wallace_f

Is attacking Grewnwald's character relevant here?

Anyways, if it is, Greenwald has been one of the most outspoken critics of many aspects of the Russiagate accusations against Trump(1); and in consideration of your aforementioned "liberal agenda" of his, it hardly makes any sense at all to label him on this hand a Trump defender--as he has been accused of--and on the other a 'liberal commie.'

1-https://theintercept.com/2019/01/20/beyond-buzzfeed-the-10-w...

From a distance, to me it's interesting to read about fears of the FBI snooping in our phones and email, and see how quickly the discussion jolts to how immoral (or amoral) corporations are because one of them is not completely defying government.

Sadly, it reminds me of all the stories of authorities using databases for stalking women they're interested in, or people they have a personal grudge against, or whatever.

https://nypost.com/2019/03/11/sergeant-used-police-databases...

https://theweek.com/speedreads/651668/hundreds-police-office...

https://apnews.com/699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43/ap-acros...

If you're familiar with the market and the dogma at the time, the idea was that securitization used mathematical techniques to actually reduce risk, and these were being sold as such. What's wrong was after this bubble popped, the taxpayer was on the hook for the socialized bailout, while the temporary profits were privatized. As such, while people like Fink may not have seen this through from start to finish, their ignorance or unwillingness to blow the whistle on something as destructive as this calls into question--in my opinion--their competence or earnestness in indicting others to effectively do what he should have done.

Larry Fink sent a strongly worded letter about how companies needed to make society better

On the topic of executives needing to improve society, Fink here was important in the creation of the MBS market.

Last decade was terrible for housing construction: https://reason.com/2019/12/23/the-2010s-were-a-terrible-deca...

These argumentative tactics are of poor conduct, and seem to be clearly made in bad faith.

Someone who disagrees with you is just someone who has a different opinion, and that does not make it appropriate for you to attack them.

In other words, what you are doing is wrapping your argument in argumentative tactics. Instead of acknowledging another user has a different conclusion than you, you assert that they "don't get your position." In this context, all you did was reiterate your disagreement, and so the personal attack comes across as either a put down or an statement of arrogance.

At the end of your statement about physics being a meritocracy, you again use argumentative tactics, suggesting that any disagreement is a conspiracy.

First of all, the poor results of physics as a field is not a conspiracy. And you do not need to be a conspiracy theorist to criticize the field of physics. That is just ridiculous. Did you even take a moment to look at the Paul Graham post I referenced? Something tells me you are more interested in broadcasting and arguing about your world view than you are in engaging in though-provoking discussion.

But finally, social justice in academia is blatantly obvious. For example, affirmative action awards up to a few standaDs deviations of promotion in rank alone in just undergraduate admissions. Also, the author of the OP has written about social justice in the field herself. It is just both dishonorable and disingenuous for you to ignore the truth and be so argumentative.

That was actually part of the point I was trying to make.

See below comments, particularly shkmmo's. My comment above was socratic irony.

I don’t think physics operates on anything resembling a social-justice system

Physicists are chosen within the Academic-Governmental Complex, and as such physicists are chosen according to its preferences. Maybe this is a big problem? It's not just with respect to selection based on gender, race or socioeconomics. Have you read Paul Graham's Lesson to Unlearn, about the adverse incentives and maligned merits which academia chooses for: http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html

Personally, I just hate it when people praise Academia (I see it often with Wall Steeet, too) as being a shining example of social justice like its some gift-wrapped paper around a rotten core.

an attitude that bars commentary might stagnate us for a long time.

I agree. Now watch comments such as these incite downvotes and inflammatory responses because they question assumptions and make people feel uncomfortable.

Physics has made a lot of progress in social justice and representation and these kinds of comments putting down "her point of view" is the type of toxic masculinity that will send us back 100 years.

Very true. In fact, I doubt few people would be content being alone with themselves and their thoughts and nothing to distract them.

No. Yes? That's what I mean, my whole life is a way of dealing with them by using escape mechanisms. HN is one of them. Lesser one.

I feel like my whole life is a series of addictions designed to prevent me from drudging through the extreme anger and sadness I have in my life. At least, luckily, I don't like to drink so excessively.

