2 ms·

I wonder if a descent to full-blown Soviet "Vranyo" (brazen lying) can be prevented. As in: "They lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're l

I wonder if a descent to full-blown Soviet "Vranyo" (brazen lying) can be prevented. As in: "They lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them." Pretty much the only brake pad on that machine is that capitalism actually requires at least some efficiency from the players, and a web of lies like that will destroy any institution. But I am far from certain.

eastbound 4y ago
I often compare science environments to general environments. In science, if you’re wrong, there’s no pardon: Your rocket doesn’t land on the moon, so you gotta keep your speech clear, your expertise precise, and your reputation perfect. In speech environments, if you’re handwaving it and are dishonest, you win the market. Science environments are better suited for me, but I get bashed in general environments…
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  There is science and science. Rocket science is notoriously unforgiving. Nutrition science is pretty much the opposite, a half-hearted attempt to make sense of "garbage in, garbage out". The difference is in, among others, loopback length. If something goes wrong during a rocket launch, the fireball is only seconds away. Not so much in food and health, where the consequences take decades and multiple causal factors are hard to disentangle.
int_19h 4y ago
Orwell wrote this in a letter in 1944: "Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible."

eastbound 4y ago

I often compare science environments to general environments. In science, if you’re wrong, there’s no pardon: Your rocket doesn’t land on the moon, so you gotta keep your speech clear, your expertise precise, and your reputation perfect. In speech environments, if you’re handwaving it and are dishonest, you win the market. Science environments are better suited for me, but I get bashed in general environments…

inglor_cz 4y ago
There is science and science. Rocket science is notoriously unforgiving. Nutrition science is pretty much the opposite, a half-hearted attempt to make sense of "garbage in, garbage out". The difference is in, among others, loopback length. If something goes wrong during a rocket launch, the fireball is only seconds away. Not so much in food and health, where the consequences take decades and multiple causal factors are hard to disentangle.

int_19h 4y ago

Orwell wrote this in a letter in 1944: "Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible."