I did not, but like all the facts you mentioned so far, this is not a surprise at all for me (if that was the intention), since it does not contradict any belief I had about first millenium france. It is an interesting fact, though!
> Anyway, you don't seem to be taking me seriously
That's not the case, and I am sorry if I came over as such; I would not have tried to argue my points if I would not have taken you seriously. English is also not my native language, which might contribute to more subtle points being missed/misscommunicated.
> to be reading as a confrontational argument something that I meant as a friendly and helpful nudge towards digging deeper instead of making assumptions
You see, that's the issue; your nudge would only be helpful if I indeed did not dig appropriately deep yet already; which may or may not be, but instead of verifying it first, you told me things that I either knew already, or that did not address my point at all, which was irritating. I am all for infodumps, everytime, everywhere, love 'em. What I took issue with was that you seemed to assume a lack of knowledge, and decided to nudge, seemingly not considering the possibility that you might have completely missed my point.
Which is, succinctly stated: "Surely we should be able and are able to make educated assumptions about all aspects about anytime anywhere of human history; with the strong assumption that we do not have time machines and are therefore are limitited to guessing (or theorising, if one wants to use the fancy word), not measuring or anything or anything of that sort. It is perfectly understood that it's all guesswork, that might be mightly off regarding how it really was - and if we are lucky, the theory is not totally off".
You seemed to take this as a much stronger claim, as is evidenced by you bringing up exceptions to the "rule" more than once; that would only make sense if you literaly believe that statements such as "most of the books in the old testament were written for with an audience in mind that mostly viewed being the first born son a special, higher social condition" was meant in its absolutes (or with absolute certainty), which it was not. Anectodes, counterexamples and so on are meaningless when it comes to statements of bigger trends. They would only be relevant if they would turn out to be a common occurance, or when the source mentions the homosexuality of a monk in passing, without making a big fuzz about it for example - a possible indication that non-hidden homosexuality amongst monks might have been at least tolerated, and maybe even not-rare in first millenium france in at least that monstery. Or was not an issue to the person who reported that. Or it was a smear campain (not all sources are reliable). And so on and so on... (Note: I don't doubt that a homosexual monk named Flora existed back than, it might be well established that he did. I am just using that fact as an example)
---
To wrap up: Infodumps/facts? Heck yeah! Exchange? Yes please. The two of us talking past each other? That's not an exchange, yes. Simply assuming I do not know something instead of verifying it? Heck no, I firmly reject that. If you would have shown me where I was wrong, a nudge would have been appreciated, but as I read it, even now, you simply misunderstood my claims - then, the nudge was missplaced, and came over as patronizing to me.
I think I understood now where it went wrong and what you tried to bring across. Appreciate the facts you droped; I am more the top-down than bottom-up type, but facts like those are interesting to me nonetheless.
I will also stop this thread; in case it helps resolving open ends: "most of the books in the old testament were written/edited/composed for with an audience in mind that mostly viewed being the first born son a special, higher social condition" was and is my intended claim; independent of who the individuals where that wrote these books, of periods where social hierarchies within the intended audiences at time of writting/editing/composition changed, and so on and so for. Yes, that audience encompasses a bit amount of time and space. Still, people who are paid to think and write about this seem to majorily agree with "most of the books in the old testament were written for with an audience in mind that mostly viewed being the first born son a special, higher social condition", if I did not wildly misread the current consensus of academic research. Again, this is a big picture claim; no singular counterexamples or short time periods can change the assumed validity of that statement, only once new sources or new interpretations of old sources indicate a different quantitative historic reality than previously assumed.
---
All the best & happy nerding!"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Seven books I keep close because I love them"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://blog.plover.com/2026/08/02/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_dev_dan_2","story_49299675"],"author":"dev_dan_2","comment_text":"> Even the early medieval period has a lot of blanks. Did you know a homossexual bishop called "Flora" lived in first millennium France?
I did not, but like all the facts you mentioned so far, this is not a surprise at all for me (if that was the intention), since it does not contradict any belief I had about first millenium france. It is an interesting fact, though!
> Anyway, you don't seem to be taking me seriously
That's not the case, and I am sorry if I came over as such; I would not have tried to argue my points if I would not have taken you seriously. English is also not my native language, which might contribute to more subtle points being missed/misscommunicated.
> to be reading as a confrontational argument something that I meant as a friendly and helpful nudge towards digging deeper instead of making assumptions
You see, that's the issue; your nudge would only be helpful if I indeed did not dig appropriately deep yet already; which may or may not be, but instead of verifying it first, you told me things that I either knew already, or that did not address my point at all, which was irritating. I am all for infodumps, everytime, everywhere, love 'em. What I took issue with was that you seemed to assume a lack of knowledge, and decided to nudge, seemingly not considering the possibility that you might have completely missed my point.
Which is, succinctly stated: "Surely we should be able and are able to make educated assumptions about all aspects about anytime anywhere of human history; with the strong assumption that we do not have time machines and are therefore are limitited to guessing (or theorising, if one wants to use the fancy word), not measuring or anything or anything of that sort. It is perfectly understood that it's all guesswork, that might be mightly off regarding how it really was - and if we are lucky, the theory is not totally off".
You seemed to take this as a much stronger claim, as is evidenced by you bringing up exceptions to the "rule" more than once; that would only make sense if you literaly believe that statements such as "most of the books in the old testament were written for with an audience in mind that mostly viewed being the first born son a special, higher social condition" was meant in its absolutes (or with absolute certainty), which it was not. Anectodes, counterexamples and so on are meaningless when it comes to statements of bigger trends. They would only be relevant if they would turn out to be a common occurance, or when the source mentions the homosexuality of a monk in passing, without making a big fuzz about it for example - a possible indication that non-hidden homosexuality amongst monks might have been at least tolerated, and maybe even not-rare in first millenium france in at least that monstery. Or was not an issue to the person who reported that. Or it was a smear campain (not all sources are reliable). And so on and so on... (Note: I don't doubt that a homosexual monk named Flora existed back than, it might be well established that he did. I am just using that fact as an example)
---
To wrap up: Infodumps/facts? Heck yeah! Exchange? Yes please. The two of us talking past each other? That's not an exchange, yes. Simply assuming I do not know something instead of verifying it? Heck no, I firmly reject that. If you would have shown me where I was wrong, a nudge would have been appreciated, but as I read it, even now, you simply misunderstood my claims - then, the nudge was missplaced, and came over as patronizing to me.
I think I understood now where it went wrong and what you tried to bring across. Appreciate the facts you droped; I am more the top-down than bottom-up type, but facts like those are interesting to me nonetheless.
