558 karma · joined October 6, 2014
I am very worried about doing the wrong thing in the wrong terminal, so for some machines I colour-code my ssh windows, red for prod, yellow for staging and green for dev. e.g. in my ~/.bashrc I have: echo -ne '\e]11;#907800\a' #yellow background
The Guardian article says:
> Some charged particles in the air shower travel faster than the speed of light, producing a type of electromagnetic radiation that can be detected by specialised instruments.
> One such instrument is the Telescope Array observatory in Utah, which found the Amaterasu particle.
The Telescope Array actually has two different types of instrument for detecting the particles. Fluorescence Telescopes and Scintillation Detectors.
According to the paper the "fluorescence detectors were not operating at the time (owing to bright moonlight)". Instead the particles were detected by the plastic scintillator surface detectors.
I have found more information about the surface detectors here: http://www.telescopearray.org/index.php/about/surface-detect...
> Some charged particles in the air shower travel faster than the speed of light
Better article: https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/cosmic-ray-2023/
Science paper for those with access: https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.abo5095
We need to move away from the idea that there is such a thing as 'settled knowledge', because as you suggest there is always something else to uncover. Our knowledge is fallible, never settled, there is always the possibility to find and correct errors.
There is objective truth about the physical world, and we work towards it by error-correcting and replacing our bad explanations with better explanations. Errors and bad explanations cause us problems, and we create knowledge to solve them.
Moral problems like the holocaust also require knowledge to solve. With more knowledge, we could have stopped the holocaust sooner. We can't just embrace ignorance and unreason and hope for the best, we need to create a continuous stream of knowledge to solve the continuous stream of problems we face.
You can't just commit to any subjective moral values you feel like and hope to have continual success in knowledge creation. Unbounded knowledge creation requires commitment to moral values such as tolerance, openness to criticism and change, and respect for truth. Blind obedience to authority, rigid acceptance of dogma and commitment to infallible final solutions are all morally bad and limit our ability to make continual progress.
Popper’s grandparents were Jewish and he wrote one of his major works which explores these topics, The Open Society and Its Enemies, as an urgent response to the totalitarian ideologies and atrocities of WWII. Totalitarian ideologies do not permit open, critical pursuit of the truth, and so they cannot create knowledge to solve problems in an unbounded way. Free, open societies can, where ideas can be freely exchanged and people have the freedom to criticise institutions without fear of violence. The values of an open society are the values needed for knowledge growth. And the reason we want more knowledge is to solve our problems.
I am wondering if it would have been better if I had written ‘solving problems is on balance a good thing’? Or do you think solving problems is on balance bad, or perhaps neutral?
In David Deutsch's terminology, a problem exists when a conflict between ideas is experienced. It is worth reading his books to understand more on his view. He builds on Karl Popper's work, which is also worth reading.
> And whose problems?
Everyone has their own particular problem situation. Here's some relevant things Popper has said about problems and solving them:
> All things living are in search of a better world. Men, animals, plants, even unicellular organisms are constantly active. They are trying to improve their situation, or at least to avoid its deterioration... Every organism is constantly preoccupied with the task of solving problems. These problems arise from its own assessments of its condition and of its environment; conditions which the organism seeks to improve... We can see that life — even at the level of the unicellular organism — brings something completely new into the world, something that did not previously exist: problems and active attempts to solve them; assessments, values; trial and error.
And lastly
> My solution might be the source of your problem, and why should I care if it is?
How to 'make you care' about you creating a problem for me is itself a problem that we can create knowledge to solve, perhaps e.g. by creating a legal system that discourages you from doing the thing that made my life worse.
Appeals to the supernatural or dogma are bad explanations, and they should be criticised and improved upon. They are bad explanations because they are not hard to vary, and can be easily modified or replaced by any other supernatural or dogmatic entity or force without affecting the phenomenon they are supposed to explain. They are essentially arbitrary and unfalsifiable assertions that do not increase our understanding of reality.
Also note, you never get rid of problems, there are always more. New knowledge creates new and better problems. Running out of problems would itself be a problem.
The only way to solve problems is to create knowledge. We need to create good explanations of what is there, what it does, and how and why. The only we know to create knowledge is through creatively guessing things and checking our ideas against criticism.
