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Freeman Dyson Has Died

nytimes.com

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Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#51

Post by gus_massa »

b0sk wrote: post #34
hirundo wrote: post #17

"When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories" "We have no reason to think that climate change is harmful if you look at the world as a whole. Most places, in fact, are better off being warmer than being colder. And historically, the really bad times for the environment and for…

the ridiculously hot summers in Australasia resulting in bushfires, famine and drought... seas taking over the cities are all demonstrable effects of climate change. Did he live in UK? Yea the winter was milder I guess.

> seas taking over the cities are all demonstrable effects of climate change

The sea level raise has been approximately 3 inches from the 1993 level. That is much less than the change due to the tides.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#52

Post by krapp »

adpirz wrote: post #46

I really feel like it's worth having this discussion: the black bar for Freeman Dyson, but not for Katherine Johnson who died earlier this week. At the time I thought it was likely because she wasn't _directly_ involved in computing and tried to write it off, but Freeman seems to be as related to the page as her. I bring it up because it really does speak to how a community decides who they want to include or not. Un…

The community doesn't decide who gets the black bar or not, and there are no published guidelines. AFAIK it's entirely the personal preference of the admins, or possibly just dang.

Maybe Katherine Johnson just wasn't considered notable enough, or maybe the story just wasn't noticed. I wouldn't necessarily attribute it to sexism, though - there have been male obits that haven't gotten the black bar either.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#53

Post by CamperBob2 »

gus_massa wrote: post #51
b0sk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the ridiculously hot summers in Australasia resulting in bushfires, famine and drought... seas taking over the cities are all demonstrable effects of climate change. Did he live in UK? Yea the winter was milder I guess.

> seas taking over the cities are all demonstrable effects of climate change The sea level raise has been approximately 3 inches from the 1993 level. That is much less than the change due to the tides.

Well, all that matters is the level at high tide, right? Everything near the seashore is constructed on that basis.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#54

Post by astrophysician »

aardvarks wrote: post #47
astrophysician wrote: post #5

About 4 years ago, I was a grad student in astrophysics at Princeton. Dyson worked at the Institute for Advanced Study which, while not officially part of the university was essentially an extension of the various departments (shared colloquiums, any researcher there was a valid thesis adviser, etc.). The grad students have a tradition (or used to) called “Thunch” (Thursday Lunch) where they invite someone to come ha…

He would sometimes eat lunch with us postdocs (just randomly, on a whim) when I was a postdoc at IAS. He would always have something interesting to say or ask, generally about science but often offbeat or unexpected -- you couldn't help but notice both his wide-ranging intellectual interests (our field was not quite within his main expertise) and his very gracious manner in starting conversations that both he and we…

Thanks for sharing — yea completely agree, it’s always so much fun to be around people like Dyson. There’s more like him at Princeton (and everywhere else, I was at university if Illinois for undergrad and the story is the same there), they just get a kick out of being curious, and always are genuinely interested to learn and hear new things, no matter how old they get. Such a pleasure to be around — they aren’t bitter or insecure, they don’t have anything to prove, they just think that some things are just so gosh darn cool, and that fun energy is contagious.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#55

Post by CamperBob2 »

Daishiman wrote: post #39
CamperBob2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point is, for every place that gets worse, someplace else will get better. Small consolation if you live in one of the former places, of course. But he's not wrong. Earth as a whole is a bit colder than it would be in the best of all possible universes. Other effects like ocean acidification are harder to hand-wave away. I hate cold weather, myself, but it's not just about terrestrial climate.

His point has been debunked time and time again. "Better" is a definition for the organisms that may inhabit a certain environment. Under no reasonable time frame for human existence is his claim even close to valid.

His point has been debunked time and time again. ... by arguments that themselves are subject to debunking. You've used a thought-terminating phrase here.

The fact is, we've been coming out of an ice age for the past several millennia, and life has generally gotten better as a result. The rate at which that process happens is very important, though. If Dyson did overlook any important counterpoints, that seems like a big one.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#56

Post by SargeZT »

jey wrote: post #48
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure how long it'd take to become socially acceptable, but I would bet we could make robotic tails for the elderly to help with balancing... accelerometer, motors and a few counterweights, controller and battery.

A lot of people have psychological hurdles to even using a cane. Something like "I raised N children, I powered through my career, I have been a strong independent human being as far as I can remember, why should I use a cane?"

I work with seniors, and even walkers/canes aren't surefire answers. In my facility, with roughly 500 seniors, we still have at least 2 major falls a month with people using walkers. We had a hip fracture last week with someone using a walker because they decided to take a sharp turn and just tipped over. They certainly help, but I've seen falls happen that wouldn't have happened were a walker not in the equation at all.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#57

Post by logfromblammo »

nerpderp82 wrote: post #11
starpilot wrote: post #6

He was the sanest mind on climate change: https://e360.yale.edu/features/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_cl...

> Dyson contends that since carbon dioxide is good for plants, a warmer planet could be a very good thing. And if CO2 does get to be a problem, Dyson believes we can just do some genetic engineering to create a new species of super-tree that can suck up the excess. Forever the optimist!

That is actually work-in-process. Biological engineers are trying to upgrade C3 plants to C4, improve rubisco efficiency, and other such performance enhancers for photosynthesis.

It's not so much driven by climate changes as by potential agricultural profits, though. If it were the former, they'd make an algae 2.0 and drop it in the ocean. But as C3 to C4 modification could make a hotter, drier rice with 20%-50% higher yield, that's worth a whole lot of money.

Of course, that work has been underway for decades--even before CRISPR/Cas9--and golden rice got stomped for no good reason, so even if someone made a super-Sitka-pine exclusively for carbon fixation, it could still get blocked by politics.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#58

Post by mongol »

rtrunck wrote: post #2

“It is remarkable that mind enters into our awareness of nature on two separate levels. At the highest level, the level of human consciousness, our minds are somehow directly aware of the complicated flow of electrical and chemical patterns in our brains. At the lowest level, the level of single atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is again involved in the description of events. Between lies the level of mole…

Sounds like Dyson believed in, or hoped for, free will, in that mind would affect the randomness that quantum physics involves. I think it would be great if it was so because the alternative would be that we are just machines. But I fear that the mind does not have that type of influence on it's fundamental parts...

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#60

Post by m0zg »

melling wrote: post #28

Started writing "later” in life: “Life begins at 55, the age at which I published my first book,” he wrote in “From Eros to Gaia,” Never got his PhD. Taught physics at Cornell. Thoughts on climate change: "Relishing the role of iconoclast, he confounded the scientific establishment by dismissing the consensus about the perils of man-made climate change as “tribal group-thinking.” He doubted the veracity of the climat…

>> Excess carbon in the air is good for plants, and global warming might forestall another ice age.

How is it not "rooted in science" that excess carbon is good for plants? We're already seeing significant global greening, and yields are up. Excess CO2 also reduces the amount of water the plants need.

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