My understanding is that, yes, the way matter in a galaxy merger behaves acts as strong evidence for the existence of dark matter and the theory that it's made of something that interacts weakly with normal matter.
"What is truth?" asked the powerful Roman governor of Judea, of a man accused of blasphemy two millennia ago, and we still don't know. What is "neutrality" for a university? Is creationism "neutral"? It was a huge political deal in the US for decades (though it seems to have died down recently), but in the 1980's, 1990's, and into the 2000's there were plenty of people who wanted creationism taught in science classes, or at least to "teach the controversy." Was picking sides on that topic in science class "neutral"?
Is the superiority of phonics based literacy approaches "neutral" or criticism of teachers unions? If a economics professors research indicates that, say, supply-side economics doesn't work under current circumstances, is it "neutral" for her to tell her class that? If a law professor thinks that judges only make ad hoc arguments to achieve whatever ends they desire, can they teach their class legal nihilism?
"Neutral" is the sort of thing that someone who has never actually tried to teach or inform can think is reasonable, until you actually try and do it and realize that there are people out there who strongly want to contest whether the earth is round, and that either you throw up your hands and accept epistemological nihilism or you accept that you have to pick sides, and try and do a good job of picking the right sides.
It's amazing how motivated reasoning and a poltics poisoned mind can be used to make obvious points out to be unreasonable. Institutional neutrality is simple, the organization does what is ncessary to operate, but doesn't prescribe anything unnecessarily over that.
It does not mean that professors are not allowed to talk about disagreeable things that are required for teaching the subject. If anything, it makes it easier for them to do so, as they can teach whatever is necessary to produce well-functioning members of society.
Eg you don't need to endorse a specific candidate to fulfill your duty of teaching students. You don't need to avoid talking about research that runs counter to the organization's politics. You don't need to openly pick sides on protests besides advocating for enough civilty to allow your institution to keep operating, and so on. I'm fairly certain that a good portion of the neutrality statements from universities have been coming from the difficult ideological situation presented by the flaring up of the Israel-Gaza conflict, where picking sides opens them up to either being islamophobes or antisemites.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at with the tension about creationism as part of science education. In my schooling the early science education often covered the history of the topic, which would inevitably talk about the local religious ideas, working it's way through them, sometimes even with brief readings of some associated stories, through to major discoveries that provided the evidence for the modern consensus. That's just part of providing a comprehensive education and connecting it to the culture kids are exposed to?
Calling an important aspect of most cultures as "propaganda" is rich. You don't have to be religious (I'm not religious and wasn't religious at that time either) to recognize that it's useful to understand those beliefs and how we worked our way to the modern age. That's how you help students to learn our current understanding of the world such that they are less susceptible to eating up blatant lies and believing that school was just indoctrinating them.
Creationism is an American protofascist phenomenon, it actually is propaganda and does not need to be taught in a science class in order to nurture and develop critical thinking skills.
If you are referring to traditional cultures, they have creation myths which are better suited for social sciences classes.
Showing both sides of the debate is itself a worse form of indoctrination. Haha, look at how creationism is pseudoscience! Now you will be tested on the reasons why. No, let's just not platform propaganda as if it deserved any fair footing in good-faith context of discourse.
It never made it into science class, but only because institutions had (and have) the power to set rules and not be neutral on important issues of the day. It was our choice at the museum that received tax payer funding to not be neutral that kept creationism out. That's picking a side. And that is absolutely essential is my point, because the truth is, unfortunately, not neutral, and we all need to do our best to find that truth. Just saying "be neutral" is abdication of responsibility.
Well said. There's are several sayings, such as "neutrality is the both-sideism fallacy", which is one of the most obvious critical thinking examples that humanities students are taught early on, but it is not so easy to convey this to people without exposure to these ideas.
I was a volunteer at a US science museum that received some taxpayer funding back in the mid-aughts when "Scientific Creationism" was still a thing. Our museum had (and still has) an institutional commitment to the scientific consensus on the age of the universe and earth. If we had caught a volunteer providing visitors with creationism they would have been asked to hand in their badge and not work any more shifts, because that was our institutional position and everyone had to respect that.
