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Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

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Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#301

Post by WalterBright »

Eisenstein wrote: post #262
WalterBright wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't think of any technology developed by slaves because they wouldn't get credit for it. Can you think of any in the US Confederacy? Any at all? The cotton gin comes to mind, but that was invented by Eli Whitney in the north. Can you imagine this? slave: "Boss, how about if we do it this way, we can be more productive?" boss: "shut up and do what I told you to." Slaves had every incentive to do as little as p…

If you can't come up with a scenario where a slave would improve their life by innovating the tools and objects they had available to them, or a scenario in which a master is not a one dimensional caricature, or a scenario where a slave is not a stupid pack animal that can only follow orders, then the burden is not on history to convince you otherwise.

History shows us that free men produce far more innovations than unfree ones.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#302

Post by WalterBright »

Eisenstein wrote: post #296
WalterBright wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which specific aspect of that work was responsible for humans being better able to solve complex problems after its development which could not have been solved before it, if the same access to materials and resources were available? It sounds like you don't know what the scientific method is? > The German regime Yes, it was. And I wrote "tend to be" not "absolutely 100%".

> It sounds like you don't know what the scientific method is? I take from that response that you just assume that the scientific method was important but don't know why. I will posit that is because it wasn't as important as you assume. > tend to be What number of exceptions would there need to be before you accepted that the entire premise was wrong?

I conclude you are just being argumentative.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#303

Post by nradov »

WalterBright wrote: post #165
RajT88 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People may have had less access to information and technology, but that didn't make them any dumber than we are now. There's probably an aspect to people confusing "knowledge" with "brainpower". People in the past were just as good at figuring stuff out as we are today. We have the advantage of Millenia of stuff figured out and documented. So we know on average more about how the universe works than people in the d…

> People in the past were just as good at figuring stuff out as we are today. I seriously doubt that. My experience in college was not to learn facts and formulae, but to learn how to learn. I.e. training the mind. It's similar to athletes. The worst Olympic athlete today would blow away the best from a century ago. That's not because people are inherently stronger today, but because we know how to train much better.

In swimming, high school girls today routinely go faster than the best male Olympic athletes from 1924. In most sports, technique and equipment has improved along with training.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#304

Post by sdwr »

Eisenstein wrote: post #115
Vegenoid wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. History makes it abundantly clear that it is a regular occurrence for large groups of people to collectively believe things for which there is little evidence, and furthermore, to take extreme actions based on such beliefs. This applies to you too, reader. Many would read the above and fully agree…

> I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. It is the tendency to think that people in the past were dumb, and we aren't. Like, there always has to be some explanation involved when we learn that people did something unintuitive in the past -- people learned how to make beer by accidentally leaving leftover bread in liquid and then drank i…

The funny thing is that, if anything, we are the dumb ones in this scenario.

They figured it out through reasoning and trial and error and raw experience, while for us it's apparently impossible to learn anything we don't already know the answer for.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#305

Post by Cthulhu_ »

WalterBright wrote: post #162
Eisenstein wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. It is the tendency to think that people in the past were dumb, and we aren't. Like, there always has to be some explanation involved when we learn that people did something unintuitive in the past -- people learned how to make beer by accidentally leaving leftover bread in liquid and then drank i…

Initial technological progress was agonizingly slow. Presuming that man then was just as smart as today, why would that be so? I suspect it is because the thought of what might be possible just never entered their minds. For example, Edison invented the idea of the invention development laboratory. Very, very recently. The Wright Bros were the first to come up with the idea of a research and development laboratory -…

Wasn't Da Vinci also a researcher running an innovation lab in the modern day definitions of the phrase, or is that the popular video game adaptation version of him?

Going back further, the Islamic world had a lot of science going on which is often ignored or omitted by the western world when it comes to discussing the origins of science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islami...

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#306

Post by Cthulhu_ »

rob74 wrote: post #252
jyounker wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does it always have to be an accident? Because that's a surprisingly common way for things to be discovered. Saccharine? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet. Aspartame? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet. I think this is true of basically every major artificial sweetener…

Same as the famous discovery of Penicillin in a petri dish contaminated with a mold that killed off the bacteria? ...but now I'm starting to wonder how many people working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and died, because they had accidentally discovered a toxin?

Dying is still a valuable scientific outcome, but few people become famous for it except maybe Marie Curie.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#307

Post by Cthulhu_ »

carlosjobim wrote: post #187
Loughla wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? What great war did we all live through and what's being openly planned? I feel like either you're being dramatic or I'm waaaayyyyy more out of touch than I thought I was. Both are possible, so I need some clarification.

We went through covid, just a couple of years ago. Each of us know how we reacted and how we behaved. The great war between Russia and NATO is being openly planned right now, by both sides. European and Russian media has reached a war frenzy that probably hasn't been seen since WWI.

I can't speak for Russia but you're kind-of correct about NATO planning for war, because Russia has been making moves to start one (or, they already did).

I have heard the spin that Russia made a move on Ukraine because if they became a NATO country there'd be more NATO at Russia's border, but... they still started it. They can't finish it because they vastly underestimated their own abilities though.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#308

Post by Cthulhu_ »

WalterBright wrote: post #168
binoct wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t take issue with the point of your last sentence, but rather the framing that “animal” is somehow a negative thing. Humans are animals, there’s no separate animal nature. We are animals, full stop. The scientific method is a skill we have developed to be more objective about complicated phenomena. Depth of knowledge and education certainly help an individual reason more carefully about cause and effect in vari…

What separates men from animals is men have honor.

I'd nuance that argument a bit; we know of the concept of honor and can distinguish between "honorable" and "dishonorable" behaviour, and / or the definition thereof depending on culture, whereas animals only have instinct. But then again, smarter animals do know right from wrong, or honor, if you will.

But this is a philosophical subject, which I'm not educated in.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#309

Post by Cthulhu_ »

raddan wrote: post #161
nilsbunger wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been fascinating to watch this play out with the drone stories in NJ too. Despite all our amazing tech, we still can’t tell truth from fiction.

I assume this is why this was posted on HN. My first thought when I heard the drone stories was “you’re just noticing them now?” Anyone who has ever spent any time watching the skies knows that there is an amazing variety of things in the sky. To be honest I am kind of surprised that the current hysteria revolves around something plausible (foreign drones) given that past hysteria has been about the totally implausib…

The implausible thing there is that if it really was an Iranian mother-drone ship etc, it'd be shot down ages ago. But it's a convenient story for parties that want to portray the US as incompetent, even if said parties have tentative alliances / shared interests with Iran.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#310

Post by Cthulhu_ »

nradov wrote: post #223
csours wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The conclusion is terrifying in my opinion. And this is why "conspiracy" theories exist. I prefer to call them Low Information High Satisfaction theories, as I fee that is a more accurate name. I am do not intend to pass judgement on this commentor or on people who believe in these theories; in fact, I think that if you tell yourself "I am too smart to believe in conspiracy theories", you are making yourself MORE l…

I am too smart to believe in conspiracy theories. (And I'm not even particularly smart.)

Not being particularly smart probably gives you a better defense against conspiracy theories; a lot of them rely on pseudoscience and faith in said science, which require some intelligence to comprehend.

Like, I'm too stupid to understand the flat earth science.

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