Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran medic and infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
Today I saw my name in print for the first time in twenty years.
Oh sure, I've been #published in various journals since then. A couple of first-author papers, about a dozen others with my name buried somewhere in the author list.
But I honestly don't recall seeing any of those #journal issues in physical form, even for those which publish paper copies at all. In any case, #academic #writing is such a different kind of writing that it hardly seems like it should go by the same name.
This is a #fiction #anthology. A *book*, with my name (among those) on the cover. To paraphrase Damon Knight, what I point at when I say "writing." I don't quite have words for how that feels. Which I guess is kind of a strange thing for a writer to say.
A #writer. Yeah. That's me. Cool.
In case you were wondering, because of course you were: https://www.amazon.com/SF-Horror-Boundary-Shock-Quarterly/dp/B0DJD9JDLP/
Large portions of this country have gone completely insane. We knew that already, but here's further proof, as if any were needed:
This particular flavor of madness has been metastasizing for almost exactly a decade, since the #Bundy #Ranch standoff. That was the point where the loons found out they could #threaten the #federal #government with armed force and get away with it. And from there to #Malheur to 1/6, we've been treating #domestic #terrorists with suicidal gentleness.
We made the same mistake after #Appomattox, but it was at least understandable. Almost everyone was sick of killing. Now, after a century and a half of seeing the legacy of that misguided mercy, we have no excuse.
If these #militias exist, we should hunt them down like the rabid dogs they are, and deal with them accordingly. Whether they do or not, those calling for their existence are suborning #insurrection: *that* would be an appropriate use for "seditious conspiracy," as opposed to the charges of #treason that should be levied against the 1/6ers.
But we won't. And when the Republic falls, it will be because we refuse to face up to this cancer on the body politic. Unpleasant but survivable treatment now, or slow agonizing death later. Those are our only choices. So far I'm not optimistic about which option we'll take.
#Weather #control #conspiracy theorists are rapidly moving up my not-so-little list. #Antivaxers are still at the top, of course. But these clowns are in a solid second place.
"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.
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.
September 12, 2024- “Patients With Long-COVID Show Abnormal Lung Perfusion (*aka blood supply, likely the cause of shortness of breath) Despite Nor...
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.
Good look at a bad problem. The author is a friend from grad schol at the #University of #Colorado, where she was a faculty member when I was a grad student. She's since gone on to bigger and better things, and I've gone on to ... well, things.
Anyway. I've never been particularly worried about #Cylons, #Skynet, etc. Humans doing stupid human tricks, and using #AI to do them much faster, OTOH, yeah.
The internet community of anti-science #cranks is an example of #model #collapse happening at human speed. #Antivaxers, #creationists, #climate change #deniers et al. prey on people with legitimate questions about some particular aspect of the broad #consensus. Those people often go down an increasingly loony rabbit hole, and end up propagating the absurdity, sometimes adding their own bizarre spin which their new-found colleagues happily add to the ideology.
If this becomes part of the #academic ecosystem, with AI reviewers approving AI-generated #papers and no human checks on the process, the scholarly corpus will become hopelessly contaminated. I have no idea what to do about that.
So apparently the #RoyalSociety is considering giving #ElonMusk the boot. I am appalled and astonished, not that they're considering kicking him out, but that he was a ever a member in the first place.
"... elected as a fellow of the UK’s national academy of #sciences in 2018 in recognition of his work and impact in the #space and #electric vehicle industries, with some considering him a 'modern #Brunel'."
Isembard Brunel was a genius polymath engineer who built much of the modern world. He also, BTW, lived a reasonably comfortable but not especially wealthy life. His obituary noted archly, "Brunel was the right man for the nation, but unfortunately, he was not the right man for the shareholders."
Musk's odor permeating the halls of the Royal Society proves that eminent scientists are no more immune to fast-talking con artists than anyone else. We non-eminent scientists should take this lesson to heart.
There's been no doubt for some time that we're in the middle of a sixth #mass #extinction. Here are some numbers.
If we're very lucky, we'll stop at the level of the #Devonian extinction, the least severe of the Big Five. More likely we're headed for something on the scale of the #Ordovician or #Triassic. The #Cretaceous is in sight, and the #Permian is not out of reach. From an evolutionary time perspective it will *look* like the Cretaceous, practically as instantaneous as the Big Rock.
I confess, I really like the idea of #corvid #paleontologists digging up the #Anthropocene. Feathers gleaming under badlands dust, exciting cawing as dextrous claws scrape rock away from a flat-faced skull ... But I’m very much not okay with what we’re doing right now to make that happen.
Pop-sci coverage: https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2023/07/19/modern-sixth-mass-extinction-event-will-be-worse-than-first-predicted/
Journal article, open access: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12974
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran medic and infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
