her because this is what is expected of them to do. Should a woman do this, it is more likely to be considered surprisingly “forward”. In other words, women are expected to “bait and wait”.

The cumulative results of the online “dating” situation are as follows:

• If you are a woman:
  1. You are inundated with propositions, welcome or otherwise. In an online setting, this means instant messages, emails, posts, or other things that make your computer go “beep!”
  2. You spend most of your time sorting through these propositions, deciding with a justified split-second choice whether or not to give this particular suitor the time of day. Tools exist especially for this purpose, such as the automated reply.
  3. You don’t need to set up a particularly engaging profile or otherwise advertise yourself as available.
• If you are a man:
  1. You need to ensure that your profile is unique and engaging enough to sit and read through. Despite this, the chances of it being read through are minimal anyway.
  2. You need to actively monitor the situation, seek opportunities, and act on those opportunities quickly. You will need to spend a lot of time browsing profiles and sending messages. If you can manage it, you need to be available to talk with directly. You are expected to pursue.
  3. Your messages and conversational skills need to be way above par. You must be an excellent conversationalist, a good listener, and a quick typist. In short, you must be engaging.

Put simply: when a man and woman begin talking online, the woman is appropriately not invested, while the man knows that he’s at least somewhat fortunate just to have the conversation.

How it affects me:

My girlfriend is already part of several online social networking services like Friendster and orkut. Actually, I invited her to orkut. As is typical, she gets literally dozens of offers and messages all the time from guys on these services and, comparatively, I get none from anyone. And, yes, I’ll freely admit to being somewhat jealous of her for this. (Wouldn’t you be?)

Moving on however, it is sometimes incredibly difficult for me to feel secure because of all this. That’s what really bothers me — and it doesn’t have anything to do with my girlfriend. I am not the jealous type, I am not controlling or restrictive, and I am not a paranoid psychotic. Nevertheless, the fact remains that it is far easier for a woman to find a man than it is for a man to find a woman, and that fact is utterly unnerving when it is prominently presented time and time again as random men propositioning my girlfriend in all sorts of ways.

To her credit, she is very affectionate and does a wonderful job of reminding me that she loves me. That’s something I need every so often. In fact, as I wrote this entry she said so more than five times. I really don’t have much fear of being subverted by some random guy she meets online. Quite to the contrary; I’ve been her biggest supporter when it comes to striking out to make a social network independent of my own. Like I said before, I’m in no way controlling or restrictive, and I am proud of that.

Still, there is this nagging feeling of…bitterness, maybe, at the situation being so utterly one-sided. Currently, she discovered someone who I’ll call John, and has spent more than five hours talking to him over AIM in the last two nights. I’m not worried that I’ll lose her to John; I’m jealous that she can meet people so effortlessly because she has boobs and I can’t because I don’t.

Ladies, you just don’t know. And I really don’t think you understand the gravity of the effect….

As another note, consider the following excerpt from an IM conversation with a female friend.

…in little stuff, my gmail invite off [gmailswap.com], I posted total BS about my eternal gratefulness or some such thing. But I put in there I was female and got [a gmail account] almost instantly.

(Emphasis added.)

On the up side to the whole thing, my afore-quoted friend did point out that this isn’t something which causes women to fall into lovely, fairy-tale-like relationships. Men who proliferate this trend by being deceitful are in for a very short fling at most. (Or so I hope. Every woman out there, it sometimes seems, needs to start developing more self-esteem, and fast. And not just the outward facade of being cool but true self-acceptance and emotional self-reliance.)

Come to think of it, I think this may be why there is so much dishonesty online. Men have been backed into a corner. We don’t have the power to change this anymore; try to fight it and you simply won’t get the girl. Some (read: plenty) thus resort to lies which they justify as "embellishments". It should also be noted that I don’t believe women are under any obligation to give up this power on principle. In fact, if I were a woman I would be taking advantage of this as much as I could. One of the really annoying things, however, is that some women don’t seem to understand that this isn’t a right. It’s a situation of circumstance. A situation that sometimes frustrates me to no end, and scares me at other times.

But all is well and good when my sweetheart comes to bed, kisses me gently and tells me she loves me. I am lucky to have her love, and don’t for one minute think that I ever forget that.

I woke up after a bad dream and after grabbing a drink, I turned on my Windows laptop to check my mail. As I was downloading my new messages I tried to scroll my inbox with my mousewheel. Didn’t work. That’s when I noticed the Synaptics TouchPad™ system tray icon was missing. In addition, none of the TouchPad’s features would work: no tap zones, no edge motion, no nothing. Now, this is not really that big a deal (at least my cursor was still moving around), but it just goes to show how much damn babysitting these computers need. Isn’t the whole point of technology that things should just work and make our lives easier? ::sigh::

Ultimately, uninstalling and then reinstalling the driver fixed my problem. I have no idea what caused the problem in the first place, though and I didn’t bother to do any digging.

This Macintosh PowerBook is now officially on my wish list!

So he told me to go check out Craigslist to look for additional work.

Well, here’s what I think about that:

I looked through Craigslist’s several categories for job postings.

The bottom line on Craigslist is this: it’s free to post. It’s free to respond. It’s all anonymous.

Which means:

1. It’s limited to only what recruiters post, which is an estimated 30% of the actual job openings. (www.job-hunt.org) Not to mention, this is an utterly random technique.
2. Each poster is probably inundated with replies daily. It’s too competitive.
3. Employers over-specify the necessary skills and experience needed for the job, creating a job posting with requirements that no one can meet (e.g., 10 years of experience with a technology that’s only 7 or 8 years old). Besides, job seekers over-apply. Also according to job-hunt.org: “Many recruiters have shared with me that they don’t like to advertise a job opportunity because they receive so many responses from unqualified applicants, an estimated 80% to 90% of responses. Job seekers view it as a “why-not” opportunity; recruiters see it as more dumb (or lazy) applicants who didn’t pay attention or don’t understand what is required.”
4. It’s a lose/lose situation. You lose because you must spend a lot of time finding and combing through job opportunities for the ones that match your qualifications and/or interest you. The recruiters lose because they must comb through hundreds, if not thousands, of resumes to find the truly qualified applicants.

And that is why job postings on craigs list suck.

Believe me, I know. [The organization I currently work for] posts its [entry level job] openings on Craigslist. And we get over 50 responses daily!

-m

P.S. That’s why I want to get [our new client's] site up (last week). That would be word-of-mouth. It taps a potential market never available to people responding to job postings, it’s less work, and it’s ultimately higher paying.