Trying to throw that away because of Israel-Palestine is much more threatening to the value of truth than it helps it.
Neutrality is a problematic ideology because it serves the powerful and the status quo, the first question to ask back is are they (an authority, an institution) really neutral/impartial?
I don't think neutrality serves the powerful. Neutrality serves the 'truth' otherwise it wouldn't be neutral in the first place. Your point only stands if you assume that the partial source would side with the 'good' side on average.
Neutrality is problematic because in practice it serves the powerful, like every instance of bureaucracy and scientism we can point to through civilized history. Instead you are appealing to some politics-free context-free notion of neutrality which might as well be a made up word then. Humans and institutions are not truth objects, so your incorrect argument is in conflating this with a discussion of access to truth. Universities are human processes, not mathematical theorems for which good and bad are irrelevant, which is a different issue than neutral.
The powerful by definition control us. Otherwise they wouldn't be powerful. I don't see your point. To me the notion of trying to be neutral seem to give the powerful less power than being "political".
I.e. it is better if the puppets think they are living in a fair democracy, since they might act like they do, decreasing the power of the puppet masters. The opposite is concepts like the series "House of cards", that instruct people to play the game and be "political".
I define "neutral" as loosely "trying to not be biased".
Like, for example, pretending until it became way over the top too embarrassing that the president is mentally fit for another 4 year of any work, is a good example of being "political" about it.
I am biased against creationism being treated as science. And that is correct, because one side is true and the other is false and should not be taught or treated equally.
So I think either your definition is wrong or your goal of neutrality is wrong.
I don't see how that is biased in anything but a really litteral way.
I don't think that is your point, but treating creationism as a science would rather quickly disprove it? Like Dowsing rods or whatever.
If God descended from heaven (lets just pretend he did, not a powerful alien or whatever) and showed you how he creationisted everything, then it would be 'biased' to pretend it didn't happen. But I guess you could still believe it is fake, as long as the facts are considered in some way, without being biased.
Well, on the details, technically creationism is non-falsifiable, because God in his infinite wisdom could have just done whatever (1). It's impossible to disprove it- that's why its not part of science.
But the issue of whether science class was "biased" against creationism- and whether it should neutrally teach both sides in public schools, museums, etc.- was a huge political argument in the US for decades, resulting in many legal battles- with Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Rehnquist voting that it should be taught in public school science class (Edwards v. Aguillard, 1987, decided 7-2 against creationism). Given the current makeup of the Court - where Scalia's positions have far more clout than they did then- I hesitate to see where a new case would end up.
To just wave that away because you want the world to be different is avoiding how the world actually works. It would be nice if organizations could be "neutral" on things you disagree with them about and biased on things you agree with them about, but unfortunately people disagree with you, and they get a vote too.
Far more important to spreading the truth to let organizations have bias, and then build good institutions that achieve positions closer to the truth, and those institutions get respected for being closer to the truth, and lose respect for being further from the truth.
1: The Omphalos Argument, the God of Abraham could have made the entire universe 6000 years ago with an appearance of age, with light from distant galaxies already in flight towards the Earth, with radioactive isotope ratios consistent with a 13.7 billion year old universe and a 4.54 billion year old Earth, for His own purposes.
Omphalos is Greek for navel, and the name comes from a medieval argument over whether Adam and Eve had bellybuttons: they would not have had one naturally, obviously, due to their special creation, but then they would not be like all other humans, and they are supposed to be. But if they did have them was God lying about their past? This is why most artists of the time carefully placed some cover where the bellybutton would be, to stay neutral in this argument.
Please keep in mind that "creationism as part of science education" (as you argued about elsewhere in the thread) and "creationism being treated as science" do not mean the same thing.
Then you need to finish high school, because if you define neutral as "trying not to be not-neutral" then you are using a circular definition and so you really need to work on your basic skills which are usually taught by high school.
