I think its more of a gorilla marketing tactic for the new Tom Delonge fringe science company that he is trying to get investors for.
He also has a line up of books,movies, films , and documentaries to sell.This smells like a marketing tactic with convenient timing to get some hype and buzz going with the fringe sciences.
Yep, as much as I want to believe, which is more likely?
1. Our understanding of physics is very wrong and this is the very first time we've seen any phenomena that overwhelmingly demonstrates that; OR
2. Someone shopped up some videos for distraction and/or marketing? Perhaps there's going to be an expensive military-industrial spending activity that needs public support?
"Our understanding of physics is very wrong" - this seems very likely to me. Pretty much all scientists have been proven wrong so far in significant ways. The entire structure of the universe makes no sense without tons of dark matter and dark energy we can't observe, which sounds a lot like the way we used to balance the equations of orbits so the earth was the center of the galaxy.
2. I think this alleges a pretty large conspiracy theory on the order of 9/11 being faked. There is a wide body of evidence from a lot of reputable witnesses of unexplained phenomena. The idea that the military fabricated that video and the pilots who are the witnesses is more ridiculous to me than "Our understanding of physics is very wrong"
>The entire structure of the universe makes no sense without tons of dark matter and dark energy we can't observe
It's not directly observable, but it's effects are certainly observable in the surrounding organization of baryonic matter. It could very well be an incorrect assumption, but we would need some evidence to the contrary to change our minds, no?
> It's not directly observable, but it's [sic] effects are certainly observable
You could say the same thing about the ether, the centrifugal force, and the argument about flat earth.
My money is on dark matter's effects being due to some as-yet-undetectable acclerative force, maybe due to deformative effects of gravity that are only apparent at massive scales. Some sort of extension of GR that takes into account local clustering of energy that it isn't yet doing. But I'm no cosmologist.
Is that what the cosmological constant is all about?
I'm not saying it is definitely wrong and no one should believe it because it is the best working theory. Based on the track record of science though it is very unlikely that it is 100% correct.
Actually for just this present couple of HUD camera vids, it's just a couple of videos, a couple of guys doing interviews maybe, and a few wonks at the pentagon PR office. I'm ready to keep an open mind either way.
It's also the pilots who are on the record and have a history of integrity, anyone else who saw those videos before and after edits, the air traffic controllers that day.
Our current understanding of physics is extremely accurate at predicting almost everything we know about. Dark/matter/energy are theories to explain one area physics doesn't easily explain right now, the orbital velocity of stars in galaxies. But excess matter/energy would explain it fine.
One video that's easily misinterpreted is not enough to overturn any physical law we currently understand.
With new research, we are finding caveats and inaccuracies in many of our previously understood "laws" of physics and nature. Chemistry is a good example of this. Several 20th century chemists came up with widely accepted theories/models that were only shortly thereafter disproven by further research.
It's healthy to recognize the limitations of science. Awareness of the limitations of a tool make sure we don't wast time using it where it really doesn't help. Not to mention that a sense of academic humility is often part of the open-mindedness that precedes counterintuitive, surprising findings.
Recognition of the limitations of science only comes after better science provides a more accurate model, and demonstrates those limitations. That's how science works. It's not always wrong, it's incrementally more and more correct.
What's being asked here is not to accept the limitations of science, but to simply assume that science is wrong and that skepticism based on it should be ignored. So let me ask you this, on what basis would you attempt to study or possibly falsify any UFO claim, or even find the truth behind it, if skepticism and science can't be trusted?
skepticism of science based on the accuracy of prior theories is appropriate. Newtonian physics seemed correct for 99% of observable phenomena, but it was in fact very wrong about some basic underlying ideas of how the universe works. That is basically true of every past scientific theory, so it is probable that our current physics does not accurately describe the universe.
It is extremely likely that people did observe an unidentified flying object in the air that day. That doesn't mean it was aliens, but it was something. That seems true for this recent video footage as well. It is more likely that people observed something vs a grand conspiracy.
Unfortunately, there don't appear to be many credible, impartial or first-party sources linked to that wikipedia article. The best appears to be a Chicago Tribune article[0], but that only contains direct quotes from employees who claim not to have seen anything, and indirect (and sometimes contradictory) descriptions by other witnesses.
The common details seem to be that it was "dark grey" and "well defined," and displayed no lights. It can be difficult to correctly estimate the size of an object in the sky, so the disagreement about that doesn't necessarily discredit the story. The conclusion reached that it was a "weather phenomenon" doesn't sufficiently explain it.
Interestingly, there appears to be evidence that airport personnel contacted the FAA about it which turned up in a FOIA request, but I don't know if that audio is anywhere, or verified.
