6 ms·

The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong

51 points by Theory42 4y ago

082349872349872 4y ago
There is a Strugatsky brothers short story, in which most of the inhabitants of a planet seem to have suddenly left via some portals, but there are a few who remain, highly armed, violent, and apparently seeking to prevent anyone else from using the portals. TFA reminds me of this story (which reminded me of the situation sketched by TFA when I had read it, except perhaps for the ratio of leavers to left behinds) but I cannot recall its name?
- dima_vm 4y ago
  I know one familiar-sounding, but different (without violent armed remainers) novel by Clifford Simak: "City".
  - dopidopHN 4y ago
    It’s such a weird collection of ( chronologic ) novels. One of my favorite book. I read it every 5 years or so.
- Miiko 4y ago
  This story is embedded into their novel "Жук в муравейнике" ("Beetle in the Anthill"), so it does not have a name, never being a separate short story.
- ralfd 4y ago
  tfa?
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    The Fine Article (The Eureka Theory of History is Wrong)
  - mayankkaizen 4y ago
    I was also ignorant about this so I googled. It said it means "Thanks for Asking" or "The fucking article". The second meaning sounded correct but I found it weird. "The fine article" also sounds weird to me.
    - medstrom 4y ago
      Hacker legacy. It comes from "RTFM" (Read The Fucking Manual), said to people on mailing lists who ask questions easily answered by the manual.
    - bmacho 4y ago
      The featured article. For usages see https://hn.algolia.com/?query=TFA&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=TFA&sort=byDate&type=comment
      - amadeuspagel 4y ago
        Is this acronym really worth it? I always just speak of the article.
        rolenthedeep 4y ago
        HN has a whole series of acronyms for things ranging from "the linked article" to "the nth comment above this" and its super confusing. I've given up on trying to learn them and just take a stab based on context
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/lkdhR https://archive.ph/lkdhR http://web.archive.org/web/20230101102554/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/science-technology-vaccine-invention-history/672227/ http://web.archive.org/web/20230101102554/https://www.theatl...
hgsgm 4y ago
The article is about how (well akshually) deployment of new ideas has greater impact than the inventions themselves.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Since this is HN, there is a canonical translation of this, something like "Ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything".
  - brobinson 4y ago
    https://sive.rs/multiply https://sive.rs/multiply
  - hnbad 4y ago
    Alternatively, combining this with the Great Man Theory of History also being wrong, we should drop the narrative that One Smart Guy will pick up One Great Idea and execute on it and recognize that human history is a story of social networks (no, not those).
roenxi 4y ago
This article is dancing around the issue; making fast progress has been made systemically illegal. Now we have evidence of exactly how damaging the regulatory state is in the the medical world. 1) Turns out those heartless capitalists could be producing vaccines in ~2 years. The tech is there, the regulators aren't ready for the level of risk in the COVID response as a routine thing. 2) Turns out that people aren't going to inject themselves with uncertain technologies, to the point of irrationality. Contrast this to one of the usual response to "we need less medical regulation" which is that people are stupid and will hurt themselves with unproven products. My suspicion is that over the long term this irrational looking swarming behaviour actually turns out to be pretty good at managing risk no matter how crazy the individuals in it are behaving. The problem in building, construction, technology and mining is pretty consistent. We see the strategies that work in Asia and maybe eventually in Africa - if you let capitalism happen it has powerful enough results at a such speed vs. central planning that it can be rightly called a miracle.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Do you have any evidence to suggest mRNA research was slowed by regulation that was loosened up in the face of COVID? My understanding is 1) it builds on decades of publicly funded research, originating in military programs, and 2) it was being developed nonstop and every prior attempt had serious adverse effects (specifically serious allergic reactions).
  - roenxi 4y ago
    Then where are all the other mRNA vaccines? If it is a tech change rather than a regulatory exception there should be a whole bunch of other vaccines coming out by now, they've had long enough. COVID appeared in March, they had the vaccine in clinical trials by April. The technical aspects aren't a factor here - the time taken to develop a vaccine is basically instant.
    - bsder 4y ago
      Covid vaccines were a repurposing of MERS vaccine research which is also a coronavirus and has a similar spike protein. So, some vaccine companies had a leg up as they were already pursuing MERS vaccines. The problem was that progress was slow because nobody was willing to put large amounts of development money behind a vaccine for a disease with such a small number of cases. Covid poured accelerant on MERS vaccine research. Suddenly, there was a disease with lots of cases with lots of people willing to sign up for trials. In addition, there was a lot of money sloshing around so companies were willing to take the financial risk to combine Phase II and Phase III trials (to be fair--a Covid vaccine passing a Phase II trial was always going to pass a Phase III trial until we had many different vaccines). And, please do remember, nobody knew if mRNA for Covid was actually going to work. Other mRNA vaccines are in the pipe. However, they have to go through trials with a lot less funding and a lot less money at the end. Rabies(!) got a Phase I trial--but it's hard to get to Phase II since rabies is so rare. mRNA flu vaccines are in Phase III. mRNA HIV vaccines are in Phase I and may be in Phase II by now. What you see is that if we drop the equivalent of the Manhattan Project at producing a vaccine, we can pretty much produce a vaccine for a virus in a hurry. However, if we're not willing to drop that kind of cash, progress is slow. If you want more vaccines, tell some of these multi-jillionaires to quit fucking around with virtual crap like Bitcoin and Twitter and start dropping some non-virtual gigabucks on vaccine companies that are trying to produce real products.
colechristensen 4y ago
> WHY THE AGE OF AMERICAN PROGRESS ENDED Actual title? Are they testing out titles. Things of the genre “everything is going to shit and here’s what to blame” are not worth reading. Exposing “The decline” of whatever the target audience cares about sure is good for attention but it’s just a toxic emotional manipulation and not useful to actually enlighten anyone. It comes down to things always changing and having a bad attitude about the present and an unreasonable positive attitude about the past is very prevalent.
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago
  [dead]
Tor3 4y ago
The part of the article which explains how the smallpox vaccine was distributed around the world before cold storage and airplanes is just incredible. 1) Recruit 22 orphaned boys 2) Inject two of them with the cowpox virus (which is the actual smallpox vaccine) 3) Put all the boys on a ship leaving Spain for Venezuela 4) Scrape material from the two boy's pustules (appearing after a couple of days) and inject two more boys with that - the first two boys recover 5) Continue this daisy-chain approach until reaching Venezuela 6) Go on with people in Venezuela, arm-to-arm 7) Continue to Mexico and other places 8) Go global And that's how you transport vaccines without fridges and airplanes
- psychphysic 4y ago
  What's even funnier is that it's horsepox[0]. At some point it got swapped, maybe a milk maid actually got it off a horse and assumptions were made. No current smallpox vaccine stock is molecularly likely to come from cowpox as I understand it. [0] https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-020-02202-0 https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13...
  - Tor3 4y ago
    Yes, I came across that recently. It may even have been mentioned on HN before - that the original smallpox vaccine is apparently lost.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
amadeuspagel 4y ago
The discussion of trust is too binary — people trust institutions or not. My trust in institutions is limited, but I got vaxxed without hesitation, because it's a specific decision, the kind of decision that has been made many times, where the relevant institutions have a track record and every incentive to get it right. I sometimes get the impression that people want to sell trust in institutions as an all-or-nothing package. Institution will not discuss when to trust institutions and when not to.
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago
  [dead]

