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One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

nytimes.com

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Re: One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

#51

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ballenf wrote: post #48
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its four pages including large pictures. Shorter than a children's book. Have a heart - its an interesting story with lots of detail packed into those 20 paragraphs.

I don't get moralizing the point. And if you want to go that route, I'd argue that forcing someone who is coming to you based on a headline's promise to sift through a short children's book is disrespectful and rude. But maybe it's a generational thing and stories are what more people expect now. I bet NYT knows its audience better than I do.

"Sift through". Is that what it's come to? A few paragraphs read in under a minute, is too much to ask of a modern reader?

Kids these days. Bah.

Re: One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

#52

Post by sfink »

Xplune13 wrote: post #26
gnarbarian wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. This is why I am dead set on one of those tickets to Mars.

I always find these types of comments funny. I cannot think of any other reason on why a person would think that going to mars is a better option than lack of research on the planet and its habitability. On top of that, going to Mars isn't going to magically solve the problems. As I've said earlier in some past comment, going to Mars is just as good as moving the goalpost. What we have to do is change what we're curr…

The way I think of it is:

If you had to terraform a planet, which one would you choose?

Option 1: a bombed-out Earth with runaway global warming, acidic oceans, the end result of mass extinctions where there's dramatically less species diversity and some planet-wide ecologies have utterly collapsed.

Option 2: Mars.

I would at least hope the answer is obvious. No matter how much we trash Earth, it's still vastly more habitable than Mars or any other planet or moon in this solar system. The human species might not survive what we do to it, but parking a small repository of humans in orbit or on the Moon that would be capable of repopulation is still easily the winning species-survival strategy over terraforming Mars. (Though I suspect it's probably even better to keep that repository someplace on Earth.)

Re: One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

#53

Post by sfink »

mjevans wrote: post #31
bildung wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the small quantity of humans exactly what makes it less survivable? The smaller the group, the more severe a single fault in the system. This is the way habitats ecosystems work anyway. A trivial example might be aquariums: the bigger the easier to maintain a healty equilibrium.

If you have 1000000 people, there's a very high risk at least one is crazy or illogical with respect to survival. If you have a couple hundred really well examined people who all really wanted to be somewhere the odds are much better, and all the more so, that problems can be contained when identified.

So some form of meritocracy.

Are there any instances in the history of the human race where that idea has worked? My impression is that it always fails due to corruption or incorrect evaluation metrics or some other fundamental flaw in the starry-eyed idea of separating "good" from "bad".

In theory, it's perfectly straightforward to write a flawless, unexploitable large program in C. In practice, we get hacked by plugging something into a Lightning port.

Re: One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

#54

Post by dandellion »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #46
permo-w wrote: post #33

I despise articles written like this Clickbait Headline informative intro Real Article Begins: Once upon a time… Please just tell me the information, I’m not here to read a story

Its four pages including large pictures. Shorter than a children's book. Have a heart - its an interesting story with lots of detail packed into those 20 paragraphs.

I'm the same and it's not like I do it on purpose. I simply cannot enjoy the style, I like the important information up front. If I felt like reading a children's book I'd go grab a children's book. If I'm reading an informational article I want it to read like an informational article.

Re: One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

#55

Post by hypertele-Xii »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #51
ballenf wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get moralizing the point. And if you want to go that route, I'd argue that forcing someone who is coming to you based on a headline's promise to sift through a short children's book is disrespectful and rude. But maybe it's a generational thing and stories are what more people expect now. I bet NYT knows its audience better than I do.

"Sift through". Is that what it's come to? A few paragraphs read in under a minute, is too much to ask of a modern reader? Kids these days. Bah.

With the exponentially increasing amount of information on the Internet, yes, we have matchingly decreasing amounts of patience for sifting through it. Shit is shit, matters not if it comes in tiny pieces or massive turds. It's about aggregate volume.

Re: One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

#56

Post by Cyberdog »

memorysafety wrote: post #21
gamblor956 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antarctica is more hospitable than Mars. The average temperature on Mars is -81 degrees F. The South Pole is generally -76 F during the Southern Winter. On top of that, Antarctica has a breathable atmosphere, and water. Mars does not have a breathable atmosphere, and if it has water, it does not have water in an easily accessible form. Mars also has 2.5x the radiation one would experience orbiting the Earth, or appro…

Good points. But dare you doubt human's destruction ability?.. Note also, that destroying just the thin tender habitable layer of Earth would suffice.

I do not yet think that humanity's capability to destroy is stronger than nature's capability to heal and grow.

But ask me again in a couple decades.

Re: One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

#57

Post by permo-w »

voisin wrote: post #42
permo-w wrote: post #33

I despise articles written like this Clickbait Headline informative intro Real Article Begins: Once upon a time… Please just tell me the information, I’m not here to read a story

Seems like a good problem to tackle with NLP text summarization. Text summarization is already pretty good for the real article issue you mentioned. I wonder if the same process could be applied in reverse to identify low quality headlines too.

I have beta access to Open AI, so I could definitely give that a go when I’ve finished my exams

Re: One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

#58

Post by permo-w »

mhb wrote: post #44
permo-w wrote: post #33

I despise articles written like this Clickbait Headline informative intro Real Article Begins: Once upon a time… Please just tell me the information, I’m not here to read a story

Well, journalists used to be taught the inverted pyramid concept. Maybe they've become preoccupied with other agenda.

The Economist Style Guide suggested summarising in the first few lines, then elaborating after that

Re: One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

#59

Post by permo-w »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #46
permo-w wrote: post #33

I despise articles written like this Clickbait Headline informative intro Real Article Begins: Once upon a time… Please just tell me the information, I’m not here to read a story

Its four pages including large pictures. Shorter than a children's book. Have a heart - its an interesting story with lots of detail packed into those 20 paragraphs.

I understand where you’re coming from, and I’m a proponent of story-telling, but give me the main points first, then let me read the story of if I feel like it.

To be more cynical, this is because it’s behind a paywall. They want to entice you with a little morsel of information, get you hooked into a story, then cut you off at the paywall.

If they gave away all the info in the first few lines, less people would want to keep reading

Re: One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

#60

Post by jefurii »

gnarbarian wrote: post #13
nickserv wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the first mass extinction the planet has seen.

Yep. This is why I am dead set on one of those tickets to Mars.

So what you're saying is you'd like to die a few months or possibly years later than everybody else, but on a different planet?
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