I don't think that anyone is complaining about the filtering of deliberate fraud from outside influences. What people are complaining about are the obvious biases exhibited by the large social media companies. Take this new Hunter Biden example. Twitter claims that they don't want to promote hacking and releasing of private information. Hunter Biden's laptop was abandoned, not hacked. Besides, where was that privacy stance a week or two ago when Trump's taxes were leaked? Facebook claimed unreliable sourcing for the story. Where were such concerns when anonymous sources were claiming that Trump had said that our troops were "suckers and losers"? Or when anonymous sources were claiming that Trump had been peed on by Russian hookers?

We have independent election observers.

Yeah and we balance things out by letting both major parties watch for funny business. Who watches Facebook and Twitter? Those companies are loaded with ex-Democrat operatives in senior positions. They've run out anyone who even smells halfway conservative. Facebook and Twitter have demonstrated time and again that they aren't just getting rid of fake news and bots. They're weighing in on complex political and statistical issues by silencing information sources that they don't like.

there are actors who want to harm the free and good faith discourse of our public forums

Yeah and evidence shows that some of those people are controlling information from within the social media giants.

When you engage in the decision-making process, you learn. When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn.

Some dude does a bunch of research, reasons as carefully as he can about the subject, and openly provides his research and reasoning to others. The very first note in his research is a disclaimer to say that he's a layperson with no medical or scientific credentials. It doesn't appear that he's trying to deceive anyone.

Why the piling on? Why the expenditure of so much effort to silence his intellectual inquiry?

Here's one showing the mistakes of left-leaning media I found in 2 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=wVDPVBZF2Xg

It's just as easy to find supercuts of Pelosi, DeBlasio, and other prominent Democrats telling people that they didn't need to start social distancing or that the virus wasn't airborne contagious.

Bad judgement is a human failing that cuts across party lines. To think that this is a long-term credibility problem for only some people shows a lack of a healthy diversity of news sources. At the end of this, everyone will go back to their teams' dugouts and prepare for the next political battle. Nothing will have been learned about credibility.

Because the community is fragmented and that weakens language adoption, productivity, and enjoyment.

The 2-3 schism in Python has been a pain to deal with for years. I use Python casually here and there, but I'm so sick of trying to do something quickly in Python and finding out that I'm on a machine that only has 2 but the module I need is only for 3 or having the bulk of my app written in 3 but the only version of a module I need is for 2.

Same goes for examples you find on the Internet to do a particular thing. Ooops, it's 2.x syntax/modules so you have to fix it up for 3. Ooops, it's 3 syntax/modules so you have to fix it up for 2.

For the good of any computer language, old versions need to eventually die off.

I really don't have much of a github presence, but then again I'm not a day-to-day coder at work. The presence I do have I created in just a couple of hours and I could easily beef it up to something respectable by spending a couple of hours a month on it.

The person to whom you're responding explicitly drew a distinction between discussing a raise with your boss vs going to your boss with another offer that you have secured.

I can see the importance of that distinction. To put the relationship in a different context: Imagine the difference between a girlfriend who says, "Hey, we need to discuss the amount of time you spend playing video games. I'd like you to pay more attention to me." vs "Hey, I don't like the amount of time you spend playing video games, so I've been talking to this new guy about being my boyfriend. Your move."

Maybe he didn't do the fun little easter egg for marketing, but for whatever reason he did it, he created the opportunities through hard work and cleverness.

The problem with psychiatry isn't that they aren't trying or that they're not going about it the best way that we know how. The problem is that the human mind is still too complex at the macro level to be easily testable. But Science has shown again and again that it's the best way to go about determining how reality works. We shouldn't abandon it now and prefer delusional thinking because it has a minor winner in making a patient feel better. That said, tell the patient whatever he may want to hear in the psychiatric ward. Just don't try to pass it off as legitimate outside of the mental institution.

Regarding capitalization: Sometimes I find it helpful capitalize schools of thought that embody more than just a casual set of principles. I can do some science in the lab, but not really have a lot of trust in Science as a way to live life, run society, and generally approach problem solving. I do the same thing when writing about being liberal vs being "a Liberal".

  * Which model is more likely to prevent someone with mental illness from harming himself or others because of incorrect diagnosis?
  * Which model is more likely to lead to scientifically sound treatments for his malady?
  * Which model is more likely to encourage people to generally think rationally about the real world around us?

Maybe, but he's so far been a much more reliable information source than his opponents. Lacking real efforts of transparency from the NSA, I think that it's prudent to give Snowden wide latitude.

Of course Snowden wasn't a traitor.

Snowden was faced with a staggering ethical dilemma. There was no "right answer" to what he should have done because the system was/is fundamentally broken.

Says you. I appreciate the freedom to sit at home and play a video game on a Saturday without feeling compelled to meet the needs of others.

There are simple methods to combat gross inaccuracies in the client specification. You document the requirements for what you'll be delivering in a carefully worded Statement of Work that the client signs off on, you ask to be paid in chunks as you go with a portion up front, and you implement a system of change control so that it's totally clear if the customer is sending you off in a completely new direction. At that point, you book what you've worked at your hourly rate and you submit new work and time estimates for the changes.

Developer estimates are regularly off because they seldom impact the developer directly. Experienced development managers will pad the hell out of the developers who give them the worst estimates. Most developers will explain all the complexity of what threw their estimate off without acknowledging the huge mistake of not anticipating extra complexity in the first place.

My estimates in my early career were no better than anyone else's, ie way off -- especially for more complex projects. I'd explain what happened to my managers and soldier on. The very next task that came up, I'd give my manager some best-case estimate of how long something would take and the cycle would begin again.

That all changed once I started to do consulting for myself using "not-to-exceed" pricing. The first multi-month project I did killed me. My effective hourly rate went down to sub McDonalds levels and took much longer to deliver than I had expected. After that project, I did a post-mortem on the project to figure out where I went wrong. I came up with several spreadsheet templates and checklists to run through before giving any more estimates.

Mostly I just concerned myself with getting a hell of a lot better at estimating project duration and difficulty. Like most things, when you really pay attention to it and practice it, you get better at it.

I'm sure we'd all be better people if instead of helping others, we spent time judging and bashing those who spend time helping others but don't have the proper frame of mind when doing so.

Then we could get into the whole philosophy 101 debate of "Does truly selfless behavior exist?"