This, to me, is a fundamental problem with the Posterous culture. Here we have a post on a Posterous blog made by a Posterous co-founder which copies, in its entirety and with no significant commentary, a work published elsewhere.

It’s attributed with a link to the source — barely, in lowercased, tiny font, at the bottom. The headline is a link to the Posterous page, not the source (unlike Daring Fireball “linked list” items, for example). How many people will actually follow the link? Why is this Posterous blog entry #1 on HN when a permalink to the original source on Quora is readily available?

Let’s be clear. This is not “fair use.” It’s not plagiarism, as Garry doesn’t claim he wrote the anecdote; but it’s a violation of copyright. It’s publishing without permission of the copyright holder.†

My first submission to Hacker News was an original item I posted to my own website. It got quite a few reads — but a lot of people were re-tweeting a link to a full copy of it hosted on someone else’s Posterous. That user didn’t add much (A sentence expressing “me, too”). I was conflicted: Glad people found my writing interesting enough to duplicate and share, but disappointed that they were reading it on someone else’s site for no good reason.

I see now that if the company’s own bloggers consider copyright a joke, if they believe posting other people’s articles verbatim is kosher, well, can we be surprised their users do, too?

(Postscript: This differs from Tumblr’s “re-blogging” in one important way: You only re-blog other Tumblr posts. “Re-blogging” is part of the Tumblr system. You expect it there if you post there. You don’t “lose” anything by it. I have no problem there.)

† I don’t know if Quora’s terms of service mean that consent is implied, but honestly, in this case and this case only (the case of a Posterous employee), it doesn’t matter, because it’s about setting precedent for the community.

Subject to these Terms, Quora gives you a worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable and non-exclusive license to re-post any of the Content on Quora anywhere on the rest of the web provided that the Content was added to the Service after April 22, 2010, and provided that the user who created the content has not explicitly marked the content as not for reproduction, and provided that you: (a) do not modify the Content; (b) attribute Quora with a human and machine-followable link (an A tag) linking back to the page displaying the original source of the content on quora.com (c) upon request, either by Quora or a user, remove the user's name from Content which the user has subsequently made anonymous; (d) upon request, either by Quora or by a user who contributed to the Content, make a reasonable effort to update a particular piece of Content to the latest version on quora.com; and (e) upon request, either by Quora or by a user who contributed to the Content, make a reasonable attempt to delete Content that has been deleted on quora.com.

http://www.quora.com/about/tos

Copyright owner is the original poster at Quora. If (s)he chooses to delete the post, thus revoking Quora's licence to republish, will it become Quora's responsibility to remove Posterous post and all other copies?

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm curious if we will see the URL of the submission updated by a moderator.

http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-stupid/ans...

It actually is simply a violation of copyright. Anything over 15 lines cited iirc.

edit: fixed the link tx Alan!

The point of (nearly) any blog post should be to "continue the current conversation", whatever that means for your genre. It's very obvious to me that this post does not do that, or really anything else.

This should've linked to the source text, which would've included comments.

Determining fair use is much more complicated than that. There is no such quantitative standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

That blog is just my interesting snippets blog. It just so happened that this snippet was so interesting that the entirety made sense. I usually try to break it down into the smallest most interesting bit.

Imagine my surprise as to the reaction to this article. The blog is mainly for myself and my friends / twitter followers. There was no malice here, and I've altered the post to more prominently link to the source content.

The nature of the Internet is such: My blog drives some amount of attention. I don't monetize it and have no intention to. If Quora can make more money by the traffic I direct to it, all the better.

I did not post this to Hacker News. I had no intention of it receiving the attention that it did. All in all, I'm happy that some people got value out of the story. Whoever linked to my post should have linked to the original quora post. That's that.

I am basing my criticism of “Posterous culture” solely on your post and the one I mentioned that copied my entire blog post. Do you think I’m on to something, or do you think Posterous users probably infringe just as much as users of any other blog service?

We do honor DMCA takedown requests -- they're fairly easy to do and we are very mindful of taking down infringing content.