51 points by Theory42 4y ago

There is a Strugatsky brothers short story, in which most of the inhabitants of a planet seem to have suddenly left via some portals, but there are a few who remain, highly armed, violent, and apparently seeking to prevent anyone else from using the portals. TFA reminds me of this story (which reminded me of the situation sketched by TFA when I had read it, except perhaps for the ratio of leavers to left behinds) but I cannot recall its name?

dima_vm 4y ago
I know one familiar-sounding, but different (without violent armed remainers) novel by Clifford Simak: "City".
- dopidopHN 4y ago
  It’s such a weird collection of ( chronologic ) novels. One of my favorite book. I read it every 5 years or so.
Miiko 4y ago
This story is embedded into their novel "Жук в муравейнике" ("Beetle in the Anthill"), so it does not have a name, never being a separate short story.
ralfd 4y ago
tfa?
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  The Fine Article (The Eureka Theory of History is Wrong)
- mayankkaizen 4y ago
  I was also ignorant about this so I googled. It said it means "Thanks for Asking" or "The fucking article". The second meaning sounded correct but I found it weird. "The fine article" also sounds weird to me.
  - medstrom 4y ago
    Hacker legacy. It comes from "RTFM" (Read The Fucking Manual), said to people on mailing lists who ask questions easily answered by the manual.
  - bmacho 4y ago
    The featured article. For usages see https://hn.algolia.com/?query=TFA&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=TFA&sort=byDate&type=comment
    - amadeuspagel 4y ago
      Is this acronym really worth it? I always just speak of the article.
      - rolenthedeep 4y ago
        HN has a whole series of acronyms for things ranging from "the linked article" to "the nth comment above this" and its super confusing. I've given up on trying to learn them and just take a stab based on context

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/lkdhR https://archive.ph/lkdhR http://web.archive.org/web/20230101102554/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/science-technology-vaccine-invention-history/672227/ http://web.archive.org/web/20230101102554/https://www.theatl...

hgsgm 4y ago

The article is about how (well akshually) deployment of new ideas has greater impact than the inventions themselves.

nine_k 4y ago
Since this is HN, there is a canonical translation of this, something like "Ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything".
- brobinson 4y ago
  https://sive.rs/multiply https://sive.rs/multiply
- hnbad 4y ago
  Alternatively, combining this with the Great Man Theory of History also being wrong, we should drop the narrative that One Smart Guy will pick up One Great Idea and execute on it and recognize that human history is a story of social networks (no, not those).

