knzhou

65 ms·

631.
by knzhou 7y ago
I agree that BICEP was the worst debacle of this kind that’s occurred in recent memory. But also see how the safeguards worked: their results were properly questioned, the hype was over in months, and they did not get a Nobel.
632.
by knzhou 7y ago
Huh, I didn’t even know! The new answer really does change things.
633.
by knzhou 7y ago
What people forget is that this was true in the old days as well. Even back in the 60s and 70s there were over ten accelerators throughout the world constantly doing science, and you can bet they were booked up with new speculative searches
634.
by knzhou 7y ago
That's an old Feynman story, but he was kind of bullshitting to make a point. If you actually look at the history of measurements, it doesn't look like that at all -- it instantly corrects to about the correct value right after Mi
635.
by knzhou 7y ago
Sure, but there's a difference between the accuracy of speculative theory and experiment. Experiment is very reliable -- they never called the 750 GeV bump a discovery of anything, because it didn't meet the statistical standards.
636.
by knzhou 7y ago
> Is there evidence of American scientists who have greatly benefited in reputation and prestige, despite doing very shoddy work? This is the exact point of the replication crisis. Within social science, the answer is an absolute yes. Th
637.
by knzhou 7y ago
I don't want to sound too triumphant, but over here in fundamental physics we have decades-old safeguards in place against all these problems. The big experiments don't have publication bias: they proudly say exactly what they did
638.
by knzhou 7y ago
Numbers.
639.
by knzhou 7y ago
My extended family over there knows perfectly well what happened, they just don’t like to talk about it. And my parents know exactly what happened because they were there, and nobody’s coming after them. So without further evidence it seems
640.
by knzhou 7y ago
If such deeply-held values can flip within 40 years, then what does it mean to say one set is "Eastern" and one is "Western"?
641.
by knzhou 7y ago
When I actually visit, I will look into this. It's easy to tell all kinds of crazy stories about would happen in China, but do you have direct evidence? I don't, but I know for a fact that expat communities usually bitterly hate t
642.
by knzhou 7y ago
> Look at the controversies surrounding "no nudity/sexual imagery" > "banning/unbanning breast feeding pics" > "banning/unbanning pics of the african tribe who nurse sick goat calves back to
643.
by knzhou 7y ago
I addressed exactly this. This is what you are doing: > The second Facebook censors anything, they are immediately hit with a furor of complaint that, under those standards, they are obligated to censor some slightly less objectionable t
644.
by knzhou 7y ago
I have always wondered what people mean by "Chinese ideals". As a Chinese person myself, all 4 of your options are things that I oppose. I find myself consistently on the side of individuality, privacy, free speech, and self defen
645.
by knzhou 7y ago
This is yet another example of 'damned if you do and damned if you don't. If Facebook did literally no moderation whatsoever, then there would be (and indeed was, in the past) a furor of complaint over their callous indifference t
646.
by knzhou 7y ago
We've been through this same conversation with the FEC decades ago. They ended up with precisely the same compromise Facebook is implementing now.
647.
by knzhou 7y ago
I agree there is a problem, I simply disagree that there is an easy solution. All "solutions" people suggest either propose to make Facebook nakedly partisan, or would just cause the very same criticisms to reignite in essentially
648.
by knzhou 7y ago
And what is a political ad? Does an ad for an abortion clinic count? How about an ad asking for donations for Palestine? Or Hong Kong? Or wall construction? How about an ad that only points out that stocks have gone up, along with a picture
649.
by knzhou 7y ago
> Remember Zuck wanted to run for president not that long ago. This is absolutely false. There has never been any evidence for this whatsoever, and it is a good example of a falsehood becoming true in the media by constant repetition.
650.
by knzhou 7y ago
And precisely who do you think should be appointed to head your “ministry of truth”? For example, I believe Facebook employees currently skew 90% Democrat. Should the committee seek out and add more Republicans in order to have a 50/50
651.
by knzhou 7y ago
Again, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. In fact in this case we’ve already been through this. Instead of “why does Facebook allow possibly false ads” the discourse instantly becomes “why did Facebook allow this possibly fals
652.
by knzhou 7y ago
That’s unfortunately naive —- as we’ve heard, these days “the personal is political”. To a lot of people, if you disallow politics you are also restricting personal expression. Banning politics would lead to yet another doubling of the aval
653.
by knzhou 7y ago
Once again you are dammed if you do and damned if you don’t. If you like, imagine a totally random hypothetical set of Facebook rules (for example, the exact reverse of what the current rules are). You will find that it is easy, really comp
654.
by knzhou 7y ago
Sorry, that just sounds naive. It’s all well and good until the echo chamber you live in meets a different echo chamber, which has a different idea of what’s true. The resulting conflict would instantly devolve into furious tribal warfare w
655.
by knzhou 7y ago
And it's not just the qualifications -- Scott Aaronson is one of the most approachable, honest, and witty science communicators of all time. You almost never see all those traits all together in popsci, even ignoring qualifications. If
656.
by knzhou 7y ago
Thanks for clarifying. My response has two points as well. The first is that thinking about "Facebook" as ordering more policing is misleading, because its influence in this case is not more than the 10,000 residents would have ha
657.
by knzhou 7y ago
Jesus. These are the medical standards of the early 19th century. On net, it's probably better than nothing at all, but there is so much further to go.
658.
by knzhou 7y ago
We will possibly end up with nearly 1000 children killed by a single man. A sobering reminder that our problems are, almost always, nothing in comparison.
659.
by knzhou 7y ago
I'm getting very confused with all of your comments. Do you want more policing of theft in poor communities, such as East Palo Alto, or less? I currently live in the rich part of Menlo Park (thank god for subsidized housing). Do you th
660.
by knzhou 7y ago
Elsewhere on this thread I'm being told by the asme poster than we need more policing of theft -- apparently, having less policing of theft in poor communities is the problem, because that means the rich get better police service.

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