SatanicNotMessianic

I mean, sure maybe. But we’re talking about highly engineered systems here. They should already have tightly understood error bands.

Again, for the puddle jumpers, I can see it. I’ve been on planes with 20-30 seats where they reassigned passengers before takeoff (again, probably based on load data from the wheels), and that makes perfect sense to me. If we assume a model where people pick a seat at random, there will be some percentage of flights where too many people (or at least too much weight) lands on one side of the plane. But as someone whose flown in everything from tiny helicopters to C-130s to giant international commercial airliners, there’s a point where the capacity of the plane should so vastly over-exceed its load that it just doesn’t matter.

That might be the case here, but the article doesn’t specify.

Same. I’ve also had peer reviews that pointed out that I spelled Erdős’ name incorrectly as Erdos. I had another that I grew so irate over Reviewer #2’s critique of my lack of explanation that I turned a ten page paper into a 53-pager, which was then accepted. I’ve also seen absolute blatant inattention, and I’ve definitely been subject to being told to add coauthors because of their seniority/role or current lack of pubs.

I’m completely with you on the academic publication industry. I sympathize with the younger researchers now who are in a far more pay to play environment than I ever was. We’d always build public fees into our funding because we felt obligated to open access all of our work (being government funded, but also just morally), but we were a big money institution that had that kind of flexibility. $10k is nothing on a $5M grant. But now, there’s so many journals that exist only to churn out papers for the publish or perish culture, and no one seems to take seriously the fact that they go unread and are just hitting a check mark.

99% of the time I’m sure it doesn’t matter. It’s just flotsam. But there should be a way of gauging a paper’s potential importance, both by journal ranking and maybe by topic. I’m really not going to call out some overseas researcher who is just trying to keep their job for publishing in a backwater journal, but it’s like that old saying that a lie can travel around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. Or that Ashkenazi story about the rabbi emptying the pillow full of feathers to illustrate how a damaging lie is impossible to recover from.

Yeah - I mean, I can say an f-word like “fountain” without lowering my upper lip and (to my ears at least) it sounds almost the same if not identical, but I have to do it consciously and it feels unnatural.

I would have no problem with people doing guerrilla marketing with this kind of thing. I think sticking them over those shopping cart ads is a great idea. And it certainly wouldn’t be illegal to leave them in your shopping cart face up when you return it.

What is really like to see though is a crowdfunded grassroots campaign to put these on billboards. Maybe not this one per se - billboard design is its own thing - but basically just getting the agitprop out there where it can do some good.

That, and ai gen / bot farm these things and post them to twitter and facebook.

God damn it. I don’t think that reviewers and publishers are aware as to the potential long term consequences of publishing shit papers that ultimately get retracted. It’s one thing if it’s some physics paper on a new superconductor, it’s another thing if it leads to an antivax movement that’s still going to this day.

I understand.

I hold a scientifically informed position (to the point that I can go into neuroanatomy and evolutionary dynamics - I’m a biologist) that makes me believe quite firmly that free will simply does not exist and that people cannot therefore be morally held culpable for their actions. I would require the people (that is, the prosecution) to prove to my satisfaction that the person under trial can and should be held culpable for their actions, not just that they committed the actions or that they “knew they were wrong.” This is a subject I’ve studied at length and can make numerous citations to back my position - including neurobiologists and neuropsychologists at the top research institutions around the world.

If I were to be put on a jury, I would feel obligated to make my position known to my fellow jurors and would explain at great length why a person with a hypertrophied amygdala and a hypotrophied prefrontal cortex resulting from growing up in poverty in an abusive household and in a violent neighborhood can be fully expected to react violently with a hyper developed fear reaction due to a pre-triggered limbic system with extremely diminished executive control. That person is just set up to fail.

And I would require to know that the person should be held culpable. If a man’s daughter were to have been kidnapped, and the kidnappers told him they’d kill her if he didn’t rob a bank, we’d have a situation in which the man would have done the deed, made a plan, knew it was wrong, but still would not be held culpable. I couldn’t see a prosecutor attempting to try that case, and I couldn’t see a conviction happening if they did. That’s how I have to evaluate behaviors in general.

I’m not saying that dangerous members of society shouldn’t be removed - I’m saying it needs to be approached as a medical problem and not one of crime and punishment. As long as “guilt” is a factor and punishment is the answer, I cannot sign off on that.

I would not, however, say that in front of the jury pool. I’d request a private meeting with the judge and attorneys and carefully answer their questions. I recognize that I likely would not be selected for a jury.

You have to differentiate between your responsibilities as a citizen and human versus those more specific ones as a juror. I argue my position with people, I write and work on trying to spread my understanding, but I’m not going to put myself in the position of either coming off like I was trying to deceive the court or tainting the pool illegally. If they ask “if we prove the defendant guilty will you vote to convict?” I could technically say “Yes” knowing that they will not prove the defendant guilty because that’s not a status I think exists - unless we get into a multi week philosophical and biological discussion - but it’s not really what they’re asking and I know that.

On the other hand I would be perfectly confident in clearly and openly stating that I would not send someone to prison for life or to the death penalty, because I am opposed to both of those things independently of my position on free will.

Not if your lips just touch lightly in the middle and the air flows around the sides.

Maybe it’s a regional thing, but that’s also how I say that sound.

Be careful with that. You can just vote not to convict. Talking in front of the jury candidates about nullification can be seen as poisoning the jury pool and can be grounds for a contempt charge. It’s better to speak privately with the judge/court to go over your concerns about the case.

I’d be uncomfortable if large aircraft were operating so close to tolerances that it made this kind of thing necessary. I’ve been on small aircraft where they’ve asked passengers to switch seats before takeoff to balance out the load (I’m assuming there’s a scale readout on each wheel).

Assuming they have those data already, I’m not sure how per-flight data would change what they’re doing (as opposed to averaging), unless they’re talking about tiny planes.

I hope he sues Silwa and the Angels to bankrupt them and send their organization into collapse. I also hope he sues Hannity and Fox for defamation.

He’s a Trumpist and a liar, but I’m just repeating myself.

That’s what I was going to point out. Any male between about 16 to 45 was a dead enemy combatant, not a civilian.