roenxi 4y ago

This article is dancing around the issue; making fast progress has been made systemically illegal. Now we have evidence of exactly how damaging the regulatory state is in the the medical world. 1) Turns out those heartless capitalists could be producing vaccines in ~2 years. The tech is there, the regulators aren't ready for the level of risk in the COVID response as a routine thing. 2) Turns out that people aren't going to inject themselves with uncertain technologies, to the point of irrationality. Contrast this to one of the usual response to "we need less medical regulation" which is that people are stupid and will hurt themselves with unproven products. My suspicion is that over the long term this irrational looking swarming behaviour actually turns out to be pretty good at managing risk no matter how crazy the individuals in it are behaving. The problem in building, construction, technology and mining is pretty consistent. We see the strategies that work in Asia and maybe eventually in Africa - if you let capitalism happen it has powerful enough results at a such speed vs. central planning that it can be rightly called a miracle.

ethanbond 4y ago
Do you have any evidence to suggest mRNA research was slowed by regulation that was loosened up in the face of COVID? My understanding is 1) it builds on decades of publicly funded research, originating in military programs, and 2) it was being developed nonstop and every prior attempt had serious adverse effects (specifically serious allergic reactions).
- roenxi 4y ago
  Then where are all the other mRNA vaccines? If it is a tech change rather than a regulatory exception there should be a whole bunch of other vaccines coming out by now, they've had long enough. COVID appeared in March, they had the vaccine in clinical trials by April. The technical aspects aren't a factor here - the time taken to develop a vaccine is basically instant.
  - bsder 4y ago
    Covid vaccines were a repurposing of MERS vaccine research which is also a coronavirus and has a similar spike protein. So, some vaccine companies had a leg up as they were already pursuing MERS vaccines. The problem was that progress was slow because nobody was willing to put large amounts of development money behind a vaccine for a disease with such a small number of cases. Covid poured accelerant on MERS vaccine research. Suddenly, there was a disease with lots of cases with lots of people willing to sign up for trials. In addition, there was a lot of money sloshing around so companies were willing to take the financial risk to combine Phase II and Phase III trials (to be fair--a Covid vaccine passing a Phase II trial was always going to pass a Phase III trial until we had many different vaccines). And, please do remember, nobody knew if mRNA for Covid was actually going to work. Other mRNA vaccines are in the pipe. However, they have to go through trials with a lot less funding and a lot less money at the end. Rabies(!) got a Phase I trial--but it's hard to get to Phase II since rabies is so rare. mRNA flu vaccines are in Phase III. mRNA HIV vaccines are in Phase I and may be in Phase II by now. What you see is that if we drop the equivalent of the Manhattan Project at producing a vaccine, we can pretty much produce a vaccine for a virus in a hurry. However, if we're not willing to drop that kind of cash, progress is slow. If you want more vaccines, tell some of these multi-jillionaires to quit fucking around with virtual crap like Bitcoin and Twitter and start dropping some non-virtual gigabucks on vaccine companies that are trying to produce real products.

colechristensen 4y ago

> WHY THE AGE OF AMERICAN PROGRESS ENDED Actual title? Are they testing out titles. Things of the genre “everything is going to shit and here’s what to blame” are not worth reading. Exposing “The decline” of whatever the target audience cares about sure is good for attention but it’s just a toxic emotional manipulation and not useful to actually enlighten anyone. It comes down to things always changing and having a bad attitude about the present and an unreasonable positive attitude about the past is very prevalent.

Slava_Propanei 4y ago
[dead]

Tor3 4y ago

The part of the article which explains how the smallpox vaccine was distributed around the world before cold storage and airplanes is just incredible. 1) Recruit 22 orphaned boys 2) Inject two of them with the cowpox virus (which is the actual smallpox vaccine) 3) Put all the boys on a ship leaving Spain for Venezuela 4) Scrape material from the two boy's pustules (appearing after a couple of days) and inject two more boys with that - the first two boys recover 5) Continue this daisy-chain approach until reaching Venezuela 6) Go on with people in Venezuela, arm-to-arm 7) Continue to Mexico and other places 8) Go global And that's how you transport vaccines without fridges and airplanes

psychphysic 4y ago
What's even funnier is that it's horsepox[0]. At some point it got swapped, maybe a milk maid actually got it off a horse and assumptions were made. No current smallpox vaccine stock is molecularly likely to come from cowpox as I understand it. [0] https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-020-02202-0 https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13...
- Tor3 4y ago
  Yes, I came across that recently. It may even have been mentioned on HN before - that the original smallpox vaccine is apparently lost.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

amadeuspagel 4y ago

The discussion of trust is too binary — people trust institutions or not. My trust in institutions is limited, but I got vaxxed without hesitation, because it's a specific decision, the kind of decision that has been made many times, where the relevant institutions have a track record and every incentive to get it right. I sometimes get the impression that people want to sell trust in institutions as an all-or-nothing package. Institution will not discuss when to trust institutions and when not to.

Slava_Propanei 4y ago
[dead]