Comments on: The Sunday Papers

By: Muzman

Muzman — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:27:11 +0000

At the risk of being a tad self absorbed; did I get deleted for being bad somehow? That would be worthwhile knowing. (perhaps I ought to email, I guess)

By: oohal

oohal — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:43:25 +0000

“hypersacharine”

Dear god you weren’t kidding. By the time the chorus kicked in it was like someone was pouring concentrated skittle juice down my ear canal.

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:03:45 +0000

In terms of jargon, it depends. Jargon is a useful tool to discuss things with people in your field (like Noc says), but popular writing should tend to avoid it or, possibly better, explain it.

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:59:04 +0000

“It’s probably worth pointing out that “someone is killing all the aliens” isn’t actually a solution to Fermi’s Paradox.”

The solution to this problem is: They’re hiding. Because they want to kill you.

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:57:51 +0000

“Quantum relies heavily on the observer effect and the Alien would see quantum differently then us so They would not be part of the same universe.”

Hmm, where did you read that? Not sure that actually makes sense in terms of actual, real physics. Unless those aliens are nanometres in length. Although that would give us a simpler explanation for why we can’t see them…

But yeah, the universe is a strange place, so there are some crazy hypotheses out there. Boltzmann Brains are fun.

That said, you have to be quite careful about invoking quantum mechanics. It’s quite non-intuitive, and plenty of people into things like crystal healing or other stuff like that use “quantum” as filler bullshit to persuade people that what they do actually works.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:37:28 +0000

Bilzor: The text almost always comes last. We collate the articles across the week. The thing to be avoided normally happens across the week, but occasionally is as late as the text.

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:00:17 +0000

Noc: That’s only true up to a point. The use of jargon does not, arguably, make for the most effective philosophy. The jargon vs no jargon tension runs all the way into the heaviest philosophy, and I think whether it obfuscates does actually come down to the clarity of the individual writer. Many great philosophers were terrible communicators.

By: Muzman

Muzman — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:59:17 +0000

Hmm. My comment that was listed as awaiting moderation for half the day has been deleted.
It’s not so great that the world needed to see it, but it’d be good to know if it was by accident or on purpose.

By: Billzor

Billzor — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:54:57 +0000

Which comes first: the articles to include in The Sunday Papers, the beginning blurb, or the thing to be avoided?

By: Noc

Noc — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:33:00 +0000

It’s probably worth pointing out that “someone is killing all the aliens” isn’t actually a solution to Fermi’s Paradox. Because, you know, if you’ve got intelligent life traveling around the universe all the time and killing off all the other aliens . . . then you’ve got intelligent life traveling about the universe that we still haven’t seen any sign of.

So, yeah. Not really a solution.

. . .

@Sonic Goo: The thing about serious philosophy is that it requires an absurd amount of rigor, because you have to qualify all of the most basic leaps of logic and observation that we tend to take for granted.

The reason it’s incomprehensible is that it’s essentially jargon for that whole process. Any sufficiently sophisticated field develops its own very specific vocabulary. This is because studies in the field tend to require terms for very specific concepts that aren’t very often used outside of the field.

(Case in point: MMO jargon. It’s nearly incomprehensible to people not versed in the genre – or often in the specific game – but I don’t think anyone in their right mind would accuse Joe MMO Forum Poster of padding his barely punctuated and entirely uncapitalized posts to make himself sound more intellectual.)

Serious studies in philosophy work the same way. Of course, there are people who are just bullshitting the jargon to sound like they know what they’re talking about, but that occurs in every field too and is a side effect of jargon existing at all. (See: dodgy car mechanics, tech support, lawyers, art, and so on.)

. . . so yeah. There IS a reason things have a habit of getting incomprehensible when people start talking about philosophy.

By: Xercies

Xercies — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:26:15 +0000

I actually quit elike the explanation of why there are no aliens in the universe in a sci-fi book i read. Quantum relies heavily on the observer effect and the Alien would see quantum differently then us so They would not be part of the same universe.

Yes its quite hard to understand and it is quite geeky but I like it. It kind of makes sense

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:05:57 +0000

The Fermi’s Paradox stay-at-home solution makes sense when if society becomes machines or software and thinks millions of times faster, they’re not going to want to take the subjective millions of years it would take to get to the nearest star system.

There’s also the “someone is killing everyone” hypothesis (there are a few references for these theories in fiction but they’re kinda plot spoilers if I say them, but suffice to say I can think of one example at least for the former and two for the latter)

It’s equally possible that the “life is super-rare for some very plausible statistical/physical reason” thing also works out, given that we understand star and planet formation quite poorly, and that it took us about 5 of the 13-ish billion years of the universe to evolve from a cloud of gas and dust into SF nerds.