The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronics engineering, electrical engineering, and other related disciplines.
Serious question, with respect. What is your profession? I think that some acronyms, like NASA, need no explanation. In Vanity Fair I would expect IEEE to be explained, but not on HN. For what it's worth I don't work with hardware or electronics now am I an engineer nor do I live in the US. The IEEE is still a very well known acronym among my peers.
Funnily enough, my brain still associates IEEE with ethernet, or networking in general. I know what it is, but I think the first few times I read the term was on some network config view in an old Windows version, probably next to some protocol selector. Now whenever I see IEEE, my brain loads a picture of a network config page, or an ethernet cable & port.
Arxiv is pre-publishing, not publishing. Much as I wish the death of Elsevier, this is an important distinction for us to maintain, as we all found out during the LK-99 superconductor craze.
It's a question of volume of crap. Just because garbage makes it through the filter doesn't mean the filter isn't doing anything.
As for asking working scientists, working scientists were warning caution during the LK-99 debacle partially by reminding people that it hadn't even been published yet.
Not really, consider this restatement for example:
Houses are built with lumber,
Carpenters nail up lumber with hammers,
I live in a house with nailed framing.
The individual who invented the hammer likely died in his home cave.
The thing is that tools and the use of those tools both create value. But economically the production of things using tools is valued more than the existence of tools. There are outliers, such as in my case where the value of all the test equipment I own is probably double the any amount of economic value they might generate over my remaining lifetime.
This fallacy is very closely related to the value of "ideas" versus the value of executing on the idea. The latter has tremendous economic value, the former, not so much.
I apologize if this comes off rude. That is not my intention, rather directness is my goal.
Rhetorical questions are only rhetorical if they are based on correct premises and if the answers to those questions clearly and logically lead to the answer that the rhetorical questioner wishes to convey. Used correctly they are indeed a powerful rhetorical tool as they not only illustrate the concept vividly, but they also create an "aha!" moment in the listener. Used incorrectly, they can still be a useful tool despite the initial intention, as it allows the answerer to correct faulty premises or logic, and the questioner to receive updated knowledge that may change their supposition, so the questions can still fulfill a good purpose.
However, this does require that the questioner maintain sufficient humility and open mindedness as to benefit intellectually from the exchange. I would humbly suggest embracing a hearty dose of humility at all times and to re-examine your beliefs when faced with a contradictory reply, rather than doubling down and resisting the new information. It can truly be difficult to do as we humans have evolved to win arguments by any means, not solely through logic[1]. Nevertheless I believe it to be very worth it as the only full path to enlightenment is an unmitigated embrace of logic and truth, and a mental adaptation and change of position whenever it is warranted.
The merit of your questioning was good, so please don't feel as though you didn't add value to the conversation, because IMHO you did!
[1] this is discussed by Robert Sapolsky in "Behave", a book and author I heartily recommend
> Is there something surprising, incongruous here?
You responded:
> Not really, consider this restatement for example:
...
> This fallacy is very closely related to the value of "ideas" versus the value of executing on the idea. The latter has tremendous economic value, the former, not so much.
My question was rhetorical --
I was saying the same thing you did. A reader was supposed to look at the situation of the huge difference in dollars, be tempted to conclude that, yes, there was
> something surprising, incongruous here
and then remind themselves of the very well known point you reminded us of:
> latter has tremendous economic value, the former, not so much.
Or, for one more, whatever is the truth about life and reality, Kahn contributed so much and got paid comparatively so little. That's reality we all know, and I'm not crusading against it, but it's still a big difference.
That's fair, it would seem you stepped into a trap that I myself have stepped into many times which is to be clear in your own mind what you're saying without first considering the context of the reader.
As was pointed out elsewhere, being rhetorical depends on context. And in this case the context is "What is the general belief system of the readers." What I think happened here was that your context was actually the inverse of what I would expect a reader to be thinking here (given your questions). As this population is heavily 'startup' and 'make a big dent' oriented, if you had said "I find it incongruous that someone who contributed something so fundamental wasn't nearly as well rewarded financially as others who came after and used their contribution."