Paypal has the right to, not the government.

I am aware. Even going back in history, I find most are surprised to know even Abraham Lincoln really went after journalists and the press.

Anyways, I don't know why I was downvoted. Hopefully not because people disagree with that hope.

“To comply with government regulations, PayPal is required to review certain transactions.”

For mentioning the word Iran. Terrifying.

I guess the best to hope for is that the Institute for Justice or the ACLU pick this up and sue for their free speech rights. But even then, the only consequence would be taxpayers burdened to pay up.

US healthcare is corrupt and inefficient. It's not only a debate about who should pay for it. Your comment suggests changing the latter would fix the problem with cost, which surely has a lot to do with the former.

It might be cultural. I think it is. Being unsure or humble is not valued as much as it should be.

Thanks for the explanation, but I'm stuck on the last sentence of this part:

evidence of accelerating expansion is that based on the redshift of nearby objects, we would expect distant objects to have a higher redshift than they actually do.

I think what you mean is "than we'd expect them to."

Imagine if the FTC actually still did their job, not just how much more innovation and competition there'd be, but also lives saved.

smart people in a hypercompetitive environment and they will quickly identify the traits that are being rewarded and optimize for those. What does academia reward? Large numbers of publications with lots of citations, nothing else matters. So, naturally, scientists flock to hip buzzword-filled topics and churn out papers as quickly as they can.

For some other opinions, consider:

1) Paul Graham who states this is the biggesg lesson to unlearn in academia. He states academia selects for people who tend to 'hack,' not learn, to the easiest grades/favors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729619

2) Feynman who often stated things like "the pleasure is in finding things out" and that "the whole academic department was rotten."

I'm not convinced academia is selecting primarily the attribute: intelligence.

Good question, and why not just look at the Wikipedia entry, which addresses this in the second paragraph:

paradigm seeks solutions to social and ecological problems, based on principles of land rights and public finance which attempt to integrate economic efficiency with social justice.[6][7]

Georgism is concerned with the distribution of economic rent caused by natural monopolies, pollution, and the control of commons, including title of ownership for natural resources and other contrived privileges (e.g., intellectual property). Any natural resource which is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent, but the classical and most significant example of 'land monopoly' involves the extraction of common ground rent from valuable urban locations. Georgists argue that taxing economic rent is efficient, fair, and equitable. The main Georgist policy recommendation is a tax assessed on land value

can only be a negative

Your argument is noy exactly true. If the value of finding a similarly open-minded individual outweighs the low probability* of finding it, then it makes sense.

Put another way if given a utility function with terms (utility of open minded individual) (probability of OMI) > 1 then it is rational.

It would be nice if the FTC did their job of breaking up conglomerates and preventing monopolistic competition. But Washington is like a plutocracy and the FTC wouldn't be serving the interests of all that network of money and favors being passed around.

"We've 12 years to live because of climate change!" are fickle and as soon as the current narrative shifts a bit there's no telling what other damage they're capable of doing.

One of the contributing factors to why I think we'll see a significant return to religiousness in Western nations in the coming decade.

Those hysterias and groupthinks already are their religions. Meanwhile the tail end of the distribution in the US is increasingly experiencing worse outcomes: homelessness, joblessness, suicide, etc.

be quickly forgotten, much like mass shootings today

Mass shootings have historically been responsible for deaths totalling in the teens per year, or less. Today, with increaded gun control, death totals from mass shootings are their highest ever at hundreds per year. Still, I hope it is possible for you to understand just how tiny this number is compared to those killed by the War on Drugs, the opioid crisis, by suicide, by preventable accidents, by smoking, etc. Inner city gang and Black on Black crime kills over an order of magnitude more people by shooting. Your idea that mass shootings are somehow underreprensented in our conciousness completely insane.

Do you really believe that a billionaire clearly funding a marketing campaign for themselves would be received well?

Charity often does good, but often does not have the intended or apparent result. See William Easterly on the subject.

If most billionaires are optimizing for social image / good will, your idea makes no sense to most of those people.

I mean the professor or university could be the best in the world in terms of scientific discovery or university rankings criteria and this does not mean these materials are necessarily the best learning experience.

Did you even take courses there? Have a different experience?