Yes, this is the famous aphorism of Zal-Tar's Fence:
> There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a crystal or jewel erected to contain an ancient being. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the danger this being poses; let us release it." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don’t see the danger, I certainly won’t let you release it. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the danger, I may allow you to release it."
You know, i'm not sure i can explain the joke. I can explain what i wrote, but not why it's funny (if indeed it is). As far as i know, we don't really understand what 'funny' actually is.
My working hypothesis, though, is that this is mostly funny because of the conjuction between the familiar and the unfamiliar. There is then a second layer of funniness to do with absurdity.
So, Chesterton's Fence is a bit of a meme (in the original sense) on HN now. I've seen it come up a few times, as something people consider obscure, but are eager to share, because it's interesting. I assumed that people would recognise it. The re-formulation as a piece of Kryptonian philosophy (Zal-Tar is the scientist guy from the 1984 Supergirl film) about something fantastical and over-the-top like an ancient evil trapped in a crystal, on the other hand, is unfamiliar. There's something about the superposition of the two that is funny.
However, that feeds immediately into absurdity, because my re-formulation is rubbish; it's entirely unconvincing, and fails to disguise the origin of the quote. But that makes it more funny, because now you think i'm an idiot. Except you know i'm not really an idiot (well, something like that), you recognise that i'm playing at being an idiot. That isn't a universal element of all comedy, but it's something i personally lean on a lot - if you can make a really obviously silly statement the right way, either deadpan or hyperbolic, it can be funny.
I'm reminded of "You've not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.":
OK, thank you! I think I might have been amused by it on another day. Or perhaps with a little linguistic style hint that you were up to such ironies (This possibility had been in my range of possibilities, but not at the top). Maybe the responder's literalist correction put me off before I had time to get the joke? Anyways, this helps with the ponderings on the tribulations of text!
Sounds like a particular application of the more general principle that in order to disagree with someone constructively you first need to be able to articulate their point of view in a way they would agree with.
I swear, there's a scientist who looks suspiciously like Jake Gyllenhal saying "The way they're organising... it's almost intelligent..." just off camera right now.
Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua looking for extremophiles, which contain caves as large as cathedrals.
Is it just because English isn't my first language, or does that sentence sound weird to native speakers too? Like the extremophiles contain "caves as large as cathedrals"
That sentence does sound weird, it's not just you, and using of contain rather than contains doesn't help either. If it was referring to the Naica Mine it should have been "which contains caves ...".
It would also be clearer if "looking for extremophiles" were moved to an earlier position in the sentence.
Here's how I would word it:
Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years looking for extremophiles in the Naica Mine. The mine, located in Chihuahua, Mexico, contains caves as large as cathedrals.
This is tangential at best, but a) I've been thinking about it for some time and b) someone reading this thread may actually know: why are there differences in punctuation rules between languages? Comma placement before certain words in a particular situation, hyphen-related rules, quoting, and so on - there may be differences even within a single language, and differences between languages are even bigger. How come?
The punctuation - or more specifically, the commas, their placement or absence in certain places - is the last thorn my brain hurts over when reading and writing English. I read a sentence, and I feel like I'd trip each time I see a comma where there shouldn't be any. Like walking a rocky road or something.
Most punctuation was developed before any standardization efforts, so every language has rules that reflect whatever the most influential writers believed to be natural
Quotation marks differ because the transition from handwriting to printed letters solidified different shapes like ", «, „ or “, depending on how the strokes were jotted down in handwritten text.
I think of it as similar to HTML vs CSS: words are the content, punctuation marks are an attempt to mark up a suggestion of how to present them. (Where I'm including whitespace in punctuation)
In theory comma placement has something to do with the natural cadence of speech, and that varies quite a lot between different people (even within the same language, much less different languages).
Looking for extremophiles, Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contains caves as large as cathedrals.
But yeah, the sentence is too long, with too many modifiers.
Native speaker here. For what it's worth, I understood it perfectly. And so did you. It's not possible for extremophiles to contain caves, so obviously you know what they mean. Much of English is like this in informal conversation, and informal conversation is arguably the best way to write.
I disagree that informal conversation is the best way to write. If you're going to write an article, you should convey the ideas in the article as clearly and smoothly as possible. In informal conversation there are tonal and visual cues. In an article all we have is words, so use them correctly.
Even in informal conversation, that's not really about ordering that you'll come across. I had to parse it a couple of times , and my first thought was that my contextually acquired definition of extremophiles from the comments and article was wrong in a really weird way. (Because of the word roots ).
You're not wrong: it is broken English and parses incorrectly vs its intended meaning.
Should be "...team have spent years looking for extremophiles, exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contain caves as large as cathedrals."
It's not just you. The whole article is full of some really janky and broken English. No offense to the original author intended, but I would really expect the Telegraph to have better editing than this.
You're right. While understandable through context the sentence is ungrammatical because the relative clause is misplaced.
It should rather be "Looking for extremophiles Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contains caves as large as cathedrals." and even then it's quite cumbersome to read because there are too many modifiers.
Sentences like that should simply be split up in order to avoid such problems and to be more comprehensible. Unfortunately, many writers seem to equate long sentences with sounding intelligent (speaking from personal experience here ... school and academia can teach you bad writing habits that take some time to unlearn).
The storyline, and even the first picture do mirror a lot of doomsday/virus/zombie/etc plots. I'm sure that occurs to just about everyone that reads it.