I think that point of view would gather a lot of support here as the community abounds in examples; my favorite being Gruber inventing markdown to make blog writing easier and people like Github turning it into a key feature of there service offering.
This is because this community is acutely aware of the mismatch between effort invested and the relatively randomness of the financial rewards. That is also why a common dismissive comment to a submission touting the big raise of some startup with "I just don't get it, I could write that product in a weekend" (or some variation on that theme). It's the idea that 'fairness' involves reward commensurate with impact.
As a result of this, your comment hit exactly the opposite tone, which is to say that I read it (and I'm guessing others did as well) that you were implying that somehow Bob Kahn had been "ripped off" or otherwise harmed unjustly because his contribution was not as well rewarded as far as its impact (which was large) went.
My restatement was an attempt on my part to reflect back to you the way your comment sounded; I did this using an even more extreme example of the separation between the invention of something, and the economic exploitation of that something.
It probably wasn't the nicest way to do that, for that I apologize.
I find that communication, especially written communication without all the cues that come from things like body language and facial expressions, is really hard to do well. I also find that different communities have completely different customs, for example a comment that might get upvoted here could get mercilessly down voted on Reddit. Or a tweet that might get likes goes no where in a different forum. It's tough to do humor and rhetorical questions here, there is an extremely fine line between it being okay and it being down voted into oblivion.
Charitably, your profile indicates you have been 'subscribed' (or what ever they call it) here for 10 years. During that time you've posted reasonably often and received a varying amount of engagement.
> Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even zero, why my comment was flagged.
In that time I would expect it to become clear that anyone, at any time, has a fixed set of options when responding to a post:
1) Ignoring it.
2) Voting on it "up" or "down"
3) Flagging it (which generally brings it to the attention of moderation)
4) Commenting on it.
(note that 2, 3, and 4 are not mutually exclusive, you can flag, downvote, and comment all one the one thing).
Generally the reason for down voting or flagging is how your comment was 'heard' by the person reading it. Some folks down vote when they disagree, some when they feel it doesn't add anything to the conversation, sometimes because they feel it disparages or insults something they value. There an innumerable number of ways people can feel when they read something.
> As this population is heavily 'startup' and 'make a big dent' oriented,
Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even up to zero, why my comment was flagged.
Uh, on your point about startups, gee, early on in my post I mentioned that also
===>>> I <<<===
was doing a startup based on the Internet. Sooooo, I should be regarded as also
> big dent' oriented
and a member of the club, at least with attitudes of the club.
I'm not a joiner of clubs: In high school I was not getting a lot of invitations to clubs and gave up then.
Uh, there's the old joke "Any club that would have me as a member I wouldn't want to join." But at least, no way, was I suggesting that Kahn was getting ripped off or that the billionaire founders were guilty of some transgression.
On facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, I wasn't at the head of the class on those and regarded them as poor quality information.
Here at the risk of rubbing more fur the wrong way are some old sayings:
Girls pay attention to people. Boys pay attention to things.
Girls work hard to learn how to please people. Boys work hard to learn how to do things.
It is not 100% this way, but, warning, if try to change either of these two, may encounter difficulties beyond overcoming or prior expectation -- take this as a grand understatement. Some of my evidence is 6 feet under.
E.g., there is the movie Armageddon where a daughter tells her father that she was more mature (or some such) than him when she was 10 years old -- in my experience that's not unrealistic!
Now, back to facial expressions, tone of voice, ...: Girls can do a lot better than boys at making that input quality information.
Long overdue! It should not have taken this long to officially recognize his contributions.
