Cunningham's Law and the Williams Corallary (+playlist)

Cunningham’s Law and the Williams Corollary

                 Ward Cunningham, Wikipedia Pioneer
(Photo by Carigg Photography and courtesy of:Wikipedia Creative Commons.)

                  Cunningham’s Law: “The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer." As quoted by Cunningham's friend and former Intel Corp. executive Steven McGeady

 Williams’ corollary to Cunningham’s law: "It's not enough that the question posited be incorrect; said question must also be so egregiously erroneous as to compel even the laziest of smug, know-it-all bastards to get off their judgmental haunches and chime in with the correction.” Taken from a comment posted on Reddit, March 8, 2014

Joel Z. Williams
Creator of the "Williams Corollary" to the Cunningham Law

In a discussion held on the popular news and information site Reddit, Joel Z. Williams responded to a comment left by "rockychunk" who stated that Cunningham's Law was fairly good but that it did not apply in situations where it was unclear as to whether the answer put forth was accurate or true. Joel Z. Williams agreed with "rockychunk" and expanded this concept to say that any answer put forth must deviate substantially from any plausibly correct answer in order to compel persons to intervene.

For example: Joel Z. Williams published an article a year prior to his discussion with "rockychunk" wherein he posted a formula he named the "Williams Peak". Although not a scientist, Joel Z. Williams created the formula using plausible variables such as the numbers of insecticide resistant bedbug cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control, the numbers of licensed Pest Control Operators in the U.S. and etc. Yet despite the article receiving heavy viewership for over a year, no scientist or other expert questioned his formula or otherwise called him to account. Joel Z. Williams attributed this phenomena to the fact that his formula contained all of the normal hallmarks of scientific legitimacy. Indeed, his correct use of letters to denote time, distance, costs, and etc., in his formula discouraged critical analysis from people unfamiliar with such fields of study.

 Joel Z. Williams pointed to the tactics employed by Nigerian con-artists working what has come to be known as an Advanced-Fee Fraud, or "419 Nigerian Prince Scam". These con artist purposely send out thousands of emails to potential victims which are peppered with misspelled words and poor grammar in an effort to weed out the more critically thinking victims. This process saves the Nigerian Prince scammers time because of a process called "self-selecting".  Victims who overlook the glaring "red flags" and do respond are usually more feeble-minded and therefore more pliable to their schemes. 

In other words, the majority of people would  immediately notice if a correspondence sent to them did not bear the hallmarks of legitimacy. Readily apparent  indicia of fraud such as bank notes bearing the logos of unfamiliar institutions, hand-written text on a supposedly legal document and etcetera. Smarter people would instantly say: "See? that's a scam, there's no longer any need to read further or otherwise concern myself with the intricacies of that person's sad story." whereas the more gullible person might ignore those obvious signs and say: "OMG that person is in extreme peril and I must act now to save them.".

In summary, if Joel Z. Williams wants to get the right answer on the internet regarding his formula for the Williams Peak, then he needs to rewrite the equation using obviously unscientific terms and other wildly inaccurate and unsubstantiated claims. That should sufficiently upset someone in the scientific community to the point that they would feel compelled to right a wrong and correct such an obvious and unforgivable error. (Note: The Williams Peak article is posted on this site in an article called "The Missouri Method").  

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Is the powderkeg that is Ukraine about to ignite into a war between the U.S. and Russia?

A close friend of mine asked me today if I thought Ukraine was about to descend into war. She doesn't follow international politics as avidly as I do so I wanted to give her a short answer, yet soon realized that the situation is too complicated to be explained properly in less than 300 words. Here's the best I could do for the casual newser after considerable cheeseparing:

If war does come, it will be a proxy war at best. America can't get involved directly because Russia is a nuclear power. Countries with nuclear capacity don't go to war openly because both sides fear nuclear Armageddon. Instead, they will fund and arm intermediaries to fight the other side through intermediaries funded by the other side, e.g., Vietnam is a classic example (US v. Russia & China and fought via Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians), 

It is unlikely that the Russians will allow Ukraine to break away and join the European Union because the pipelines that provide most of the natural gas traveling from Russia to Europe flows through it. Too much money to be lost there. Added to the confusion is that Ukraine is a country split in half almost right down the middle by politics. The Europe leaning side in the West, and the Pro-Russian side on the East. Think of this country if all the Dems lived west of the Mississippi and all of the Republicans lived in the East. 

The last reason is: Ukraine is broke. They need something like 16 billion dollars just to keep the lights on. Russia has offered that money if they come under their full control. In fact, that's what started the protests. The president (Yanukovich) promised the people that he was going to lead the nation towards joining Europe, but then Russia offered to pay them a lot of money and then he changed his mind at the last minute. Nobody wants to live under the Russians expect the people in the East. 

Short answer: Sorry Ukraine, the West will do a lot of public bellyaching but ultimately we cannot keep Putin from enslaving you. We just don't have the money and our country is war weary. Plus, the US needs Russia's help in the United Nations in contain Iran and keeping the radical Iranian regime from getting a nuclear bomb. The US is broke, we can't afford to give Ukraine the emergency funds they need. US is set to pull out of Afghanistan this year ending 13 years of war which has cost us an estimated 3 trillion dollars.

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