Hey nerds, how do you calibrate mentally with respect to what you might call papers with high "filedrawer effect susceptibility?" Meaning... suppose a paper comes out that seems reasonably well done, but also confirms deep social/political biases in academia, and for which a negative or countervailing finding would be difficult to publish. What's the appropriate intellectual response?
Talking to 9 year old about The Odyssey.
Me: And so all these boys are trying to marry Penelope.
Her: So, she kills them?
Me: Usually in Greek myths it's the boys who do the killing.
Her: Oh come ONNNNN.
Offhand thought - I wonder if part of why sci fi and fantasy are so huge now is that a lot of the genres that would've scratched the same escapist itch are now hard to do inoffensively. Like a lot of 19th century adventure literature is oriented around white adventurers visiting strange cultures, romancing hot locals, stealing stuff, and getting away. Setting it among aliens or elves or whatever allows the same story, theoretically minus the dehumanizing.
Hey mathstodon, help me understand something. What does Hilbert mean when he argues that to prove the existence of a mathematical concept, you only have to prove that if it existed you arrive at no contradiction.
Boole: invented now logic, possibly accidentally killed by his wife making him sleep in cold wet sheets when he had pneumonia
Frege: invented new logic, late in life was shattered by a discovery of Russell's, wound up a sad angry anti-semite
Cantor: invented new logic, everyone hated him, severe depression, conspiracy theories
Godel: Godel
Lesson: don't study logic
Now that Y'all has won the Second Person Plural Wars, can we add the use of "Mr./Ms. [First Name]"? It's the ideal intermediate formality level for kids because you neither have the awkwardness of a kid calling an adult Alice, nor the overformality of calling her Mrs. Johnson. "Ms. Alice" is the ideal.
More interesting question: Is obsessive fandom a new thing, or is it just a new form of an old thing? The thing that feels different in my lifetime is the move from media obsession as a quirky geek thing to something like a serious identity category that lots of people possess.
A linguistic theory of the Swedish chef:
Classically, the Swedish chef's language is defined by repeated "oo" sound e.g. "spoody hoody coocoonoot." Why?
Turns out one of the few vowel sounds that exists across Old Norse derived languages but is not present in modern English is "y" like the German ü or the French u in "tu." Pronounced by making an ee vowel with rounded lips. The foreignness of that sound leads to its emphasis in English speakers imitating any Nordic language.
Talked to the 9-year-old about how you once had to wait, bored, like Prometheus tied to the stone, while your mom compared prices at Dillard's, and nobody had invented the smartphone. I think she understood intellectually but was unable to grasp the true depth of what we endured.
So I can't talk too much about what's IN the book yet, because that's how publishing works, but like... there is now every single day an article that is basically wrong, or treating a question as mysterious when there are actual answers, about space settlement. Please consider reading if these things interest you: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/639449/a-city-on-mars-by-kelly-and-zach-weinersmith/
Maybe I'm over-calibrating from having read a lot about the use of science-talk for propaganda in the Soviet union, but God it's really irritating that tech geeks will claim China is beating the US at something because Xi gave a speech talking about tech being important. Or because a higher quantity of papers are released by Chinese universities.
@6d5fa5b5 I've heard people age 20 basically re-inventing this idea! I dunno what the future holds, but as for myself I'm drifting more into bookwriting.
So I'm finally basically done with twitter - now using it only to reply to people or promote products, but man does it suck for a lot of artists. Twitter was never a big part of my business, but for some people it was the popular streetcorner they did their work. For them it's just lost money that they won't get back. The modern all-social Internet is brutal.
Oddbean new post about login | logout
Notes by 01661f5f | export