"Kids" nowadays don't even know of the true "Greats" who made The Internet as it is today, possible (they have forgotten "standing on the shoulders of giants"). I always point folks to the classic early-1990s Internet System Handbook by Daniel Lynch and Marshall Rose which explains the then Internet Architecture with chapters written by the greats like Jon Postel, Vint Cerf, Van Jacobsen etc.
> It should not have taken this long to officially recognize his contributions.
His contributions have been officially recognized many times before, this is not the first time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Kahn - check out the list of awards. 13 in all over the last 30 years including this one. He received the Turing Award in 2004 with Vint Cerf and also the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 1997.
Because it's a career achievement award. Look at the other people who have received it and when, in their lives, they received it. It's also a bit of a broader category of award than the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal he received 3 decades ago which is for the field of telecommunications. Vint Cerf only received it last year himself. It also looks like it's not awarded to more than one person at a time, and it's only awarded annually, so that limits the number of people who could ever possibly receive it quite a bit.
Agreed; but sometimes it just feels like these award committees have no sense of timing and it often appears like a case of "too little too late". Awards should be given as soon as a person's discoveries/inventions have been validated and when people are still aware of them to make an impact on public consciousness.
It is exactly what it is. The internet of today also wouldn’t look the way it looks without the incredibly valuable contributions built atop the foundation. I wouldn’t look too harshly at a carpenter for not constantly acknowledging that their house frame would be a whole lot less useful if not for the concrete slab underneath it. Whilst I certainly respect the names you mention, we can’t pretend that the Internet of today is as it was in their imaginations. The Internet is the world’s largest collaborative project and is exactly the sum of its parts. The design envisaged by these people is exactly why no one person or small group of people really deserve to be put on such a high pedestal.
> The design envisaged by these people is exactly why no one person or small group of people really deserve to be put on such a high pedestal.
You have missed the point. The things we take for granted today started small and evolved from there; we have merely added a lot of superstructure to the underlying bedrock foundations envisaged by these select pioneers. All the application layer protocols and technologies utilizing them can be replaced as the fad changes (eg. distributed Objects vs. distributed web) but these core concepts/ideas/technologies will always remain and hence needs to be acknowledged. The situation is analogous to the building of great Architectural Marvels; even though a lot of folks with different skill sets are actually responsible for the manifestation, it is usually the "Architect(s)" who are credited with the achievement because it is the keeping of the holistic design together through its evolution is what is actually the key.
Your analogy doesn't make any sense, and "Whilst I certainly respect the names you mention" is faint praise kinda like "You have ten cats? Wow, it only smells like five or six!"
Maxwell didn't envision electric guitars, either. That doesn't mean Les Paul is equal to him.
Even by your analogy though, GP’s concept makes sense. I would cringe if an old guy at a music store started rambling about how kids these days with their fancy electric guitar don’t even respect the great Lord Maxwell, without whom we wouldn’t understand electromagnetism enough to make an electric guitar.
Even by your cringey explanation, GP's "concept" (as you call it) is stupid.
We honor the people who first develop something, because, by definition, they're out there without much, if any support. Improving something once it's there is much easier and safer. If you fail, hey -- the original thing is still there.
On the other hand, if you're the type to whom everything is obvious once you see it, then I can understand how it might all seem equal to you.
45 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 75.3 ms ] threadThe Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronics engineering, electrical engineering, and other related disciplines.
(from Wikipedia)
- Produces 30 percent of the world’s published literature in electrical engineering, computers and control technology.
- Holds annually more than 300 major conferences.
- Has nearly 900 active standards with 700 under development.
https://umaine.edu/ieee/what-is-ieee/
Though maybe in GP's field the term 501 is as commonly known as I think that IEEE is in mine. ))
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/501c3-organizations.asp
As for asking working scientists, working scientists were warning caution during the LK-99 debacle partially by reminding people that it hadn't even been published yet.
