A suicide bomber really believes in what they are dying for and that is the point. With the disciples the fact that they were eye witnesses to the central point of their religion is unique. Either they saw Jesus rise from the dead or they were lying. If they were lying, then why would they be willing to die for a lie? Just doesn't add up in my book.
But his followers were all willing to die because they believed Jesus rose from the dead and they saw it. Seems unreasonable that they would die for something they know is a lie.
I would love to see something like this for broader issues and I see two big benefits.
1) I think it could be really helpful to bloggers. If I wrote a post on a divisive topic, I would love to have it reviewed by respected people who are on the other side (not sure exactly how you would work out the respected part). When we write it's too easy for us to build up a scarecrow argument then knock it down to the delight of those who already agree with us. For example imagine a metric that showed how much people who disagree with the article respect it anyways. If I saw something like that on my Facebook feed I would be more likely to read it.
2) A place for us to get experience on how to debate better. There are a number of principles that a site like this could promote. For example, when you disagree with someone ask a question you actually want the answer to, then talk about it. It sounds easy but it can only become a habit with deliberate practice. I have seen a number of other TED talks that go over these kinds of things.
With response to "The 1916 book The Institutional Care of the Insane of the United States and Canada reports" paragraph. Schizophrenia is by no means easy to diagnose and there is a lot of debate over when someone is or isn't Schizophrenic. I have known two people (one a family member) that some would call Schizophrenic and after many years I'm still not sure if that is a fair diagnosis or not. I think it might be a bit much to expect a society with little social expectations to evaluate this well.
In our society we suspect people to have mental illnesses but it takes years to get a good diagnoses and sometimes they never get a clear one.
I've worked the standard 40-? hr/week programming jobs for years and about a year ago I took on a project where I was the only developer and before I took the job I made the decision to work about 20 hours a week. Turns out that 20 wasn't quite enough so I ended up doing 25-30.
Looking back I think 25-30 hours is about as efficient as I could have been as I gave the best hours of my day. But when it came to the last month before the release I found I did have to give some more time to get it done on time. Short bursts of working long hours seem to be effective for me, but I also noticed that I needed to take some time off after the project.
It's been a great year and I've really enjoyed the other things I was able to do with my time. If you are able it's worth considering even if you take a little less pay.
Top notch article thanks for posting. Thanks for pointing out those fonts, I feel like finding good fonts is always a struggle for me. Anyone have any other suggestions like these?
Thanks Matt that is more what I was thinking. There are 40,000+ companies that use Zendesk so estimating less than 5000 copies seems reasonable and I also agree 1000$ advance is unusually low.