A pointer to some credible source as to why it's not dangerous might be interesting.
Even being somewhat reasonable, scary things like prions do exist.
At the bottom of the article it briefly mentions bringing back stuff from other planets, and that stuff could include extremophile-like life:
"It is assumed that such life would be hardy - to survive the trip to Earth; not easy - and precautions taken would provide a very high degree of containment."
Sounds like the solution to the gray goo end-of-the-world scenario: Have the bacteria eat the gray goo. Tho, we'd then probably end up with an uncontrollable green goo problem ;)
I agree. The article is not very clear, but IIUC they only found some bacteria and some archaea. Some of them are weird because they live in place that are very hot or because they get their energy from "weird" sources. Instead of burning something like sugar with the oxygen of the air they use other compounds. They may burn ferrous iron or sulfur. There are many possibilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithotroph
They are very common underground. IIRC the mass of all the "weird" extremophiles is bigger that the mass of the usual life forms that we usually meet.
Naica Mine is a beautiful place, wish I could be inside some day. I've read that is not accessible to public in general due to constant water flow that has to be drained and a very high humidity.
Fascinating that the organisms can remain viable in geo-preservation mode. When growing up in Vegas we used to go swimming in some of the side canyons the lake had filled. And once while swimming we found some gypsum crystals that were like 1:100th scale models of the ones in the cave (I think the largest were about 5" long and maybe an inch in diameter.) we carried a couple of home and for a fairly long time they sat as table decorations. I never even imagined they could have something inside of them like that. Definitely solid horror movie material :-)
I wonder what the frequency of caves like this might be, and how likely they are to ever be found. Are they typically indicated by some evidence or indicators on the surface, or might there be unthinkable quantities scattered all over the globe?
What is the researcher wearing in the first photograph? It looks like a lead smock for radiation protection, but those bags have gaps between them so that doesn't seem likely. Sample containers?
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] threadWhy were they trapped in the first place? And is it a good idea to let them out?
> There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a crystal or jewel erected to contain an ancient being. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the danger this being poses; let us release it." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don’t see the danger, I certainly won’t let you release it. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the danger, I may allow you to release it."
I don't know, this seems pretty obvious to me.
My working hypothesis, though, is that this is mostly funny because of the conjuction between the familiar and the unfamiliar. There is then a second layer of funniness to do with absurdity.
So, Chesterton's Fence is a bit of a meme (in the original sense) on HN now. I've seen it come up a few times, as something people consider obscure, but are eager to share, because it's interesting. I assumed that people would recognise it. The re-formulation as a piece of Kryptonian philosophy (Zal-Tar is the scientist guy from the 1984 Supergirl film) about something fantastical and over-the-top like an ancient evil trapped in a crystal, on the other hand, is unfamiliar. There's something about the superposition of the two that is funny.
However, that feeds immediately into absurdity, because my re-formulation is rubbish; it's entirely unconvincing, and fails to disguise the origin of the quote. But that makes it more funny, because now you think i'm an idiot. Except you know i'm not really an idiot (well, something like that), you recognise that i'm playing at being an idiot. That isn't a universal element of all comedy, but it's something i personally lean on a lot - if you can make a really obviously silly statement the right way, either deadpan or hyperbolic, it can be funny.
I'm reminded of "You've not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsCVuO1yeJc
I'd imagine they were engulfed by the growing crystals.
> And is it a good idea to let them out?
Extremophiles don't tend to do all that well outside of their extreme conditions. We're extremophiles to them.
Is it just because English isn't my first language, or does that sentence sound weird to native speakers too? Like the extremophiles contain "caves as large as cathedrals"
Here's how I would word it:
Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years looking for extremophiles in the Naica Mine. The mine, located in Chihuahua, Mexico, contains caves as large as cathedrals.
The punctuation - or more specifically, the commas, their placement or absence in certain places - is the last thorn my brain hurts over when reading and writing English. I read a sentence, and I feel like I'd trip each time I see a comma where there shouldn't be any. Like walking a rocky road or something.
Quotation marks differ because the transition from handwriting to printed letters solidified different shapes like ", «, „ or “, depending on how the strokes were jotted down in handwritten text.
There's a popular meme about it:
http://imgur.com/gallery/ljjibpM
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/2/1/36/
(I think so, at least. Not too sure.)
But yeah, the sentence is too long, with too many modifiers.
Edit: grammar
Geology has a certain reputation for its vocabulary https://xkcd.com/1829/
Should be "...team have spent years looking for extremophiles, exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contain caves as large as cathedrals."
Or split into two sentences.
It should rather be "Looking for extremophiles Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contains caves as large as cathedrals." and even then it's quite cumbersome to read because there are too many modifiers.
Sentences like that should simply be split up in order to avoid such problems and to be more comprehensible. Unfortunately, many writers seem to equate long sentences with sounding intelligent (speaking from personal experience here ... school and academia can teach you bad writing habits that take some time to unlearn).
A pointer to some credible source as to why it's not dangerous might be interesting.
Even being somewhat reasonable, scary things like prions do exist.
"It is assumed that such life would be hardy - to survive the trip to Earth; not easy - and precautions taken would provide a very high degree of containment."
So yeah, what could go wrong?
Yep, sounds like "thriving" to me!
They are very common underground. IIRC the mass of all the "weird" extremophiles is bigger that the mass of the usual life forms that we usually meet.