> So let me ask you this, on what basis would you attempt to study or possibly falsify any UFO claim, or even find the truth behind it, if skepticism and science can't be trusted?
You would be unable to conclude anything about a UFO claim if your own methodology is not falsifiable. To believe any one tool of reasoning is infinitely powerful, strikes me as zealous and closed-minded.
By the way, your premise that "skepticism and science can't be trusted" is a straw man. I didn't say that.
Science is an epistemological philosophy coupled with a method of empirical testing. Just because a good scientist comes up with a theory, doesn't make his theory science.
If I observe something and I create a hypothesis, that hypothesis is not "science." It's an idea, a proposition. I have to exhaustively demonstrate its validity empirically, or (if I can't be exhaustive) express the limitations of its validity as demonstrated.
Thus, if I draw a conclusion that is later disproven, I failed somewhere in my reasoning. I drew a conclusion that, while perhaps supported by my evidence, was later shown to be an overreach.
If you support skepticism, you also have to be skeptical of science. A good scientist is a critical thinker, always trying to find holes in his own work and determine how he could disprove his own conclusions.
Since science is empirical, there isn't "better science" and "worse science." There is only a complete demonstration of a phenomenon or method, an incomplete such demonstration, and a totally theoretical conception.
"To the best of my knowledge" is a smart phrase to hear out of a scientist's mouth. It would be naive to assume that everything we believe to be correct, is actually correct. This has never been true in history, and it will not be true for the present set of scientific beliefs.
Thus, we should be skeptical about our own findings and beliefs. Scientists should be philosopher-experimenters, not zealots.
I agree with everything you've said here, and I believe most science and most scientists operate in the way you describe.
>By the way, your premise that "skepticism and science can't be trusted" is a straw man. I didn't say that.
Fair enough, but that does seem to a the general theme of this subthread.
>To believe any one tool of reasoning is infinitely powerful, strikes me as zealous and closed-minded.
Yes, but no one is actually making that claim about science. I'm certainly not, and I doubt most scientists do, either.
So, to the best of anyone's knowledge, the current models of physics appear true enough that photographic or video evidence of UFOs alone are not sufficient to discredit them. Those models may be inaccurate, as all models are, but there's no reason to believe they're entirely wrong.
Nationalists are rising or at least becoming more vocal in at least Britain, India, United States, Austria, Germany, Korea, and Japan.
They are direct threats to the established status quo. Censoring their political speech will cause a "Streisand Effect" and only further galvanize a backlash against the establishment.
Social Media will probably be broken up by country (Ex. The chinese model), so that national laws on speech can be enforced.
However pros and cons of the new political groups must be debated on a public stage.
Not all of these protests or nationalism were organic, they were engineered by Russia. ex) Brexit
There is increasing number of evidence that points to the ex-KGB officer now leading a nuclear armed 2.5 world country.
If they can pull one on the US, the rest of Eastern Europe, or frankly any country facing an authoritarian government will face this new 'hybrid war'--combining cyberattacks, psy-ops on social media and backing separatists in the said country.
I fear for both of my countries Korea and Canada as they are on the trajectory of colliding with Russian & Chinese interests...and we cannot even trust the US while it's going through an internal conflict.
We've collectively realized just how powerful these social media platform is....people are heads down on their smartphones consuming low-dopamine hits that eventually overrides critical thinking.
I also think that Facebook and Twitter are going to be facing a political and legal uphill battle once the establishment has thoroughly finished analyzing exactly step by step what happened.
Honesty, regardless of his outside image, Putin is sweating. Instead of lifting sanctions he's earned the exact opposite. Instead of keeping former soviet blocs in check he scared them to the arms of US & Nato. This unrest he caused will fade as the US media ramps up their own psy-ops against Putin.
I will go far as to predict that the Russian Federation will be broken into multiple countries in the near future as their economy is destroyed by the West....with China picking up scraps and benefiting greatly from the brain drain.
Yes, the 73 pence spent by Russia on covering Brexit (the paid tweets were RT twitter promotions ) were responsible for Brexit. Not that Britain has had a vocal euro-sceptic contingent for over 40 years, satisfaction with the EU has been minor and the EU's handling of the refugee crisis.
None of that. It was due to the 73p of Russian promoted tweets.
> Not all of these protests or nationalism were organic, they were engineered by Russia. ex) Brexit
Nothing scares me more than unfalsifiable claims like this. "The vote didn't go my way, so it must have been illegitimate. If only people weren't entranced by Russian propaganda! My side would have won!"
Truly disgusting. We're already seeing justifications for limiting speech. This is a very dark road we're going down.