To solve the moral problem of whether breeding and killing animals to eat is wrong we need a good explanation of consciousness, and whether animals are conscious, and if they suffer. We do not have a good explanation of consciousness or suffering yet. Any ideas we do have we can improve upon, endlessly.
Edit: I should emphasize that we can never be certain that we've really 'solved' any given problem: we could always be wrong. This is why we should always be open to criticism and better ideas.
Commitment to solving problems entails a commitment to knowledge growth, which in turn involves a commitment to certain values, such as valuing truth and being open to error-correction by debating and criticizing ideas. Killing and enslaving people is the opposite of this.
I thought all change is diachronic.*
I looked it up and found out that ‘diachrony’ is a term of art in linguistic analysis, contrasting with synchronic analysis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diachrony_and_synchrony
*Edit: I initially thought that saying ‘diachronic change’ was like saying ‘three-sided triangle’. But thinking about it, I suppose things do change in space but not time, e.g ‘the pattern changes abruptly’
Can you elaborate on this?
Books that informed my understanding of nuclear war and that I recommend are: Hiroshima by John Hersey, Command and Control by Eric Schlosser, The Doomsday Machine by (recently deceased) Daniel Ellsberg.
> The US has never purposefully tortured or starved to death millions of people.
I know your comment is in the context of more recent times, but we shouldn't overlook the fact that the US enslaved millions of people, not least because the effects are still playing out today.
> The most effective device is the bounding of the thinkable, achieved by tolerating debate, even encouraging it, though only within proper limits.
An example given in the book is focusing attention on how best to 'contain' the Soviet Union.
> In short, what is essential is the power to set the agenda. If controversy over the Cold War can be focused on containment of the Soviet Union -- the proper mix of force, diplomacy, and other measures -- then the propaganda system has already won its victory, whatever conclusions are reached. The basic assumption has already been established: the Cold War is a confrontation between two superpowers, one aggressive and expansionist, the other defending the status quo and civilized values. Off the agenda is the problem of containing the United States, and the question whether the issue has been properly formulated at all
Nietzsche gives the example of the self-renouncer, who might seem to go beyond status games by renouncing material things. But this renunciation of one status game is just replaced by another. It's the same desire for status, but aimed at a different object. The self-renouncer's object is the status of being seen as the exalted person who soars above everyone else, free from vulgar worldly desires.
> What does the self-renouncer do? He strives after a higher world, he wants to fly longer and further and higher than all men of affirmation—he throws away many things that would burden his flight, and several things among them that are not valueless, that are not unpleasant to him: he sacrifices them to his desire for elevation. Now this sacrificing, this casting away, is the very thing which becomes visible in him: on that account one calls him the self-renouncer, and as such he stands before us, enveloped in his cowl, and as the soul of a hair-shirt. With this effect, however, which he makes upon us he is well content: he wants to keep concealed from us his desire, his pride, his intention of flying above us.—Yes! He is wiser than we thought, and so courteous towards us—this affirmer! For that is what he is, like us, even in his self-renunciation
I can recommend the book The Status Game by Will Storr if you want to read more about status.
As one example it could design, synthesize and spread a highly contagious and lethal pathogen.
My comment was written with the summary of that article in mind (I didn't make this clear):
> Climate change is going to significantly and negatively impact the world. Its impacts on the poorest people in our society and our planet’s biodiversity are cause for particular concern. Looking at the worst possible scenarios, it could be an important factor that increases existential threats from other sources, like great power conflicts, nuclear war, or pandemics. But because the worst potential consequences seem to run through those other sources, and these other risks seem larger and more neglected, we think most readers can have a greater impact in expectation working directly on one of these other risks.
There is an excellent chapter on the existential risks associated with climate change in Toby Ord's book The Precipice, which you can get a free copy of at https://80000hours.org/the-precipice/
Whether people know or care about a risk doesn't mean that the risk won't affect them!
> I also doubt they would be - negatively - affected if a rogue AI would turn out the lights in the electronicified world.
A rogue AI might as well just kill everyone rather than just the Western naval-gazers, as this would bring to 0 the possibility that a human could ever turn it off / thwart its plans.
His books are dense and benefit from multiple readings. I came back to them recently after reading Karl Popper’s works, which helped me understand his position better.
"These chemicals crystallize into the same shapes, what should I call my exciting new observation? I know, I'll translate the concept into Ancient Greek, let's see. 'Isomorphism' hey? That sounds very respectable and grand - perfect!".