Granting that there is a “Flaubert’s captain problem” in one of NASA’s 2006 budget reports… now what? Is there some personally applicable upshot we can derive from it? What was your larger rhetorical point?
I could imagine someone making all the factual claims you’ve raised in order to prove the larger point that math and budgets are flexible and learning to plan and reason precisely are not that big a deal because no one who matters bothers to check the actual details and thus what really matters is something like getting along with influential and powerful people… Is that what you wanted to show here?
I could also imagine someone making all the factual claims you’ve raised here to show that corruption and/or incompetence was rampant in a science oriented public institution seven years ago and thus that citizens who contribute to that institution have a moral duty to respond somehow… but if that was your rhetorical goal then the call to action seems to be missing? And in the meantime the sense of moral outrage has been fanned somewhat, and now there’s no outlet. Was inducing generalized angst against NASA your rhetorical goal?
I’m moderately friendly to the basic point being made that “someone in a high place was wrong at one time!” if there is admission of limits, but this article seems to be presented as something self contained but feels to me like half the story at best. If all you want to say is that something is wrong then I guess I’m cool with that being all you’re saying, but I’d like you to admit it at the end so that, as a reader, I’m not left waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Thanks for the feedback. Here’s an attempt below at responding; please let me know what you think, I might incorporate it into the piece.
What was your larger rhetorical point?
“Big bucks” claims like NASA’s are the intellectual equivalent of schoolyard bullying: they use their reputation and bluster to grab your lunch money, that is, your assent to the claim that Independent Validation and Verification has very high expected value.
Always fact-check and logic-check claims, even when the source has a formidable reputation; certain domains, such as software engineering, are particularly rife with bogus claims and failures of critical thinking from smart people; quantitative claims in particular are often easy to fact-check and logic-check, so that a even self-taught smartass like me (the unathletic weakling in the schoolyard) can stand up to the biggest bullies. “If I can do it, so can you”.
Granting that there is a “Flaubert’s captain problem” in one of NASA’s 2006 budget reports… now what? Is there some personally applicable upshot we can derive from it? What was your larger rhetorical point?
I could imagine someone making all the factual claims you’ve raised in order to prove the larger point that math and budgets are flexible and learning to plan and reason precisely are not that big a deal because no one who matters bothers to check the actual details and thus what really matters is something like getting along with influential and powerful people… Is that what you wanted to show here?
I could also imagine someone making all the factual claims you’ve raised here to show that corruption and/or incompetence was rampant in a science oriented public institution seven years ago and thus that citizens who contribute to that institution have a moral duty to respond somehow… but if that was your rhetorical goal then the call to action seems to be missing? And in the meantime the sense of moral outrage has been fanned somewhat, and now there’s no outlet. Was inducing generalized angst against NASA your rhetorical goal?
I’m moderately friendly to the basic point being made that “someone in a high place was wrong at one time!” if there is admission of limits, but this article seems to be presented as something self contained but feels to me like half the story at best. If all you want to say is that something is wrong then I guess I’m cool with that being all you’re saying, but I’d like you to admit it at the end so that, as a reader, I’m not left waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Thanks for the feedback. Here’s an attempt below at responding; please let me know what you think, I might incorporate it into the piece.
“Big bucks” claims like NASA’s are the intellectual equivalent of schoolyard bullying: they use their reputation and bluster to grab your lunch money, that is, your assent to the claim that Independent Validation and Verification has very high expected value.
Always fact-check and logic-check claims, even when the source has a formidable reputation; certain domains, such as software engineering, are particularly rife with bogus claims and failures of critical thinking from smart people; quantitative claims in particular are often easy to fact-check and logic-check, so that a even self-taught smartass like me (the unathletic weakling in the schoolyard) can stand up to the biggest bullies. “If I can do it, so can you”.