7 ms·

Epistemic Collapse at the WSJ

129 points by r721 1y ago

iammjm 1y ago
[flagged]
- naasking 1y ago
  He's named because his rebuttals are weak and Hossenfelder actually makes legitimate points that "Professor Dave" just evades.
  - cubefox 1y ago
    He also isn't a professor. He did an MA in chemistry apparently.
balozi 1y ago
I'll argue that this Woit post is no better. Its lazy. What was the point?
jcalvinowens 1y ago
Huh, Firefox on Debian: An error occurred during a connection to www.math.columbia.edu. Peer’s Certificate has been revoked. Error code: SEC_ERROR_REVOKED_CERTIFICATE I apparently can't bypass it. EDIT: Chain: https://pastebin.com/raw/Mch2XTiQ https://pastebin.com/raw/Mch2XTiQ
- jchw 1y ago
  It's been archived on archive.today. https://archive.is/wAtCw https://archive.is/wAtCw That said, I'm not having this issue at all. Strange.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- kelnos 1y ago
  Firefox on Debian here as well (installed from Mozilla themselves, not the .deb), and it loads fine for me.
- mionhe 1y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20250912131943/https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=15206 https://web.archive.org/web/20250912131943/https://www.math....
- mikestorrent 1y ago
  www.math.<any university in the world>.edu SSL cert expired??? unfathomable!! As a former math sysadmin... I apologize on behalf of math sysadmins
  - raverbashing 1y ago
    Their reaction is probably "what do you mean, a number expired?!"
  - jcalvinowens 1y ago
    I don't think it's expired: https://pastebin.com/raw/Mch2XTiQ https://pastebin.com/raw/Mch2XTiQ
  - godelski 1y ago
    Validity Not Before Fri, 06 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT Not After Tue, 07 Oct 2025 23:59:59 GMT Subject Alt Names DNS Name *.math.columbia.edu Looks valid to me
- SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago
  https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.math.columbia.edu https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.math.colu... Has an IO error fetching the CRL. If you've got `security.OCSP.require` set to `true` it'll treat non-response from the OCSP server as a revoked cert.
hobs 1y ago
Huh, I am getting an OCSP revoked certificate for *.math.columbia.edu
swagmoney69 1y ago
[dead]
samename 1y ago
https://archive.is/wAtCw https://archive.is/wAtCw
- arduanika 1y ago
  Thanks! And here's the WSJ article he's responding to: https://archive.is/qGOmz https://archive.is/qGOmz
jeffbee 1y ago
Reading books is A-OK but you can't ignore online, and especially the online-offline nexus. Witness this week's escalation of a 4chan beef into a real-world assassination, another thing that the WSJ misreported.
- Mistletoe 1y ago
  What?
  - gainda 1y ago
    Allegedly, Charlie Kirk's killer, Tyler Robinson, may have been a groyper.
    - intalentive 1y ago
      What's the evidence for this claim? Seems at odds with the details reported here: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/charlie-kirk-tyler-robinson-suspect-b2825455.html https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
      - jeffbee 1y ago
        You don't think writing Helldivers memes on shell casings means anything?
        intalentive 1y ago
        "Hey, fascist! Catch!", "Bella ciao" and three arrows are all antifascist. I would assume that the shooter is motivated by antifascist political ideology at odds with Kirk's political ideology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Arrows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Arrows The groypers are not antifascist, so the reported symbolism doesn't add up. If there's evidence of the shooter being a groyper, then I'm curious to see it.
        1y ago
nullbyte 1y ago
Joe Rogan had Michio Kaku on once, it was a fun episode
- Conlectus 1y ago
  I’m not sure if this is the point you mean to make, but Michio Kanu is one of the bigger cranks in physics communication. He said ion an (maybe the Joe Rigan interview?) that quantum computers would be able to act as a truth detector for AI. He wrote a whole book on quantum computing in fact despite clearly not understanding it at all[0]. [0]: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7321 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7321
AlfredBarnes 1y ago
The internet has allowed anyone to build a voice/following. Whether they should or not.
electric_muse 1y ago
[flagged]
- titzer 1y ago
  When the media stops holding people in power accountable, they are no different than idiots with megaphones. The press has special rights because accountability and informing the public was supposed to be their job.
  - wwweston 1y ago
    Might be worth asking: Why would “the media” do this? Over thousands of outlets?
    - mulmen 1y ago
      Because it’s a moral obligation. The fourth estate is critical to the sustainable operation of our system of government and society. The electorate need to make informed decisions at the polls. In the same way lobbyists inform representatives the media inform the electorate.
    - kulahan 1y ago
      I think you could reduce the profession of journalism to “forced transparency”, which can be a form of accountability unto itself. In short: because it’s simply who they are by definition
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      Interpreting as "why would the media stop holding people in power accountable"... Because it's cheaper and lets it survive. The unspoken undercurrent is that Google and Facebook ate the ad spending that used to fund journalism, without replacing its function. Google and Facebook don't fund journalism at scale -- that's why their profit margins stay at 23% & 40%. Without revenue, reporters don't get paid, high quality reporting doesn't get done, and newsrooms grovel for any source of margin. Which currently seems to be {minimal cost "journalism"} + {catering to power in exchange for access}.
Terr_ 1y ago
The linked WSJ article has an interview-quote from Scott Aaronson: > Anyone perceived as the ‘mainstream establishment’ faces a near-insurmountable burden of proof, while anyone perceived as ‘renegade’ wins by default if they identify any hole whatsoever in mainstream understanding. I feel this Futurama clip about evolutionary "missing link" fossils [0] captures a little bit of that frustration. Building any cohesive framework for understanding a big problem is always harder than finding and attacking a weak spot and declaring the entire thing flawed. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICv6GLwt1gM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICv6GLwt1gM
- giraffe_lady 1y ago
  > finding and attacking a weak spot and declaring the entire thing flawed. It's funny because I've come to think of this exact thing as basically the defining characteristic of the HN rhetorical style. It's not unique to here of course but it's where this approach is taken most seriously as honest rigorous debate. Long time commenters here have internalized it to the point where their writing is large defensive in anticipation of these rhetorical chisels that will try to pry into any minute crack to dismiss the entire issue at hand.
  - Terr_ 1y ago
    In my own writing experience of stuffing qualifier words and caveats everywhere, it's at least as old as Usenet.
  - etblg 1y ago
    Error: Compiler warning: Appeal to Authority fallacy detected on line 8, your argument is hereby invalid or whatever fallacy nerds like bringing up in debates, just pick your favourite one and insert it here.
    - Terr_ 1y ago
      > your argument is hereby invalid Which is not-quite but sometimes leads to a Fallacy Fallacy comeback: Just because the argument is unsound doesn't mean the conclusion is wrong. :p
lupusreal 1y ago
> I was planning on writing something explaining what exactly the WSJ story gets wrong, but now realize this is hopeless Okay, then this blog post was essentially useless. The WSJ is wrong about something, but the author can't be bothered to tell us what. Pity.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
