msg3

I think there are far more examples of developing countries ignoring copyright - the US didn't recognise foreign copyrights until the 1890s.

Fair enough, although I think you are maybe thinking a bit too narrowly about what school taught you. To get you to the point where you can write a scientific report takes an awful lot of learning... seems unfair to dismiss all of that.

Being able to read "exemplary works" is a really strange and narrow definition of literate.

I also have to disagree that "twitter speak and memes" is not intelligent communication -- just because something is new, doesn't mean it's less intelligent.

But would you have been able to learn from those roles if school hadn't laid the groundwork?

You can't expect a school to teach every child every skill they need for their adult life. It sounds like you were able to teach yourself the skills you needed to succeed -- in my eyes, producing children able to self-teach is the sign of a very successful school system.

Kids enter school at 5 or 6 with a range of reading abilities - some can recognise simple words, but very few are fully literate. The UK currently has a literacy rate of 99% -- something is going right.

Learning to write and perform basic maths doesn't seem that hard to us, but for most of human history was the reserve of a select few. Perhaps the fact that it seems so easy is actually because school can be quite effective at times?

..or time. Schools in the UK have already got a curriculum that's pretty full. Everyone will have their own different list of "essential life skills" and trying to fit them all into the curriculum is impossible.

One thing that is often missing from these conversations is that arguably the goal of education isn't really to teach you any specific skill, but rather to give you the capability to learn things by yourself.

Part of this process will necessarily mean teaching you things like reading and writing, but whenever I hear "My school didn't teach me X, so I had to teach myself, wasn't my school terrible", I think "no, probably not."

We see this with Dyson claiming every few years that they can't find enough engineers -- translation -- we can't find enough engineers for the salary we want to pay them.

I'm just not sure this is true. There are plenty of things wrong with the education system in the UK, and no doubt many individuals are completely failed by the system. But most kids do learn to read, write, perform basic maths and handle social situations well enough that they can get a job / engage in further training.

Room for improvement? Yes, hugely. Total failure? I think that's hyperbole.

I guess the problem here is the ambiguity of not responding -- it could mean you're not interested, but it could also mean you are too busy to reply. Without additional information, the salesman doesn't know which case it is.

From his perspective though, he doesn't lose anything by sending the follow up, and if it is the second case, may gain a sale.

I think that's a huge part of the problem though - we've made it so the only way we can get research done is by training a new researcher - even though there's already plenty of trained researchers who are struggling to find a decent job.

I'm suggesting that we re-direct some of the funding for training PhD students into funding for postdoctoral positions (via either fellowships or research grants). Professors would still get their research team, but rather than consisting mostly of untrained PhD students, they'd have a smaller, but more effective team of trained researchers.

I think we had a far smaller number of people going to university back in the "golden days of science" - not sure you can really compare.

A tenure lottery seems like an extreme option - there has to be a middle ground between what we have now and something entirely random.

I think this would be a positive step, but to play devil's advocate, what happens when this superstar scientist retires? If I'm a researcher in his lab, does my job just disappear? If so, I'm still going to feel pressure to exaggerate the impact of my research.

I agree with your diagnosis of the problem, but don't think your solution is a good way forward - immediately after undergrad is way too early to be evaluating research potential and would just shift the hyper competitiveness earlier.

A better solution would be to stop overproducing PhDs. We could reduce funding for PhD students and re-direct that towards more postdoctoral positions - perhaps even make research scientist a viable career choice?

"The climate is in danger/is not in danger and we should or shouldn't do so and so" is an expression of an idea, and can't be libel.

If I was an employee of a climate action advocacy group, wouldn't publicly stating that the climate is not in danger cause harm to my employer? Should they be forced to continue employing me despite that harm?

Again, I'm not advocating that this person should be fired, but it feels like overreach to say that it shouldn't be possible for someone to be fired for what they say.

So is it OK if a mob (not a legal or govermnet entity) stomped on you and beat you to a bloody pulp?

No - legally and morally, this is not OK.

If a church (not a legal entity) asked its members to spit on your face and abuse you on the internet?

Morally, I'd say this was wrong, but legally, I think they would be within their rights. But equally, if I were to respond by encouraging my friends to protest outside the church, I wouldn't be violating their right to freedom of speech.

If you were immediately fired?

This would depend on the country and my contract, but I'd hope that immediate dismissal would be a violation of my labour rights - not my right to free speech.

It's meaningless to be for or against free speech in some binary sense. What you can have is an opinion about the mapping from speech to consequences. You might think that speech should map to lighter consequences than it does at the moment across all speech, or to heavier consequences, for for some kinds of speech to be lighter and some heavier.

I think this is a very good way of putting things. However, when it comes to answering the question, there's two ways of thinking about it -- how do I map other's speech to consequences with my actions (i.e morally) and how does the government map speech to consequences (i.e legally). I think only this second way of thinking is where the "right to free speech" comes in.

