Paul

Paul @futurepaul

@Kr0nos_ @Justin_Schmidt1 It's not my job to explain this! I have my theories but who cares what I think. My point is scientists have overstated what they know, and / or public policy have overstated what they have learned from science. Lockdowns for the healthy are a new and completely unproven idea. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@Kr0nos_ @Justin_Schmidt1 There really isn't an obvious correlation between lockdowns and mortality after the cat is out of the bag and the cat is def out of the bag. https://t.co/923XjSVZl6 — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@bad_football I appreciate the subtlety you're trying to add to this convo. I'm not asking science to be perfect or it's trash. I'm saying there are many bad theories that make poor predictions in the mainstream of science right now. Not just faulty, but fault-filled. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@bad_football (I really want to see this car math you did btw!) — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@bad_football I think that's a great ideal for science to strive for. But public policy has a too broad definition of "science" that can't distinguish between the good and bad actors. There are imperfect models that are interesting and ones that are bullshit. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@Kr0nos_ @Justin_Schmidt1 Well you're going to have to figure out what the difference is between our reaction to the pandemic and the pandemic itself. Covid didn't disrupt supply chains, our response did. Whether or not that disruption was appropriate is up for debate. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@Justin_Schmidt1 I'm saying our problem is scientists overriding traditional (crowd) wisdom with policy prescriptions that get people killed. I can find scientists that agree with me, but this is obviously a muddy area. I suggest when it's muddy we don't pretend to know more than we do. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@Justin_Schmidt1 I strongly disagree. We listened to scientists who overstated the danger of Covid-19. This has had hugely negative implications for the poorest people in the world. What is our remedy for when "science" gets something this wrong? https://t.co/gEWIE8Vrv4 — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@jamespmcleod And sorry if this sounds offensive, but how can you listen to any modern politician talk for more than five minutes and think they're equipped with this level of discernment? — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@jamespmcleod I'd argue that this process typically works upside down of how it's intended. Special interests inside or outside government fund "science" that supports the outcomes they desire and use this as a cover for terrible and destructive policies like the food pyramid. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@Justin_Schmidt1 I'm suggesting we listen to a strict subset of scientists who come to their conclusions via the scientific method, and shun anyone attempting to use their Science Badge to speak beyond their scientific understanding. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@niksko That's a really fun example. I do find myself coming full circle on somebody, where they say something so dumb that I lose all respect. And maybe a year later I realize that they were just a layer deeper on a subject. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@jamespmcleod So you do whatever any scientist tells you to do? What if two scientists disagree? What metric are you using to judge these disagreements? — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@niksko Hmm I think that's partly true. But 1. I think we underestimate how much we can understand, 2. when we catch one obvious liar in our web-chain of trust, the whole structure is called into question. This is my (unverified) theory on how flat-earthers come to be. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@AaronBrown In "The Edge of Evolution" Michael Behe proposes a limit on the capabilities of common descent + natural selection + random mutation to create beneficial mutations. So some evidence beyond his proposed limit would be a pretty big deal. https://t.co/hRHQPeyU1u — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@niksko I absolutely agree, I'm not going start replicating all of science. So in some sense I must trust scientists doing experiments. But I won't put my faith in people making untested / untestable claims. And I think what we lack right now is a firm understanding of the distinction. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@sherifhanna Yes! We see lots of simple mutations and natural selection, but no evidence of the big jumps and functionality gains that evolution requires to get from single cell to humans. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

Contrast modern "science" with the Royal Society that Newton was a part of. Latin for "don't trust, verify" basically. https://t.co/JV29AEtXL6 — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

Common descent from a spontaneously generated single cell organism sounds dumb. It sounds extra dumb given our modern knowledge of the cell. So we take it on faith. This trains us to accept many "science" claims on faith and makes it difficult to tell the good from the bad. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

I think this "listen to the scientists" dogma can be traced back to macro evolution's contradiction of increasing entropy. An improbable theory became fact not by experimentation but through just-so stories. Storytellers became a priesthood. And so we suffer in superstition. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

RT @Kevin_McKernan: Our ancestors paid it forward by building a vibrant free market economy that took these slight infections risks while b… — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@junlimited Why should it require a huge company to protect you from bad laws? Also, YouTube didn't really protect creators faced with a similar situation, it just streamlined licensing and handed the revenue straight to copyright claimants. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

Ultimately the way these things will trend is how they've always trended: Disney will get bigger. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

Once you start to see how arbitrary intellectual "property" is, the scarier and dumber these laws look. It's basically a coinflip right now whether or not video game streaming without a license from the copyright holder is illegal. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@garthvh @pierre_rochard @dergigi There's a great piece on "Bitcoin, Not Blockchain" by @parkeralewis if you want to see how / why Bitcoin actually uses this https://t.co/k5In9lOcJP — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@garthvh @pierre_rochard @dergigi But he's not really giving a deep view on what Bitcoin is trying to accomplish with money. It's both a new currency (like a USD with a fixed supply schedule) and the method of transferring / storing that currency (like Visa or a bank). — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@garthvh @pierre_rochard @dergigi Okay well I agree with big percentage of this. People dress up good ideas (and usually bad ideas) in "blockchain" to attract funding. And usually don't ship. Blockchains that do ship are usually centralized to a few nodes on AWS. It's a huge world of scams and fakery. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

RT @pierre_rochard: High school seniors! 👇 Do not go to college. 1. Work construction while you learn to code 2. Save and accumulate #bit… — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@garthvh @pierre_rochard Now, if it is or isn't valuable to secure the Bitcoin network is: 1. Subjective 2. Worth thinking about! I recommend this piece by @dergigi as an introduction https://t.co/f5tiEYV842 I'll read the piece you linked if you read this one. Deal? — PolitiTweet.org

Paul @futurepaul

@garthvh @pierre_rochard "Waste" implies the energy is not being used for its intended purpose. I would argue the energy is being used to secure the Bitcoin network, and that miners work hard to use energy as efficiently as possible. — PolitiTweet.org