Has anyone checked for kernels of corn growing behind their ears?

Me, about to suggest some actually really good, thought provoking Marvel comics that somehow got made alongside the relentless superhero soap opera: oh wait now isn’t the time, we’re dunking on the AI bro

John McPhee’s so goddamn good, one of the best nonfiction writers out there. The absolute master of nonfiction narrative structure, imho.

And yeah, Deep Time is… a hell of a trip.

Super late response (sorry!), but yeah, history of science is great stuff. And your point about TESCREALS engaging with science fiction over science is entirely spot-on. (Which was me as a teenager. There but for the grace of god go I…)

Btw, if you want to read a FANTASTIC book dealing with people grappling with plate tectonics, John McPhee’s Pulitzer-winning Annals of the Ancient World spans literal decades of interviews with geologists, and you get to start with geologists being deeply skeptical of this newfangled plate tectonics (not dismissive, but not convinced of the breadth of its explanatory power), and work to it being fully accepted science over the course of the book.

Oh geez, just saw this response, feel really bad I missed it- you put a ton of effort into it! (And I’m overwhelmed with work right now, so I can’t reply in the depth it deserves, alas!)

In short, though: Your arguments largely make sense to me, and I’m reasonably persuaded by them! I too also think Kuhn has been treated worse than he deserves- yes, others have surpassed him since, but few of them are as approachable to laymen as he is, and that’s worth something, imho. (I’m also kinder to Jared Diamond than many folks for similar reasons. Yeah, he fucked a lot of stuff up, but he got a lot of laymen- including me, before I started by studies in geology- interested in environmental history, so at the very least he deserves that nod.) And I’d agree that Feyerebend did better than Kuhn! (Maybe not on layman approachability, but he’s not that much tougher than Kuhn- I certainly had no trouble, and I’m a dilettante in philosophy of science.)

Wish I had time for a longer (and very belated) reply, but thanks for the great response!

And is the “beam of pink energy from the future” a reference to Philip K Dick’s Valis, by any chance?

RIP digital drug trip, you were actually pretty cool

It’s like the classic comic “we should improve society somewhat!” “And yet you participate in society!”

• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn

Bit of philosophy of science is a useful bit of immunization against Rationalist bullshit. Maybe not on its own, but it helps.

Seconding, Mismeasure of Man is fantastic.

Ayuuuuuuuup. Movable feast is a great term for it. Even once formerly ostracized groups get permitted into the in-group, their membership is strictly conditional on serving the interests of those closer into the center of the Whiteness construct. Stop being useful, watch how fast the old hate rears its ugly head again.

Fucking giant water and power guzzling data centers, ugh.

I haven’t seen any numbers on how much Sora cost to train, nor how much it costs to run- I can’t help but believe it’s painfully high.

How delightfully ineffective

(Seriously, what has Effective Altruism ever accomplished beyond buying castles?)

Goddamnit I wish I’d intended that pun

Yeah, there’s absolutely a place for arguments that aren’t full-bore “capitalism is evil, forward the revolution!” Some people need to be eased into that space, and articles like this, that show how fundamentally stupid and terrible Musk and company are, are a great way to get people to start asking HOW dingbats like that got power. And it’s not the longest journey from there to questioning whether something is wrong with the system itself.

(There are failure states, of course- namely, reinforcing the neoliberal idea that if you just put better people in charge of a system, it will work better. But that’s a question of execution, not of tactical validity.)

Somehow, I doubt there’s many other sneerers in Hanoi, but you never know…

Oh gross

As a non-tech person who has zero idea what Urbit is, this is still deeply funny to me.

I’m guessing there’s probably a libertarian bent to this whole thing, somehow?

Oh heck yeah new Dan Olson

The full book is well worth the read, imho.