In the age of the printing press, once a book or newspaper was printed and published, it was very rarely lost, despite the best efforts of book-burners — simply because there were many stable copies of it in existence, one for every two or three readers. I believe that this newfound resilience of knowledge has benefited humanity substantially. (Perhaps you disagree.)

In the age of the WWW, this is no longer the case. A web page can easily have hundreds of thousands, even millions of readers — more than all but the most popular of books — and still be lost to posterity through simple carelessness or lackadaisical attitudes about archival, because a single stable copy can be accessed by all of these readers concurrently. I have web pages from ten years ago (e.g. http://canonical.org/~kragen/x-pretty.html) and the links have nearly all rotted.

Consequently: if you find something on the web that has enduring value, by all means, make copies of it, and publish them so that other people can do the same. If nobody does, it will almost certainly be lost in a few short years.

Promulgating pseudo-moral injunctions against such copying could consign valuable information to the memory hole much more effectively than any Nazi book-burning parties ever could.

But if you find something valuable on the web, copy it and spread it around. I could go on for hours with a sob story about tens thousands of combined hours of thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis that represented real philosophical progress evaporating in the into the ether because there was no redundancy and we took its existence for granted.

http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/credit-where-cred...

It could then suggest to the submitter that they submit the original source instead. Alternatively, it could keep the link to the submitted article but also add an (Original Source) link next to it.

Why would you take a piece of content off the web and re-publish it in its entirety on your own blog?

I see this happening to my articles, and I initially assumed it was just black hat SEO. But frequently it appears it's an actual human being who seems to think he's adding value to the world by reposting something he found somewhere else.

Can anybody explain the motivation behind this?

- Him posting the full text rather than a hyperlink saves me an extra click. - Maybe it also makes it easier to talk about the article with the rest of that blogs community. - It provides another copy in case the original goes down. - If he also has other posts it provides a consistent visual aesthetic across the body of information.

It's somewhat like creating a miniature library and discussion group.

I don't find any of these arguments convincing, but they're possibilities.

The web at large however, does not fully embrace this level of detail and focus in URLs. So users do not feel comfortable using URLs to link readers to discrete packets of information, they feel safer just copying the data.

This is just a theory.

Someone using any blogging platform (or any hosted website) could do this.

That said, I barely use Posterous, so a member of the "community" would be in a better position to comment (and maybe this has already occurred theough the upvoting of the parent), but I felt like the parent had some pretty harsh words which needed to be addressed due to their generality.

Are there some studies on short format content reproduction producing a net detriment (and no wisecracks about ehow)?

Granted, the duplicator in this case should have made the original author more visible.

I consider myself generally intelligent and capable, and while ill I was definitely neither. I once failed twice in a row at following the directions to make instant mashed potatoes. It wasn't really a joke that a good day was keeping the toilet seat clean and remembering to flush. It's been about 5 years, and my health is mostly back to normal other than no longer being in decent physical shape. I'm currently doing non-computer work (http://screamsorbet.com) but I'm eager to someday get back to the programming problems I abandoned.

Unlike the author of the article, I didn't find it made me happier. Perhaps it's a general personality issue, but it made me even more depressed. Books and movies were mostly beyond me, and there wasn't much I found to take any joy in. I presumed I would eventually recover (and think I have almost completely) but the overall feeling was one of intense mortality --- a dread of the eventual senility that will probably come with aging, and a realization that when it happens again it will likely be once and forever.

I've stopped coding for about 3 years at one point (not the best period in my life to put it mildly) and once I tried to get back in to it I found that the stuff that I'd been doing just before quitting was totally beyond me, I literally had to walk myself through the code line-by-line (even though I wrote it only a few years beforehand) in order to make sense of it.

Now, after slowly working my way up again it's much better than before, I've done some more intricate stuff recently and working on the more complex stuff (for me, no doubt it is still childs play compared to what others achieve) is still tough but no longer impossible.

