green_leaf comments on Peter Thiel’s speech at Oxford Debating Union on technological stagnation, Nuclear weapons, COVID, Environment, Alignment, ‘anti-anti anti-anti-classical liberalism’, Bostrom, LW, etc.

green_leaf 1 Feb 2023 17:02 UTC
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Okay, so it’s saying untrue things for rhetorical impact.
It’s saying something literally untrue (how the English language often works) but not for rhetorical impact, but simply because that’s what the phrase means.
When you send a paper to a journal, that journal does ask itself “Is this paper useful to the people who read this journal and helps advance the field or is it pointless for the readers of the journal to read it.”
If that was the case, the suggestion to change the process of producing science would be pointless, because science would already work that way.
In Viliam’s proposal, having students train “science” with something Kahn Academy like is having train skills that are not about producing anything on which other people or even themselves can build. I used the term real-world to contrast it with the world of school.
The understanding from textbooks (or Khan Academy) is very much needed to create something other people can build on. The reason there is no obvious pathway from the former to the latter is because science is extremely complex with many layers of abstraction.
- M. Y. Zuo 2 Feb 2023 1:06 UTC
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  When you send a paper to a journal, that journal does ask itself “Is this paper useful to the people who read this journal and helps advance the field or is it pointless for the readers of the journal to read it.”
  If that was the case, the suggestion to change the process of producing science would be pointless, because science would already work that way.
  Can you elaborate on this?
  - green_leaf 2 Feb 2023 1:51 UTC
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    If only real-world-useful science was published in journals, it would be pointless to suggest that only real-world-useful science should be produced.