I will also stop this thread; in case it helps resolving open ends: "most of the books in the old testament were written/edited/composed for with an audience in mind that mostly viewed being the first born son a special, higher social condition" was and is my intended claim; independent of who the individuals where that wrote these books, of periods where social hierarchies within the intended audiences at time of writting/editing/composition changed, and so on and so for. Yes, that audience encompasses a bit amount of time and space. Still, people who are paid to think and write about this seem to majorily agree with "most of the books in the old testament were written for with an audience in mind that mostly viewed being the first born son a special, higher social condition", if I did not wildly misread the current consensus of academic research. Again, this is a big picture claim; no singular counterexamples or short time periods can change the assumed validity of that statement, only once new sources or new interpretations of old sources indicate a different quantitative historic reality than previously assumed.
---
All the best & happy nerding!","created_at":"2026-08-20T22:07:39Z","created_at_i":1787263659,"objectID":"49380908","parent_id":49339579,"story_id":49299675,"story_title":"Seven books I keep close because I love them","story_url":"https://blog.plover.com/2026/08/02/","updated_at":"2026-08-20T22:10:16Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"acdha"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"> In the 1970s, the feared effect was global cooling
This is a common trope but it\u2019s mostly been promoted by fossil fuel lobbyists to pretend climate scientists weren\u2019t right than reality. That alternate history is mostly promulgated by the likes of noted-creationist Duane Gish or general purpose denialists like Stephen Milloy, but it doesn\u2019t hold up when you look at the record.
People had been concerned about global warming since 1896, and scientists had been increasingly concerned before World War II. There were a handful of papers in the early 1970s predicting cooling based on aerosol effects BUT those did not reflect widespread consensus and other researchers at the same time published papers predicting warming, and those papers were considered stronger.
What most of this hangs off of is that Time magazine \u201cAnother Ice Age?\u201d article which sounded dramatic but was actually inconclusive about the future. It sold a lot of issues, but it wasn\u2019t exactly a climate science journal.
By the end of the 1970s, consensus had been reached that the earth was warming and most climate science research was focused on how it would happen rather than whether.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-cl..."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Jimmy Carter has died"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/12/29/jimmy-carter-president-dead/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_acdha","story_42543128"],"author":"acdha","comment_text":"> In the 1970s, the feared effect was global cooling
This is a common trope but it\u2019s mostly been promoted by fossil fuel lobbyists to pretend climate scientists weren\u2019t right than reality. That alternate history is mostly promulgated by the likes of noted-creationist Duane Gish or general purpose denialists like Stephen Milloy, but it doesn\u2019t hold up when you look at the record.
People had been concerned about global warming since 1896, and scientists had been increasingly concerned before World War II. There were a handful of papers in the early 1970s predicting cooling based on aerosol effects BUT those did not reflect widespread consensus and other researchers at the same time published papers predicting warming, and those papers were considered stronger.
What most of this hangs off of is that Time magazine \u201cAnother Ice Age?\u201d article which sounded dramatic but was actually inconclusive about the future. It sold a lot of issues, but it wasn\u2019t exactly a climate science journal.
By the end of the 1970s, consensus had been reached that the earth was warming and most climate science research was focused on how it would happen rather than whether.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-cl...","created_at":"2024-12-30T00:59:07Z","created_at_i":1735520347,"objectID":"42545246","parent_id":42544645,"story_id":42543128,"story_title":"Jimmy Carter has died","story_url":"https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/12/29/jimmy-carter-president-dead/","updated_at":"2024-12-30T19:11:28Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"gus_massa"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"From the article:
> A slow-moving emergency is lapping at California\u2019s shores\u2014 climate-driven sea-level rise that experts now predict could elevate the water in coastal areas up to 10 feet in just 70 years, gobbling up beachfront and overwhelming low-lying cities.
There is a map that show what part will be flooded with an increase of 10 feet. It's not the whole state. Some cities will be fine. Some cities will be doomed.
> A consensus of scientific research makes catastrophic projections that, in the worst case, will be reality by the end of this century: [...] More than 42,000 homes in California will be under water\u2014not merely flooded, but with seawater over roofs.
For comparison, there are like 40 million people living in California, so a good guess is that there are 10-20 million of homes there. So 42,000 sink homes are only 0.5%-0.25%, but it's a lot if it's your home."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: Could California sink into the Ocean in the next 60 years?"}},"_tags":["comment","author_gus_massa","story_17741285"],"author":"gus_massa","children":[17741801],"comment_text":"From the article:
> A slow-moving emergency is lapping at California\u2019s shores\u2014 climate-driven sea-level rise that experts now predict could elevate the water in coastal areas up to 10 feet in just 70 years, gobbling up beachfront and overwhelming low-lying cities.
There is a map that show what part will be flooded with an increase of 10 feet. It's not the whole state. Some cities will be fine. Some cities will be doomed.
> A consensus of scientific research makes catastrophic projections that, in the worst case, will be reality by the end of this century: [...] More than 42,000 homes in California will be under water\u2014not merely flooded, but with seawater over roofs.
For comparison, there are like 40 million people living in California, so a good guess is that there are 10-20 million of homes there. So 42,000 sink homes are only 0.5%-0.25%, but it's a lot if it's your home.","created_at":"2018-08-11T21:27:28Z","created_at_i":1534022848,"objectID":"17741637","parent_id":17741479,"story_id":17741285,"story_title":"Ask HN: Could California sink into the Ocean in the next 60 years?","updated_at":"2024-09-20T02:52:58Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"trominos"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"How so? If a mathematician is good enough to win the fields medal, he (she) can probably have the career he wants.
I haven't done research myself, but I've spent a fair amount of time around researchers in math and the basic sciences and my experience strongly suggests that the purpose of the Nobel etc, insofar as they have any, is not to advance the careers of the recipients (who don't need the help if they're deserving) or to drive the recipients to do better research (the consensus is that, if anything, earning a major prize dampens a researcher's potential, though of course that has selection bias written all over it); the purpose is really to give those researchers who've already reached the top of the playing field something to aspire to. (I used to think these prizes were net losses for science, but over time it's become clearer to me that the role they play is actually fairly important.)
All of this is to say: the actual distribution of prizes is more a necessary evil than anything, and delaying conferral to the end of a person's career minimizes the bad effects of a prize and maximizes the good ones."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"American wins $1 million math prize"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36023457/ns/technology_and_science-science"}},"_tags":["comment","author_trominos","story_1217530"],"author":"trominos","comment_text":"How so? If a mathematician is good enough to win the fields medal, he (she) can probably have the career he wants.
I haven't done research myself, but I've spent a fair amount of time around researchers in math and the basic sciences and my experience strongly suggests that the purpose of the Nobel etc, insofar as they have any, is not to advance the careers of the recipients (who don't need the help if they're deserving) or to drive the recipients to do better research (the consensus is that, if anything, earning a major prize dampens a researcher's potential, though of course that has selection bias written all over it); the purpose is really to give those researchers who've already reached the top of the playing field something to aspire to. (I used to think these prizes were net losses for science, but over time it's become clearer to me that the role they play is actually fairly important.)