It scares me how much my skills dropped in that relatively short period through no other action than just doing nothing and the 'use it or lose it' mantra is one that I repeat to myself frequently now in order warn myself to never ever let that happen again to any part of me.

It also was a good lesson about taking things for granted.

It sounds as though your west nile had a stronger effect than the author's problems. Perhaps a person becomes happy insofar as their level of intelligence is closer to the population average. This makes sense if people are happy to the extent that they can relate to others.

I think you're probably right about happiness, but I didn't find that my impairment helped me relate to others. Even when well, I feel like I relate to most people in an 'emulation mode': a feedback loop of consciously gauging reactions and continually asking myself how my audience expects me to react. Being impaired just made this less effective and more stressful.

The general feeling was similar to being sleep deprived and unable to focus. Small concepts felt very complicated and hard to grasp, but at the same time I constantly realized that I wasn't operating very well. I suppose if the effect was more like alcohol, where the impairment is more obvious to the audience than to the drinker, that there might be more of a pro-social effect. I'm not much of a fan of alcohol, though, so again this might be just a personality issue.

Reading about these kinds of things is exactly why I donate to organisations that are working on curing the diseases of aging (mostly http://www.sens.org). Nothing scares me more than slow decline and decrepitude.

Awhile ago I've decided upon a signal for myself that, should I see it, means "you're crazy and you can't trust yourself". Hopefully I'll recognize it when I see it later, and also have the forethought to deploy it in time. I doubt it'll actually change anything (i.e., if I have Alzheimer's, I'm unlikely to remember the signal anyway and act accordingly) but I like to think of it as a neat little experiment on myself.

He's in his 80's so I don't think he's going to recover much from this. You're probably recovering better because of your age.

Unless it's intentional :)

I might really enjoy slam-dunking basketballs if I just did it more, but there is a really good chance that its never gonna happen, no matter how much I try.

This is a fact of life that I'm often unwilling to admit. I'm sure that contributes to the impatience a lot of people feel, we have very little empathy for people who don't comprehend and analyze the same way that we do. Where would that empathy come from? Analogous experience with slam dunks, maybe.

Fifteen years ago, I would have told you they secretly understood that and thought you were a sucker for bothering. I always suspected that people used the concept of "intelligence" and their supposed lack of it to excuse themselves from responsibilities such as reading a god damned book once in a while.

How could either of us be disproved? Ability and sustained effort go together so consistently that the exceptions are too rare to mean anything. Whether success enables effort or effort enables success, there's no denying they're found together. I did many things "effortlessly" in school because I started learning them years before. I read (and studied and reread) an Isaac Asimov book on basic physics ("Understanding Physics") in junior high, so is it any wonder physics came "effortlessly" to me in high school? I started learning high school chemistry from a "Chemistry the Easy Way" study guide a year and a half before I took the class; is it any wonder I got As despite being a lazy student who never paid attention in class?

Of course, part of the draw of learning physics and chemistry was that I was acting out a role I enjoyed, that of the "smart kid." So I was "smart" because I did the work because I liked being "smart"... who can find the beginning of that? I remember that in first grade we decorated coat hangers with little construction paper cards for each book we read, and I wanted mine to have more cards than anybody else's. There's no telling how it started.

I might really enjoy slam-dunking basketballs if I just did it more, but there is a really good chance that its never gonna happen, no matter how much I try.

You should admit that you really don't care enough to find out how your body would respond to six months of an hour of daily training aimed at dunking a basketball, and you should consider whether your attitude towards dunking a basketball is any different from a "stupid" person's attitude toward acquiring "intelligence." A twinge of regret, yet security in yourself as you are, and fear that commitment to change would be futile, and worse, appear foolish.

That would hint that many "stupid" people around us are not stupid, just insecure. Having the OP belief that "there is no Intel.", perhaps this is why I always try to convince people around me that they can understand math/science/programming etc. :-\

This is why natural ability is such a hard thing for me to accept - I really believe that I can be good at anything, and I believe that is true of other people as well, but if they don't believe it, how will it happen?