I think it depends how people interpret neutral. Choosing what to talk about or not in itself has influence. It's impossible to be a newspaper and not in any way help or support one side over another in a conflict, even if you don't intend too, you will be, you might even be helping the side you don't cheer for inadvertently, because it's also hard to predict what direction what you say will influence others.
In that sense, I agree with you.
But you can interpret neutral more as not attempting to influence. In that sense, it does not mean the result will be neutral, but that you tried to be. Neutrality is an effort, like trying to be kind to others, or to be positive. It's an attempt at curbing bias. And I think that's something you'd want journalists to practice. Just like it's beneficial to have people try to be kind and positive, even if it's impossible for them to truly be at all times and to the most extent, it does make the world a better place still when people try.
Now, if you tried to read news, and wanted to form your own opinion, would you rather read the one from someone purposely siding with one side, and specifically choosing their words and what to say in a conscious effort to bring you over to their position? Or would you rather read the one from someone attempting to be impartial, disclosing their bias from the start so you can weigh it in, attempting to show the arguments against theirs, as well as their own, spend some time to discuss the other viewpoint, have quotes from both sides, etc.
This is said by both sides, it is equally stupid every time.
If ethics are pretty universal, how is it that one party wants no abortions at all and thinks any abortion that isn't absolutely medically necessary is evil and the other party wants abortions right up until viable birth and thinks that anything less than that is evil?
Especially when considering that most of the world is somewhere in between, where abortions are legal for a few weeks and then illegal unless absolutely necessary.
One party wants to end _all_ abortions, _including_ those that might be medically necessary. They are pro-forced-birth, and pro-killing-women.
You’ve got the position of the other party wrong as well, but I’m not going to even bother correcting that because if you don’t find the above completely vile there’s no helping you.
You were demonstrably wrong three times in your comment, misrepresenting the reality of both sides of the argument and the prevailing opinion of humanity. The fact that one side doesn’t have the tools to confidently reach that conclusion is the problem.
Endorsements come opinions editors, a special part of the paper where the paper prints opinions, not news.
I agree that it would be nice if news outlets tried to always be neutral, but a lot of TV news channels in the US would have almost nothing to say if you stopped their opinion reporting.
Opinion sections on websites and on TV/video should be segregated from the rest of the organization in some way. On paper having it as a section was fine because it used to be marked relatively clearly and there were serious logistical issues.
However, with video and websites, it is very easy to mix editor opinion with news. People tuning into a news channel mid-report don't necessarily know they're listening to just an opinion, and same goes for people reading the headline from an embed or URL without clicking through to the page.
Another thing I often notice is that opinion pieces get to play more loose with the facts. They can say completely unsubstantiated things or get actual facts wrong, but still say something as if it had the credibility of the organization. Yet if the backlash gets too strong they get to deflect by arguing that it was just an opinion and not meant to reflect on the organization.
The current state of opinion pieces is like running a blog about my research and getting important things wrong there, then expecting people to assume that my actual research publications are accurate.
I don't disagree with some of the things that blog post is saying, but excluding the opinions on the Washington Post home page, where is the is outright bullshit or propaganda? I hear the opinion often but I don't see it when I go to a newspaper.
Now if you were to go to the home page of reddit or twitter there's clearly tons of propaganda.
The current headline on the
Washington post is talking about Israeli strikes in Iran.
Is that the most immediate event pertaining to Israel? Probably. Is that the most important recent event pertaining to Israel? Well, that depends, doesn’t it?
There’s not really any such thing as neutrality. Arguably universities can maybe step away from things (although this is complicated with departments that are inherently political), but “neutral” if you’re writing about politics always reflects some kind of value judgement. By definition one person’s neutrality is someone else’s bias.
But what about the rest of their coverage? Every article and its editorial promotion reflects a value judgement that basically has to be not neutral. This is unfortunately something newspapers like to pretend is not true but it absolutely is.
