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Comment by ABCLAW | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this really addresses the core issue, being that experimentation is used as an excuse to not apply the results of the experiments after they've been performed.

I don't think the idea is that experimentation is de facto bad. It's the use of experimentation as a tool to avoid implementation following experimentation that's being decried.

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I think you are correct, but also think that’s why Jefferson deliberately rooted the virtue of experimentation in our ability to use reason to interpret the results.

If someone is acting in bad faith, the fault is not in the experimental process but rather their faculty in interpreting the results. We wouldn’t throw out experimentation in science just because a researcher was biased in their result. The OP seems to be throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Too right. What’s the alternative? Living in a stagnant dictatorship governed by caprice and bllsht? Making sure your citizens remain ignorant and downtrodden? Jefferson is undeniably problematic by our standards and judged by the standards of his time, but he had a way with words (and was pretty handy at some other stuff too!). He tried to do some good in the world from his position of privilege, through the lens of the world as he saw it… There are many ideas and actions of his that I disagree strongly with, but I can allow that he got some stuff very right and expressed his thoughts and ideas extremely eloquently.

You are correct, however my point was that when we see bad faith acting people will continue to use the same descriptive language of it being an "experiment" when there are active, known harms

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