However, the basic point about a standard is not that it's perfect: it's a coordination mechanism. Companies go bust all the time, technology changes all the time, but if you have standard components, large parts of complex systems can be maintained indefinitely. Like, I have a rolling press that was made in 1840, and I can still replace the bolts for it, because the standard thread gauge has not changed.

I guess the nice thing about both algorithms and standards are they are the two places where the software world is not just burning people's lives on relentlessly reinventing the wheel. If you contribute even a fraction to the study of an algorithm, your work will be part of software in a thousand years. If you contribute to a standard, you are producing the conditions for a thousand other programs. Both of these things are basically common goods, and they help everyone. I think a culture of programming where it's less about founding the next over-capitalized unicorn, and more about creating a mutually supportive ecosystem, would produce very good software.

Everything that isn't dross in the computer world is either a well designed standard, or a well designed algorithm. If the German government adopted a sensible standard for government documents, for example, and mandated that all documents must be saved in it, that would already make a huge difference.

Second, in the dialogue, there are a bunch of examples of texts that are presented by the characters: the speech from Lysias, which Phaedrus has hidden in his cloak, then the speech from Socrates, that he disavows, then another speech, taking the opposite position. There's also the (fascinating) recounting of a legend about Thoth, and the invention of writing, which plays on the fact that the greek word for 'medicine' is the same as that for 'poison'.

It's a really rich text - as, I guess, you might expect from a really brilliant writer who was also a disciple of a philosopher who never wrote a word. I tend to think of it as a serious attempt to describe the conceptual differences between speech and writing - something people tend to collapse ('writing is recorded speech', etc).

Seriously though, that's a horrible bowdlerization of the argument in the Phaedrus. It's actually very subtle and interesting, not just reactionary griping.

You can commission as many studies as you like on astrology, and they'll all be meaningless.

Disappointment is often proportionate to anger.

There's a second point which is, from a political perspective, police behaviour can be easily changed. Desperate criminal behaviour cannot.

As such, there's no need for anybody to know about anything technical. And they don't: the president of the US suggested injecting bleach. The prime minister of the UK bragged loudly about shaking hands with absolutely everyone.

The various interventions vis-a-vis night-time strolls were basically technical measures in the end of a widely-agreed upon goal: avoiding mass casualties. You can say you are fine with the casualties. You can become an expert and identify a mistake in the argumentation. You can't vote on what the facts are, and whether or not 'do not leave the house' moves case rates up or down is a fact.

Sometimes, you just have to recognize that you don't have the requisite training to respond to a problem, and just follow advice from people who do.

I figure a lot of people are just not used to following rules (they're office workers who don't wear PPE at work, etc) so when they had to follow rules, they freak out.

Which is fair enough, I think.

Maybe move to a low-car-density enviroment? Holland?

[0]: https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical...

I think in many ways this is the real story of AI: we have convinced the decision-makers of the world of the power of computing, but they don't know anything about computers, so they are wildly enthusiastic about a technology they understand - a program that makes a computer behave a little like a person.

I don't think you need compassion to recognize the value of non-typical people - just a lack of prejudice.

[0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/net-supply-of-hous...