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North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

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Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#391

Post by mikeyouse »

porknubbins wrote: post #209
mikeyouse wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hasn’t been true for decades… it’s one of those “Internet Talking Points” that gets repeated ad nauseam but just isn’t true.. The AMA lobbies intensely for more residency spots and more medical schools and has since at least the debate over the ACA.

Why aren't there any more medical schools then? I believe professional schools (law, MBA etc) are historically very profitable for universities so they are (or were) incentivized to open even mediocre ones.

Mostly because they’re extremely expensive to set up.. but even so there are maybe a dozen new ones that have opened in the past 5 years with about that many under discussion to open in the next 5 years. I think the big bottleneck right now is the residency slots, those need Federal funding and they’ve been hesitant.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#392

Post by colechristensen »

gavinhoward wrote: post #370
colechristensen wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Further research necessary. The autism link to vaccines isn't at the "further research necessary" stage, it is at the "not absolutely impossible but much evidence against" stage. The only reason the link exists at all is that vaccines and first signs of autism can happen at similar times and often a vaccine will make a person/small child briefly feel unwell which gets pointed to as a "first sign" because humans find…

Until it's absolutely impossible, further research is necessary. Who knows? It could be a combination of things. Perhaps vaccines are not aggravating factors by themselves; maybe you also need to combine them with, I don't know, Tylenol or another pain killer. Saying the equivalent of "the science is settled" is always not true because how could we possibly know all of the variables that matter. And in science, all f…

>Until it's absolutely impossible, further research is necessary.

There is no such thing, you can study something until the heat death of the Universe and still have a nonzero uncertainty.

>Saying the equivalent of "the science is settled" is always not true because how could we possibly know all of the variables that matter. And in science, all factors matter.

There is a wide gap between "further research is necessary" and "the science is settled" and you seem to be arguing on both sides depending on if that argument is in favor of the autism link. The link stopped being an interesting or pressing scientific question, the necessity or urgency of continuing to research it is quite low and anyone making funding decisions would be wise to allocate mostly elsewhere. There's no problem with continuing to search if a research group wants, researching unpopular questions is important, but let's not misrepresent the state of the research and the reasonable conclusions which can be drawn from the data. "further research necessary" is a phrase that evokes a sense that there is little evidence on which to base conclusions, there may be a hint of an effect, perhaps with contradictory evidence. This is not the case for the autism link, there is indeed a large statistically sound corpus of evidence pointing in the "no link" direction.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#393

Post by ineedasername »

ddingus wrote: post #387
ineedasername wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, that makes sense, I've done that once or twice, but now I listen to audiobooks. Pretty much constantly actually, even at work. Especially at work: helps me concentrate without getting distracted. Unless something requires my absolutely full attention.

I will listen to an audiobook from time to time myself. A good reader makes for a nice experience! Thinking back, I have never referred to those as a show.

Here's a few of my favorite readers. If I don't enjoy a book, it's never because of them. And they're good enough that they're never on some of the self-published audiobooks coming through Amazon's ACX program. (don't get me wrong: there's some good stuff there, it's just hit or miss both on writer quality & narrator quality) meaning you'll often find them outside of the Amazon ecosystem as well, if you get audiobooks from somewhere other than audible.

Anyway, here they are. All very different styles, but all very good:

John Lee

William Dufris

Stefan Rudnicki

Scott Brick

In fact, if you enjoy scifi/fantasy, The Psalms of Isaak by Ken Scholes has a full cast with all of the above except for John Lee. (John Less

That series is a very thoughtful set of books, not easily placed into a nice category of high/low fantasy & doesn't romanticize feudalism societies with royalty, lords, etc being the only notable characters. That always annoys me about some types of fantasy: Taking a style of government that is brutal & freedom crushing for 99.99% of the population & focus on the lucky few who where fancy clothes and go to feasts, with a token peasant as "the chosen one".

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#394

Post by ddingus »

ineedasername wrote: post #393
ddingus wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will listen to an audiobook from time to time myself. A good reader makes for a nice experience! Thinking back, I have never referred to those as a show.

Here's a few of my favorite readers. If I don't enjoy a book, it's never because of them. And they're good enough that they're never on some of the self-published audiobooks coming through Amazon's ACX program. (don't get me wrong: there's some good stuff there, it's just hit or miss both on writer quality & narrator quality) meaning you'll often find them outside of the Amazon ecosystem as well, if you get audiobook…

Thanks! Much appreciated.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#395

Post by jimmaswell »

mint2 wrote: post #388
jimmaswell wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great. I've had this idea myself but for major legislation in general. A checkup on any new federal law first 2 years later, then 4, then every 8, or maybe a provision to allow a longer time after enough successive affirmations. Congress could live with their easy jobs getting a bit harder.

