722 karma · joined October 24, 2011
https://medium.com/lucky-peach/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-kn...
What do you think about museums -- a public institution that is more or less the antithesis of your view of the art world? Without going into semantics, let's say you have a genuinely old artefact. Now someone comes along and makes a replica. Let's say they're virtually identical, and the only difference is in the carbon dating, which you can't really fake. Which one should be admitted into the museum?
It cost a lot of time/energy to hunt, for sure. But that's basically all they did. And reading descriptions of say, the Americas before European colonisation, meat was plenty despite industrial breeding, or any breeding at all.
I think it only saves energy on CRT screens, which is not popular these days.
Of course, I have no idea how a brain works, and it's unlikely that it's anything like a computer.
This is a UK source, but I think it reflects the view of most students in the West:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14616788
I feel bad for saying something like "kids these days" (I'm one of them, admittedly) but "fun" seems to be a big factor in a student's choice of a school today. Admittedly, this is mostly based on anecdote and stereotypes (I think there's a reason why "college life" is commonly associated with parties and frats). I won't say that the social aspect of education is unimportant, but it seems that rather than making the education itself more "fun", universities in the last few decades have gradually increased funding for recreational buildings, big events, frats, and sports [1], etc. Of course, I don't know how significant these costs actually are, and I'm happy to be convinced by some budgetary data if this is actually a non-issue.
[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/15/athleti...
My comment was on-topic. grkvlt's was not, regardless of what he thinks I meant with that one pronoun (which was wrong, anyway).
Maybe you should realise that sane women, just as much as sane men, don't think pronouns will "solve" sexism. If I'm referring to a specific person, I'll be specific. If it's some random imaginary person, it's none of your bloody business what pronoun I choose.
Maybe I'm a girl and, try as I might to say "he" all the time (to avoid comments like yours), the one time it slips and I say "she" the Internet thinks it's all about some "femi-nazi" agenda of mine?
Chill out and talk to me about sexism/feminism/SJW when it's actually relevant (clue: not here).
I am pretty sure that when the physics journal editor rejects your paper, she isn't even actually saying "this can't be published in a physics journal", she's really saying "this can't be published in this physics journal" (unless she says otherwise, explicitly, of course).
Though I didn't see him talk about it at length in the blog, I can see that he might have meant that such a journal would be good for interesting future generations in science. But is this really a good idea? They would come into physics, or whatever, with the expectation that such research actually constituted hard science. It is not.
Interesting future generations about science is hugely important, but this is just a dishonest way of doing so.
And also, this may sound a bit harsh, and I might be out of line here, but I think the point of the paper was really to get some attention. And personally I think there's a trend of this happening in physics' interface with the public -- scientists wanting attention for themselves, apparently for the sake of future interest in the field. There seem to be a lot of popular science books these days, many written by genuinely brilliant scientists, who seem to be trying to sell their own theories as truth, like the various string theories and other GUTs. While I am sure that the authors don't really mean to say that their theories have passed the sniff test of science, and that we can put their theories on the same shelf as GR and QM, my observations from friends and people on the internet tell me that a lot of them just gobble it up as truth.
PS: Not saying that the GUT formulations are in anyway comparable to Nemiroff paper.
Philosophically, but something vaguely based on physics, there's the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. But as far as I know the "physical meaning" has no bearing on science. There's a good sci-fi novel about a universe where the MWI is true -- Anathem by Neal Stephenson.
I'm not a physicist, but certainly saying that such a journal does physics is a bit of a stretch? Ignoring the fact that he hopes such a journal could accept hard sci-fi (of which I am a fan), how could such a journal be maintained properly if it was driven "BY public interest, instead of IN THE public interest"? The general public is ignorant about science, especially deep science -- which is absolutely fine. Funding agencies (as I understand them) are here to help us decide what to do so that not all of us have to go through graduate school to get an idea about the state of science. Moreover, it sounds to me that he wants a more "democratic" process of science. Democracy makes sense in politics -- we vote on politicians because they have the power to change our lives. But scientists, especially physicists, are powerless to change Mother Nature. Regardless of who we choose, as long as the physics is done half-decently, we're going to get to more or less identical answers.
It also doesn't help that he is insistent on using his own brand of English[1].
I don't mean to say that you shouldn't help him out. And I definitely can't say if he "deserves to be homeless/near-homeless". Just want to point out that the reason why he hasn't been hired isn't mainly because he has had "no corporation to witness to [his] ability", as someone else pointed out.
[0] Recent example blogpost: http://xahlee.org/sex/pretty_girl_racism_facial_expression.h... [1] http://wordyenglish.com/musing/xah_style.html
Edit: Just realised his writing style is only used on his blog, and not in professional stuff.
But thanks for the link though, I'll check it out. I must've suppressed all my Gates-criticism for all the good he's doing now.
Do you mean that there instances where he really listened or liked/respected/etc someone because they had similar narcissistic tendencies? I was under the impression that people like him tend to hate people like themselves -- a narcissist who thinks he's the best is at greatest odds with another narcissist who thinks he's the best.
One of my favourites (ignore the patriotic stuff in the beginning): http://www.wvi.com/~sr71webmaster/press_suit001.html