The view that I'm advocating is that I want the government to support a relatively strong version of free speech (i.e you should be able to say what you want without fear of being persecuted by the government, bar a few exceptions), but my personal map of speech to consequences is for me to decide. This means, for example, that I may choose to stop supporting a particular business because of something one of their employees have said, and may even shout about it on Twitter, but doing so wouldn't be an infringement of their right to free speech (it may be morally questionable).

I'd agree that a twitter mob getting someone fired is in most cases a bad thing and I can think of a bunch of reasons why it's a bad thing. But "infringing on the employees right to free speech" isn't one of them.

This might seem a bit pedantic, but I do think it's important. If something is a violation of someone's rights then there doesn't need to be any further discussion - it shouldn't be allowed. I think claiming that this is a free speech issue is not only wrong, but also shuts down much needed discussion about where we set the limits of our tolerance.

Surely that depends on a number of things -- the nature of the employer's business, the manner in which the opinion is expressed, etc? I think businesses should generally be free to set their own terms and conditions, provided they are compatible with the nation's labour rights.

Personally, I'd prefer to live in a society where people are encouraged to have frank and respectful exchanges of views, and I'd prefer to work for a business where I'm not afraid to share my views, but equally where political discussion is not a large part of workplace culture.

But that's just my preference _- we're not discussing what should happen, but what rights people have, and no, I don't think you have the right to say whatever you like and keep your job.

That doesn't mean your boss should fire you because he disagrees with something you said, but it does mean it should be possible, provided you are accorded due process.

Fair enough. I'm certainly not advocating that it's ok to punch someone over something they said.

The context of this thread (expressing political opinions at work) makes me think the other types of consequence are more relevant for this discussion though.

Yes, and I think that's a good thing. But I don't see think that's incompatible with my view here - that freedom of speech doesn't mean I have the right to say anything and expect to keep my job.

If I was to say something offensive, I should be accorded due process, but the result of that process may be that I'm let go.

Punching people in the face is illegal regardless of the reason - I don't really see how that's relevant?

Are you really saying that it should be impossible for someone to lose their job over what they say? If someone, for example, threatened to kill a co-worker, you don't think they should be fired? I appreciate that this is an extreme example, but when we talk about rights, don't we have to cover all examples of speech?

I'd agree that social media mobs trying to get people fired is a bad thing, that it's become too easy to whip up such mobs, and that as a society we should try to be more tolerant of other views. But I don't see somebody losing a job over something they've said as a rights issue - you don't have a right to a job.

I'm sorry but I have to disagree here.

You want your speech to be free from consequences -- i.e if you were to call someone a liar / cheat, they can't change their opinion of you based on what you've said? How is that compatible with their freedom of thought?

To me, freedom of speech means I shouldn't worry about legal repercussions for expressing wrongthink.

There is perhaps a separate discussion to be had about the sort of society we want to live in - do we want to promote open discussion, even if it can be divisive? But I don't think it's really a rights issue unless the consequences progress from social / economic to legal.

I'm not sure about the current situation, but I believe the loans were maintained for a long time to ensure a certain level of government control over the large Chaebols.

According to the Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang, the Korean government (or rather the dictator Park Chung Hee) is directly responsible for a lot of the success of the large Korean companies like Hyundai and Samsung.

It's been a while since I read the book (Bad Samaritans I think it's called), but I believe he offered them large government backed loans to move out of palm oil production and into more profitable areas like semiconductors.

I have to disagree about the low quality matches (completely agree about the debt issues). I watch both NFL and Football and think the average NFL game is more competitive / exciting than the average EPL game. Look at this season - it's been clear Man City will win the league for a while now, and most games Man City play the question isn't "will they win" but "how many will they win by".

I don't think the ESL was really about addressing the problem of low quality matches, but I really hope this doesn't stop all innovation in football. I think compared to other sports (Rugby, Cricket and NFL come to mind), football is too conservative about making changes that actually improve fans enjoyment of the game. I've certainly found myself watching switching over to other sports over the last 10 or so years.

For many of the clubs in the ESL a major problem is that participation in the champions league is not guaranteed. Currently, the top four clubs from the English Premier League qualify for the following season's Champion's League. The EPL currently has six "big" clubs who agreed to participate in the ESL - some of which have not qualified for the CL in quite a few years. The ESL would have guaranteed their participation every year.

I'm glad the ESL idea has fallen through as it seemed to be poorly thought out, but I hope this doesn't stop all attempts at innovation in European football. I think there are far too many uncompetitive games (both in the CL and EPL), and I'm quite fed up of the top teams buying up all the best talent, even just to sit on the bench.

By itself, it's probably not a good idea.

If the government supports the development of a chocolate production industry, including support for cocoa exporters, then it has every chance of success.

The Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang makes similar arguments in his book Bad samaritans. He argues that this model was successfully followed by Korea (Samsung, Hyundai, etc), Japan, and even Henry VII in 15th century England - well worth a read.

Just like the US and UK did when they were emerging economies.

For me, the pencil is the killer app for my ipad. It's turned a nice to have gadget into an essential for getting anything done.