It's perfectly fine if the US does it, but if Russia does it they're the big, bad man in the room? All that blatant Pro-US Anti-Russia propaganda all over the western world must actually be efficient. Who would have thought.
Not a good implementation, this feature should be been far more explicitly stated in some sort of alert rather than buried.
This is something that is burning the good will towards apple. Something that is in shorter supply since the days of Steve Jobs. You can see the polarization about it on social media.
Again whether the feature was good/bad, there is clearly something to be learned from the shitstorm that it is causing. Something I hope Tim Cook learns quickly.
I'm not sure what the right move is here. Apple does have a notification once the battery reaches some threshold of "bad". But maybe it's too conservative? Clearly, notifying an iPhone customer that their battery is going bad when they're throttling CPU by 1% is too aggressive. 75% is too late. Where the right number lies, I don't know.
I ran the benchmark and my phone is affected (showed 1650 and 3000 when it the average for my phone is 2400 and 4000). I went into the battery menu people are saying that this notification shows up and there is nothing there about my battery needing to be replaced or serviced.
EFF has proven to be an ineffectual organization.
They bungled NN(infuriating me to no end), and proven partisan at every turn, which would not be a problem if they were successful.
But its clear we need a nonpartisan group who can successfully rally most of America on the left and the right.
> But its clear we need a nonpartisan group who can successfully rally most of America on the left and the right.
Why? Keep the Nazis and their friends where they belong: on the dustbin of history. There is no need to further legitimize Bannon and the rest of the alt-right bunch by rallying with them. They need to be fought relentlessly.
To the degree that it's an opening to economic opportunity, then yes, why not?
FWIW, truck driving (at least long-haul) is a little different from programming in one important regard: it takes the driver away from their families for days at a time. This is typically more problematic for women than for men, since women are still more likely to be responsible for care of home and family, whether they want to or not. (IMO that's another issue our society needs to address w.r.t. gender equality, but it's a bit tangential to the current topic of discussion.)
By contrast, programming jobs are no more gender-loaded in terms of the lifestyle involved than law jobs are. There's no reason for women to self-select out of them aside from being told that programming isn't for them or being made to feel unwanted.
What about agriculture? That industry has faced labour deficiencies for years, and the need is only growing with tightening controls on migrant labour. Interestingly, worldwide, women are more likely than men to work in agriculture, but in the USA the industry is overwhelmingly dominated by men.
Why isn't there a big push to get women into US agriculture like there is for US tech? Where is the government creating "farming" classes in school like they have done with coding?
I work in agriculture, so it is my industry and my place to work on. But realistically this problem does not seem exclusive to any particular industry, so I'm not sure it even makes sense for a specific industry to try and attack the problem in a way that only applies to that industry. There must be some solution that applies generally? Why not work together?
Write a letter to your elected representative. With current DOT roles anyone who isn't willing to piss in a jug to save a couple minutes is at a severe disadvantage.
Susan Fowler is a great person but this reeks of a clickbait agenda.
She is important but Xi, Bezos,and Musk are radically changing the face of the world in a much much greater capacity.
EDIT:
Musk has the hyperloop, tesla, spacex. These are what I consider revolutionary technologies that could change the face of our global civilization.
Bezos is eating the world with amazon, whole foods, and washington post. Amazon is leading so many new industries drone deliveries, cloud, and so many are cities are competing for hq2. What isn't amazon doing lately ?
Xi is changing the face of silicon valley by making SV more like china which has huge global implications.
I think Fowler is great, but she isn't on the same level.
Fowler's post created ripples, at least in tech. It was a brilliant exposition of how not to run a company. Bullying happens in every company, what makes a company special is how you deal with it.
Uber dealt with bullying by pampering its odious alpha-shits and creating a structure around them that legitimised and encouraged it, in the guise of "culture".
Musk, Bezos xi et al, are uber rich engineers. Most moderatly intelligent people with >60 billion can change the world. Getting there in the first place is the hard part.
writing honestly about an abuse of power, knowing that it will most likley end your career and result in more persecution, takes a fuck tonne more courage than ordering a bunch of top people in thier fields to build a rocket/shopping empire.
in terms of impact, a nobody unseated Kalanick, something the US legal system never managed to do, despite his companies many legal transgressions.
For what it's worth, I remember there were several high profile VCs accused of harassment, with several of them resigning or being pushed out. Scoble was also accused.
>writing honestly about an abuse of power, knowing that it will most likley end your career and result in more persecution, takes a fuck tonne more courage than ordering a bunch of top people in thier fields to build a rocket/shopping empire.
If you grow up with little to lose it's hard to un-learn that.
African Americans have a particularly eloquent way of describing that behavior but it isn't appropriate to repeat here.