All of this is to say: the actual distribution of prizes is more a necessary evil than anything, and delaying conferral to the end of a person's career minimizes the bad effects of a prize and maximizes the good ones.","created_at":"2010-03-25T05:05:52Z","created_at_i":1269493552,"objectID":"1217780","parent_id":1217591,"story_id":1217530,"story_title":"American wins $1 million math prize","story_url":"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36023457/ns/technology_and_science-science","updated_at":"2024-09-19T16:56:03Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"lstamour"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"Read more code. Edit code others have written. Maintain a wide variety of projects. Try to start your own.
Failure can be tough and sneaky: I didn't want to fail, so I Googled to see how others did it until I was sure... Then found I couldn't reach a consensus, and ended up "researching" for months. Sometimes doing it wrong isn't failing, after all, you've just found a way that didn't work-- that's progress.
Oh and reading or knowing how to do it isn't doing it. There can be quite a bit of work to doing it yourself, don't skip the exercises at the end of the metaphorical chapter ;-)"},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["of"],"value":"Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["of"],"value":"http://www.michaelbromley.co.uk/blog/65/confessions-of-an-intermediate-programmer"}},"_tags":["comment","author_lstamour","story_7337278"],"author":"lstamour","comment_text":"Read more code. Edit code others have written. Maintain a wide variety of projects. Try to start your own.
Failure can be tough and sneaky: I didn't want to fail, so I Googled to see how others did it until I was sure... Then found I couldn't reach a consensus, and ended up "researching" for months. Sometimes doing it wrong isn't failing, after all, you've just found a way that didn't work-- that's progress.
Oh and reading or knowing how to do it isn't doing it. There can be quite a bit of work to doing it yourself, don't skip the exercises at the end of the metaphorical chapter ;-)","created_at":"2014-03-04T02:12:37Z","created_at_i":1393899157,"objectID":"7338016","parent_id":7337994,"story_id":7337278,"story_title":"Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer","story_url":"http://www.michaelbromley.co.uk/blog/65/confessions-of-an-intermediate-programmer","updated_at":"2024-09-19T20:34:10Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"evgen"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"You are correct. So far the consensus opinion in medical research is that except for extreme ends of the dietary spectrum a calorie is a calorie. If you are trying to lose weight then some diets make the task a little easier than others, but otherwise the only equation that really matters is calories in as food vs. calories out as physical exertion."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Why Are Southerners So Fat?"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909406,00.html"}},"_tags":["comment","author_evgen","story_719524"],"author":"evgen","comment_text":"You are correct. So far the consensus opinion in medical research is that except for extreme ends of the dietary spectrum a calorie is a calorie. If you are trying to lose weight then some diets make the task a little easier than others, but otherwise the only equation that really matters is calories in as food vs. calories out as physical exertion.","created_at":"2009-07-23T16:18:34Z","created_at_i":1248365914,"objectID":"719824","parent_id":719770,"story_id":719524,"story_title":"Why Are Southerners So Fat?","story_url":"http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909406,00.html","updated_at":"2024-09-19T16:38:27Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"ddebernardy"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"It's a growing consensus insofar as I've researched it three or so years ago.
Dissent then came mostly between two extremes. Namely: "Interesting take, but the body can process a lot more sugar than Lustig suggests before becoming sick", and "NO NO NO! [That's not what I learned and believe is true!] Low-carb food is baaaad!"
Speaking personally, the first end of that spectrum stroke me as forming reasonable objections. The second end stroke me as quacks and curmudgeons on roughly the same level as economists -- i.e. they'll dismiss anything that won't fit their worldview, including evidence and reproducible facts."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["of"],"value":"The Insanity of Our Food Policy"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["of"],"value":"http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/the-insanity-of-our-food-policy/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_ddebernardy","story_6757777"],"author":"ddebernardy","comment_text":"It's a growing consensus insofar as I've researched it three or so years ago.
Dissent then came mostly between two extremes. Namely: "Interesting take, but the body can process a lot more sugar than Lustig suggests before becoming sick", and "NO NO NO! [That's not what I learned and believe is true!] Low-carb food is baaaad!"
Speaking personally, the first end of that spectrum stroke me as forming reasonable objections. The second end stroke me as quacks and curmudgeons on roughly the same level as economists -- i.e. they'll dismiss anything that won't fit their worldview, including evidence and reproducible facts.","created_at":"2013-11-19T08:49:17Z","created_at_i":1384850957,"objectID":"6759956","parent_id":6758764,"story_id":6757777,"story_title":"The Insanity of Our Food Policy","story_url":"http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/the-insanity-of-our-food-policy/","updated_at":"2024-09-19T20:14:50Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"ben_w"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"For (1), free-will, the people I know who think about it at all generally reach the conclusion that the concept as used generally is ill-defined. Most people don't think about it in any depth.
For (2), no, their "will" and "goals" are best considered in terms of the gradients of their training process. While Pavlov's dog, and Skinner's rats and pigeons, were given specific objectives in order to test the hypothesis, any environmental stimulus that is merely correlated with a reward can have the same effect, including on humans (general consensus in research of human sexuality is that fetishes are an example of this: random thing gets repeatedly rewarded).
Goodhart's law: even when Microsoft 'rewards' Copilot for better code suggestions and 'punishes' it for bad ones, Microsoft is using a proxy measure for 'good' and 'bad', and that proxy measure is what Copilot ends up with as a goal.
For (3), if we are "playing god" with these AI, it is not in the sense of the god of the Epicurean paradox: we are not omniscient, we are not omnipotent, and we are not omnibenevolent.
For your conclusion based on those three points, even for \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 there's a lot of people who disagree with a claim "God [\u2026] cannot do wrong.", though in the cases I'm aware of this directly leads to people who reach this position to thereby conclude that Christianity/Judaism/Islam really isn't for them."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"If AI is conscient, then we are making slaves"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.groundlevel-ai.com/p/anthropic-ai-consciousness-new-york-times-rabbi"}},"_tags":["comment","author_ben_w","story_50029681"],"author":"ben_w","comment_text":"For (1), free-will, the people I know who think about it at all generally reach the conclusion that the concept as used generally is ill-defined. Most people don't think about it in any depth.
For (2), no, their "will" and "goals" are best considered in terms of the gradients of their training process. While Pavlov's dog, and Skinner's rats and pigeons, were given specific objectives in order to test the hypothesis, any environmental stimulus that is merely correlated with a reward can have the same effect, including on humans (general consensus in research of human sexuality is that fetishes are an example of this: random thing gets repeatedly rewarded).
Goodhart's law: even when Microsoft 'rewards' Copilot for better code suggestions and 'punishes' it for bad ones, Microsoft is using a proxy measure for 'good' and 'bad', and that proxy measure is what Copilot ends up with as a goal.
