17 ms·
It's an article about QM. On Vice. About a QM thought experiment. On Vice. Why would there be any expectation of scientific rigor whatsoever? "retrocausali
by ChancyChance 4y ago
It's an article about QM.
On Vice.
About a QM thought experiment.
On Vice.
Why would there be any expectation of scientific rigor whatsoever?
"retrocausality, may seem like science fiction grist at first glance"
Stop there, vice.
- richardw 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
- nanidin 4y ago[dead]
- mlindner 4y agoTechnically, Vice isn't a human.
- m463 4y agohmm... Vice might be incorporated.
- baremetal 4y agoCorporations are people too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
- eldritch_4ier 4y agoUgh this point is so old. Corporations have “legal personhood”, which shares almost nothing in common with actually being a person in the understood sense. It’s just a legal term, in the same way a state of matter and a state in the US have nothing in common except the same letters make up the term.
- dragonwriter 4y agoSince the only sense that “person” matters to ad hominem really is as an entity making an argument, a corporation (or any other collective entity, with or without juridical personhood) is a person in the sense required for the fallacy to apply. (Also, juridical persons and natural persons are a lot more similar than US states and states of matter; it is not just a distantly related etymology; the former literally refers to having legal attributes of the latter.)
- richardw 4y agoFeel free to use “ad entitatem” instead. I don’t think it diminishes the point in any way.
- mik1998 4y agoI think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes... is applicable here.
- krsdcbl 4y agothe comment may be superficial and dismissive without pointing out factual issues, but ad hominem attacks are still a very different thing than dismissing the credibility of a publication that has a track record of misleading pop science sensationalism
- musicale 4y ago> dismissing the credibility of a publication that has a track record of misleading pop science sensationalism Attacking the publication's track record, rather than the article's content, is clearly covered by PP's cited definition: "a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself"
- anenefan 4y agoPointing out or calling out people posting BS, that is clearly BS, does not fall into any category of logical fallacy - those arguing the case that it does on the other hand ... I've heard people in that field talk about the possibility of loops in the time dimension, but infinitesimally short period of time is involved and local. Not enough to call it the past though.
- richardw 4y agoIt’s playing the man and not the ball. Argue the point not the publisher. You’re arguing the point here, which is correct. Thinking that you can reject the point by diminishing the publisher is definitely a logical fallacy.
- anenefan 4y agoI do not know Vice's track record as per the credibility of their science write ups, nor if the General Editor is more concerned with filling white space while ensuring even if fluffy explanations make muster, fluffy fluff does not. Still the blame for fluffy fluff falls at the feet of the author and or their research team. I don't see the General Editor rejecting a story submission because it's true or has good grounds to arrive at given conclusions. As far as rejecting the point outright, well for myself, I'm not in the string field or quantum physics, but I used to read some pretty reliable sources, and bleed back was put to bed a while ago (years) ... non event now as far as I know apart from a few people who missed that memo - but would consider the possibility there's been new discoveries the last few years and with new theories, the possibility is tangible once more.
- musicale 4y agoIt isn't an error to distinguish between credibility or competence attacks and logical refutation. PP is technically - which is to say logically - correct.
- fsckboy 4y ago> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem ad hominem? "add Vice and 'em", I say, to your list of unreliable sources, for exaggeration, arguments of convenience, burying any counter-evidence...
- gotoeleven 4y agoHacker news has the best passive-aggressive link commenting anywhere on the internet. This reminds me of an old joke my grandfather told me: two hacker news commenters are climbing up a mountain one of them loses his footing and falls on his butt, and asks the other to help pull him up the other responds that this looks like a textbook case of slippery slope fall-assy and that it is beneath his intellectual dignity to even consider responding on the merits and further... while he continues on the first commenter falls into an ice crevice and dies
- seattle_spring 4y agoAre you asserting that any topic brought up by any publication deserves equal consideration, even if one said publication has a track record of intentionally misrepresenting facts? I ask this question without ascribing credibility or lack thereof for Vice, but just in general.
- agilob 4y agoCheck other articles by the same author.
- stametseater 4y agoMostly a bunch of clickbait crap. > "One 'Super-Earth' Could Destroy Our Own Planet, Study Finds" > A super-Earth existing in our solar system is so far hypothetical, but its effects would be incomprehensibly destructive.
- coldtea 4y agoIs there any point to the comment? Did Vice made the theory up?
- berry_sortoro 4y ago[dead]
- yesenadam 4y agoThe main thing I didn't like about it was pretending it's all scientists involved and not philosophers. The article talks mostly about Huw Price—and from phrases like "Scientists, including Price", you'd think he's a scientist. He's an Australian philosopher. He was my professor for a couple of philosophy-of-science-related courses at Sydney Uni 20 years ago. He started the Centre for Time there I believe. He's a great lecturer—a very impressive mind and a nice guy. Not a scientist though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huw_Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huw_Price https://prce.hu/w/ https://prce.hu/w/
- jakzurr 4y agoThanks for the links. Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years. Also, gotta say many of the top comments are pretty interesting here.
- yesenadam 4y ago> Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years Hmm, I don't recall ever coming across a philosopher professing to be a scientist. > Is it bad to upvote an article on HN, just because I think the comment quality is enlightening? Not bad—I and others do it all the time, when you want more people to see the existing comments and to comment more. Often the worst articles provoke the most interesting conversations.
- memling 4y ago> Philosophers professing to be scientists has been troubling me more and more the past few years. Scientists professing not to be philosophers has been troubling me more and more the past few years.
- btilly 4y agoWhy does it bother you? As Richard Feynman said, "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Sure, lots of what scientists do, including Feynman, involve an implied philosophy. It is easy to read https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm or https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm and extract a lot of important philosophical ideas from them. But I have yet to see any self-proclaimed philosopher successfully do so without totally losing the key points. There was a time when I thought that philosophy must have something important to it, and philosophers must have something useful to say. So I wound up reading works by various philosophers that were recommended to me. Some works, like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, were invaluable. Most weren't. The ones that were invaluable to me inevitably were written by people whose primary profession was NOT philosopher. For example Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor. After a time I learned that if an important philosophical point happens to be made by a philosopher, I'd prefer to hear it filtered through the brain of a non-philosopher. Every time I try setting this rule aside, I am reminded of why I adopted it in the first place. And so, even if I'm reading about something which is apparently philosophical, I skip past the philosophers. Paul Graham offers an explanation of why this might be in http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html. I don't completely agree. But I also don't have a better explanation to offer. And I'll happily laugh at anyone who tells me that I should think of myself as a philosopher because I happen to be interested in a bunch of philosophical-sounding subjects like "philosophy of math", "epistemology" and so on.
- mnd999 4y agoCouldn’t read it anyway because of the ridiculously intrusive ads. Sure, journalists need ads to make money but this way too much.
- hinkley 4y agoThey cite a preceding article, though I've no idea if 'the conversation' has any more gravitas (literally first I've heard of it). https://theconversation.com/quantum-mechanics-how-the-future-might-influence-the-past-199426 https://theconversation.com/quantum-mechanics-how-the-future...
- lupire 4y agoThat article is written by the same philosopher Price. The Conversation is a site where academics blog about their papers.