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IMO, "crackpot" and "crank" are quite far from "butthead". The first two communicate precisely what you've described, and are a significant charge to level at a scientist. The last is a playground insult, meaning only "I don't like you" or "I think you're mean."
I actually agree with you there. I was just trying to imagine a scenario where it made sense from Sagan's perspective.
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In case anyone else is interested in the not-at-all-obvious-answer [1], I’ll save you the google: autorotation > Autorotation is the ability of a helicopter to in some situations have its rotors powered by the flow of air rather than the engine. In short, as the helicopter descends, the upward directed flow of air pushes through the rotors, makes them rotate faster, which in turn provides lift. [1] https://www.highsk…
Still, isn’t it more likely for the occupants to survive when a plane lands without power, assuming a decent landing spot?
see the "dead man's curve" which relates to having an engine failure with insufficient height or lateral speed (helicopters shouldn't hover in place unless a good ways up) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93velo...
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>I wonder if scientists feel similarly to Neil deGrasse Tyson today. Find it hard to imagine anyone taking him seriously after seeing his Twitter account.
I suppose I'll need to check it out, I am not on Twitter so don't frequent it. At the same time... If twitter existed back then, how would the famed scientists and communicators come out? Einstein, Feynman, Asimov, Clarke have all had pretty damming (defined at minimum as "unacceptable by modern cultural standards") behaviour come to light. Respected scientists and philosophers of 70s who are still alive have similar…
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Ref #2, I wonder if scientists feel similarly to Neil deGrasse Tyson today. He doesn’t seem likely to be wildly better as a scientist than his peers, but being wildly better as a communicator has incredible differentiating value (and likely has a tailwind for the other scientists in terms of public support for science when it’s something they feel is almost within their grasp).
Keep in mind that some of the youngest generation of scientists have been influenced by his Cosmos revival. Source: have one such in my household.
But show them the original Sagan version. The CGI may be dated, but the material is far more thought provoking.
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This is true (source: worked at NASA and heard other astronomers opinion of Sagan). The other chief aspects were (1) some had professional disagreements with Sagan and resented that he still won academic battles for mindshare just by being Sagan, and (2) resentment of his success by academics who were just as good but didn’t get fame and the grant wins or lucrative work that came from it.
Ref #2, I wonder if scientists feel similarly to Neil deGrasse Tyson today. He doesn’t seem likely to be wildly better as a scientist than his peers, but being wildly better as a communicator has incredible differentiating value (and likely has a tailwind for the other scientists in terms of public support for science when it’s something they feel is almost within their grasp).
Neil deGrasse Tyson, on the other hand, is an edgelord with a PhD. He takes contrarian positions for the sake of generating controversy, often without understanding the underlying issues or forming a cohesive, reasoned argument. He appeals to emotion rather than logic, and is politically partisan and divisive rather than unifying.
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Still, isn’t it more likely for the occupants to survive when a plane lands without power, assuming a decent landing spot?
a helicopter can "glide down" just like an airplane. if your engine fails, with the aid of the rotor as you descend you can turn the potential energy of being up in the air into forward motion, and that forward motion will generate lift over your rotor blades. You practice these techniques as part of getting a license. see the "dead man's curve" which relates to having an engine failure with insufficient height or la…
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This sort of stuff makes me happy I worked on open source research rather than try to get a PHD. Same thing is playing out with LeCun. The excessive, perhaps egotistical need for attribution in academia is in strict opposition to what I consider “good science”.
I don't think this comparison is fair to LeCun. He has literally been at the forefront of ML for over 40 years, starting with his PhD thesis and continuing to the present, and his public fame is entirely a byproduct of the awareness of the impact of his work. (Disclaimer: I've known Yann for decades and worked down the hall from him during his NEC years.)
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I don't think this comparison is fair to LeCun. He has literally been at the forefront of ML for over 40 years, starting with his PhD thesis and continuing to the present, and his public fame is entirely a byproduct of the awareness of the impact of his work. (Disclaimer: I've known Yann for decades and worked down the hall from him during his NEC years.)
To be clear, I’m not accusing LeCun of trying to “hoard credit”, rather I’m accusing others of having petty squabbles (often surrounding his published works) around who was “first” and thus “actually” deserves credit. To them, I say “Get over yourself” - progress doesn’t tend to be made when we’re busy trying to win imaginary races for “mindshare”. And LeCun has done more than enough to prove himself in the field (wi…
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I don’t think people outside the company should get a say over internal code names at all To think otherwise is a much stronger arrogance
Is there a word for this kind of logical fallacy? GP asserts that what the engineers did is wrong. They didn't say that the public should get to decide what codenames to use or anything like that. They simply pointed out the arrogance of the engineers, and they are right. It's like a straw man, but specific to issues of morality. "X is wrong". "Oh, so you want to jail every offender of X? You want to completely regul…
You just don't know what a fallacy is.
> Oh, so you want to jail every offender of X?
This is not what I'm saying. I'm disagreeing, and putting forward a stronger, opposite claim.