seydor 1y ago
In the past it was the postmodernists attacking physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair It's funny how this new generation of professional antiestablishers are using the same tactics (even though they would vehemently attach postmodernism) It's all a power play really, when politics is involved. That's not science
- Terr_ 1y ago
  > this new generation of professional antiestablishers [...] would vehemently [attack] postmodernism I can think of two ways to interpret this, and I'm not sure which one you intend: 1. They hold modernist views, that there is a distinct and meaningful direction/progression for how societies must change over time. 2. They don't know what postmodernism means, and consider it a generic bad-word to attach to things they don't like. (Comic example: [0]) [0] https://existentialcomics.com/comic/289 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/289
- mattmcknight 1y ago
  "the postmodernists attacking physics" The Sokal affair was a physicist attacking the postmodernists for attacking physics (and scientific realism) by showing the postmodernists would publish complete nonsense. The current attack is saying the physics establishment is backing a theory that doesn't adequately make predictions (not adequately supporting scientific realism). It can be viewed outside the realm of power, that's a very postmodern view.
- viccis 1y ago
  The pomo authors weren't "attacking" physics. They used terminology sloppily in their writing and all Sokal proved was that if you find a publisher with sufficiently lax standards, they'll publish just about anything. I've read enough complete nonsense compsci papers from conferences with <15% acceptance rates, as well as seen the replication crisis get so bad that I've never taken Sokal's stunt as anything other than a party trick of philosophical philistinism. He showed that a journal that "covers subjects in the debates around feminism, Marxism, neoliberalism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, queer theory, and popular culture" doesn't perform adequate peer review of theoretical physics papers.
javier123454321 1y ago
[flagged]
- Herring 1y ago
  Maybe your society. Finland is doing great with media literacy and resilience to misinformation in Europe. https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/05/europe/finland-fake-news-intl/ https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/05/europe/finland-f... As a general rule, you can sit there and moan about problems or you can spend 5min to find proven solutions. It's hard to do both.
  - hkpack 1y ago
    I have a suspicion that Finland is able to do well against fake news mostly because it is Russian fake news and people know them very well. I can also confirm that Ukrainians are doing amazingly well compared to the rest of the world in this regards. The problem I see is that the west _loves_ russian propaganda. Listening to any popular US podcaster feels like they are taking their hot takes directly from the Olgino troll factories.
  - javier123454321 1y ago
    The US definitely has a global target for disinformation. I've lived in Latam and the propaganda was far more easy to spot. The link I gave a lot was concerted efforts by the democratic party but I do acknowledge there is Russian, North Korean, Chinese, and probably other propaganda that is looking to destabilize. However, I do think that we are at a moment where the idea of objectivity is loosing its foundation. That's a cultural philosophical moment we're having, and I don't know if you can say that Finland is above this epistemic shift.
- throw4847285 1y ago
  The irony is that people accused 20th Century academics of being "post-modern" and "post-truth" when really they were reporting accurately on how fragile our society is. When Bruno Latour tried to argue that science was socially constructed, he wasn't trying to undermine it. He was trying to be challenge a certain naive understanding of the world in which science is clearly true, progress is obvious to all, and science/technology can be entirely divorced from the rest of society. In recent years, he has undertaken an active effort to shore up the authority of science, but this isn't him recanting. He always knew the scientific consensus was fragile. Latour is just one example of many. The concept of performativity, Adorno and Horkheimer on the failure of the Enlightenment, Feyerabend's epistemic anarchism. All attempts to understand society in a rigorous way that were dismissed or willfully misunderstood because a naive narrative of progress meant not having to worry about those kinds of things. We were going to get ever closer to the truth and build better and better things, with no negative consequences. That was the promise.
sevensor 1y ago
The critique is somewhat misplaced. There have always been terrible, ignorant newspaper articles. There sometimes used to be good, informative ones, but this is getting scarcer and scarcer.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 1y ago
  If anything, "yellow journalism" has been the norm. Being a journalist used to be a step above parasite and ambulance chaser in popular opinion. You didn't need a college degree, let alone an Ivy league degree like today, to do it. Most papers were blatant mouthpieces of owners or certain political parties. Everyone knew that. "Objectivity" was laughed at by reporters. That shifted with Watergate, which, afterwards, journalism began to have a certain prestige as "crusading truth seekers." Journalists doubled down on that view, cultivated it, and began to believe in it. Nowadays, journalism (at least in major markets) is more about prestige and access to power. Some journalists have a complex and believe that they have the access to the truth, leading to much handwringing about its "professionalism". In reality, journalism is closer to writing in a journal after a party: they just offer accounts of events. That we expect better from them is, in part, a creation of their own making that is now starting to bite them in the ass.
micromacrofoot 1y ago
The WSJ and other outlets are also completely failing at understanding the "chronically online" messaging from recent mass shooters, and are unintentionally spreading the memes and attention that the perpetrators are seeking out, thus feeding the cycle. They seem to be seriously lacking experts on anything these days... culture, physics and anything between.
- psunavy03 1y ago
  The media has been failing at this since Columbine, if not before. They don't take the contagion effect nearly as seriously as they ought to, given that so many shooters have been documented now as idolizing previous shooters. When you give a maladjusted freak a script that's basically "get your hands on this specific model rifle, go to this specific type of place, kill a bunch of people, and we'll make you famous," is it any wonder it happens over and over again? They show their photo, they name them down to their middle name, they write articles about whatever loony manifesto they wrote . . . none of this should be newsworthy, and it all feeds the social phenomenon.
refulgentis 1y ago
Hear hear. One of my red alarms the last 6 months has been saying anything about Sabine less than parise is verboten on HN is controversial, no matter how kind and couched and calm and cited.
mikert89 1y ago
WSJ and the like just hire for pedigree. You end up with careerists writing generic articles, and injecting political opinion into everything
- tracker1 1y ago