You don't notice most of the time when someone rage-quits their job for moral/ethics reasons because usually it doesn't lead so something like this.
Perhaps it is to be expected in Hacker News, but focus exclusively on the technological and totally ignore the cultural at your peril.
If you accept the premise that Susan Fowler has opened (or helped open) a door for women across the world to be more successful and freer of sexual harrassment, you could absolutely make the case that will have as big of an impact as whatever Bezos is doing with Amazon - women are quite a large portion of the population after all!
To put this another way: even if you are fixated on industry and finance, all of those companies have employees. The issues raised by Susan Fowler are very important to these employees. That makes this issue very important to industry and finance.
Ya know, your comment might leave something to discuss had you left out the “clickbait” part. Instead it leaves me impulsively want to downvote. But, hey, happens to the best of us, so let’s move on. I suppose it depends on one’s gender to some degree. Musk is the epitome of “boys and their toys”, because nothing he’s done has had any impact on my life yet (well, except the oodles of dosh made off TSLA). Bezos? Eh, modern day Sam Walton that impacts the lives of more than a few, but in the end a retailer. But if you’re female, I could see how one might view the Fowler situation as “good, maybe I’ll have to put up with creepy men just a little less than I did last year.”
OP's comment is exactly right, and I've noticed a trend in the Financial Times over the past several years to jump increasingly on social activism bandwagons. The way they've lionized Ellen Pao, for example, a figure who has turned exploitation of these bandwagons into a personal brand, has been incredibly frustrating to watch.
What Susan did and the other women and men who have come forward this year will have a massive impact on the business world and the types of people who read FT need to know about it. It will affect HR policies, compensation, career paths, job assignments, and the manager/employee relationship in general. Having your business outed as an "Uber" will destroy billions in shareholder value and may end up with you, the C-suite guy, getting canned, even if you're a "nice guy". You can be damned sure that all these C-level guys are reviewing policies and having internal discussions about this and making sure that they're not going to be next.
New rockets and computer products come every year and have been since 1969. Wholesale cultural shifts in business are more rare, more impactful, and more complex.
I would say that there is a social activist moral panic that we are in the midst of, some of which has been spurred by social media mobs and deliberate narrative reinforcement. Fowler is just one example of it, along with Pao.
Another example would be the horrible way Denise Young Smith was fired from Apple, and James Damore from Google.
This pick signals more of the wagons circling, fanning the flames by the Financial Times.
Everytime sexual harassment by comes up from women, they are demonised in HN. And this is the reason these issues are coming up. What's wrong with Ellen Pao taking about it? You very skilfully changed it into her "personal brand". Past presidents make it their brand to give speeches and earn millions just for that.
Rape and sexual harassments are most under-reported crimes. Everyone who faced these issues should talk about it. And HN being mostly men's place, it's obvious they don't like it.
Xi has been around for ages, as has Bezos. It's not really their year. Musk has done very little to impact anyone's life; maybe some of his stuff might in the future (though I would argue probably not), but at most it's unrealised potential. Save it until there's an impact. The change in culture around sexual assault and harassment in the US and more broadly the west in general is already having a large impact, and going forward its impact may be dramatic.
You could certainly argue to what extent Fowler was involved in that, but if you take the position that she was key, and there's certainly an argument to do so, then it makes sense.
Much of the FT's output is about the business of business, and they've covered Uber and the fallout from Fowler's revelations extensively. It's not a stretch.
(A very cynical person might mention the FT's recent trouble with gender pay gap, but I'd say Fowler's impact remains clear.)
Leading a shift in the workplace dynamics for 50% of the population could arguably have a much bigger impact than decreasing the cost of rocket launches
>I assumed its really due to a lack of well paying jobs
Close. It's because there's been a massive reduction in low-skill jobs that can still pay the bills outside of cities (whose size sustains their service sector, so you can keep the people who can't cut it at university employed).
Robotics did this somewhat; Chinese slave labor doesn't help.
I suspect this is almost more of a "marketing" (for lack of a better word) problem than anything else. It's this negative feedback loop where no one thinks non-costal cities are cool, so they don't move there, so they don't become cool, etc, etc.
I grew up on the East Coast so that may also bias me a bit, but I'm planning on being in NYC for at least the next 10 years seeing how the "second coming" of tech plays out. I feel a lot better about job prospects in NYC in an economic downturn vs basically anywhere else. Sure, rent is high in the abstract but roommates bring it way down.
It’s also a status symbol to be able to live in a popular place. I don’t think any amount of marketing can change wanting to rub shoulders with the haves versus the have nots.
The video itself felt like one of those old bigfoot vidoes.
I want to believe in aliens as a huge fan of star trek (TNG is best :) ), but I feel skeptical for now.