I think one confusing aspect is the fact that the person being critical about the structure of the post is also the target of the post, therefore it is difficult to assume good intent.

If another well respected user had written a similar comment about why the post should have been written differently, then it would be a much cleaner discussion about writing standards and similar considerations. Actually, a lot of people did, not really about the structure (at least I don't think so), but mostly about the tone of the post.

As for EY, it is difficult not to assume that this criticism isn't completely genuine, and is some way to attack the author. That being said, maybe we should evaluate arguments for what they are, regardless of why they were stated in the first place (or is it being too naive?)

In that regard, your post is very interesting because it addresses both questions: showing that EY hasn't always followed this stated basic standard (i.e. claiming that the criticism is not genuine), and discussing the merit of this rule/good practice (i.e. is it a good basis for criticism)

Anyway, interesting post, thanks for writing it!

I think you are missing the point.

Getting back to the example about an old man collapsing in a bank lobby, let's compare three alternative types of actions:

• Helping
• Doing nothing
• Harming an old man on purpose

Claiming that there is no meaningful difference between action and inaction would imply that doing nothing to help the old man is equivalent to harming an old man. This is indeed a fairly extreme position, and I agree with you that it is rejected by nearly everyone. In this very real case, the bystanders were fined by the German justice system for not helping, but they were not put in jail, as would have been the case for harming an old man (at least on purpose). So the German justice system agrees with you on this point.

But that's not really the question of duty to rescue. The question is not about the equivalence of doing nothing and harming an old man, it's about the equivalence between helping and doing nothing. In this case, one would be fined for doing nothing, but wouldn't be fined for calling an ambulance. 

Without the duty to rescue, one wont be fined, or otherwise punished, for doing nothing. This makes doing nothing a safe choice (at least in term of legal consequences).

'Petard' is French for 'fuck you'

Is it though? Where have you heard that? 

If we search for Pétard in google translate, the results are petard, firecracker, squib, cracker, banger, maroon, backfire, whizz bang, which doesn't seem to match your definition. If we try Petard, google translate auto-corrects into Pétard so I'm assuming this is what you meant.

Maybe google translate doesn't know swear words though? To check that, I try to translate Putain, which is a foul word for prostitute. I will not write the results here, but you can check for yourself that the results match this definition.

If we go the other way around, and try to translate fuck you, we get a french sentence which I won't write here either, but perfectly matches the english sentence.

What evidence supporting this can you provide?

[EDIT] You may also want to check Pétard(homonymie) on wikipedia

Shouldn't this imply that a country with a huge colonial empire (and the UK comes to mind) would have the best food?

I'm not really sure how useful this poll is to answer the title question of this post. Indeed, what is evaluated in each cell is the food labeled as "country A" in "country B", which may or may not be similar to what one would find in country A.

For example, let's consider the first row. It describes how much each country's version of italian cuisine is liked within said country, but may not reflect how much anyone would enjoy the food, were they to travel to italy. In particular, I wouldn't be surprised to see an italian traveling around the world, appalled or amused by what each country labels as italian food.

I'm not sure I follow you on the skyscrapers example.

The Burj Khalifa is about 2 times higher, and took about 3 times as much to be built ; it doesn't look like things are getting much slower. Even better, it is 2 times higher, thus it is between 2 times and 8 times bigger (depending on how scaling laws work for civil engineering), so one could argue that it was built faster. 

The slowest example, the Abraj Al-Balt, also seems to be much bigger than the other ones, so it's not too surprising either (?)

1.66 children per woman in the US

I want to stress that this is the total fertility rate (TFR), and not the completed cohort fertility (CCF), and therefore it is not a very good proxy for what you want to measure, especially since women are having children later. I wrote a post about it a while back, although it is far from perfect. You can also look it up on wikipedia or something similar.

I liked your first post and I like this second one. I hope your events succeed

Just to clarify:

• Is anyone invited to the weekly dinners (thus you are providing a public good)?
• Or, are the dinners limited to the contributors (thus it is a club good)?

From reading pu1377.dvi (gmu.edu), I believe that dominant assurance contracts work better for club goods 

At least in the sense of "you receiving as much money as possible" or "the contract being more likely to succeed", but obviously you may put value on welcoming everyone, and, in general, those two alternative dinners won't be the same.

I can see the smiley through the spoiler protection. This is eerie.