  Journalism is kind of a weird thing... it's often been about truth to power and reporting even what the govt/establishment doesn't always want to see. Of course this also attracts a lot of activism. I think they've, for a long while, crossed over to more propaganda over truth in general. This combined with infotainment news business trends in general is a bad mix. I think it was just yesterday, I saw an article about an ICE raid of the Samsung plant in Georgia. It was a pretty long article, and even the tone of the article was pretty level. That said, there was a critical and very important piece missing from the article altogether... "Why?" As in what law(s) were broken and how/why the raid was used. TBH, I don't know that a raid was necessary over revised negotiations between DoJ/ICE, Samsung, Korea and the people in question... That said, the fact the article clearly didn't even attempt to report the ICE reasoning was pretty damning of the author and the site.
  - ejstronge 1y ago
    > I think it was just yesterday, I saw an article about an ICE raid of the Samsung plant in Georgia. It was a pretty long article, and even the tone of the article was pretty level. That said, there was a critical and very important piece missing from the article altogether... "Why?" As in what law(s) were broken and how/why the raid was used. TBH, I don't know that a raid was necessary over revised negotiations between DoJ/ICE, Samsung, Korea and the people in question... That said, the fact the article clearly didn't even attempt to report the ICE reasoning was pretty damning of the author and the site. Or maybe this was a rhetorical point? Even today, there are articles that are trying to piece together who informed on the plant and what the basis for an ICE raid was. It seems you and the authors retain a similar understanding of the situation.
    - tracker1 1y ago
tracker1 1y ago
I'm not sure why the author is making digs at Joe Rogan so much... I mean, his podcast isn't really a deep dive into anything, its more conversations with generally interesting people from a number of different backgrounds. Sometimes MMA, sometimes conspiracy nuts... It's not a scientific podcast and I'm not sure that anyone is claiming it is. Of course, this is quite a bit different than bought and paid for corporate media shills that currently represent "journalism" at large. In that space they do pretend to have the prestige of being about news, truth and information. For television in particular is pretty bad... MSNBC, CNN, Fox, etc. all are just not great between selection/coverage bias, misinformation, out of context contortions and opinions masked as news. I will separate Fox's written/web coverage as a bit better than their TV counterpart (and the others in general) though. I used to find BBC coverage decent, but they've slipped a lot in the past few years. Similar for Al Jazeera, at least for content outside middle east concerns.
- jacobgkau 1y ago
  > I will separate Fox's written/web coverage as a bit better than their TV counterpart (and the others in general) though. I regularly check Fox's website along with CNN and NewsNation, which gets me ostensibly right/left/center views on things. Having not seen much TV Fox, I assumed Fox News Digital put more spin on things. It could just be the stupid little quip taglines they put over all of their image thumbnails that made me think that, as opposed to the actual article content, though.
  - tracker1 1y ago
    Yeah, I tend to do similar to check article subjects from a couple different sources. It's amazing how many times bits of information are straight out missing from one or another that changes the context of things a lot. There's really no excuse for it with online reporting other than twisting/propagandizing events. On Fox content, yeah I'm more referring to the written news content (not editorial). All said, I'm probably going to unplug for a couple weeks regarding social media, news and politics... some of the posts on Bluesky and Reddit the past couple days just make me feel a bit ill.
- 1y ago
buyucu 1y ago
That is a lot of words to communicate a very simple truth: WSJ is trash. (so is NYT btw)
- hn_throw_250910 1y ago
  You’ll be downvoted for this and my comment will be marked as off topic or whatever but you capture the gist of it. These news outlets shouldn’t delve into anything requiring the use of word “epistemic” their “collapse”, when they fail to report on much more basic things.
jihadjihad 1y ago
It's not just technical subjects, either. In the midst of the chaos of Charlie Kirk's assassination, they ran an article [0] yesterday titled (it has since been edited) "Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology". It's just incredibly irresponsible reporting. One can only assume it is a symptom of a wider problem within WSJ and media itself. 0: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/charlie-kirk-shot/card/ammunition-in-kirk-shooting-engraved-with-transgender-antifascist-ideology-sources-pdymd1sXXMSlVRhpvR4b https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/charlie-kirk-shot/card/ammu...
- ashleyn 1y ago
  I believe it says quite a lot when a major and supposedly reputable institution like the WSJ will sacrifice journalistic rigor when they see an opportunity to potentially besmirch the image of a sharply unpopular demographic. Facts still matter over agenda. People should be fired for this.
- lawlessone 1y ago
  edited but no retracton.
- r721 1y ago
  The Verge story about this is pretty popular on reddit today: >The WSJ carelessly spread anti-trans misinformation https://www.theverge.com/politics/777630/wsj-trans-misinformation-charlie-kirk https://www.theverge.com/politics/777630/wsj-trans-misinform... (archived: https://archive.is/liFTX https://archive.is/liFTX)
  - Jensson 1y ago
    A policeman did, the police did tell that to WSJ. The police later retracted that statement. The exact messages weren't made public until later.
    - detaro 1y ago
      And part of good journalistic practice is not reporting everything "a person familiar with the investigation" (so not even an official statement) tells you immediately. Because otherwise you become a willing vehicle for spreading bullshit.
nilkn 1y ago
A couple thoughts: - The author of this clearly disliked the WSJ article, but I don't think they did a good job of explaining why. I'm not saying they're wrong, but this article is very emotional without much concrete criticism. I assume 'woit' is someone famous I should know about but don't and he or she is assuming people will find this sufficient simply because they wrote it. But for someone like me who doesn't know who woit is, it doesn't land as a result. - I enjoyed the WSJ article and (perhaps naively) thought it did an acceptable job shedding light on an interesting phenomenon that would fly under the radar for many readers. I'd be interested in seeing credible criticism of it, but the article in question declares that providing that information would be "hopeless". In the next sentence, they mention experiencing mental health issues. - On theoretical physics, my thought, for whatever it may be worth, is that a verified theory of quantum gravity is simply one of the hardest scientific questions of all time. It's something that we should expect would take the entire world hundreds of years to solve. So I'm not at all unnerved or worried about what appears from the outside to be a slow rate of progress. We are talking about precisely understanding phenomena that generally only occur in the most extreme conditions presently imaginable in the universe. That's going to take time to unravel -- and it may not even be possible, just like a dog is never going to understand general relativity.
- Eisenstein 1y ago
  The author is a member of the academic community and are known for their grounded and informed takes on topics which are extremely complex and only well understood by high level physics theoreticians and researchers. They are writing for an audience of sophisticated non-experts who are curious about fields of advanced topics that are difficult to understand and thus are usually distorted in an unhelpful way by people who barely grasp it but are trusted by the public to be the authority on relaying that topic to laypeople.
- r721 1y ago
