7 ms·

The greatest and in some sense heartbreaking admission of error I know of, is Frege's letter to Bertrand Russell: https://sites.tufts.edu/histmath/files/2015/1

• Daub 7y ago
  This is beautiful and humbling. An example of a scientist who loved being wrong was Fred Hoyle. Quote: ‘it is better to be interesting and wrong than boring and right’.
  • amelius 7y ago
    > ‘it is better to be interesting and wrong than boring and right’ This is why fake news is such a hit ;)
    • OrgNet 7y ago
      sometimes I think Trump makes these dumb quotes just for free publicity... hopefully he doesn't kill too many people in the process...
      • asdkjh345fd 7y ago
        Who is it that really bears the blame for these unsubstantiated bleach drinking incidents? Trump, who did not say anything like "drink bleach", or the media who openly lie and run headlines like "Trump tells everyone to drink bleach!"? Or even non-media hucksters trying to get publicity by tweeting things like "I can’t believe I have to say this, but please don’t drink bleach"?
        • neltnerb 7y ago
          You can't be a huckster if you aren't selling. They aren't making a profit on anyone's gullibility, they're just horrified.
          • asdkjh345fd 7y ago
            Joe Biden is selling. He absolutely is using any idiotic fake outrage as a way to get publicity for himself. What is he horrified by? Nothing, obviously. He is irresponsibly creating the problem he is pretending he is outraged about.
        • empath75 7y ago
          Even if trump didn’t say to drink bleach, his statements in context showed such a complete ignorance of many basic facts that even the average 8th grader would know. It’s impossible to defend what he said so people attack the media response to it instead.
          • asdkjh345fd 7y ago
            >his statements in context showed such a complete ignorance of many basic facts that even the average 8th grader would know How does that make the media lying ok? The president being a dumbass does not excuse the media lying, especially not with such dangerous lies.
            • KSteffensen 7y ago
              Whataboutism is apparently not reserved for China criticism
              • asdkjh345fd 7y ago
                There is no whataboutism. You are creating a strawman, and then complaining about it being fallacious. I am not defending Trump, I am attacking the media. The media are the ones spreading the bleach drinking meme. That is bad. They should not do that. And all I get are these histrionic "omg u luv blumpf fox watcher!1111" responses, nobody actually addresses the issue. If the media did not run insane "don't listen to Trump, drinking bleach is bad!" stories, nobody would think Trump said to drink bleach, because he did not, and because nobody listens to anything he says in the first place, only to what the media says he says.
                • cycomanic 7y ago
                  You have not provided proof that the media said people should drink bleach (let alone a media frenzi about him saying it) and please you should apply the same standards that you apply to the media to your own claims.
        • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
          He should have said nothing at all, but left it to his department heads to deliver the message. Oh! He's gagged his department heads, or fired them. Well. It all lands on his head. What else does being the President mean? He's screwed up the message royally, because he's an ordinary dufus who likes to hear himself talk, operating way out of his depth. That's an honest appraisal, given the avalanche of examples.
          • asdkjh345fd 7y ago
            None of that is relevant to my post. A major symptom of Trump derangement syndrome is the inability to understand that criticizing the bad behavior of the press is not a defense of Trump. No matter how stupid Trump is, it in no way excuses the media intentionally lying about what he says.
            • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
              Only seems like 'lying about Trump'. More like, mocking him for saying awkward confused things.
              • asdkjh345fd 7y ago
                What he said is just his usual incoherent gibberish. If the media didn't run an organized campaign of bleach drinking hysteria, absolutely nobody would have that idea in their heads. Now the media has created a situation where a small group of paranoid, low IQ people will think Trump actually did tell them to drink bleach, and that CNN is just trying to stop them from trying this great cure. The problem here is the media.
                • DanBC 7y ago
                  The problem here is that there is a conspiracy-theory based alternative medicine "treatment" of using bleach to "cure autism", and those bullshit theories get amplified by someone with huge influence and media presence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mineral_Supplement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mineral_Supplement
        • mgkimsal 7y ago
          > who did not say anything like "drink bleach" "We're preparing to launch a submarine offensive". "We need to do more to address homelessness". "I'm having a team investigate infrastructure spending bills". Those sorts of quotes are not anything like "drink bleach". Within the span of a few seconds, Trump strings together "disinfectant" and "injection" and "sounds interesting". We've already seen someone drink chloroquine phosphate, after days of Trump mentioning hydroxychloroquine multiple times, with lines like "If it were me, in fact, I might do it anyway. I may take it" and "what have you got to lose?" Did Trump specifically say the words "Drink any form of chloroquine on your own?" No. In the midst of a global health pandemic, he keeps throwing a bunch of words together which don't make much sense, and can easily influence people to make bad decisions. His influence in this matter has already been demonstrated. A danger of multiple people saying "don't do it" is... a certain portion of people will read that as a sign that "they" don't want you to get healthy, and that Trump is "on to something", and they may do this sort of thing anyway.
