Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

Post by marklgr » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 7:12 AM UTC

lucajona wrote: post #187

cantankerous wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a vacuous statement. Science is an inductive exercise and suffers from the problem of induction. It's difficult to make the case that real truth can come from it at all. In lieu of this, peer review is a very good heuristic for sifting out bunk science.

I don't think it's fair to call a correct statement vacuous. More nuanced than it appears, and easily misinterpreted maybe. I think it's fair to point out that peer review doesn't determine scientific truth, because that would get the causal relation in reverse. Consensus has little to do with objective truth, but it is a useful heuristic as you say.

Post by facetube » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 7:17 AM UTC

general_ai wrote: post #172

facetube wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How in the world is a picture of actual reality a "political statement"? How on Earth can an unedited photo of something that really happened be construed in this way?

It's a photo that was taken hours before inauguration, which made it look like the grounds were sparsely populated. Also known as "fake news". Here's the Gigapixel during Trump's inauguration speech: http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/01/politics/trump-inaugu...

Post by wallacoloo » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 7:47 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #75

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta: people say they keep looking for explanations. Explanations are offered. Then the explanations are downvoted and an argument ensues. It may be fine that you don't understand or like the explanations, but saying "I really don't understand X" and then punishing anybody who tries to explain it isn't much of a way to have a reasonable public discourse. (This wasn't directed at you, just at the community at large. I…

On HN, you cannot downvote a direct reply to your comment, so you can't punish an explanation provided to you.

Post by realityking » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 7:52 AM UTC

masonic wrote: post #168

Vivtek wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pro forma for the ambassadors from the outgoing administration to proffer their resignation effective noon on Inauguration Day. The incoming president then says, no, no, please stay on until we have your replacement set up. A transition team who knows these things would have done that - the Trump team, though, since he was not actually expecting a transition, had no idea how to run one. And accepted all the resi…

The incoming president then says, no, no, please stay on until we have your replacement set up. ... which constitutes a rejection of the resignation. Later, when a replacement is confirmed, what happens if the offer to resign is not repeated? Do ambassadors get normal Civil Service protections?

Post by vhost- » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 8:01 AM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #149

cyberferret wrote: post #6

I am looking for reasonable explanations for this, but keep coming up blank. I grew up in a country where this sort of censorship and fact hiding was the norm, and hated it. I now live in a country that is much freer, but for the first time since 1938, no longer has an active US ambassador, with no replacement in sight, since President Trump fired all US ambassadors to foreign countries on the afternoon of his inaugu…

I don't know how saying governemnt officials should speak through a specific medium is 'censorship'. Any organisation will want to control its message, and having your officials use a channel that's 140 characters maximum leads to only being able to talk about issues in the most flimsy of ways. Personally, I think there should be less Twitter and more published in-depth reports.