  >I assume 'woit' is someone famous I should know about but don't and he or she is assuming people will find this sufficient simply because they wrote it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Woit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Woit
hrnnnnnn 1y ago
By coincidence I just listened to the Decoding the Gurus episode on Sabine https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/sabine-hossenfelder-science-is-a-liar-sometimes https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/sabine-hosse... I also just finished a four-and-a-half-hour defence of modern physics by Sean Carroll which has some really good counterarguments in it, as well as a whirlwind history of the last century in physics. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-... I am conscious of the irony of responding to this post by posting podcasts.
TriangleEdge 1y ago
> Sorting through a pile of misinformation, trying to rebuild something true out of a collapsed mess of some truth buried in a mixture of nonsense and misunderstandings is a losing battle. In short, I'm predicting port 80 and 443 as we know it today will see much less usage because of LLMs. Or that it'll move to more curated one off blogs like it used to be. Stack Overflow died because of LLMs. I'm not certain if other social media is next or not. Anyone want to guess at when HN will be a hot mess of bots and garbage?
hn_throw_250910 1y ago
The focus on technical and scientific studies here shouldn’t dissuade anyone from questioning more approachable subject matters, namely anything involving studies or scientific inquiries should be placed under suspicion. Moreso when it relates to hot headed topics of the moment that drive clicks and engagement (outrage). This all reminds me of the Gell-Man Amnesia which is an absolutely real thing, and this turn of events with regards to WSJs capability (if it can be called that) shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Animats 1y ago
High energy physics and cosmology have been kind of stuck for years, generating untestable theories. But low energy physics, down near absolute zero, has had a steady stream of new experimental results. Real progress down there. Optical tweezers, attosecond lasers, quantum condensates...
OutOfHere 1y ago
The bias in favor of "dark matter" is a strong example of why academic physics is corrupt. There is absolutely no astrophysical evidence for dark matter, only gravitational anomalies of regular matter, yet significant money has been funded into it for decades, at the expense of ignoring other simpler satisfactory theories. The alternate theories have been prematurely rejected on false grounds without giving them sufficient attention or effort in their development.
- JackYoustra 1y ago
  > corrupt What do you mean when you say this? > prematurely rejected What does this mean?
  - jacobgkau 1y ago
    >> prematurely rejected > What does this mean? I'm assuming it means rejected "without giving them sufficient attention or effort in their development," as stated in the rest of the sentence. What do you think "prematurely" means?
legitster 1y ago
By nature, journalists are not subject matter experts. Even in the height of our technological progress during the space race, the best they could do was call up a nationally recognized expert, get an oversimplified explanation, and publish a summary of that. The true knowledge was locked into a small set of researcher circles running out of exclusive labs and in whatever they published or lectured about. Journalism is the one part of this equation that has changed the least since then. The way I see it, there are two bigger forces at work: - The demand that normal people have for this sort of knowledge. People today believe they should have a front row seat to everything and be an active participant. And to a lesser degree we have encouraged this as a society through television, social media, or even the way we assumed every student needed a well-rounded undergraduate college education. - Academia has exploded in size and scope in the last century. The prestige, the hierarchy, the social ladder climbing, the funding battles, the publishing race, the sheer number of graduate students in these programs. These programs are meat grinders that pump out all sorts of noise and failed academics with grudges. We have conveniently forgot that there is a massive ongoing replication crisis that is still largely being ignored. Journalists and scientists can point fingers at each other as much as they want and claim the other knows nothing about what they are speaking of. But at the end of the day the sheer amount of information (right and wrong) at our fingertips is bearing down on our society like a great weight ready to destroy us all.
bawolff 1y ago
I've never heard of Eric Weinstein, but he sounds like a crank. I don't think he should be grouped together with Sabine, whose primary message is that she believes science funding priorities are out of whack, and are currently funding things she believes won't be fruitful or are over explored at the expense of things she believes are more promising. There is a huge gap between - we should change funding priorities vs "Peer review was created by the government, working with Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, to control science". One is a reasonable but potentially controversial viewpoint. The other is batshit insane. These 2 views should not be grouped together.
- ianburrell 1y ago
  Sabine has been recently supporting Eric Weinstein. She started off criticizing research, but has been following the path to grift. Now she appears on podcasts with fellow Weinstein and other cranks.
  - bawolff 1y ago
    I'll admit i've watched some of her videos from time to time, but don't follow her super closely. If she's giving air-time to full on cranks, that is disappointing.
JackYoustra 1y ago
because no one here seems to have said it yet: I actually think experts and academics, by and large and especially in physics, are the most likely to know what they're talking about! Personalized mavericks are rarely right, and the mavericks people hold up as mavericks are usually just conventional (researchers, leaders, etc) who either are right place right time (jack welch, for example: good ceo, but what catapulted him to myth wasn't him, it was being in the spot where law was such that he had the opportunity to make the first real shadow bank before people realized the consequences) or just have charisma so they seem different.
f137 1y ago
An error occurred during a connection to www.math.columbia.edu. Peer’s Certificate has been revoked. Error code: SEC_ERROR_REVOKED_CERTIFICATE Something seems to be wrong...
sockbot 1y ago
This shit is infecting every news source. Even CBC yesterday put out this garbage headline "Charlie Kirk shot dead at university event, Trump says". Who cares what Trump says. Responsible reporting would be getting the information from primary sources, not fettering responsibility for determining newsworthiness to whatever Trump says. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6897816 https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6897816
arduanika 1y ago
> If a podcaster (e.g. Sabine Hossenfelder) has a book, read the book (Lost in Math is pretty good) rather than watching the podcasts. That's a good general takeaway, not just for physics drama. I can think of several people whose books are great or at least pretty good, but their social media presence is...Flanderized, would be a kind way of putting it.
the-mitr 1y ago
In case of Indian main stream media, they have completely lost it. The collapse is not only epistemic it is moral and ethical also. They have become submissive with the present incumbents. Not only they have become propaganda tools of first order they also promote all sorts of nonsense as national level breaking news. Forget about accountability from the government, they tend to pin all the failures on previous governments.
FilosofumRex 1y ago
[dead]