It's kind of a chicken and egg problem, or maybe a qualia problem. I have an empowering imagination and I surround myself with like people. I can't imagine someone else lacking that - but maybe some people do? I don't know, its a little frustrating.

To me, what you can do in life all comes down to a Henry Ford quote:

"Whether you believe you can, or you believe you can't, you're right."

It's also strong belief that most people are pretty smart at something, and those of us who normally get labeled as being conventionally smart are just lucky enough to have easily identified aptitudes which are picked up in school/university.

Some of the stupidest things I've ever seen people do were actually done by people who were exceptional in a narrowly defined area.

I've also always been one of the "smart kids", but I think it's a load of horseshit.

Ask me daily. I'll confirm once a week.

I wonder if anybody would pay for that, and, at the same time, whether that would be a sign of narcissism.

I can tell your from personal experience that being stupid does not feel good especially when you know it. You never "get it" when others talk, you never have anything to say, you are always saying and doing the wrong things, or not doing what should have been done.

I do agree there's a lot more to enjoy. One is not critical and cynical. I like a lot more people, food, music than my smarter siblings. I am very happy walking in parks, looking at trees, or petting animals. Life is simpler.

More explicitly, the author is describing the effects of poor oxygen supply to the brain. He seems to make the mistake of thinking of the brain as a machine who's level of functioning can be well described by a single parameter (poor/stupid/malfunctioning --> good/intelligent/functioning). But that's obviously a ridiculous simplification. There's absolutely no reason to believe the effects of poor oxygen supply are comparable to being naturally unintelligent.

In other words: having one of your legs amputated does not give you any insight into being short.

The more interesting question is, what it's like to feel that way all the time. I suppose we all choose to associate mostly with those of approximately equal intelligence to ourselves, so we're probably mostly oblivious to our relative intelligence.

As you rise in rank, you are associating with people who are all of higher intelligence. I made whatever i could on dint of twice the effort and reading a lot more. I am fortunate I was able to save enough money since i reached a stage where I knew i could not continue to be employed. I was too old to be a continue at middle management, and too stupid to move to higher management. I've retired and lead a slow life living on savings. I do programming for fun, but no-brainer stuff.

Sometimes I do think i am blessed with stupidity. Most intelligent people i know are miserable, spending their entire lives chasing wealth or becoming something to be happy.

Fortunately this has lead to some spectacular failures and the burden of knowledge that comes with. I think I've successfully managed to leverage my multiple stupidities effectively.

I think these seemingly simple things are something a lot of smart and brilliant people could enjoy very much. Being smart and able to think will let you enjoy a walk in the park on a whole different level... You could find out what trees those are or think about all the people who been here, who made this park and why and how... I think a walk in the park is a great opportunity to try and focus on HERE and NOW and concentrate on "mindfulness", seeing all things and how they connect.

Or, you know, you could just enjoy walking in parks and let your clever brain rest and indulge in nature, blue skies and fresh air.

The sad thing about being "stupid" is being unable to put your predicament into compelling writing.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...

Reads like the way to cure narcissism.

Physical beauty is a wasting asset, present when you are least able to appreciate how valuable it is.

I was basically incapable of complex reasoning because I couldn't expend the required mental energy. I did not become laid back or socially competent; instead, I was irritable and frustrated at my shortcomings. People could take advantage of me more easily. I generally stopped being interested in esoteric things of any sort. I don't think I derived anything of value from the loss of my mental acuity.

One tangential benefit I did receive, however, from having DKA, was an increase in motivation and willpower. I had taken my health and cleverness for granted, and now it was slipping away, and I didn't know why. All I knew was that I wanted it back. I forced myself to slog through, to finish the CRM I was working on, and I started working out more. It didn't help me health-wise at the time, but now that my condition is being managed, I find I am much more aggressive and resourceful in the way I conduct my life.

"Just after dinner...

Scott suddenly collapsed. Everybody panicked.

- There's no cause for alarm. There was a blockage in the artery, but it's been dissolved.

