41–50 of 82 posts
Guy who literally made his career on fear mongering in fiction and speculation gets mad if other fields do it. No self reflected irony at all there. I have a hard time reading this as anything other than a continuation. He has a habit of not seeing the forest through the trees. Instead of focusing on the fact that human caused extinctions have created a literal new age of extinction, he focuses on a specific point be…
Fake news is not new. It is at least as old as the oldest written texts. The religions of the world are the largest fake news outlets out there, and those are going along just fine. I mean they kind of have to be - even if you do believe in one of them the rest must be concluded as millenia old fake news. "Our times are different" thrown around without care is a very widespread cognitive error.
Absolutely right. The Book of Ecclesiastes talks about this at great length. History repeats, no-one will remember those of us alive today, and the people who follow us will also be forgotten by those who follow them.
>even if you do believe in one of them the rest must be concluded as millenia old fake news
A religion would not last thousands of years if there were nothing to it, and there's far more commonality between religions than meets the eye. Read the things that Jesus Christ said, and then read the Tao Te Ching. It's astounding how closely they agree on quite a few things. The "Test of Time" works subtly but powerfully over thousands of years. The old religions that still exist today contended, in their time, with hundreds or even thousands of competitors. Those competitors all faded away.
"Sons are seldom as good men as their fathers; they are generally worse, not better." ~Homer, The Odyssey
"Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away." ~Jesus, The Gospel of Matthew
Guy who literally made his career on fear mongering in fiction and speculation gets mad if other fields do it. No self reflected irony at all there. I have a hard time reading this as anything other than a continuation. He has a habit of not seeing the forest through the trees. Instead of focusing on the fact that human caused extinctions have created a literal new age of extinction, he focuses on a specific point be…
“We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It’s not sensible to listen to it.»
Coincidentally I just finished State of Fear last night, a Crichton novel about Eco terrorism. To be honest parts of it made me uncomfortable but with an open mind it can be a very interesting read. His idea of the PLM complex is a pretty interesting take on our current state of affairs.
Worth reading this response by James Hansen: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200604/viewpoint.cf...
Guy who literally made his career on fear mongering in fiction and speculation gets mad if other fields do it. No self reflected irony at all there. I have a hard time reading this as anything other than a continuation. He has a habit of not seeing the forest through the trees. Instead of focusing on the fact that human caused extinctions have created a literal new age of extinction, he focuses on a specific point be…
Indeed, his examples are comically telling: CNN and MSNBC but not Fox which had equivalent and bigger audiences.
But for our present time, I presume the point of resurrecting a 17 year old speech from a fiction writer is to further reduce confidence in a press that dare criticize the ruling party.
10 years ago, I was a religious Techcrunch reader. I read every article. Eventually, I noticed something peculiar: I'd have an idea for a startup, and six months or so later (about the time it would've taken me to do it) someone would come out with that idea! It happened enough times that it pushed me to stop reading the same tech news as everyone else, because I didn't want to succumb to group think. I've since exte…
It's unavoidable, but compartmentalization of Information and focus can help. You don't always have to mix fragments of known things (Do you think you know everything or almost anything you know?) with possibly new ways of providing products functionality or a completely new product consciously, but many times you are putting an "additional" cognitive effort when you try to predict if someone else would do it the same way you do it, or will go through the same thought process, and get the same results. Of course, that "additional" can overload you.
Those phenomenons are being exploited from centuries ago but they have different causes and taxonomies according to the discipline you look at them.
> For example, here is The New York Times for March 6, the day Dick Farson told me I was giving this talk. The column one story for that day concerns Bush’s tariffs on imported steel. Now we read: Mr. Bush’s action “is likely to send the price of steel up sharply, perhaps as much as ten percent…” American consumers “will ultimately bear” higher prices. America’s allies “would almost certainly challenge” the decision.…
Guy who literally made his career on fear mongering in fiction and speculation gets mad if other fields do it. No self reflected irony at all there. I have a hard time reading this as anything other than a continuation. He has a habit of not seeing the forest through the trees. Instead of focusing on the fact that human caused extinctions have created a literal new age of extinction, he focuses on a specific point be…
> Guy who literally made his career on fear mongering in fiction ... Can you expand on that? I presume you're talking about his book, "State of Fear". I guess "Andromeda Strain" could be in that category. I found most of his books interesting, educational and often insightful.
Even if he has written books that don't follow this pattern, Jurassic Park surely does; I'm not sure why you didn't mention it yourself
> For example, here is The New York Times for March 6, the day Dick Farson told me I was giving this talk. The column one story for that day concerns Bush’s tariffs on imported steel. Now we read: Mr. Bush’s action “is likely to send the price of steel up sharply, perhaps as much as ten percent…” American consumers “will ultimately bear” higher prices. America’s allies “would almost certainly challenge” the decision.…
Yes, it's "bullshit on the front page of the Times". Now, I happen to agree that tariffs may cause prices to increase. I've been educated in economics and study it as a hobby; I can explain my point-of-view from the concrete facts to the high level theory. The most definitive statement I would ever be willing to say on the subject is that tariffs always harm the economic, moral, and political interests of the citizen…
That's unfair. First of all, their interviewer probably demanded that they give a quotable figure, because the readers want some quick concrete takeaways and not a lesson in economics and uncertainty. And just because they didn't give further qualification (or it didn't make it into the quote) doesn't mean they didn't consider all of those things. I think you risk being guilty of making disingenuous assumptions about them in the same way that you're accusing them of making disingenuous assumptions about economics.
>The improper speculation about the consequences of current tariffs are precisely what give Trump and his cabinet the intellectual cover to make outlandish claims like "our tariffs are being paid for by China."
They certainly are being paid (in part) by China, and appear to be having the desired effect of shifting US supply chains away from China.
If they only hurt American businesses and consumers and didn't affect China at all, then China wouldn't be responding with retaliatory tariffs on American goods. And I presume you don't think that China's retaliatory tariffs only hurt the Chinese.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an AE major, what aerospace discussion do you think is terrible?
AE myself. Reading the discussion on the 737Max incident generally is extremely painful. Also anything involving electric airplanes
* Boeing wants to make a new plane, by pretending it's a "small" modification of their existing plane. (don't have to get certified; the old plane designs wouldn't get certified today; costs a lot to certify and re-train; take your pick)
* One of the regulations they have to stay within is that the plane shouldn't pitch its nose up without any pilot input in that direction. (Maybe it was more specific than that; something about requiring more force to pitch higher up?)
* Some airplanes comply with this requirement because they comply with the laws of physics. (Including presumably the original 737; otherwise this system wouldn't be new, right?) Not so the 737Max.
* The system that caused the crash was meant to comply with the above. If the aircraft was pitched up, it applied a force on the controls down. (every 10 seconds or so?)
* One of the problems was that there were only 2 sensors feeding into this system. If you have 3 sensors, a single failure can be outvoted; if you have only 2 that disagree, no matter what you try, you'll get it wrong in some cases
* Something something software. We've already established we're working with too few sensors to be safe, and the system applies force intermittently every 10 seconds, so it's hard to even tell that it's a problem. Who cares how the software works?
* Because of the original desire to pass through this new plane under the same certification, there was no new pilot training that mentioned this system. There was some sort of optional indicator, I think, too? The output of the broken system was also intermittent, so it was hard for pilots to quickly realize what was happening.