129 points by r721 1y ago

iammjm 1y ago

[flagged]

naasking 1y ago
He's named because his rebuttals are weak and Hossenfelder actually makes legitimate points that "Professor Dave" just evades.
- cubefox 1y ago
  He also isn't a professor. He did an MA in chemistry apparently.

balozi 1y ago

I'll argue that this Woit post is no better. Its lazy. What was the point?

jcalvinowens 1y ago

Huh, Firefox on Debian: An error occurred during a connection to www.math.columbia.edu. Peer’s Certificate has been revoked. Error code: SEC_ERROR_REVOKED_CERTIFICATE I apparently can't bypass it. EDIT: Chain: https://pastebin.com/raw/Mch2XTiQ https://pastebin.com/raw/Mch2XTiQ

jchw 1y ago
It's been archived on archive.today. https://archive.is/wAtCw https://archive.is/wAtCw That said, I'm not having this issue at all. Strange.
- deleted 1y ago
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  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
kelnos 1y ago
Firefox on Debian here as well (installed from Mozilla themselves, not the .deb), and it loads fine for me.
mionhe 1y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20250912131943/https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=15206 https://web.archive.org/web/20250912131943/https://www.math....
mikestorrent 1y ago
www.math.<any university in the world>.edu SSL cert expired??? unfathomable!! As a former math sysadmin... I apologize on behalf of math sysadmins
- raverbashing 1y ago
  Their reaction is probably "what do you mean, a number expired?!"
- jcalvinowens 1y ago
  I don't think it's expired: https://pastebin.com/raw/Mch2XTiQ https://pastebin.com/raw/Mch2XTiQ
- godelski 1y ago
  Validity Not Before Fri, 06 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT Not After Tue, 07 Oct 2025 23:59:59 GMT Subject Alt Names DNS Name *.math.columbia.edu Looks valid to me
SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.math.columbia.edu https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.math.colu... Has an IO error fetching the CRL. If you've got `security.OCSP.require` set to `true` it'll treat non-response from the OCSP server as a revoked cert.

hobs 1y ago

Huh, I am getting an OCSP revoked certificate for *.math.columbia.edu

swagmoney69 1y ago

[dead]

samename 1y ago

https://archive.is/wAtCw https://archive.is/wAtCw

arduanika 1y ago
Thanks! And here's the WSJ article he's responding to: https://archive.is/qGOmz https://archive.is/qGOmz

jeffbee 1y ago

Reading books is A-OK but you can't ignore online, and especially the online-offline nexus. Witness this week's escalation of a 4chan beef into a real-world assassination, another thing that the WSJ misreported.

Mistletoe 1y ago
What?
- gainda 1y ago
  Allegedly, Charlie Kirk's killer, Tyler Robinson, may have been a groyper.
  - intalentive 1y ago
    What's the evidence for this claim? Seems at odds with the details reported here: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/charlie-kirk-tyler-robinson-suspect-b2825455.html https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
    - jeffbee 1y ago
      You don't think writing Helldivers memes on shell casings means anything?
      - intalentive 1y ago
        "Hey, fascist! Catch!", "Bella ciao" and three arrows are all antifascist. I would assume that the shooter is motivated by antifascist political ideology at odds with Kirk's political ideology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Arrows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Arrows The groypers are not antifascist, so the reported symbolism doesn't add up. If there's evidence of the shooter being a groyper, then I'm curious to see it.
        1y ago

nullbyte 1y ago

Joe Rogan had Michio Kaku on once, it was a fun episode

Conlectus 1y ago
I’m not sure if this is the point you mean to make, but Michio Kanu is one of the bigger cranks in physics communication. He said ion an (maybe the Joe Rigan interview?) that quantum computers would be able to act as a truth detector for AI. He wrote a whole book on quantum computing in fact despite clearly not understanding it at all[0]. [0]: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7321 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7321

AlfredBarnes 1y ago

The internet has allowed anyone to build a voice/following. Whether they should or not.

electric_muse 1y ago

[flagged]

titzer 1y ago
When the media stops holding people in power accountable, they are no different than idiots with megaphones. The press has special rights because accountability and informing the public was supposed to be their job.
- wwweston 1y ago
  Might be worth asking: Why would “the media” do this? Over thousands of outlets?
  - mulmen 1y ago
    Because it’s a moral obligation. The fourth estate is critical to the sustainable operation of our system of government and society. The electorate need to make informed decisions at the polls. In the same way lobbyists inform representatives the media inform the electorate.
  - kulahan 1y ago
    I think you could reduce the profession of journalism to “forced transparency”, which can be a form of accountability unto itself. In short: because it’s simply who they are by definition
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    Interpreting as "why would the media stop holding people in power accountable"... Because it's cheaper and lets it survive. The unspoken undercurrent is that Google and Facebook ate the ad spending that used to fund journalism, without replacing its function. Google and Facebook don't fund journalism at scale -- that's why their profit margins stay at 23% & 40%. Without revenue, reporters don't get paid, high quality reporting doesn't get done, and newsrooms grovel for any source of margin. Which currently seems to be {minimal cost "journalism"} + {catering to power in exchange for access}.

Terr_ 1y ago

The linked WSJ article has an interview-quote from Scott Aaronson: > Anyone perceived as the ‘mainstream establishment’ faces a near-insurmountable burden of proof, while anyone perceived as ‘renegade’ wins by default if they identify any hole whatsoever in mainstream understanding. I feel this Futurama clip about evolutionary "missing link" fossils [0] captures a little bit of that frustration. Building any cohesive framework for understanding a big problem is always harder than finding and attacking a weak spot and declaring the entire thing flawed. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICv6GLwt1gM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICv6GLwt1gM

giraffe_lady 1y ago
> finding and attacking a weak spot and declaring the entire thing flawed. It's funny because I've come to think of this exact thing as basically the defining characteristic of the HN rhetorical style. It's not unique to here of course but it's where this approach is taken most seriously as honest rigorous debate. Long time commenters here have internalized it to the point where their writing is large defensive in anticipation of these rhetorical chisels that will try to pry into any minute crack to dismiss the entire issue at hand.
- Terr_ 1y ago
  In my own writing experience of stuffing qualifier words and caveats everywhere, it's at least as old as Usenet.
- etblg 1y ago
  Error: Compiler warning: Appeal to Authority fallacy detected on line 8, your argument is hereby invalid or whatever fallacy nerds like bringing up in debates, just pick your favourite one and insert it here.
  - Terr_ 1y ago
    > your argument is hereby invalid Which is not-quite but sometimes leads to a Fallacy Fallacy comeback: Just because the argument is unsound doesn't mean the conclusion is wrong. :p

lupusreal 1y ago

> I was planning on writing something explaining what exactly the WSJ story gets wrong, but now realize this is hopeless Okay, then this blog post was essentially useless. The WSJ is wrong about something, but the author can't be bothered to tell us what. Pity.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

seydor 1y ago

In the past it was the postmodernists attacking physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair It's funny how this new generation of professional antiestablishers are using the same tactics (even though they would vehemently attach postmodernism) It's all a power play really, when politics is involved. That's not science

