This isn't a how-to, but I thought you might find these articles cute:

Linky- Story of how parents of toddler boys keep their kids from playing rought with the author's toddler girl, because "you have to be gentle with girls".

Linky- Dad tired all video game heroes are male. Reprograms Zelda to make Link a female for little daughter.

Linky- Video- A What Would You Do? episode, where you see how people in a costume store react when a little boy (actor) wants to dress as a princess, and a little girl (actress) wants to dress as Spiderman for Halloween

To me this just seems like a disconnect between the way language is parsed by the speaker and the listener. When I hear somebody say "Atlas Shrugged is the greatest book ever written" I don't take it as the speaker's literal belief, because almost nobody means such a statement in that way.

It would probably be useful to compile a list of times in the past that coming out the other side of the bull's horn was worth it. If you're trying to find a common thread.

What immediately comes to mind as an obvious example is Newtonian physics. There was a period in the history of science where it looked like we had figured out almost everything worth knowing in this field. That turned out not to be the case in a big way. There were clues that there might be a deeper, more general theory in the inconsistencies in observational data at the time and it seems like this would be a good place to start.

What fields are there that seem like they are mostly figured out but with a few nagging inconsistencies? Continuing the physics theme, the standard model does a heck of a job but there is still dark matter/energy and gravity to figure out. It's clear from the number of top level minds devoted to studying these things that people already think this horn is worth bulldozing through though. It's not that people don't think it's worth digging, it's just really hard.

Maybe there are fields that are similarly saturated theory wise but have inconsistencies that aren't being thought about a lot?

What evidence is there that compulsory voting wouldn't just add noise to the selection process?

There are about two dozen countries that use compulsory voting. Looking at the ten countries that actually enforce it we find that it in fact doesn't just add noise to the selection process. We find that they in fact don't have a selection process particularly dominated by noise.

If we look at actual compulsory votes, and find that practically nobody votes for some candidates while others get a lot of votes despite the addition of the reluctant voters then that which was added can't have been just noise. In this example only 1.4% of all (primary) votes went to the "Family First" candidate. Even assuming zero of the voluntary voters voted for "Family First" somehow the additional "noise" still knew to favor the other three candidates and mostly avoid Family First. Additional votes made by constituents and which systematically favor one candidate far above another aren't called "noise", they are just called "votes".

What evidence is there that compulsory voting wouldn't just add noise to the selection process?

I happen to know Mortimer Q. Snodgrass, who lives at 128 Ordinary Ln. is well informed about politics and economics but chooses not to vote because he is personally better off staying at home to play catch with his son. Obliging him to vote introduces information into the process that is not noise.

By the above I mean to reject the framing whereby "it would just add noise" is set up as priveliged hypothesis that significant 'evidence' must be expended just to escape from.

If the new voters actually "just add noise" it would mean every single one of them had no preference or information about what they are voting on and all choose to vote using a noise source. Even if we weaken the hypothesis to "the amount of noisy votes added relative to signal votes would do more harm than good to the preference extraction process" it is still an overwhelmingly unlikely proposition.

The basic voting systems just aren't especially vulnerable to noise, they are vulnerable to corrupted or biased input (some of which they cause themselves). If even 1 out of 20 of the new votes represents information about population preferences while the other 19 are 'noise' the system still ends up better informed. Noise just isn't the potential downside here, the respective biases held by the people who would have voted vs those that wouldn't and how much you endorse the groups and biases in question. It is at least plausible for someone to declare that the preferences of the demographic that would vote voluntarily are more important for some intrinsic or instrumental reason than the preferences of the demographic that must be compelled.

People often say that voting is irrational, because the probability of affecting the outcome is so small. But the outcome itself is extremely large when you consider its impact on other people.

Which, of course, should encourage all sane states to have compulsory voting for the same reason that paying taxes is compulsory rather than voluntary. (Or, rather, to make attendance at the polling booth compulsory such that a decision to abstain is permitted but not more convenient.)

Took it.

My browser was unable to copy/past most of the links which led to less than initially intended participation on my part. For instance, I took the big 5 quiz because the address was easy to glance at and type into another tab but didn't take other surveys/tests in the bonus question sections because i didn't feel like tabbing back and forth to get the web address correct.

Rough Idea: Send brilliant, destitute kids to great schools from an early age in exchange for a percentage of their lifetime earnings.

Have you read The Unincorporated Man for some fictional evidence of how this idea turns out? ;-)

If that's true, then there could be no use in finding a place because you would then follow the quote's advice and never return again!

Per Bohr's advice we can identify this as a meaningless 'profound truth' by reversing it:

If you are lost, then you are at a place no one has found before... What's the use of being in unmapped territory?

If you are not lost, then you're at a place someone has already found... What's the use of being in mapped territory?

• Junot Diaz

A different perspective on a phrase our community holds near and dear