- There's no problem?

- No, he's fine.

Our scan indicated that the condition began some time ago...

so if he's shown any kind of strange or weird behaviour...

It's because his brain wasn't getting enough oxygen.

But as soon as his brain started functioning properly...

Scott resigned from the Conservative Republican Club... and started espousing left-wing Democratic philosophy.

Dad was overjoyed. Just as proud as can be."

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/e/everyone-says-i... This is the script, actual subtitles might be different.

The world isn't full of 'stupid' people and 'clever' people. The human race doesn't function on a linear spectrum; the full variety of personality types and abilities is far more diverse.

Perhaps some people value their intelligence above all else, when other areas of their lives are lacking?

While it might sound idealistic - I believe everybody has something to offer. There are many types of 'intelligence' - and many personal qualities that are just as important as intelligence.

"Wait, I enjoy walking in the park. Is it possible that I'm not as smart as I think I am? omg, maybe the blood supply to my brain is blocked!"

My mother had a stroke and for weeks afterward was under the impression that I was a nurse who she disliked.

Our minds are very complex systems of chemical reactions. They work most of the time. There is weird, marvelous, scary stuff up there, and we barely understand any of it.

Quora user Lazlo B Tamas would be a good person to ask, though coincidentally he has already gave his answer to the question itself and didn't address this answer.

For years I've suffered from headaches and I feel the cause is almost always a lack of oxygen (I suppose) to my brain. I've realized I definitely suffer from shallow breathing and over the past few years I've learned to breathe deeper. It has definitely helped a lot, though I always wonder if there's something else.

When I was younger I identified so much with my racing brain, it crowded out everything else. I couldn't even enjoy a flower, or art, or respond to the happiness of a small child.

However, one learns to accept this as how the world is, and there's no ill-feeling or depression associated with it.

Zoom out a bit. Everyone middle aged and above in our society is expected to have some degree of arterial plaque. Nowadays it is considered normal. Obesity and diabetes are on the rise.

Doesn't this mean that many supposedly healthy people are already more slow and forgetful than need be?

Absolutely. I imagine that if you summed up the various nutritional and environmental factors that impact on IQ (iodine deficiency, lack of aerobic exercise, vegetables and fish, poor sleep hygiene, dual n-back training etc.) you would find that many supposedly healthy people could increase their IQ by a fair number of points (probably <10, though).

I'm not trying to trivialize his journey; he just as easily could have spiraled into a feedback loop of self-hate and self-pity. It's admirable that he accepted the change within himself, and I enjoyed reading about how awestruck he was as he observed the emotional change within.

In most cases I believe I lean more towards an average speed of cognition, however I have no doubt my brain has multiple speeds (noticeably very rapid in various circumstances). I've been attempting to figure out how to unlock these more rapid moments "manually".

As hinted at by the OP, there appears to be some significant negatives of having an always-rapid cognition. I've noticed this in a few of my friends who seem to operate consistently at that level - they tend to struggle in certain areas of their life, yet have amazing abilities to pick up and process and analyze information. What causes this?

My thoughts:

1. It's lonely in a way (you feel left out). This causes psychological problems.

2. Arrogance is easier when you appear "smarter" than others and perhaps don't question yourself as much as someone who can admit there are smarter people in the world who naturally rethink things much more.

3. The speed could be a result of more efficient brain circuitry in general. Perhaps it's more efficient because it naturally skips "filters"/paths that "slower" thinkers naturally process everything through.

So should more rapid cognition be considered a gift in as many cases as it is? Should we rethink whether there's a direct correlation between unusual rapid cognition (or speed of thought) and what we consider general intelligence? What exactly is missing in our general understanding of intelligence to allow people to slip through who have psychological/emotional issues that prevent them from making proper use of their cognition?

What is the ideal state?

I think rapid cognition is a gift, but the problem is that our gifted programs...or training for people who are like this isn't good enough to teach them how to handle their own brains. I think there should be more work done into helping people unlock AND manage their intellectual assets. Right now I think the situation in the US focuses more on the former and less on the latter. I feel like I'm advocating that smart kids go learn under Professor Xavier or something.