The affordable care act would have been killed under that and replaced with nothing. While in principle checking in on laws seems nice, a mandatory review deadline or it goes away would not be a viable solution in our current political climate. But even in a more ideal climate, it seems that Congress would be tied up with the reviews and have no time to actually address new or contemporary issues. Perhaps if it was s…

> The affordable care act would have been killed under that and replaced with nothing

But potentially also the NFA, Marijuana prohibition, and much more.

Overwhelming congress gives states more impetus to solve their own problems instead of let the federal government be so bloated.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#396

Post by gavinhoward »

colechristensen wrote: post #392
gavinhoward wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until it's absolutely impossible, further research is necessary. Who knows? It could be a combination of things. Perhaps vaccines are not aggravating factors by themselves; maybe you also need to combine them with, I don't know, Tylenol or another pain killer. Saying the equivalent of "the science is settled" is always not true because how could we possibly know all of the variables that matter. And in science, all f…

>Until it's absolutely impossible, further research is necessary. There is no such thing, you can study something until the heat death of the Universe and still have a nonzero uncertainty. >Saying the equivalent of "the science is settled" is always not true because how could we possibly know all of the variables that matter. And in science, all factors matter. There is a wide gap between "further research is necessa…

There is no gap between "the science is settled" and "further research is necessary". Either it is settled, or research is necessary.

I am not arguing that vaccines could cause autism. What I am arguing is that we don't know what causes autism and that we don't know if vaccines are an aggravating factor. That seems like an important question to me.

By the way, there can be a "large statistically sound corpus of evidence" for "no link" and still be wrong. Most importantly, all of that evidence could have missed important factors.

But beyond that point, as the medical field has lied to us more and more this past year, I no longer take what they say at face value. I dig in myself. And while they have convinced me that there is no direct link, they haven't convinced me that vaccines are definitely not an aggravating factor.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#397

Post by systemvoltage »

hliyan wrote: post #41
the_lonely_road wrote: post #20

What a fascinating case. There are so many details in such a short articles that is each worth its own discussion! Let’s start with my personally theory that hopefully won’t color all of the conversation about the individual points. This guy pissed off some people and those people are using their petty power to make his life hell. It’s like the 10’s of thousands of people jaywalking without issue and then the homeles…

This is why the letter of the law is so important, paradoxically. It is never good to have unreasonable/archaic laws in the book and have law enforcement look the other way. Since almost everyone ends up breaking them, it allows law enforcement to basically charge any selected person. Such laws should be struck off the book. I believe in Latin, this is called Lex malla, lex nulla - roughly translates to "No law is be…

I agree. GDPR doesn't explicitly state that companies above certain size are exempt for many nuances of compliance or the 'little guy' gets a pass. Yet, almost all small companies ignore full GDPR compliance. Just because no one cares/sues small companies, doesn't mean that they're immune - the letter of the law and its enforcement should be absolute so that shitty laws don't pass the mustard.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#398

Post by gnopgnip »

xf1cf wrote: post #114
Swenrekcah wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the concept of “jaywalking” as a punishable offense is revolting to me.

Ignoring the ford conspiracies how exactly should jaywalking be treated then? It's both a danger to the drivers and the people. We can't get rid of cars and streets. That cat is over a hundred years outside of the bag. It's moved on, had it's own family, and died. Jaywalking as a punishable offense makes sense to me at least. The level of punishment is often excessive certainly. $250 fine for stepping onto the street…

CA has the right approach here. Jaywalking is defined as crossing a street with two light controlled intersections outside of the crosswalk, or when it is not your turn. You can legally enter the crosswalk when the light is flashing if you make it across in time. And for streets without intersections controlled by lights jaywalking just doesn't apply. People manage to not walk across highways or other dangerous areas for reasons other than a jaywalking ticket.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#399

Post by pomian »

SeanLuke wrote: post #45
prepend wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is he gave expert testimony. So it’s not just speaking about it, but presenting from a position of authority without qualification. I think the whole expert testimony business is suspect as the definition of “expert” varies so much. But I think the correction is in the law specifying what is expect and not and making that better is the place to focus. It seems like the correction would be to invalid…

Being a licensed engineer is not a requirement to being an "expert" in expert testimony. You are an expert if the court deems you an expert and the opposing counsel has agreed. Full stop. I think that the only thing an engineering license should grant you, in this case, is the right to call yourself a licensed engineer, which conveys some degree of authority. I don't think he made that claim.

Perfect summary. Nicely written.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#400

Post by eru »

umvi wrote: post #23
eru wrote: post #4

I remember discussions here on HN where people were looking forward to regulating software engineering.

Some people want software engineering to be like other engineering disciplines where a PE license and/or union membership is mandatory to practice the trade.

Yes, those wishes are what I was referring to.

Not sure why you are being downvoted.

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