Tl;Dr because I just do walls of text when I'm thinking...
I don't think the right answer is to go from one extreme to the other, the right answer is to move towards what should be the ideal.
The ideal being seeking truth whatever that truth may be, IMO.
The crime here isn't conclusions that people came to, is the fact that many people were essentially driven to certain conclusions by corrupt means. If your only choice is to come to one conclusion or face punishment then you aren't doing research, you're studying theological patristics.
Societies that seek truth tend to do quite a lot better than ones that rigidly adhere to orthodoxy. China's century of humiliation, India being conquered by the Islamic mountain people in the 9th century, and the barbarians controlling Europe after the fall of the Roman empire are all examples of less practical, real, grounded civilizations getting trounced by more practical, grounded civilizations.
We live in a society with a powerful and rigidly defined orthodoxy. It pretends to care about other cultures but besides surface level facts or ensuring they don't break our taboos we don't care about them because we already have all the answers as a culture. Research, particularly in the soft sciences often (not always but often) is intended to just reinforce that orthodoxy since you're going to be rewarded for doing so and punished for going against orthodoxy. In such a situation we can't exactly say such a state is conducive to finding the truth.
This is all why I'm quite happy to be on the fediverse, where I can see all kinds of different ideas that have a chance to challenge the status quo, and all kinds of ideas can find a home, even ones far from the orthodoxy that may not find a home elsewhere. It's an environment where there is no single centralized power that can punish someone for saying the wrong thing and so I get the privilege of seeing many different ideas expressed that I would not otherwise, and without the stifling inhibition of knowing any moment the sword of Damocles might snap and sever the thread of conversation.
I don't think the right answer is to go from one extreme to the other, the right answer is to move towards what should be the ideal.
The ideal being seeking truth whatever that truth may be, IMO.
The crime here isn't conclusions that people came to, is the fact that many people were essentially driven to certain conclusions by corrupt means. If your only choice is to come to one conclusion or face punishment then you aren't doing research, you're studying theological patristics.
Societies that seek truth tend to do quite a lot better than ones that rigidly adhere to orthodoxy. China's century of humiliation, India being conquered by the Islamic mountain people in the 9th century, and the barbarians controlling Europe after the fall of the Roman empire are all examples of less practical, real, grounded civilizations getting trounced by more practical, grounded civilizations.
We live in a society with a powerful and rigidly defined orthodoxy. It pretends to care about other cultures but besides surface level facts or ensuring they don't break our taboos we don't care about them because we already have all the answers as a culture. Research, particularly in the soft sciences often (not always but often) is intended to just reinforce that orthodoxy since you're going to be rewarded for doing so and punished for going against orthodoxy. In such a situation we can't exactly say such a state is conducive to finding the truth.
This is all why I'm quite happy to be on the fediverse, where I can see all kinds of different ideas that have a chance to challenge the status quo, and all kinds of ideas can find a home, even ones far from the orthodoxy that may not find a home elsewhere. It's an environment where there is no single centralized power that can punish someone for saying the wrong thing and so I get the privilege of seeing many different ideas expressed that I would not otherwise, and without the stifling inhibition of knowing any moment the sword of Damocles might snap and sever the thread of conversation.
I don't really think that you said anything in this post that actually meaningfully refutes what that I said. You're getting bogged down in minutia and ignoring the real point which remains whether or not you agree with my example.
My argument was implicitly accepting your case that one incompetent professor does not mean that the entirety of the engineering discipline at the university of Regina is broken. In that case, one bad actor doesn't come close to tipping the scales, especially when there are the successes of building the world on the other side of the balance.
But there are a thousand scales for a thousand situations, and there's certainly never just one thing going on at once.
If you have two people, and one of them acts in a trustworthy manner, and the other one acts in an untrustworthy manner, it is fallacious arguing to say that because one of them is trustworthy they must both be trustworthy.
If you have two people, and they are both generally trustworthy, but one of them will lie about certain things, perhaps both of them are generally trustworthy but it doesn't mean that the one guy won't lie about certain things.
