The Curious Case of Polywater • Hacker News Board

Re: The Curious Case of Polywater

#41

Post by mbq » Sat, Nov 09, 2013, 1:33 PM UTC

oofabz wrote: post #13

crusso wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I was thinking that the plot sounded interesting and I should look for the book... then he said how it ends. Poop.

Knowing the ending does not ruin the book. Even if you hadn't heard anything about the plot, it becomes clear very quickly how it is going to end. The suspense comes from how it all goes down. Classic Chekhov's gun. It's an excellent book and I highly recommend it. Very short too, so it's not much of a time commitment.

Agree; actually it even starts after the global freeze.

Re: The Curious Case of Polywater

#42

Post by redwood » Sat, Nov 09, 2013, 4:04 PM UTC

narrator wrote: post #8

With any of these scientific breakthrough the proof is in the pudding. They've got to get some sort of prototype invention that uses their science to validate it. If they can't get their prototype device to work then something's wrong with the science.

Yes and no: in that flying and computers have been possible since the dawn of time. But they emerged at specific times. So this leads folks to always be cautious to reject. But to your point: it isn't definitely true until proven.

Re: The Curious Case of Polywater

#43

Post by turgidElderly » Sat, Nov 09, 2013, 6:23 PM UTC

codezero wrote: post #20

When ever I read articles like this, as well as they are written, I always feel like cutting to the chase: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater

My favorite part about all this is the fear of a "Polywater Gap."

Mandrake, how does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual.

MR. PRESIDENT?! I WILL NOT ALLOW A MINESHAFT GAP!!!

...and then all the parallels with the Cat's Cradle novel, by Kurt Vonnegut, heaped on top.

It's like everyone in national security sits around watching movies and reading novels, and then goes out into the world the very next day, and tries to act them out as part of some warped vision of what they think reality should be, given their advantage for shaping world events.

There's something seriously bizarre and disturbing about that.

Re: The Curious Case of Polywater

#44

Post by Nick_C » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 3:21 AM UTC

alextingle wrote: post #38

codezero wrote: post #20

When ever I read articles like this, as well as they are written, I always feel like cutting to the chase: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater

Absolutely agree. It's written like a badly scripted History Channel "documentary"... "But what was discovered in the tomb? Find out after the commercial break." Ugh!

My new PVR can play at 2x speed with audio adjusted to sound normal. It is a godsend. You can really churn through the 30 minutes of bullshit to extract the 5 minutes of gold in double quick time (pun!).

Re: The Curious Case of Polywater

#45

Post by lamontcg » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 9:37 AM UTC

jbert wrote: post #11

I think it's unfair to lump the faster-than-light-neutrino experiment in as bad science. They pretty much said "this is really odd, please suggest your explanations".

Agreed. Everyone in the physics community pretty much knew that the FTL neutrino problem had to be a measurement error, including the group who published it. I think one individual had to resign because they jumped the gun a bit on the initial announcement, but overall they hit a situation with a pretty crazy and groundbreaking result and none of them could poke holes in it, and all of them were skeptical about it. They published that information in the most responsible manner possible, but the media handled it pretty poorly.

Some other cases are the first two "discoveries" of the top quark, which were both wrong (and the one in 1984 was by Rubbia who won a Nobel Prize for the W and the Z so he wasn't really a lightweight). Recently, CDF at Fermilab had to retract their W+multijet mystery which might have been a leptophobic Z' boson, but was just that they didn't understand their background (again, everyone kinda saw that one coming as well). Also a couple of the dark matter detectors thought they had some signal, but the recently announced LUX experiment negative results pretty much crushed them. This kind of back-and-forth actually happens all the time. That isn't bad science, that's just science.