          • asdkjh345fd 7y ago
            >Within the span of a few seconds, Trump strings together "disinfectant" and "injection" and "sounds interesting". So, you are fully and entirely aware that he said nothing of the sort, so much so you afraid to actually quote him and just want to pull individual words and say "these words were near each other!". And none of those words are drink or bleach. This supports my point. >We've already seen someone drink chloroquine phosphate, after days of Trump mentioning hydroxychloroquine multiple times And when the woman who poisoned her husband with fish tank cleaner is convicted, is that going to change anything in your mind? Or will you simply dismiss reality as inconvenient and cling to your media created fantasy?
            • mcnamaratw 7y ago
              I upvoted because I think rational disagreement is important. Let's just go through the facts we have. Below is some of the White House transcript, and a link to the rest. The President did not tell Americans to inject bleach. The President did speculate, at a press briefing, about the possibility of injecting disinfectants into the human body. To me it seemed pretty clear that he was talking about a research idea, not about a home treatment.* The President added the caution that doctors should be involved. Agreed? *Personal opinion, I don't believe he was clear about the lethality of this idea if somebody is silly enough to try it at home. Transcript excerpt: "THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me." https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-31/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...
      • jtbayly 7y ago
        Has everybody here forgotten that there was a serious discussion of using UV light on humans, as well as how to reduce the viral load internally on this very site?
        • celticninja 7y ago
          fine, but no one suggested injecting bleach to a national audience did they.
          • jtbayly 7y ago
            No, they didn't. Literally, nobody.
            • deleted 7y ago
              [deleted]
        • specialist 7y ago
          Medical advice should come from medical professionals. UVB phototherapy saved my life. Involving a ridiculous amount of planning, effort, oversight, followup. No one is more pro UV than me. (eg I asked about using non visible light as a diagnostic tool when people started playing around with UV photography.) When there are novel UV therapies, I want to hear about it from my doctors, not the POTUS. Especially at the expense of concrete things needing to be done ASAP, like ramping up testing and contact tracing.
          • jtbayly 7y ago
            A press conference does not come at the expense of doing concrete things. It has a purpose. One of those purposes is to keep people's spirits up with hopeful news about things that are being tried, to show that all angles are being pursued, etc. You can argue all you want that you know better how to do a press conference as a sitting president of the USA, but it's absurd to fault him for giving medical advice. He didn't. You might as well condemn all newspapers, websites, or newscasters, and commenters the moment they start talking about potential new areas of research or treatment. The reason the media got all pissy about it is because the President started doing what they consider to be their own proprietary job that nobody else can do: spreading rumors (aka "news").
      • pvaldes 7y ago
        > Trump makes these dumb quotes just for free publicity I wouldn't discard that is clearly a smokescreen to give journalists something to write about. It was in the same day as the embarrassing psychological mark of 50.000 US citizens killed were reached (if I'm not wrong)... and everybody is talking about bleach-yes / bleach-not. If the real purpose was that, it was clearly effective. Mission acomplished; journalists confused and running in circles; lets move on. The other possibility is that Trump would not be aware that UV rays cause skin cancer, so would cause lung cancer really fast. Seems unlikely to me. Not to mention that skin has melanin. Human lungs are like a norwegian albino in Torrevieja standing in the middle of the street at 15h. No; Trump most probably knows yet that the sunlight can hurt. I assume also that trump knows yet that bleach burns human mucous tissues. I would have a hard time thinking the opposite. In terms of deathcount, Coronavirus is turning quickly in another Vietnam for US, when 58k US soldiers were killed. And is being much worse for Europe (all should be said). We are not laughing about it. Trust me.
        • mjthrowaway1 7y ago
          I’m surprised there’s still people who think he’s just a calculated puppeteer who has everyone fooled with his act. If it’s an act and he’s actually sharply insightful then I would’ve expected someone in his inner circle, present or former, would attest to the same. But every former cabinet member describes him as “what you see on TV is what you get behind closed doors“.
          • pvaldes 7y ago
            Puppeteer or puppet reading a script, it does not matter. But well, maybe is like you say and the republican party is letting him run wild without any cordon sanitaire at sight. I don't really know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm just astonished with the current cuckooland of free, like the rest of the world.
        • craftinator 7y ago
          Or, he knew most of those things, but has become so senile that he can't help spouting his stream of consciousness during live press briefings. I appreciate your optimism, but even if he was speaking intentional fluff, the approach was childish and poorly informed.
      • McTossOut 7y ago
        I'm just gonna throw these "Rosanne/Married with children"-ready insults out there: "oh, take a pill!" "you need to get some sun, why don't you go outside!?" and my favorite "[... something something...] bl-cleaning supplies"
• Angostura 7y ago
  Talkig of Russell, I can't imagine how he and Whitehead felt when the huge edifice of the Principia Mathemetica simply crumbled away under the onslaught of the incompleteness theorem.
  • QuesnayJr 7y ago
    I don't think it did. I'm sure they would have liked it if incompleteness didn't hold, but PM was influential in advancing mathematical logic, which is still going strong. What happened is that the system itself was supplanted by first order logic and set theory.