I chose the cigarette industry as my example, and I limited it to studies that were sponsored by tobacco companies, quite intentionally. While there are trustworthy studies about the link between tobacco and cancer, you probably don't trust studies that come from the tobacco industry on that subject.
But if a study on a new method of fertilization of tobacco plants was funded by the tobacco industry, most people wouldn't have a reason to mistrust that.
Going back to your original example, I think it's safe to say that one professor turning out to be a quack doesn't discredit the entire field, but on the other hand there are examples where certain things weigh heavily on every scale. String theory in quantum physics has been around forever, and in spite of major problems with it, it just won't go away because it serves a beneficial purpose for the students working on it -- in spite of some very questionable things about it, it will get you your PhD to write a paper on it, it will get you grants to research it, you might even get the opportunity to build something like the Large hadron collider, which was built at huge expense in part to prove that supersymmetry exists (so far it doesn't) -- and examples like this, and there are quite a few, way heavily on everyone's scale because it shows that the process can be corrupted from within by incentives that are not in any way malicious -- the people pushing the theory think it'll end up becoming a unified theory of everything and the students are just following the thing that'll let them succeed.
But there are a thousand scales for a thousand situations, and there's certainly never just one thing going on at once.
If you have two people, and one of them acts in a trustworthy manner, and the other one acts in an untrustworthy manner, it is fallacious arguing to say that because one of them is trustworthy they must both be trustworthy.
If you have two people, and they are both generally trustworthy, but one of them will lie about certain things, perhaps both of them are generally trustworthy but it doesn't mean that the one guy won't lie about certain things.
I chose the cigarette industry as my example, and I limited it to studies that were sponsored by tobacco companies, quite intentionally. While there are trustworthy studies about the link between tobacco and cancer, you probably don't trust studies that come from the tobacco industry on that subject.
But if a study on a new method of fertilization of tobacco plants was funded by the tobacco industry, most people wouldn't have a reason to mistrust that.
Going back to your original example, I think it's safe to say that one professor turning out to be a quack doesn't discredit the entire field, but on the other hand there are examples where certain things weigh heavily on every scale. String theory in quantum physics has been around forever, and in spite of major problems with it, it just won't go away because it serves a beneficial purpose for the students working on it -- in spite of some very questionable things about it, it will get you your PhD to write a paper on it, it will get you grants to research it, you might even get the opportunity to build something like the Large hadron collider, which was built at huge expense in part to prove that supersymmetry exists (so far it doesn't) -- and examples like this, and there are quite a few, way heavily on everyone's scale because it shows that the process can be corrupted from within by incentives that are not in any way malicious -- the people pushing the theory think it'll end up becoming a unified theory of everything and the students are just following the thing that'll let them succeed.
There's too many parallels to today and the fall of the roman republic, but I think most people hope that it would be more like the fall of the roman empire.
DeSantis I think started smoking his own supply at some point. He lucked into some good policy stances (and has since done a good job of undermining some of them), and he had a friendly congress in his state to get them through, and mistook that luck for intense skill.
I've said many times the many reasons I think Trump isn't a great candidate (He's not the devil by any means and there's a lot to say that's positive about him, but he just isn't as competent as people give him credit for and his missteps as president should show that regardless of the MSM's treatment of him), but I have to admit, given the deeply corrupt tactics being used against him, I sort of hope he wins in a landslide just to spite the people using those tactics.
I'm often disappointed to see that leadership candidates I somewhat like often don't just not win (that's overwhelmingly likely), but get absurdly low levels of the vote. If Vivek got 10% that could've helped change the whole conversation, but at 8% it was a distant, distant fourth.
Reminds me of Ron Paul back in 2008. Maybe you think he's not a good candidate for president, but a lot of people were really excited by him and ended up with a miniscule percentage of the vote. The only thing there is I think after 2008 he won in the end because the liberatarians were positioned as a much more powerful faction within the republicans.
Reminds me of Ron Paul back in 2008. Maybe you think he's not a good candidate for president, but a lot of people were really excited by him and ended up with a miniscule percentage of the vote. The only thing there is I think after 2008 he won in the end because the liberatarians were positioned as a much more powerful faction within the republicans.
