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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

I just noticed something funny: The library of Alexandria was accidentally burned in 48 BC by Julius Ceasar. Here we are in 2021, we now have Alexandra's library, which rivals the first in size and scope, and there are at least as many forces trying to burn it. But fortunately this one is digital and you too can have a copy in your hallway closet for the price of some harddrives and bandwidth.

Go make a backup, if you can afford it, and let's make sure that this one sticks around.

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Small footnote: despite its standing in popular culture, the burning of the library at Alexandria was not as important as they make it.

> We do not lose texts because of catastrophic events that wipe out all copies of them. We lose texts because they stop being copied.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t6op5/facts...

Good reminder to backup.

Sciencide or knowledgecide. Let's hope our descendants condemn companies and personalities behind these attacks like we condemn criminals of the past.

The people making these decisions are used to being condemned by common folk, so we are not in any way better off by having more people condemning these actions.

Condemnation is not enough. We must actively work at dismantling the foundations of their power. We must abolish intellectual property laws, especially copyright.

They'll still try to maintain control but it will no longer be a crime to resist. They will lose.

We should start with Mickey Mouse.

I personally see it as an essential element of preserving democracy going forward. As science becomes a more influential component in public policy (it has arguably become the most influential component over the past 18 months), you end up with a governance style of “the law is whatever science says it should be”. If that science is not available for public scrutiny, then you have the added dynamic of “…and the science is whatever we say it is”.

I think open and transparent science is really important if we want to adopt evidence based policies in a democratic society.

However, when it comes to law I don’t think there really is a “what science says it should be”. We can use the scientific method and evidence based reasoning to assess the likely outcome of any law or policy change, but figuring out what outcomes were as society are willing to accept given all the reasons trade offs is not a scientific question.

Unfortunately I’m not sure just having open and transparent science will be enough when so many seem uninterested in having a good faith conversation about the evidence and its implications

I don’t think there is either. It ignores the fundamentally solipsistic nature of “the truth”, and perhaps more importantly the fact that science can’t tell you what values to have, or what concerns to prioritize. It’s a methodology for refining knowledge, not designing a society.

But in the realm of governance, science is frequently used (or perhaps abused) as an unassailable authority to justify a wide variety of policy positions. I generally consider this to be a governance anti-pattern, but so long as science is being used to justify technocratic policy, it should be available for all of us to make our own judgements about.

> “the law is whatever science says it should be”

First we'd need to solve the friction between how stable we want our laws and the progress of science over time.

We've seen in the past two years that going back and forth with recommendations makes the general public just give up.

I always wondered if for knowledge as for ecosystems fire is an important part. Basically, is there a point where the amount of knowledge is so wast that it becomes impossible to reach the edge and come up with something novel.

Nah, ideas becomes simplified and refined overtime. E.g. quantum mechanics was the bleeding edge of physics at one time and now it’s taught to undergraduates. Some university even have classes in string theory for undergrads (not that this is a good idea).

How much would it cost to store the articles on one of the blockchains?

blockchains are not the right tool for terabytes of pdfs, and don’t really provide any functionality over the current torrent approach

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