Your definition of neutral appears to be “shut up” and is creepily authoritarian.
Being neutral in an unbalanced situation means you are purposefully ignoring things that should be said and not putting on the table things that should be there. Not publishing relevant opinions pieces is part of that.
To get some distance, imagine being neutral to every candidates during Russia's last elections, and refusing to publish well researched and argumented opinions people have about the leading candidate.
What do you mean by 'unbalanced'? "Unstable" or "biased"?
The US seems really unstable right now. It is like a ever growing political cacophony. And blaming the "other side" for a mutual problem seems silly for an external observer.
The bad faith tone is making the caricatures real by moving people further from each other and entrenching distinctive extremes as ingroup markers.
E.g. I feel that during the pandemic supporters of the former president believed the caricatures of his policy on the matter, making it a thing.
What I mean by "unbalanced" is that the US situation is not about small details and very minute distinctions. People's opinions are divided on very basic and fundamental issues, there are very radical behaviours and really big swings of money.
Trying to keep a "the truth is in the middle" attitude is unethical.
I think the main issue becomes "bad faith", and we're back to the credibility issue. IMHO discourse should be fact based, and arguments should be researched. If you're calling your opponent names, show the receipt and not vague gesturing at what you think reality is.
Blaming the other side should be fine, as long as you can defend that position.
> Trying to keep a "the truth is in the middle" attitude is unethical.
It is illogical too. In a simple question of "little" and "much" the truth could be "even smaller" and "way bigger than much".
> I think the main issue becomes "bad faith"
Ye I think I agree here about it being the main concern. Bad faith accusation, debates etc seem to radicalize the supporters of the accused. I think you make the caricature real at some point when supporters start to believe the misconception.
So if quality news outlets no longer provide journalism when we need it most (breaking down candidate platforms, keeping candidates honest, …). Then it shifts to a variety of unverified sources (ie, TikTok, Fb, Telegram, et al) for those that couldn’t find anything credible.
The population already struggles with determining fact from fiction. Taking away the power from journalists because a _billionaire_ wants to ensure his wealth remains high.
I should have been more specific. I meant lopsided as in the character of the two candidates. I posit that any decent, moderately educated citizen should be able to see this clearly, but therein lies the issue.
One of the best respected analysts in the business, Nate Silver, currently has Trump at a 53% probability of winning (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/), in a system designed to magnify the effect of small changes near the halfway point (historically, getting about 65% of the popular vote would net you a landslide worth approximately every seat in legislature - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/12/11/bidens-vi...). Silver's model can pick Trump as a slight favourite despite being behind in the popular vote, again because of the nature of the system. In particular, each state gets an extra constant two votes on top of the ones apportioned by population, favouring rural areas which currently prefer the Republican party.
The same analyst, BTW, gave Trump a ~30% chance of winning, shortly before the election, in 2016 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/). This was notably higher than the probability ascribed by pretty much anyone else with any authority or respect in the matter.
You mean G. Elliot Morris; Nate Silver has nothing to do with fivethirtyeight any more (since he and Disney broke up, he now has his own private subscription publication—Silver Bulletin—which also does forecasting and which has much better odds for Trump from what I understand, but I can't give you details because its paywalled and I’m not paying him; aside from that gig, he’s also employed by Polymarket, now.)
My understanding is that Silver's model has been more favorable to Trump than 538, by virtue of 538 having Kamala up just a little while Silver had her up less or Trump up a little. In the past couple days 538 shifted a little toward Trump; I'm not sure Silver's model did the same. His updates have been saying "small moves, still basically tied" for a while, but like you I'm outside the paywall.
They're working on getting the issue of transport sorted out first because the entire architecture is shaped by the constraints and requirements of your transport system. The amount of mass you can land, the energy needed for ISRU and so on.
HN just has forgotten its hacker roots and instead gets off to unconstructively sitting back and criticizing with shallow gotchas.