Terr_ 1y ago
> this new generation of professional antiestablishers [...] would vehemently [attack] postmodernism I can think of two ways to interpret this, and I'm not sure which one you intend: 1. They hold modernist views, that there is a distinct and meaningful direction/progression for how societies must change over time. 2. They don't know what postmodernism means, and consider it a generic bad-word to attach to things they don't like. (Comic example: [0]) [0] https://existentialcomics.com/comic/289 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/289
mattmcknight 1y ago
"the postmodernists attacking physics" The Sokal affair was a physicist attacking the postmodernists for attacking physics (and scientific realism) by showing the postmodernists would publish complete nonsense. The current attack is saying the physics establishment is backing a theory that doesn't adequately make predictions (not adequately supporting scientific realism). It can be viewed outside the realm of power, that's a very postmodern view.
viccis 1y ago
The pomo authors weren't "attacking" physics. They used terminology sloppily in their writing and all Sokal proved was that if you find a publisher with sufficiently lax standards, they'll publish just about anything. I've read enough complete nonsense compsci papers from conferences with <15% acceptance rates, as well as seen the replication crisis get so bad that I've never taken Sokal's stunt as anything other than a party trick of philosophical philistinism. He showed that a journal that "covers subjects in the debates around feminism, Marxism, neoliberalism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, queer theory, and popular culture" doesn't perform adequate peer review of theoretical physics papers.

javier123454321 1y ago

[flagged]

Herring 1y ago
Maybe your society. Finland is doing great with media literacy and resilience to misinformation in Europe. https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/05/europe/finland-fake-news-intl/ https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/05/europe/finland-f... As a general rule, you can sit there and moan about problems or you can spend 5min to find proven solutions. It's hard to do both.
- hkpack 1y ago
  I have a suspicion that Finland is able to do well against fake news mostly because it is Russian fake news and people know them very well. I can also confirm that Ukrainians are doing amazingly well compared to the rest of the world in this regards. The problem I see is that the west _loves_ russian propaganda. Listening to any popular US podcaster feels like they are taking their hot takes directly from the Olgino troll factories.
- javier123454321 1y ago
  The US definitely has a global target for disinformation. I've lived in Latam and the propaganda was far more easy to spot. The link I gave a lot was concerted efforts by the democratic party but I do acknowledge there is Russian, North Korean, Chinese, and probably other propaganda that is looking to destabilize. However, I do think that we are at a moment where the idea of objectivity is loosing its foundation. That's a cultural philosophical moment we're having, and I don't know if you can say that Finland is above this epistemic shift.
throw4847285 1y ago
The irony is that people accused 20th Century academics of being "post-modern" and "post-truth" when really they were reporting accurately on how fragile our society is. When Bruno Latour tried to argue that science was socially constructed, he wasn't trying to undermine it. He was trying to be challenge a certain naive understanding of the world in which science is clearly true, progress is obvious to all, and science/technology can be entirely divorced from the rest of society. In recent years, he has undertaken an active effort to shore up the authority of science, but this isn't him recanting. He always knew the scientific consensus was fragile. Latour is just one example of many. The concept of performativity, Adorno and Horkheimer on the failure of the Enlightenment, Feyerabend's epistemic anarchism. All attempts to understand society in a rigorous way that were dismissed or willfully misunderstood because a naive narrative of progress meant not having to worry about those kinds of things. We were going to get ever closer to the truth and build better and better things, with no negative consequences. That was the promise.

sevensor 1y ago

The critique is somewhat misplaced. There have always been terrible, ignorant newspaper articles. There sometimes used to be good, informative ones, but this is getting scarcer and scarcer.

beezlebroxxxxxx 1y ago
If anything, "yellow journalism" has been the norm. Being a journalist used to be a step above parasite and ambulance chaser in popular opinion. You didn't need a college degree, let alone an Ivy league degree like today, to do it. Most papers were blatant mouthpieces of owners or certain political parties. Everyone knew that. "Objectivity" was laughed at by reporters. That shifted with Watergate, which, afterwards, journalism began to have a certain prestige as "crusading truth seekers." Journalists doubled down on that view, cultivated it, and began to believe in it. Nowadays, journalism (at least in major markets) is more about prestige and access to power. Some journalists have a complex and believe that they have the access to the truth, leading to much handwringing about its "professionalism". In reality, journalism is closer to writing in a journal after a party: they just offer accounts of events. That we expect better from them is, in part, a creation of their own making that is now starting to bite them in the ass.

micromacrofoot 1y ago

The WSJ and other outlets are also completely failing at understanding the "chronically online" messaging from recent mass shooters, and are unintentionally spreading the memes and attention that the perpetrators are seeking out, thus feeding the cycle. They seem to be seriously lacking experts on anything these days... culture, physics and anything between.

psunavy03 1y ago
The media has been failing at this since Columbine, if not before. They don't take the contagion effect nearly as seriously as they ought to, given that so many shooters have been documented now as idolizing previous shooters. When you give a maladjusted freak a script that's basically "get your hands on this specific model rifle, go to this specific type of place, kill a bunch of people, and we'll make you famous," is it any wonder it happens over and over again? They show their photo, they name them down to their middle name, they write articles about whatever loony manifesto they wrote . . . none of this should be newsworthy, and it all feeds the social phenomenon.

refulgentis 1y ago

Hear hear. One of my red alarms the last 6 months has been saying anything about Sabine less than parise is verboten on HN is controversial, no matter how kind and couched and calm and cited.