For (3), if we are "playing god" with these AI, it is not in the sense of the god of the Epicurean paradox: we are not omniscient, we are not omnipotent, and we are not omnibenevolent.
For your conclusion based on those three points, even for \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4 there's a lot of people who disagree with a claim "God [\u2026] cannot do wrong.", though in the cases I'm aware of this directly leads to people who reach this position to thereby conclude that Christianity/Judaism/Islam really isn't for them.","created_at":"2026-10-10T09:17:03Z","created_at_i":1791623823,"objectID":"50031097","parent_id":50030025,"story_id":50029681,"story_title":"If AI is conscient, then we are making slaves","story_url":"https://www.groundlevel-ai.com/p/anthropic-ai-consciousness-new-york-times-rabbi","updated_at":"2026-10-10T09:22:14Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Balgair"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"So, there's a lot of work that has been done on this. Generally there is a difference between large and small black holes. With the smaller ones, tidal forces rip you apart down to quarks and you die. With larger ones, tidal forces aren't as crazy (they are still totally crazy though) and you sail right into the event horizon. It may be survivable.
As for the time distortion: Yes, you see the end of the universe regardless of the black hole size. Yet, your clock continues to tick along just fine and you still fall in. Per our current understanding of physics, you get to see everything in the universe blue shift to infinity. In smaller black holes, since the Lorenz transform is so curved, all of space gets warped to directly in front of you, all the incoming radiation gets blue shifted to infinity. Essentially, every quark and electron gets blasted by pure radiation of infinitely small frequency. Think standing in front of a train in a dark tunnel with a bright light on the front. For larger black holes the Lorenz transform is less curved, so the cosmic Train Collision happens closer to the event horizon; but you still get blasted. (Note: I don't actually know if this is due to the Lorenz transform, but the best way to get a right answer on the internet is to give out the wrong answer :) )
If you are thinking that none of this makes sense and are saying "yes, but what about..." then you are thinking correctly. Black holes are very poorly understood and we're just at the beginning of trying to figure them out.
One very important ratio to remember is: 5 : 20 : 75 .
In the universe, everything that you are made of, all the matter, is only 5% of our known universe and most of that matter is locked up in stars. We're actually only a very small fraction of the universe.
Dark matter is ~20% of the stuff in the universe. About all we currently know about dark matter is that it falls down. Does it have a temperature? No clue. Does it interact with matter? More data is needed. Does it interact with itself? We haven't any idea, would you like more tea? Dark matter is ~4x the amount of stuff we are, and we haven't a clue what it does.
That said, Dark Energy is ~75% of the stuff in the universe and it ... falls up? Honestly, we're completely lost. We have no idea how it works, we just know the universe is flying away from itself and it's gas pedal is firmly glued to the floor. We haven't any remotely serious idea how to probe it outside of looking at galaxies and hoping we get lucky and see something funny.
So, before we get all high and mighty and try to think we have any idea what is going on in a black hole, we've got to figure out what the other 95% of the universe is doing, as it's very likely to have really important things going on. Hyperspace? I mean, sure, why not? It's just about as strange a thing as Dark Energy is.
So, I think the consensus is that: More research funding is needed."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Rotating Black Holes May Serve as Gentle Portals for Hyperspace Travel"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://theconversation.com/rotating-black-holes-may-serve-as-gentle-portals-for-hyperspace-travel-107062"}},"_tags":["comment","author_Balgair","story_19479352"],"author":"Balgair","comment_text":"So, there's a lot of work that has been done on this. Generally there is a difference between large and small black holes. With the smaller ones, tidal forces rip you apart down to quarks and you die. With larger ones, tidal forces aren't as crazy (they are still totally crazy though) and you sail right into the event horizon. It may be survivable.
As for the time distortion: Yes, you see the end of the universe regardless of the black hole size. Yet, your clock continues to tick along just fine and you still fall in. Per our current understanding of physics, you get to see everything in the universe blue shift to infinity. In smaller black holes, since the Lorenz transform is so curved, all of space gets warped to directly in front of you, all the incoming radiation gets blue shifted to infinity. Essentially, every quark and electron gets blasted by pure radiation of infinitely small frequency. Think standing in front of a train in a dark tunnel with a bright light on the front. For larger black holes the Lorenz transform is less curved, so the cosmic Train Collision happens closer to the event horizon; but you still get blasted. (Note: I don't actually know if this is due to the Lorenz transform, but the best way to get a right answer on the internet is to give out the wrong answer :) )
If you are thinking that none of this makes sense and are saying "yes, but what about..." then you are thinking correctly. Black holes are very poorly understood and we're just at the beginning of trying to figure them out.
One very important ratio to remember is: 5 : 20 : 75 .
In the universe, everything that you are made of, all the matter, is only 5% of our known universe and most of that matter is locked up in stars. We're actually only a very small fraction of the universe.
Dark matter is ~20% of the stuff in the universe. About all we currently know about dark matter is that it falls down. Does it have a temperature? No clue. Does it interact with matter? More data is needed. Does it interact with itself? We haven't any idea, would you like more tea? Dark matter is ~4x the amount of stuff we are, and we haven't a clue what it does.
That said, Dark Energy is ~75% of the stuff in the universe and it ... falls up? Honestly, we're completely lost. We have no idea how it works, we just know the universe is flying away from itself and it's gas pedal is firmly glued to the floor. We haven't any remotely serious idea how to probe it outside of looking at galaxies and hoping we get lucky and see something funny.
So, before we get all high and mighty and try to think we have any idea what is going on in a black hole, we've got to figure out what the other 95% of the universe is doing, as it's very likely to have really important things going on. Hyperspace? I mean, sure, why not? It's just about as strange a thing as Dark Energy is.
So, I think the consensus is that: More research funding is needed.","created_at":"2019-03-25T15:12:27Z","created_at_i":1553526747,"objectID":"19483169","parent_id":19481817,"story_id":19479352,"story_title":"Rotating Black Holes May Serve as Gentle Portals for Hyperspace Travel","story_url":"https://theconversation.com/rotating-black-holes-may-serve-as-gentle-portals-for-hyperspace-travel-107062","updated_at":"2024-09-20T03:57:43Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"AndrewKemendo"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"You don't go into how AGI would actually threaten humanity. This is because no one actually has a good grasp of how it would. Oh sure, Bostrom/Yudkowski et al. have their theories but there is only the thinnest of literature out there.
Why? Because no one knows what AGI will look like. Even AGI researchers cannot come to consensus on what it would look like let alone even tests to verify that it is in fact an AGI.