My mother is a frantic worrier and pretty intelligent IMO. I have a tendency towards worrying but when my mind dwells on negative situations I try to practice considering what the good outcomes might be or indeed to go overboard and consider the most outrageously impossible worst outcome.

I read about this technique from a link here a couple of years ago I think, it helps a little. One can spirally negatively with thoughts of possible scenarios very readily and when I remember this is a useful check on that.

Couldn't find the link, it's a common technique to teach in cognitive behaviour therapy, like http://us.reachout.com/the_facts/fs_factsheet.php?s=05&f....

I think with a little patience and humility we can notice the deepness of our stupid friends, and relax enough to enjoy what we are doing without worrying.

also, can you train yourself to be smarter by forcing yourself into such a state, much like weight training or high altitude training?

Intuitively I'd say that your cognitive ability isn't (to put things simple) a value but a range, and you can train yourself by studying to be higher within your range. I believe there are actual physical barriers that don't allow you to push over your "range" - or we'd see obsessed people turning into Savants.

(Regarding your marijuana point: I have seen the impact of daily pot smoking on friends, and it is quite real. I have also seen the effect go away when they stopped smoking. Sounds like a cliché out of a book on morals, but it is the truth)

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7610884/Popular...

This isn't the article I remember, but it's a good counter-example to the games' claims: http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2009/0126/ninte...

(I have the link handy because I was looking it up yesterday for my DNB FAQ http://www.gwern.net/N-back FAQ.html - DNB being one of the few brain games which apparently does transfer/improve 'in general'.)

Hi fredoliveira

Would you mind elaborating on this a little? It's an area of personal interest. Only for scientific reasons of course ;)

Regards c00ki3s

A close friend who went to the same university as I did smoked every single day for as long as I (and most people) can remember. He was considered "dumb" - writing this now sounds like people around him were assholes, which isn't the case; we were indeed all friends. He did score poorer grades than the rest, and had severe mood-swings.

A few months ago, he decided to stop smoking pot. I cannot begin to tell you how different things felt. His performance has apparently increased dramatically (to the point where he's now over the group average) and the mood swings are gone. Interestingly, the mood didn't improve for the better and he might be going through depression. But despite the psychological downturn (which may have other causes), his cognitive abilities have noticeably improved.

Again, I'm no doctor, so I can't say for sure whether the two things (stop smoking pot <-> better mental performance) are connected. But as with most people, my gut tells me it is. Just thinking about the people I know who smoke every day, I realize that my expectations for them are lower. Again, by writing this I feel like an ass - I am just being honest, though.

http://www.jci.org/articles/view/25509/version/1

I haven't been able to find an answer.

2. See if you can convince some other person to give you money to solve a problem, where your solution involves something besides or in addition to physical labor. (Many but not all jobs qualify.)

3. Success? Congratulations, you are very likely not retarded.

3b. Not convinced because of the "many-but-not-all" qualification? Keep repeating 2 until you are.

3c. I admit that this will never refute the idea that every other person in the the entire world is conspiring to make you feel normal in spite of your deficiencies. (And now I'm part of the Conspiracy.) This seem identical to me to the problem of solipsism, so it doesn't bother me to not have a good answer for that.

I'd say that you should seek external validation, i.e. make something and have it ripped apart on HN.

- Stephen Hawking

On the other hand I felt the same of my dancing abilities (and still do) but being praised(+) a lot by lots of people, some of them being international dancing figures, and one of my teachers - whom I find an excellent dancer - asking me to enter into her (not truly professional but important to her) dance company has made wonders to improve my self-image. Even though I feel clumsy from time to time, once a dance or so ;)

So I guess trying to improve more in what you feel you do badly until everyone praises that aspect of you can help it.

(+) I've got to say the praises where not about my technical level, but more about energy, fun and all the things that make a dance alive.

Dude, you've gotta find a better place for that aside...