mikert89 1y ago

WSJ and the like just hire for pedigree. You end up with careerists writing generic articles, and injecting political opinion into everything

tracker1 1y ago
Journalism is kind of a weird thing... it's often been about truth to power and reporting even what the govt/establishment doesn't always want to see. Of course this also attracts a lot of activism. I think they've, for a long while, crossed over to more propaganda over truth in general. This combined with infotainment news business trends in general is a bad mix. I think it was just yesterday, I saw an article about an ICE raid of the Samsung plant in Georgia. It was a pretty long article, and even the tone of the article was pretty level. That said, there was a critical and very important piece missing from the article altogether... "Why?" As in what law(s) were broken and how/why the raid was used. TBH, I don't know that a raid was necessary over revised negotiations between DoJ/ICE, Samsung, Korea and the people in question... That said, the fact the article clearly didn't even attempt to report the ICE reasoning was pretty damning of the author and the site.
- ejstronge 1y ago
  > I think it was just yesterday, I saw an article about an ICE raid of the Samsung plant in Georgia. It was a pretty long article, and even the tone of the article was pretty level. That said, there was a critical and very important piece missing from the article altogether... "Why?" As in what law(s) were broken and how/why the raid was used. TBH, I don't know that a raid was necessary over revised negotiations between DoJ/ICE, Samsung, Korea and the people in question... That said, the fact the article clearly didn't even attempt to report the ICE reasoning was pretty damning of the author and the site. Or maybe this was a rhetorical point? Even today, there are articles that are trying to piece together who informed on the plant and what the basis for an ICE raid was. It seems you and the authors retain a similar understanding of the situation.
  - tracker1 1y ago

tracker1 1y ago

I'm not sure why the author is making digs at Joe Rogan so much... I mean, his podcast isn't really a deep dive into anything, its more conversations with generally interesting people from a number of different backgrounds. Sometimes MMA, sometimes conspiracy nuts... It's not a scientific podcast and I'm not sure that anyone is claiming it is. Of course, this is quite a bit different than bought and paid for corporate media shills that currently represent "journalism" at large. In that space they do pretend to have the prestige of being about news, truth and information. For television in particular is pretty bad... MSNBC, CNN, Fox, etc. all are just not great between selection/coverage bias, misinformation, out of context contortions and opinions masked as news. I will separate Fox's written/web coverage as a bit better than their TV counterpart (and the others in general) though. I used to find BBC coverage decent, but they've slipped a lot in the past few years. Similar for Al Jazeera, at least for content outside middle east concerns.

jacobgkau 1y ago
> I will separate Fox's written/web coverage as a bit better than their TV counterpart (and the others in general) though. I regularly check Fox's website along with CNN and NewsNation, which gets me ostensibly right/left/center views on things. Having not seen much TV Fox, I assumed Fox News Digital put more spin on things. It could just be the stupid little quip taglines they put over all of their image thumbnails that made me think that, as opposed to the actual article content, though.
- tracker1 1y ago
  Yeah, I tend to do similar to check article subjects from a couple different sources. It's amazing how many times bits of information are straight out missing from one or another that changes the context of things a lot. There's really no excuse for it with online reporting other than twisting/propagandizing events. On Fox content, yeah I'm more referring to the written news content (not editorial). All said, I'm probably going to unplug for a couple weeks regarding social media, news and politics... some of the posts on Bluesky and Reddit the past couple days just make me feel a bit ill.
1y ago

buyucu 1y ago

That is a lot of words to communicate a very simple truth: WSJ is trash. (so is NYT btw)

hn_throw_250910 1y ago
You’ll be downvoted for this and my comment will be marked as off topic or whatever but you capture the gist of it. These news outlets shouldn’t delve into anything requiring the use of word “epistemic” their “collapse”, when they fail to report on much more basic things.

jihadjihad 1y ago

It's not just technical subjects, either. In the midst of the chaos of Charlie Kirk's assassination, they ran an article [0] yesterday titled (it has since been edited) "Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology". It's just incredibly irresponsible reporting. One can only assume it is a symptom of a wider problem within WSJ and media itself. 0: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/charlie-kirk-shot/card/ammunition-in-kirk-shooting-engraved-with-transgender-antifascist-ideology-sources-pdymd1sXXMSlVRhpvR4b https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/charlie-kirk-shot/card/ammu...

ashleyn 1y ago
I believe it says quite a lot when a major and supposedly reputable institution like the WSJ will sacrifice journalistic rigor when they see an opportunity to potentially besmirch the image of a sharply unpopular demographic. Facts still matter over agenda. People should be fired for this.
lawlessone 1y ago
edited but no retracton.
r721 1y ago
The Verge story about this is pretty popular on reddit today: >The WSJ carelessly spread anti-trans misinformation https://www.theverge.com/politics/777630/wsj-trans-misinformation-charlie-kirk https://www.theverge.com/politics/777630/wsj-trans-misinform... (archived: https://archive.is/liFTX https://archive.is/liFTX)
- Jensson 1y ago
  A policeman did, the police did tell that to WSJ. The police later retracted that statement. The exact messages weren't made public until later.
  - detaro 1y ago
    And part of good journalistic practice is not reporting everything "a person familiar with the investigation" (so not even an official statement) tells you immediately. Because otherwise you become a willing vehicle for spreading bullshit.

nilkn 1y ago

A couple thoughts: - The author of this clearly disliked the WSJ article, but I don't think they did a good job of explaining why. I'm not saying they're wrong, but this article is very emotional without much concrete criticism. I assume 'woit' is someone famous I should know about but don't and he or she is assuming people will find this sufficient simply because they wrote it. But for someone like me who doesn't know who woit is, it doesn't land as a result. - I enjoyed the WSJ article and (perhaps naively) thought it did an acceptable job shedding light on an interesting phenomenon that would fly under the radar for many readers. I'd be interested in seeing credible criticism of it, but the article in question declares that providing that information would be "hopeless". In the next sentence, they mention experiencing mental health issues. - On theoretical physics, my thought, for whatever it may be worth, is that a verified theory of quantum gravity is simply one of the hardest scientific questions of all time. It's something that we should expect would take the entire world hundreds of years to solve. So I'm not at all unnerved or worried about what appears from the outside to be a slow rate of progress. We are talking about precisely understanding phenomena that generally only occur in the most extreme conditions presently imaginable in the universe. That's going to take time to unravel -- and it may not even be possible, just like a dog is never going to understand general relativity.