To that end though, the scenarios that are given can be considered compelling, but as with everything it is simply a risk, not a guarantee. Even if it was a guarantee though, it is the only thing we can do as a species - there is no greater thing. "Birthing" a system that is collectively more intelligent than us in my opinion is the logical end goal of humanity and it may well be the last thing we do as a species."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Elon Musk: With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/10/24/elon-musk-with-artificial-intelligence-we-are-summoning-the-demon/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_AndrewKemendo","story_8505960"],"author":"AndrewKemendo","comment_text":"You don't go into how AGI would actually threaten humanity. This is because no one actually has a good grasp of how it would. Oh sure, Bostrom/Yudkowski et al. have their theories but there is only the thinnest of literature out there.
Why? Because no one knows what AGI will look like. Even AGI researchers cannot come to consensus on what it would look like let alone even tests to verify that it is in fact an AGI.
To that end though, the scenarios that are given can be considered compelling, but as with everything it is simply a risk, not a guarantee. Even if it was a guarantee though, it is the only thing we can do as a species - there is no greater thing. "Birthing" a system that is collectively more intelligent than us in my opinion is the logical end goal of humanity and it may well be the last thing we do as a species.","created_at":"2014-10-26T02:35:51Z","created_at_i":1414290951,"objectID":"8510101","parent_id":8508557,"story_id":8505960,"story_title":"Elon Musk: With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon","story_url":"http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/10/24/elon-musk-with-artificial-intelligence-we-are-summoning-the-demon/","updated_at":"2024-09-19T21:13:48Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"mustacheemperor"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"> Can you cite even a few articles or papers from the same era on the topic of global warming
Yes, the citations of the article I linked in my edit, the one you requoted, are absolutely full of them. The article also specifically addresses the "cooling consensus" some people perceived from media coverage and compares it to the reality of what was being published and cited at the time academically (note many of the sources you linked are newspaper articles, not journal publications). In particular, refer to the section starting at page number 1329:
>Survey of the Peer Reviewed Literature
>One way to determine what scientists think is to ask them. This was actually done in 1977 following the severe 1976/77 winter in the eastern United States. \u201cCollectively,\u201d the 24 eminent climatologists responding to the survey \u201ctended\nto anticipate a slight global warming rather than a cooling\u201d (National Defense University Research Directorate 1978). However, given that an opinion survey does not capture the full state of the science of the time, we conducted a rigorous literature review of the American Meteorological Society\u2019s electronic archives as well as those of Nature and the scholarly journal archive Journal Storage (JSTOR).
>The survey identified only 7 articles indicating\ncooling compared to 44 indicating warming. Those\nseven cooling articles garnered just 12% of the\ncitations.
On page number 1332, you will find an entire table "Cooling, neutral, and warming papers as defined in the text followed by the number of times they have been cited up through 1983."
The book also of course cites lots of research over the decades that built to this consensus, a consensus originating from many reputable sources and scientists individually studying global warming. I'm don't agree with the climate change consensus in a vacuum, but on the basis of the real story of how the consensus was reached from real research that I am trying so hard to point you in the direction of.
I'll just refer back to my original remarks that it's pretty much impossible for anyone to discuss these points with you if you won't do the reading. I said above I'm not interested in a personal back and forth about this point. I already gave you what you asked for in this reply in an earlier source, and I'm not going to keep replying any further now. Enjoy the book, but if all you need to be convinced is peer reviewed research into global warming from the 70s-80s it is readily available online. Below are just two examples I pulled from that article and a web search.
M. I. Budyko (1977) On present-day climatic changes https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3402/tellusa.v29i3.11...
>Thus, one should recognize the possibility of\nrising mean air temperature within the next quarter\nof the century. Then the calculations carried out\nusing different models of climate theory show that\nin this case the boundary of polar ice will appreci-\nably recess to the north. The available data show\nthat this warming, possibly began in late or even\nmid-1960s
Hansen, J., D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind, and G. Russell (1981), Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide,\nScience, 213, 957-966. https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html
> It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980s."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Scientists warned about climate change in 1965"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://knowablemagazine.org/article/food-environment/2023/scientists-warned-climate-change-1965-podcast"}},"_tags":["comment","author_mustacheemperor","story_36128547"],"author":"mustacheemperor","comment_text":"> Can you cite even a few articles or papers from the same era on the topic of global warming
Yes, the citations of the article I linked in my edit, the one you requoted, are absolutely full of them. The article also specifically addresses the "cooling consensus" some people perceived from media coverage and compares it to the reality of what was being published and cited at the time academically (note many of the sources you linked are newspaper articles, not journal publications). In particular, refer to the section starting at page number 1329:
>Survey of the Peer Reviewed Literature
>One way to determine what scientists think is to ask them. This was actually done in 1977 following the severe 1976/77 winter in the eastern United States. \u201cCollectively,\u201d the 24 eminent climatologists responding to the survey \u201ctended\nto anticipate a slight global warming rather than a cooling\u201d (National Defense University Research Directorate 1978). However, given that an opinion survey does not capture the full state of the science of the time, we conducted a rigorous literature review of the American Meteorological Society\u2019s electronic archives as well as those of Nature and the scholarly journal archive Journal Storage (JSTOR).
>The survey identified only 7 articles indicating\ncooling compared to 44 indicating warming. Those\nseven cooling articles garnered just 12% of the\ncitations.
On page number 1332, you will find an entire table "Cooling, neutral, and warming papers as defined in the text followed by the number of times they have been cited up through 1983."
The book also of course cites lots of research over the decades that built to this consensus, a consensus originating from many reputable sources and scientists individually studying global warming. I'm don't agree with the climate change consensus in a vacuum, but on the basis of the real story of how the consensus was reached from real research that I am trying so hard to point you in the direction of.
I'll just refer back to my original remarks that it's pretty much impossible for anyone to discuss these points with you if you won't do the reading. I said above I'm not interested in a personal back and forth about this point. I already gave you what you asked for in this reply in an earlier source, and I'm not going to keep replying any further now. Enjoy the book, but if all you need to be convinced is peer reviewed research into global warming from the 70s-80s it is readily available online. Below are just two examples I pulled from that article and a web search.
M. I. Budyko (1977) On present-day climatic changes https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3402/tellusa.v29i3.11...
>Thus, one should recognize the possibility of\nrising mean air temperature within the next quarter\nof the century. Then the calculations carried out\nusing different models of climate theory show that\nin this case the boundary of polar ice will appreci-\nably recess to the north. The available data show\nthat this warming, possibly began in late or even\nmid-1960s
Hansen, J., D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind, and G. Russell (1981), Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide,\nScience, 213, 957-966. https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html
> It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980s.","created_at":"2023-05-31T17:09:26Z","created_at_i":1685552966,"objectID":"36140760","parent_id":36140607,"story_id":36128547,"story_title":"Scientists warned about climate change in 1965","story_url":"https://knowablemagazine.org/article/food-environment/2023/scientists-warned-climate-change-1965-podcast","updated_at":"2024-09-20T14:13:48Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"craftinator"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"> What frustrates me is the apparent lack of reasonably technical secondary resources that are both relatively objective (ie not sensational, don't omit important details) and up to date.