- IEEE 802.3: Ethernet
- IEEE 802.11: Wi-Fi
- IEEE 802.15.1: Bluetooth
- IEEE 802.1Q: VLANs
- IEEE 1588: Precision Time Protocol
- IEEE 802.3af/at/bt: Power over Ethernet
- IEEE 754: floating-point arithmetic
Houses are built with lumber,
Carpenters nail up lumber with hammers,
I live in a house with nailed framing.
The individual who invented the hammer likely died in his home cave.
The thing is that tools and the use of those tools both create value. But economically the production of things using tools is valued more than the existence of tools. There are outliers, such as in my case where the value of all the test equipment I own is probably double the any amount of economic value they might generate over my remaining lifetime.
This fallacy is very closely related to the value of "ideas" versus the value of executing on the idea. The latter has tremendous economic value, the former, not so much.
Rhetorical questions are only rhetorical if they are based on correct premises and if the answers to those questions clearly and logically lead to the answer that the rhetorical questioner wishes to convey. Used correctly they are indeed a powerful rhetorical tool as they not only illustrate the concept vividly, but they also create an "aha!" moment in the listener. Used incorrectly, they can still be a useful tool despite the initial intention, as it allows the answerer to correct faulty premises or logic, and the questioner to receive updated knowledge that may change their supposition, so the questions can still fulfill a good purpose.
However, this does require that the questioner maintain sufficient humility and open mindedness as to benefit intellectually from the exchange. I would humbly suggest embracing a hearty dose of humility at all times and to re-examine your beliefs when faced with a contradictory reply, rather than doubling down and resisting the new information. It can truly be difficult to do as we humans have evolved to win arguments by any means, not solely through logic[1]. Nevertheless I believe it to be very worth it as the only full path to enlightenment is an unmitigated embrace of logic and truth, and a mental adaptation and change of position whenever it is warranted.
The merit of your questioning was good, so please don't feel as though you didn't add value to the conversation, because IMHO you did!
[1] this is discussed by Robert Sapolsky in "Behave", a book and author I heartily recommend
> Is there something surprising, incongruous here?
You responded:
> Not really, consider this restatement for example:
...
> This fallacy is very closely related to the value of "ideas" versus the value of executing on the idea. The latter has tremendous economic value, the former, not so much.
My question was rhetorical -- I was saying the same thing you did. A reader was supposed to look at the situation of the huge difference in dollars, be tempted to conclude that, yes, there was
> something surprising, incongruous here
and then remind themselves of the very well known point you reminded us of:
> latter has tremendous economic value, the former, not so much.
Or, for one more, whatever is the truth about life and reality, Kahn contributed so much and got paid comparatively so little. That's reality we all know, and I'm not crusading against it, but it's still a big difference.
As was pointed out elsewhere, being rhetorical depends on context. And in this case the context is "What is the general belief system of the readers." What I think happened here was that your context was actually the inverse of what I would expect a reader to be thinking here (given your questions). As this population is heavily 'startup' and 'make a big dent' oriented, if you had said "I find it incongruous that someone who contributed something so fundamental wasn't nearly as well rewarded financially as others who came after and used their contribution."
I think that point of view would gather a lot of support here as the community abounds in examples; my favorite being Gruber inventing markdown to make blog writing easier and people like Github turning it into a key feature of there service offering.
This is because this community is acutely aware of the mismatch between effort invested and the relatively randomness of the financial rewards. That is also why a common dismissive comment to a submission touting the big raise of some startup with "I just don't get it, I could write that product in a weekend" (or some variation on that theme). It's the idea that 'fairness' involves reward commensurate with impact.
As a result of this, your comment hit exactly the opposite tone, which is to say that I read it (and I'm guessing others did as well) that you were implying that somehow Bob Kahn had been "ripped off" or otherwise harmed unjustly because his contribution was not as well rewarded as far as its impact (which was large) went.
My restatement was an attempt on my part to reflect back to you the way your comment sounded; I did this using an even more extreme example of the separation between the invention of something, and the economic exploitation of that something.
It probably wasn't the nicest way to do that, for that I apologize.