Being able to just print some simple electronics components would massively simplify iteration and distribution of DIY things, especially as auto-filament changer systems become more accessible. As one example, being able to print a transistor or two and some traces would allow for making projects which embed something like an ESP32 dev board much more compact without having to wait for weeks for custom PCBs to ship from China.
It's always weird to see people making arguments like this on a forum titled "Hacker News"
I think it is valid to point of feasibility of something. For fast prototyping there are already breadboards or PCBs that you can just solder wires on, so it doesn't really help with tracing PCB lines. Printing transistors or other things that are good and compact enough to use, even for prototyping, seems to be indeed a stretch
It’s far easier and more effective (and economical) to have a bunch of jelly bean components around in stock.
You’re going to have a hard time 3D printing anything that can be solderable (either the 3D printer needs to work at high temperatures for DIY, or you need exotic solder that melts at low temperatures).
If you have the need to fabricate quick PCBs for prototyping, you’ll be better served by a cheap CNC machine and some copper foil blanks.
The only real promise I see is that you might, in the very long future, be able to print custom multi-purpose devices, that integrate the characteristics of non critical electronics with mechanical elements, i.e. integrating NTCs on cases or fan supports,..
You raise a great point. Maybe I should be asking the AI for more career advice or new product ideas, rather than just letting it merely solve each specific coding challenge.
They're applying that simplification to the exponent bits of an 8 bit float. The range is so small that the approximation to multiplication is going to be pretty close.
It's not their job to make AMD viable, it's AMD's job to make AMD viable. NVIDIA didn't get their position for free, they spent a decade refining CUDA and its tooling before GPU-based crypto and AI kicked off.
Worth thinking about efficiency/battery life. Might be fine performance wise, but if you tend to need it to last a while unplugged, a more recent laptop will be much better at the same performance level. I had kind of sworn off laptops because last time I had one, the battery life just wasn't useful. But nowadays they're actually good enough to treat as proper portable devices.
This is the real advantage. Any crapbox with 16GB of ram is good enough for most things (unless you work on JVM microservices), the main benefit of the new laptops is the unreal battery life.
That, and USB-C charging is handy if you spend a lot of time on the road.
Thanks for asking. I should have mentioned this is based on anecdotal personal experience. I used to have an ancient laptop with a bad mic and a low res webcam.
I noticed much higher callback rate after upgrading. This is admittedly a small sample size.
In my experience working in a remote team, what matters is the audio. Ideally a headset (so that your voice does not get cut while someone is talking) with a decent mic. Not understanding what the remote person says is very frustrating.
Any webcam does the job as long as you can recognize the person. Anyway most people use this blurry background thingy, I really don't believe that the video quality matters.
I agree with you that if you're doing a lot of remote interviews having a decent camera is worth the investment. I have no doubt that people will subconsciously judge people who have meet through a potato.
If you get a laptop with removable batteries, it doesn't really matter. Just carry a backup battery if you need it and you outdo modern laptops with non-removable batteries.
That's adding more weight to carry around, and anyway, if needed, modern laptops can also use battery banks, which once again puts them ahead. Bonus that since laptops tend to use USB-C nowadays, you get the versatility of being able to use that bank for both phone and laptop.
LLOL:D Yeah, the other thing that really helps get nice tech into the hands of cheapskates like me is the truly relentless march of time:P
If it makes you feel any better, this machine replaced my previous daily driver because I realized that the machine I'd been thinking was "surely just like 5 years old right?" was 11 years old.
The laptop I got last year also "replaced" one that was 11 years old, from the awful interval where they had internal batteries and limited ports but custom chargers and almost useless batteries.
Replaced in quotes because for the covid years I used a desktop and didn't have to be able to function outside often enough to bother with a laptop.
Considering that 5 years ago is 2019, I figure that efficiency gains are probably also not as dramatic as I'm imagining.
It's funny to say that, when propping up Boeing is a bipartisan thing. They're both willing to move Heaven and Earth to give taxpayer money to Boeing, regardless of performance.