This is a really good point. As you say, it seems the only two places to get information about climate related research are at the extreme ends of a spectrum, one heavily rigorous but prohibitively technical, and the other extremely flippant but very accessible.
> When I've previously taken the time to dig in I found it difficult to figure out what the various prevailing hypotheses were other than "things will change somehow" and also quite difficult to gauge the confidence of various longer term projections that I came across.
I think this is a symptom of the way we conduct the scientific process in the modern era. It takes a lot of time to do good research, and it takes a mass of research to develop a consensus, especially when it comes to predictive analysis."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["of"],"value":"Summer 2021 has changed our understanding of extreme weather"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["of"],"value":"https://theconversation.com/how-summer-2021-has-changed-our-understanding-of-extreme-weather-165268"}},"_tags":["comment","author_craftinator","story_28112841"],"author":"craftinator","comment_text":"> What frustrates me is the apparent lack of reasonably technical secondary resources that are both relatively objective (ie not sensational, don't omit important details) and up to date.
This is a really good point. As you say, it seems the only two places to get information about climate related research are at the extreme ends of a spectrum, one heavily rigorous but prohibitively technical, and the other extremely flippant but very accessible.
> When I've previously taken the time to dig in I found it difficult to figure out what the various prevailing hypotheses were other than "things will change somehow" and also quite difficult to gauge the confidence of various longer term projections that I came across.
I think this is a symptom of the way we conduct the scientific process in the modern era. It takes a lot of time to do good research, and it takes a mass of research to develop a consensus, especially when it comes to predictive analysis.","created_at":"2021-08-09T22:36:34Z","created_at_i":1628548594,"objectID":"28123173","parent_id":28114225,"story_id":28112841,"story_title":"Summer 2021 has changed our understanding of extreme weather","story_url":"https://theconversation.com/how-summer-2021-has-changed-our-understanding-of-extreme-weather-165268","updated_at":"2024-09-20T09:06:48Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"arotical"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"Here's a scenario: You are tasked with dealing with a problem where there is little research and no scientific consensus. There is plenty of video evidence and other related pieces of non-so-scientific evidence, but most people don't count that in evidence-based policy. What do you do?
Sometimes, I think, we have to make decisions when there's no clear solution, and it's better than just dismissing a very obvious problem as non-existent. So yes, include science in every decision, but it's not the be all end all of society, it never has been, and it's not good to teach people that you can't tackle issues without a known best solution."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-and-scientific-expertise-are-more-important-than-ever/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_arotical","story_24061603"],"author":"arotical","children":[24062518,24063100],"comment_text":"Here's a scenario: You are tasked with dealing with a problem where there is little research and no scientific consensus. There is plenty of video evidence and other related pieces of non-so-scientific evidence, but most people don't count that in evidence-based policy. What do you do?
Sometimes, I think, we have to make decisions when there's no clear solution, and it's better than just dismissing a very obvious problem as non-existent. So yes, include science in every decision, but it's not the be all end all of society, it never has been, and it's not good to teach people that you can't tackle issues without a known best solution.","created_at":"2020-08-05T16:09:45Z","created_at_i":1596643785,"objectID":"24062390","parent_id":24062286,"story_id":24061603,"story_title":"Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever","story_url":"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-and-scientific-expertise-are-more-important-than-ever/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T06:46:00Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"pyoung"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"Worth mentioning, a major tax credit for US solar installations will expire at the end of 2016.[1] No one knows for sure how this will impact the industry, but before you dump all your money into solar stocks, or quit your day job to start a solar startup, you might want to do some research. The general consensus is that things are going to get pretty crazy over the next year as companies try and get installations done before the tax credit expires. And after that, no one really knows what is going to happen.
[1] http://www.seia.org/policy/finance-tax/solar-investment-tax-..."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["of"],"value":"For the future of solar, we\u2019ve got the tech \u2013 it\u2019s the economics"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["of"],"value":"http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/for-the-future-of-solar-weve-got-the-tech-its-the-economics-stupid/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_pyoung","story_10470490"],"author":"pyoung","comment_text":"Worth mentioning, a major tax credit for US solar installations will expire at the end of 2016.[1] No one knows for sure how this will impact the industry, but before you dump all your money into solar stocks, or quit your day job to start a solar startup, you might want to do some research. The general consensus is that things are going to get pretty crazy over the next year as companies try and get installations done before the tax credit expires. And after that, no one really knows what is going to happen.
[1] http://www.seia.org/policy/finance-tax/solar-investment-tax-...","created_at":"2015-10-29T20:10:37Z","created_at_i":1446149437,"objectID":"10473926","parent_id":10471093,"points":null,"story_id":10470490,"story_title":"For the future of solar, we\u2019ve got the tech \u2013 it\u2019s the economics","story_url":"http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/for-the-future-of-solar-weve-got-the-tech-its-the-economics-stupid/","updated_at":"2023-09-06T23:58:06Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"dmfdmf"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"> So how is a common citizen supposed to know when science is \u201cdone\u201d and when it is halfway to done which is the same as being wrong?
Forget about the common citizen, the scientists themselves don't know when science is "done". This is the problem of induction and most scientist are completely ignorant of the issue because they dismiss epistemology and, more generally, philosophy as nonsense. So they implicitly or explicitly substitute "consensus" for truth which is a horrible mistake.
BTW, I don't agree that getting halfway is the same as being "wrong", science is a process after all and unlike Zeno's paradox the state of scientific knowledge is not always half-way to its target, Karl Popper's claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
> I\u2019m on the side that says climate change, for example, is pretty much what science says it is because the scientific consensus is high.
The problem here is complicated by government funding of science and positive feedback that only "consensus" consistent research gets funding. Sure there is window-dressing "opposition research" but its purpose is not the truth but to justify the consensus. Science has become politicized by the use of government money and that's why things such as global warming have become political hot buttons. There is a lot of money and power at stake and people want to fly the flag of "science" to achieve their political goals. When politics and science mix, bad things result. cf. Soviet Union.
> And we all know that studies funded by private industry are suspect.
I think this true today but that it is wrong. The tacit, unspoken assumption behind these suspicions is that government funding is NOT suspect and free from all biases. I think that that is logically and historically false. Certainly revealing ones funding is important because funding can be a source of bias but in the end science should stand on its own merit regardless of the source.
I think Scott Adams has named something that has been going on for decades now which is that the American people rightfully no longer trust science and scientists. Part of this mistrust is a product of the rising anti-technology luddites, religion and the opposition to reason in the culture as he points out. But like Adams I think that the distrust of science has also been earned and I believe it is because of the politicization of science via government funding. The leaked emails in Climategate revealed that maybe the scientists were not being so objective after all. The clearest evidence of dishonesty that I read was that in public the pro global-warming scientists would call for the opposition to publish their results and arguments in peer reviewed journals. In the background they were actively working to block the publication of such research or boycott any journals that did so.