It's a scale, and while a couple bad incidents don't tip the scales into not believing something as a whole, eventually the scale is simply too overloaded and the balance of trust is clearly on the side of mistrust.
Most people wouldn't say "just because some tobacco companies funded research saying tobacco didn't cause cancer doesn't mean we shouldn't trust research they fund about tobacco causing cancer".
Most people wouldn't say "just because some tobacco companies funded research saying tobacco didn't cause cancer doesn't mean we shouldn't trust research they fund about tobacco causing cancer".
Even people I really like have the boomer tier bad take of "people should post with their real names and faces"
Oh yah? Should they post their credit card number and social insurance number too? Just to make sure they're totally bones the moment they attract any attention whatsoever?
Oh yah? Should they post their credit card number and social insurance number too? Just to make sure they're totally bones the moment they attract any attention whatsoever?
You sort of have to turn off your postmodern filter when dealing with kids or things get weird, and so its lose-lose. You either look creepy and weird because you're stumbling over your words to not say something through unintended subtext, or you look creepy and weird because you're saying something through unintended subtext.
I realized it pretty early on that I was second guessing myself a lot talking to my son so decided to just accept I'll say things I know sound strange.
I realized it pretty early on that I was second guessing myself a lot talking to my son so decided to just accept I'll say things I know sound strange.
It is a company, but it's also a standard.
Originally, interac was a non profit operated by the big 5 banks (Canada doesn't have a lot of competition in the banking space) to create the interoperability standard. Eventually 80 companies participated. Later on a for profit entity was spun off to handle branded services online. Eventually the two branches of interac combined into.one entity.
It likely could handle international payments, but for 2 factors, both being "it's Canadian".
1. It's Canadian, nobody is going to adopt a standard from such a backwater
2. It's Canadian, and after Trudeau weaponized the banks against his own citizens adopting Canadian technologies in your banking system is a non-starter since it's a national security threat.
Originally, interac was a non profit operated by the big 5 banks (Canada doesn't have a lot of competition in the banking space) to create the interoperability standard. Eventually 80 companies participated. Later on a for profit entity was spun off to handle branded services online. Eventually the two branches of interac combined into.one entity.
It likely could handle international payments, but for 2 factors, both being "it's Canadian".
1. It's Canadian, nobody is going to adopt a standard from such a backwater
2. It's Canadian, and after Trudeau weaponized the banks against his own citizens adopting Canadian technologies in your banking system is a non-starter since it's a national security threat.
Might still go back next weekend and dedicate a machine to postgresql, it seems like just the one thing takes a lot of oomph.
Don't forget the poor!
Can't find a place? Place an order on the suicide hotline! 30 minutes or less or your suicides free!
Can't find a place? Place an order on the suicide hotline! 30 minutes or less or your suicides free!
"so you won't be capturing poachers of endangered animals because..." "Because a government I don't work for is retaliating over a terrorist attack and I don't like it."
[Admin Mode] Praise God, we're back!
Pretty touch and go there for a bit! I noticed a couple days ago that our CPU utilization was looking strangely high on postgres, and in the middle of a database backup, the whole server failed catastrophically.
And you know how you always go "Oh, I really should set up regular backups"? yeah, you should....
So I bought a new drive, recovered all the data off the old one, (set up a regular backup), and now we're back as good as ever.
One casualty is FBXL Video, which was taking up way too many resources for the fact that I never used it, so pour one out for the ones we left behind. I don't think it'll be coming back unless I make a specific server for it.
Pretty touch and go there for a bit! I noticed a couple days ago that our CPU utilization was looking strangely high on postgres, and in the middle of a database backup, the whole server failed catastrophically.
And you know how you always go "Oh, I really should set up regular backups"? yeah, you should....
So I bought a new drive, recovered all the data off the old one, (set up a regular backup), and now we're back as good as ever.
One casualty is FBXL Video, which was taking up way too many resources for the fact that I never used it, so pour one out for the ones we left behind. I don't think it'll be coming back unless I make a specific server for it.
Ah.
"It's not happening but if it is happening it's good and you're bad for opposing it"
"It's not happening but if it is happening it's good and you're bad for opposing it"