Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org

This is now 404 years ago, which seems appropriate.

"What do #Democrats have to say about the millions of blacks leaving the Democrat party this year?"

"Мы говорим, что вам нужно придумать лучшую пропаганду, или вы можете обнаружить себя с тяжелым случаем рака окна или отравлением чаем. Царь Владимир ждет результатов."

I've made this post before.

When someone is telling you about an unpleasant confrontation—an encounter with a hostile stranger, an argument with a friend or family member, contemptuous treatment by their boss, rude and uncaring customer (dis)service, whatever—there are several acceptable responses.

"That's terrible, and I hope it doesn't happen again." "Are you okay? Is there anything I can do to help?" Even a simple "I'm sorry." These are all fine things to say, as long as they're sincere.

Unless they are specifically asking for advice, it is *never* advisable to say, "Well, what *I* would have done is ..." Just don't. The instant you feel those words start to form in your mouth or on your keyboard, stop. It is better to stay silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

First of all, you're not them. What you would have done is completely irrelevant. They may not want to do what you'd have done, they may not be able to do what you'd have done, or they may believe that what you (say you) would have done would only make the situation worse.

Second, it's really easy to be a chest-thumper or a keyboard warrior. "What I would have done" in your imagination might be exactly what you'd have done in that moment—but let's face it, probably not.

I spend more time than I probably should thinking about what I *wish* I'd done in a lot of situations (some confrontational, some not) and I know I just wasn't witty or brave or quick-thinking enough to do it. If I can't live up to my own standards, I sure as hell don't get to impose those standards on other people.

Third, ask yourself honestly if "what I would have done" has ever helped *you*. I guarantee someone's said it to you, probably more than once. Did it make you feel better? Give you a useful strategy the next time something like that occurred? Strike you as clever or wise? I bet I know the answer.

BTW, yesterday someone made a credible threat to kill me. What I'd have done if I'd had time to think about it was ... exactly what I did: drive away. Fortunately I had that option. What anyone else would have done, I really don't want to hear.

@DarkAthena @Jimijamflimflam Ohhh yeah!

@bedirthan Yeah, it's the precise layout that made me think of a dungeon on graph paper.

Helping a friend at a #storage #unit the other day, I had a revelation: indoor storage units are dungeons, in the #DnD sense. Long straight #corridors, all at right angles, neat units of distance, and #niches full of #treasure to either side.

Which makes me think it would be a lot of fun to run a game in a far-post-apocalyptic-#fantasy setting, preferably without the players knowing at first that's what it is, where they are exploring a #dungeon which turns out to be a buried building. The niches all have cryptic symbols above them they can't decipher, but which appear to be some kind of numbering system. When they pick or break the ancient locks, they find some niches have ancient treasures, while others contain incomprehensible #artifacts, and still others are full of plain junk.

The main danger on the upper levels comes not from #monsters, but from precariously piled heaps that fall down as the doors are opened. The players, of course, will perceive these as #traps.

A dungeon needs *some* monsters. Here they're more numerous on the lower levels, in the form of #undead employees. The players will eventually discover that they venture forth from a chamber on the bottom level, known in the ancient tales as the "Manager's Office." The #Manager itself is the final boss fight.

Upon defeating the Manager and venturing out the door, they find that the lower levels of the building are surrounded by a vast #cavern, with an oddly flat floor and the ruins of a huge sign. The party sage puzzles out the ancient writing: PUBLIC STORAGE.

... I guess outdoor units are ruins, but anyone DMing that game needs to figure out how they've lasted that long. A #curse is a chillingly believable explanation.

Well, *I'd* laugh.

Well, this is mildly terrifying.

Let's be careful out there.

#Covid #Covid19

@Mx_EddyNikko @GottaLaff That's a serious kind of power.

Really I'm just hoping I can get banned at this point.

Worse than #BowlingGreen. [solemn nod]

@MalthusJohn I'm quoting a Facebook conversation. Happy to provide the link if you want. The first and third quoted paragraphs are mine, the second ("For the history buffs ...") is from someone else. He *pretended* to ask a legitimate question about "what do we do when experts disagree," but was clearly more interested in pushing a narrative than getting an answer.

@failedLyndonLaRouchite But was that result received with mockery, or just disagreement? It's the "they laughed at ..." narrative I'm pushing back against specifically.

@failedLyndonLaRouchite Trust me! (97.3%, ±1.7% CI.)

@failedLyndonLaRouchite Exactly. Relativity tied a bunch of strange results together in an elegant way. The same applies to some of the other examples on my list—e.g. the reason the Alvarez hypothesis gained widespread acceptance relatively quickly is that none of the other proposed mechanisms for the #KPg #extinction (formerly #KT) fit the rather odd data.

@failedLyndonLaRouchite My answer is a qualified yes: the majority of experts are more often closer to correct than anyone else. I'm a statistican, so I'm not going to get any more definitive than that. 🙂

A conversation.

"When experts disagree, usually the best thing to do is listen to what the majority of experts say. There's no *guarantee* that they're right, but they're more likely right than wrong. And if the majority view is overturned, it's almost guaranteed that this will be done by other experts in the field presenting evidence for the minority view, not by random kibitzers."

"For the history buffs in here, while most scientific knowledge is advanced incrementally, the true breakthroughs are usually ridiculed by the reigning experts. That is why appeals to authority are the worst kind of logical fallacy for a scientist."

"That's the pop-history version of scientific progress. The actual #history of #science is very different. Kind of like the difference between 'history buffs' and historians."

===

Yes, there are examples—a few—of genuine breakthroughs that were ridiculed by the scientific establishment of the day. I bet you know what they are, because everyone does. They laughed at #Semmelweis, they laughed at #Wegner, they laughed at Luis and Walter #Alvarez, they laughed at #Marshall and #Warren. These things happened.

But they did *not* laugh at #Galileo: indeed, they took his work with deadly seriousness. (And there really wasn't any such thing as a "scientific establishment" at the time.) They did not laugh at #Newton, or #Watt, or #Darwin, or #Gibbs, or #Pasteur, or #Einstein, or #Curie, or #Heisenberg, or #Fisher, or #Watson and #Crick and poor unacknowledged #Franklin, or #Tharp and #Heezen, or #Ostrom and #Bakker, or #Hansen, or the *vast majority* of scientists whose work has fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe.

At least if by "they" you mean scientists working in relevant fields, who understood the questions at hand ... not, in most cases, scientists from other fields, or those with no scientific experience at all. Nor the religious and political ideologues who muddy the waters by creating fake "controversies" to cast doubt on results they know are true, but cannot accept.

In some cases they *disagreed*, quite vociferously. There were debates that descended into shouting matches, professional disagreements turned into personal feuds, once-eminent researchers become sad cranks, ruined careers and shortened lives. Yes. These things happened too, and that's a tragedy.

But most of the time, most researchers in the same fields as the revolutionaries said, "Oh, that makes sense!" Problems that had seemed insoluble suddenly became simple, or at least it was possible to see how there *might* be an elegant solution. Major discoveries spawned a host of medium-sized ones, each of which in turn spawned endless minor ones—and endless minor papers, academic bread and butter for when you can't get steak and lobster. Everyone wins.

Those ideologues I mentioned above? They really, really want you to believe the narrative of ridicule. You might want to consider why.

No matter how #goth you are, you will never be as goth as ...

@rubinjoni It's been a while since I read the Dune novels, but wasn't the Jihad against AIs themselves? As much as I enjoy Terminator and Battlestar Galactica, like I said I'm not really worried about the machines turning against us. Just humans doing really dumb things with them.