It is now considered "scientific" to dismiss your opponents with ad hom "climate denier" labels, secretly politic to limit dissent and smear the opposition as anti-science morons (the implication that Adams was addressing) and using political marketing tricks like changing the name from "global warming" to "climate change" to make the opposition look like fools. These are the methods of a Karl Rove or James Carville not science nor scientists. This is not science."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Science\u2019s Biggest Fail"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-fail"}},"_tags":["comment","author_dmfdmf","story_8984926"],"author":"dmfdmf","comment_text":"> So how is a common citizen supposed to know when science is \u201cdone\u201d and when it is halfway to done which is the same as being wrong?
Forget about the common citizen, the scientists themselves don't know when science is "done". This is the problem of induction and most scientist are completely ignorant of the issue because they dismiss epistemology and, more generally, philosophy as nonsense. So they implicitly or explicitly substitute "consensus" for truth which is a horrible mistake.
BTW, I don't agree that getting halfway is the same as being "wrong", science is a process after all and unlike Zeno's paradox the state of scientific knowledge is not always half-way to its target, Karl Popper's claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
> I\u2019m on the side that says climate change, for example, is pretty much what science says it is because the scientific consensus is high.
The problem here is complicated by government funding of science and positive feedback that only "consensus" consistent research gets funding. Sure there is window-dressing "opposition research" but its purpose is not the truth but to justify the consensus. Science has become politicized by the use of government money and that's why things such as global warming have become political hot buttons. There is a lot of money and power at stake and people want to fly the flag of "science" to achieve their political goals. When politics and science mix, bad things result. cf. Soviet Union.
> And we all know that studies funded by private industry are suspect.
I think this true today but that it is wrong. The tacit, unspoken assumption behind these suspicions is that government funding is NOT suspect and free from all biases. I think that that is logically and historically false. Certainly revealing ones funding is important because funding can be a source of bias but in the end science should stand on its own merit regardless of the source.
I think Scott Adams has named something that has been going on for decades now which is that the American people rightfully no longer trust science and scientists. Part of this mistrust is a product of the rising anti-technology luddites, religion and the opposition to reason in the culture as he points out. But like Adams I think that the distrust of science has also been earned and I believe it is because of the politicization of science via government funding. The leaked emails in Climategate revealed that maybe the scientists were not being so objective after all. The clearest evidence of dishonesty that I read was that in public the pro global-warming scientists would call for the opposition to publish their results and arguments in peer reviewed journals. In the background they were actively working to block the publication of such research or boycott any journals that did so.
It is now considered "scientific" to dismiss your opponents with ad hom "climate denier" labels, secretly politic to limit dissent and smear the opposition as anti-science morons (the implication that Adams was addressing) and using political marketing tricks like changing the name from "global warming" to "climate change" to make the opposition look like fools. These are the methods of a Karl Rove or James Carville not science nor scientists. This is not science.","created_at":"2015-02-02T20:58:01Z","created_at_i":1422910681,"objectID":"8986916","parent_id":8984926,"points":null,"story_id":8984926,"story_title":"Science\u2019s Biggest Fail","story_url":"http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-fail","updated_at":"2023-09-06T23:25:27Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"glenstein"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":">Ethics are reached via consensus
This is probably too big a topic for a whole side-branch on this, but modern meta-ethics teaches a range of possible approaches. Some notions of ethics are relativist, and are about the fact that moral norms are produced by some given society. But under some constructions that's just a procedural truism rather than a position on the content or the nature of morality itself.
Then you have moral realism, a perfectly respected position, which can encompass things like utilitariansim and other ism's. And this might seem silly derail, and I'm trying not to, but this is important at the end of the day, because "ethics is reached via consensus" can mean a lot of things that cash out with completely different practical implications. It's the difference between, for instance, deciding we need to be consensus oriented and vote, or be research oriented and concerned with deepening our scientific understanding of things like insect consciousness and whether the physical effects of sleep deprivation fall under the traditional definition of torture.
>And good luck calculating some of these axioms
Not wrong, they can easily get computationally intractable. So I think one has to account to some degree for uncertainty. Here again, I worry that the intended upshot is supposed to be that we simply give up or treat the project of moral understanding like a cosmically impossible non-starter. I like to think there's a middle ground between where we presently stand and the hypothetical future where we've got perfect knowledge."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Translating natural language to first-order logic for logical fallacy detection"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02318"}},"_tags":["comment","author_glenstein","story_43257719"],"author":"glenstein","comment_text":">Ethics are reached via consensus
This is probably too big a topic for a whole side-branch on this, but modern meta-ethics teaches a range of possible approaches. Some notions of ethics are relativist, and are about the fact that moral norms are produced by some given society. But under some constructions that's just a procedural truism rather than a position on the content or the nature of morality itself.
Then you have moral realism, a perfectly respected position, which can encompass things like utilitariansim and other ism's. And this might seem silly derail, and I'm trying not to, but this is important at the end of the day, because "ethics is reached via consensus" can mean a lot of things that cash out with completely different practical implications. It's the difference between, for instance, deciding we need to be consensus oriented and vote, or be research oriented and concerned with deepening our scientific understanding of things like insect consciousness and whether the physical effects of sleep deprivation fall under the traditional definition of torture.
>And good luck calculating some of these axioms
Not wrong, they can easily get computationally intractable. So I think one has to account to some degree for uncertainty. Here again, I worry that the intended upshot is supposed to be that we simply give up or treat the project of moral understanding like a cosmically impossible non-starter. I like to think there's a middle ground between where we presently stand and the hypothetical future where we've got perfect knowledge.","created_at":"2025-03-04T19:29:42Z","created_at_i":1741116582,"objectID":"43258952","parent_id":43258376,"story_id":43257719,"story_title":"Translating natural language to first-order logic for logical fallacy detection","story_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02318","updated_at":"2025-03-05T04:46:17Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"codingdave"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"The article felt accurate to me - The PM and EM absolutely make the decisions. If they are good at their job, yes, of course they listen to everyone else before making those decisions. Failing to let everyone have their say would lead to not only a poor product, but a poor team. But at the end of the day, it is not a consensus, it is the PM/EM listening, researching, thinking, and then deciding.
FWIW, the best teams I've been on have been mostly driven by consensus anyway - if everyone is in consensus, the PM has an easy decision, so that is how it happens as often as not. But a good PM will know when to strive for that solution, and when to just make their own call."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["of"],"value":"PM and EM Rules of Engagement"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["of"],"value":"https://segment.com/blog/product-manager-engineering-manager-rules-of-engagement/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_codingdave","story_27390457"],"author":"codingdave","comment_text":"The article felt accurate to me - The PM and EM absolutely make the decisions. If they are good at their job, yes, of course they listen to everyone else before making those decisions. Failing to let everyone have their say would lead to not only a poor product, but a poor team. But at the end of the day, it is not a consensus, it is the PM/EM listening, researching, thinking, and then deciding.