I find that communication, especially written communication without all the cues that come from things like body language and facial expressions, is really hard to do well. I also find that different communities have completely different customs, for example a comment that might get upvoted here could get mercilessly down voted on Reddit. Or a tweet that might get likes goes no where in a different forum. It's tough to do humor and rhetorical questions here, there is an extremely fine line between it being okay and it being down voted into oblivion.
Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even zero, why my comment was flagged.
Uh, on your point about startup, gee, early on in my post I mentioned that
> Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even zero, why my comment was flagged.
In that time I would expect it to become clear that anyone, at any time, has a fixed set of options when responding to a post:
1) Ignoring it.
2) Voting on it "up" or "down"
3) Flagging it (which generally brings it to the attention of moderation)
4) Commenting on it.
(note that 2, 3, and 4 are not mutually exclusive, you can flag, downvote, and comment all one the one thing).
Generally the reason for down voting or flagging is how your comment was 'heard' by the person reading it. Some folks down vote when they disagree, some when they feel it doesn't add anything to the conversation, sometimes because they feel it disparages or insults something they value. There an innumerable number of ways people can feel when they read something.
Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even up to zero, why my comment was flagged.
Uh, on your point about startups, gee, early on in my post I mentioned that also
was doing a startup based on the Internet. Sooooo, I should be regarded as also> big dent' oriented
and a member of the club, at least with attitudes of the club.
I'm not a joiner of clubs: In high school I was not getting a lot of invitations to clubs and gave up then. Uh, there's the old joke "Any club that would have me as a member I wouldn't want to join." But at least, no way, was I suggesting that Kahn was getting ripped off or that the billionaire founders were guilty of some transgression.
On facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, I wasn't at the head of the class on those and regarded them as poor quality information.
Here at the risk of rubbing more fur the wrong way are some old sayings:
Girls pay attention to people. Boys pay attention to things.
Girls work hard to learn how to please people. Boys work hard to learn how to do things.
It is not 100% this way, but, warning, if try to change either of these two, may encounter difficulties beyond overcoming or prior expectation -- take this as a grand understatement. Some of my evidence is 6 feet under.
E.g., there is the movie Armageddon where a daughter tells her father that she was more mature (or some such) than him when she was 10 years old -- in my experience that's not unrealistic!
Now, back to facial expressions, tone of voice, ...: Girls can do a lot better than boys at making that input quality information.
"Kids" nowadays don't even know of the true "Greats" who made The Internet as it is today, possible (they have forgotten "standing on the shoulders of giants"). I always point folks to the classic early-1990s Internet System Handbook by Daniel Lynch and Marshall Rose which explains the then Internet Architecture with chapters written by the greats like Jon Postel, Vint Cerf, Van Jacobsen etc.
His contributions have been officially recognized many times before, this is not the first time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Kahn - check out the list of awards. 13 in all over the last 30 years including this one. He received the Turing Award in 2004 with Vint Cerf and also the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 1997.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_Medal_of_Honor
You have missed the point. The things we take for granted today started small and evolved from there; we have merely added a lot of superstructure to the underlying bedrock foundations envisaged by these select pioneers. All the application layer protocols and technologies utilizing them can be replaced as the fad changes (eg. distributed Objects vs. distributed web) but these core concepts/ideas/technologies will always remain and hence needs to be acknowledged. The situation is analogous to the building of great Architectural Marvels; even though a lot of folks with different skill sets are actually responsible for the manifestation, it is usually the "Architect(s)" who are credited with the achievement because it is the keeping of the holistic design together through its evolution is what is actually the key.
Maxwell didn't envision electric guitars, either. That doesn't mean Les Paul is equal to him.
We honor the people who first develop something, because, by definition, they're out there without much, if any support. Improving something once it's there is much easier and safer. If you fail, hey -- the original thing is still there.
On the other hand, if you're the type to whom everything is obvious once you see it, then I can understand how it might all seem equal to you.