pessimist

6 ms·

1.
by pessimist 5mo ago
There are multiple independent observations pointing toward dark matter: 1. Galaxy rotation curves. 2. Galaxy cluster mass measurements from gravitational lenses and infrared. 3. Cosmic Microwave Background models (mass measurements from in
2.
by pessimist 8mo ago
From Terry Tao's comments in the thread: "Very nice! ... actually the thing that impresses me more than the proof method is the avoidance of errors, such as making mistakes with interchanges of limits or quantifiers (which is the
3.
by pessimist 11mo ago
Underrated even among physicists. Among the immediate post war generation his contributions are up there with Feynman and Schwinger. To quote Freeman Dyson: "Professor Yang is, after Einstein and Dirac, the preeminent stylist of the 20
4.
by pessimist 11mo ago
Plausible. General Relativity was concieved by an extraordinary genius, but the perihelion of mercury was measured by dozens of painstaking but otherwise unexceptional people. Without that fantastically accurate measurement, GR would never
5.
by pessimist 1y ago
There should be legal recourse against these companies and investors. It is pure crime to release such obviously broken software.
6.
It's a mess: Quantum Mechanics turns 100 years old(quantamagazine.org)
3 points by pessimist 1y ago|0 comments
7.
by pessimist 1y ago
The standard model is 100% quantum mechanics. It's just QM as applied to fields. While undergrads start with single or few particle quantum mechanics. There is a lot of hard math and fundamental physical ideas that pop out when we appl
8.
by pessimist 1y ago
Killian civilians in war has been completely normalized. Even in highly visible conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. People just shrug and move on. Political discourse has lost all sense of decency. Senators, the VP and POTUS all routinely mock
9.
by pessimist 1y ago
The Democratic Governor of California denounced them publicly and stopped the effort. Despite Musk raising millions and campaigning viciously against the Democrats the administration kept all of SpaceX contracts and Tesla ev subsidies. In f
10.
by pessimist 1y ago
Yes, both parties do it. In California for example left-wing politics is openly racist and I have sympathy for even the crazy republicans here. However to defend Obama - he explictly ran on unity and went out of his away to not openly benef
11.
by pessimist 1y ago
Fine, I don't disagree with anything you point out. However where we differ is that I believe identity politics is the trigger factor here, all the other changes you mention (loss of balance of power etc) are downstream of this.
12.
by pessimist 1y ago
Low-level corruption at the local/state level is related but its effects are different though. In fact even today low level corruption in the US is extremely low by global standards - you can't bribe your way to a drivers license
13.
by pessimist 1y ago
It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losin
14.
by pessimist 2y ago
Apart from Einstein, Heisenberg, Dirac, Pauli, Bohr and Fermi are clearly ahead in depth and breadth of contribution. Post-war it's less clear, but IMO Steven Weinberg and Murray Gell Mann are probably greater.
15.
by pessimist 2y ago
This analysis in the end doesn't show what it claims to show and actually proves the reverse - US Health care spending is much larger than other countries, it eats up significant fraction of productivity gains in other sectors (ris
16.
by pessimist 3y ago
My brother is dying of a grade 4 brain tumor, and I've spend countless hours poring through papers. Horrifying to realize they may be falsified. I am always sceptical of pre-clinical studies since so many have tended to fail in the rea
17.
by pessimist 3y ago
So if Sam Altman is back by tomorrow (Sunday) after being crucified on Friday, I think that means the end of the world is near.
18.
by pessimist 3y ago
Support is bad because outsourced everything, and the outsourcing companies are under huge pressure to cut costs and especially human costs. Everything is measured, and extra time responding to complaints is a huge red flag, so its made as
19.
by pessimist 3y ago
Hard to say its the most appalling. Two more appalling omissions are Lisa Meitner for nuclear fission, and Chien-Shiung Wu for parity violation, since effectively others were given the prize for the work and their contributions overlooked.
20.
by pessimist 4y ago
In chess we had a tiny window of a few years when humans could use the help of computers to play the world's best chess. By 2000, computers were far better than humans and the gap has increased. Chess players are now entertainers, like
21.
by pessimist 4y ago
A beta that we are all helping test . Simply unbelievable that the NHTSA allows this to happen. The Tesla safety report which the company boastfully released wouldn't have counted this incident since the Tesla itself wasn't harme
22.
by pessimist 4y ago
ChatGPT understands what it reads. In the sense that it is actually creating a model of what it just read, and it's own output. It happens to understand English, dozens of programming languages and perhaps others. There is no other exp
23.
by pessimist 5y ago
The writer is far more knowledgeable than me, and it seems he believes there was no major decline related to the fall of Rome, the traditional "Dark Age" story is false, etc. I should take him more seriously since he knows a lot m
24.
by pessimist 5y ago
10x death-undercount nationwide is probably not accurate. Major states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala are reporting close to accurate numbers. 2-5x nationwide is likely, with places like UP, West Bengal and Gujarat undercounting by
25.
by pessimist 5y ago
Agree with almost everything. Health care is collapsing around us. 10x death-undercount nationwide is probably not accurate. Major states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala are reporting close to accurate numbers. 2-5x nationwide is lik
26.
by pessimist 6y ago
Yes. But clinical trials are expensive ($100m plus) and time consuming.
27.
by pessimist 6y ago
This vaccine is an inactive host virus whose payload has been replaced by the coronavirus "spike". It has always been a worry that the body will generate immunity to the host virus and thus make the vaccine less effective. That is
28.
by pessimist 6y ago
Poor Virginijus Šikšnys, left out because the journal he sent it to rejected without review his paper which was sent before Doudna and Charpentier's. https://www.statnews.com/2018/05/31/crispr-scientists-
29.
by pessimist 6y ago
The Privacy Policy is extremely dangerous and has been changed silently already. Although it claims to restrict the purpose and time of data collection, it coolly has 2 additional clauses which give blanket power. https://www.med
30.
by pessimist 6y ago
> You know that the app can be removed at any instant, once the lockdown is over? But the data is with the government already, and as per their terms of service can be stored forever, and for any purpose they wish (as long as its a &quot

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