FWIW, the best teams I've been on have been mostly driven by consensus anyway - if everyone is in consensus, the PM has an easy decision, so that is how it happens as often as not. But a good PM will know when to strive for that solution, and when to just make their own call.","created_at":"2021-06-04T12:06:29Z","created_at_i":1622808389,"objectID":"27392766","parent_id":27391658,"story_id":27390457,"story_title":"PM and EM Rules of Engagement","story_url":"https://segment.com/blog/product-manager-engineering-manager-rules-of-engagement/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T08:47:35Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"unfocussed_mike"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"Hoftstadter is fairly near standard isn't it? Assuming you mean actually reading GEB and not The Mind's I or I Am A Strange Loop. Not generally a course text but very common reading among CS/AI students. Some of whom even read all the way to the end instead of just pretending to!
The book I would most recommend software developers read is Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas by Seymour Papert.
It's a lot shorter. And probably more valuable.
And one random side recommendation: The Daughter Of Time by Josephine Tey. It's a narrative exploration of how to challenge consensus belief, explore gut instincts and follow research leads, expressed as a perception-challenging historical review of Richard III by a fictional detective.
The BBC audio book is worth a go. My copy of this book (which was my mum's copy) is one of the few things I'd rescue from the hypothetical fire. It stays with you."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"A non-standard book list for software developers"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://mihaiolteanu.me/books.html"}},"_tags":["comment","author_unfocussed_mike","story_30651273"],"author":"unfocussed_mike","children":[30653726,30657181,30659143],"comment_text":"Hoftstadter is fairly near standard isn't it? Assuming you mean actually reading GEB and not The Mind's I or I Am A Strange Loop. Not generally a course text but very common reading among CS/AI students. Some of whom even read all the way to the end instead of just pretending to!
The book I would most recommend software developers read is Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas by Seymour Papert.
It's a lot shorter. And probably more valuable.
And one random side recommendation: The Daughter Of Time by Josephine Tey. It's a narrative exploration of how to challenge consensus belief, explore gut instincts and follow research leads, expressed as a perception-challenging historical review of Richard III by a fictional detective.
The BBC audio book is worth a go. My copy of this book (which was my mum's copy) is one of the few things I'd rescue from the hypothetical fire. It stays with you.","created_at":"2022-03-12T17:14:10Z","created_at_i":1647105250,"objectID":"30652866","parent_id":30651913,"story_id":30651273,"story_title":"A non-standard book list for software developers","story_url":"https://mihaiolteanu.me/books.html","updated_at":"2024-09-20T10:42:53Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"dilippkumar"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"I've always wished to live in a world where high end science and humanities research happens on the open internet so that people outside academia (like myself) can participate as a member of an interested audience.
With YouTube removing videos about CoVid from people who are actively working/researching the virus (because they disagree with the CDC and WHO guidelines), and FB removing historical artifacts by a Historian because such things must only happen behind paywalled journals that only large universities can afford, I worry that the internet is moving away from being a place where information is freely available.
I still think that everyone should host their own blog and have an RSS feed that people can subscribe to and have independent editorial control. But I also want to see YouTube and Facebook succeed as internet companies by enabling regular people like me listen to experts disagree about controversial topics and see how consensus slowly forms at the end of rigorous debate among experts."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Historian suspended by Facebook after sharing document by Goebbels"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://labas.livejournal.com/1238249.html"}},"_tags":["comment","author_dilippkumar","story_28198722"],"author":"dilippkumar","children":[28205995,28206600,28207382,28209661],"comment_text":"I've always wished to live in a world where high end science and humanities research happens on the open internet so that people outside academia (like myself) can participate as a member of an interested audience.
With YouTube removing videos about CoVid from people who are actively working/researching the virus (because they disagree with the CDC and WHO guidelines), and FB removing historical artifacts by a Historian because such things must only happen behind paywalled journals that only large universities can afford, I worry that the internet is moving away from being a place where information is freely available.
I still think that everyone should host their own blog and have an RSS feed that people can subscribe to and have independent editorial control. But I also want to see YouTube and Facebook succeed as internet companies by enabling regular people like me listen to experts disagree about controversial topics and see how consensus slowly forms at the end of rigorous debate among experts.","created_at":"2021-08-16T18:35:08Z","created_at_i":1629138908,"objectID":"28201298","parent_id":28198722,"story_id":28198722,"story_title":"Historian suspended by Facebook after sharing document by Goebbels","story_url":"https://labas.livejournal.com/1238249.html","updated_at":"2024-09-20T09:10:23Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"whymauri"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["end","of","consensus","research"],"value":"I'm in the group which was upset over the insinuation that ML Researchers should not care about fairness or ethics as much as ML Engineers. The distinction between researcher and engineer should not be grounds to care or not care about safe and ethical model building. This is especially true when the difference between either role is highly arbitrary and varies by organization or field.
For the sake of ethical R&D, it's counter-productive to build a hierarchy of investment into the problem. Admittedly, the responsibility of end-results can differ, but the consensus that this ethical work is important should ideally be universal. That said, there should not be some ivory tower where you wash your hands of the ethical problems of your field."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Yann LeCun quits Twitter amid acrimonious exchanges on AI bias"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_whymauri","story_23696427"],"author":"whymauri","children":[23697003,23697677],"comment_text":"I'm in the group which was upset over the insinuation that ML Researchers should not care about fairness or ethics as much as ML Engineers. The distinction between researcher and engineer should not be grounds to care or not care about safe and ethical model building. This is especially true when the difference between either role is highly arbitrary and varies by organization or field.
For the sake of ethical R&D, it's counter-productive to build a hierarchy of investment into the problem. Admittedly, the responsibility of end-results can differ, but the consensus that this ethical work is important should ideally be universal. That said, there should not be some ivory tower where you wash your hands of the ethical problems of your field.","created_at":"2020-07-01T02:09:29Z","created_at_i":1593569369,"objectID":"23696969","parent_id":23696923,"story_id":23696427,"story_title":"Yann LeCun quits Twitter amid acrimonious exchanges on AI bias","story_url":"https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T06:31:19Z"}],"hitsPerPage":20,"nbHits":337,"nbPages":17,"page":0,"params":"query=End+of+Consensus+Research&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":43,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"roundTrip":18},"afterFetch":{"format":{"highlighting":2,"total":2},"merge":{"mergeLoop":{"prepareNextHit":3,"total":3},"total":4},"total":4},"fetch":{"query":13,"scanning":23,"total":37},"total":43},"query":"End of Consensus Research","serverTimeMS":46}