Eisenstein 1y ago
The author is a member of the academic community and are known for their grounded and informed takes on topics which are extremely complex and only well understood by high level physics theoreticians and researchers. They are writing for an audience of sophisticated non-experts who are curious about fields of advanced topics that are difficult to understand and thus are usually distorted in an unhelpful way by people who barely grasp it but are trusted by the public to be the authority on relaying that topic to laypeople.
r721 1y ago
>I assume 'woit' is someone famous I should know about but don't and he or she is assuming people will find this sufficient simply because they wrote it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Woit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Woit

hrnnnnnn 1y ago

By coincidence I just listened to the Decoding the Gurus episode on Sabine https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/sabine-hossenfelder-science-is-a-liar-sometimes https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/sabine-hosse... I also just finished a four-and-a-half-hour defence of modern physics by Sean Carroll which has some really good counterarguments in it, as well as a whirlwind history of the last century in physics. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-... I am conscious of the irony of responding to this post by posting podcasts.

TriangleEdge 1y ago

> Sorting through a pile of misinformation, trying to rebuild something true out of a collapsed mess of some truth buried in a mixture of nonsense and misunderstandings is a losing battle. In short, I'm predicting port 80 and 443 as we know it today will see much less usage because of LLMs. Or that it'll move to more curated one off blogs like it used to be. Stack Overflow died because of LLMs. I'm not certain if other social media is next or not. Anyone want to guess at when HN will be a hot mess of bots and garbage?

hn_throw_250910 1y ago

The focus on technical and scientific studies here shouldn’t dissuade anyone from questioning more approachable subject matters, namely anything involving studies or scientific inquiries should be placed under suspicion. Moreso when it relates to hot headed topics of the moment that drive clicks and engagement (outrage). This all reminds me of the Gell-Man Amnesia which is an absolutely real thing, and this turn of events with regards to WSJs capability (if it can be called that) shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Animats 1y ago

High energy physics and cosmology have been kind of stuck for years, generating untestable theories. But low energy physics, down near absolute zero, has had a steady stream of new experimental results. Real progress down there. Optical tweezers, attosecond lasers, quantum condensates...

OutOfHere 1y ago

The bias in favor of "dark matter" is a strong example of why academic physics is corrupt. There is absolutely no astrophysical evidence for dark matter, only gravitational anomalies of regular matter, yet significant money has been funded into it for decades, at the expense of ignoring other simpler satisfactory theories. The alternate theories have been prematurely rejected on false grounds without giving them sufficient attention or effort in their development.

JackYoustra 1y ago
> corrupt What do you mean when you say this? > prematurely rejected What does this mean?
- jacobgkau 1y ago
  >> prematurely rejected > What does this mean? I'm assuming it means rejected "without giving them sufficient attention or effort in their development," as stated in the rest of the sentence. What do you think "prematurely" means?

legitster 1y ago

By nature, journalists are not subject matter experts. Even in the height of our technological progress during the space race, the best they could do was call up a nationally recognized expert, get an oversimplified explanation, and publish a summary of that. The true knowledge was locked into a small set of researcher circles running out of exclusive labs and in whatever they published or lectured about. Journalism is the one part of this equation that has changed the least since then. The way I see it, there are two bigger forces at work: - The demand that normal people have for this sort of knowledge. People today believe they should have a front row seat to everything and be an active participant. And to a lesser degree we have encouraged this as a society through television, social media, or even the way we assumed every student needed a well-rounded undergraduate college education. - Academia has exploded in size and scope in the last century. The prestige, the hierarchy, the social ladder climbing, the funding battles, the publishing race, the sheer number of graduate students in these programs. These programs are meat grinders that pump out all sorts of noise and failed academics with grudges. We have conveniently forgot that there is a massive ongoing replication crisis that is still largely being ignored. Journalists and scientists can point fingers at each other as much as they want and claim the other knows nothing about what they are speaking of. But at the end of the day the sheer amount of information (right and wrong) at our fingertips is bearing down on our society like a great weight ready to destroy us all.

bawolff 1y ago

I've never heard of Eric Weinstein, but he sounds like a crank. I don't think he should be grouped together with Sabine, whose primary message is that she believes science funding priorities are out of whack, and are currently funding things she believes won't be fruitful or are over explored at the expense of things she believes are more promising. There is a huge gap between - we should change funding priorities vs "Peer review was created by the government, working with Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, to control science". One is a reasonable but potentially controversial viewpoint. The other is batshit insane. These 2 views should not be grouped together.

ianburrell 1y ago
Sabine has been recently supporting Eric Weinstein. She started off criticizing research, but has been following the path to grift. Now she appears on podcasts with fellow Weinstein and other cranks.
- bawolff 1y ago
  I'll admit i've watched some of her videos from time to time, but don't follow her super closely. If she's giving air-time to full on cranks, that is disappointing.

JackYoustra 1y ago

because no one here seems to have said it yet: I actually think experts and academics, by and large and especially in physics, are the most likely to know what they're talking about! Personalized mavericks are rarely right, and the mavericks people hold up as mavericks are usually just conventional (researchers, leaders, etc) who either are right place right time (jack welch, for example: good ceo, but what catapulted him to myth wasn't him, it was being in the spot where law was such that he had the opportunity to make the first real shadow bank before people realized the consequences) or just have charisma so they seem different.

f137 1y ago

An error occurred during a connection to www.math.columbia.edu. Peer’s Certificate has been revoked. Error code: SEC_ERROR_REVOKED_CERTIFICATE Something seems to be wrong...

sockbot 1y ago

This shit is infecting every news source. Even CBC yesterday put out this garbage headline "Charlie Kirk shot dead at university event, Trump says". Who cares what Trump says. Responsible reporting would be getting the information from primary sources, not fettering responsibility for determining newsworthiness to whatever Trump says. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6897816 https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6897816

arduanika 1y ago

> If a podcaster (e.g. Sabine Hossenfelder) has a book, read the book (Lost in Math is pretty good) rather than watching the podcasts. That's a good general takeaway, not just for physics drama. I can think of several people whose books are great or at least pretty good, but their social media presence is...Flanderized, would be a kind way of putting it.

the-mitr 1y ago

In case of Indian main stream media, they have completely lost it. The collapse is not only epistemic it is moral and ethical also. They have become submissive with the present incumbents. Not only they have become propaganda tools of first order they also promote all sorts of nonsense as national level breaking news. Forget about accountability from the government, they tend to pin all the failures on previous governments.

FilosofumRex 1y ago

[dead]