Interesting that it's called silver tower in your language. What's your native language? Is the word for silver and ivory the same? Probably not, but just curious.
> Engage with reality as much as possible. That means less time on this site and more time in the world. Less time watching human faces on a screen and more time seeing human faces in person.
> The more time you spend with real people out in the world, the less you will emotionally rely upon abstract intellectual models to infuse your life with a sense of connection and purpose.
> Hold all of your opinions lightly. Be proud of your ability to change your mind. Actively seek out evidence of your own ignorance and failings.
The people in 'Just stop oil' really are fools. The movement is bankrolled by the largest Solar PV importer in the UK. Also, the UK is too far north for solar PV to be environmentally friendly as their solar albino is less than .25. So they are annoying others to force an economically and environmentally unworkable solution. Yes, that is the behavior of a fool. If you are going to put so much into an issue, you should really do your research and be sure what you are trying to do makes sense. These people do not.
This is about the 50th anti-solar panel comment I've seen from you over the last number of months. If you google "solar albino" you just get your comments on here (and the AI summary is absolutely roasting you btw), perhaps you mean something else. None of the comments of yours I've seen have ever contained a source for your claims. I'd hate to assume bad faith but it does seem ideologically motivated more than based on reality.
I see this all the time. I was trying to explain recently to someone how a person can be highly intelligent and a fool at the same time. It is as if the brain takes skills from one area to build them up in another. Many intelligent people lack social understanding, and some are extremely cut off and cruel in their view of the wider population. Some intellectuals are highly totalitarian in their thinking.
Academia itself also functions as a kind of subculture, with its own customs, traditions and quirks. I'm not just thinking of the strange fraternities, processions and whatnot in old universities, but the way academic papers are worded or even titled.
While I've seen zillions of STEM folks fail to comprehend that class solidarity or exploitation/insecurity of working for corporations aren't necessarily in most people's best interests, but I'd trust a climate scientist to know more about climate science or a software engineer to understand software craftsmanship more than random people outside their particular field. Meanwhile, antivaxx and raw milk Dunning-Kruger people race towards Darwin awards because they're "so much smarter than the 'experts'". Anti-intellectualism is a deeply traditional American-ism that negates the contributions of a core of essential, highly-productive intellectualism (the history of dozens of colleges in the Boston metro, yo) that is often selectively ignored.
> That technological innovation is exponential and carbon capture can likely be made economical relatively soon.
Stopped reading at this point. The point about not updating views as new evidence trickles in is fair - it's a problem with self-proclaimed intellectuals across the political spectrum, from the most terminally online tankie to the most vicious neoliberal who sold their mother on the free market to profit from her organs).
However, immediately going on to glaze over the fossil fuel industry's non-existent technology that's supposedly going to save us all illustrates the point of the article remarkably well. Congrats, I guess?
Wait until you hear about the ultimate fraud...Economists.
Look at the EU central bank and their rising on interest rates despite rising prices not proving rising demand....but they live by their model...
You get a war as external shock that makes oil scarcer while the economy is already contracting...so they hike rates, what will not create oil but crushes demand on top of a supply collapse...
I was in a pretty decent econ program big public university. The program and our professors at the time had close Wall Street ties due to proximity. Despite that, no professor took themselves very seriously and many would make constant cracks about the absurdity of the field and why would anyone listen to them. It was a totally cool department of self-aware smart people.
Central bank interest rates don't exist to 'control prices' per se. The state would like to create new money supply to make the economy move faster (e.g. maintain high employment in slow business periods). This would be to the disadvantage of the banks (their loans to debtors would be devalued). Hence a compromise was created to make the money supply more elastic without risking hyperinflation - banks may create new money supply for this purpose but must pay for it at the interest rate. Inflation is key a part of the feedback loop, to limit money creation to some supposedly optimal target range.
Surprisingly, this system was created by bankers and politicians, rather than economists /s
There are also many sources of 'cost of living' which are not related to money supply and therefore not directly related to monetary policy.
Imagine an island country that produces no oil, a totally realistic scenario.... War cuts supply and oil goes from €10 to €100. Economy contracts, prices rise.
What do Economists do?: Raise interest rates!
Excellent. How many barrels of oil did that create? Zero.
It takes a remarkable level of abstraction to look at a physical shortage and conclude that the real problem is that people still have too much money.
They are worst than a fraud...Economist are criminals...
Best article read this year. Give this man an Oscar for his courage. Many have tried but have been crucified, I am puzzled HN set this one in main page.
This is written by the author of "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck", so gratuitous cursing is his schtick.
The book is actually more interesting than you'd think from the title, but (IMHO) the profanity still distracts from the message, and like most self-improvement books you could probably condense the 200+ pages into 10.
I can vouch for that too. I used to work with nuclear scientists in the IAEA.
They all knew the difference and the details of sievert and gray... But holy shit they were gullible idiots. They were without backbone and 0 real life experience. Most of them were the kind that got into school and they just stayed there after their PDHs.
In short it was like a group of lamb ready for the slaughter by Politicians and other industrialists.
They were all basically researchers for hire. Pay to Play. The worst of all was that they were really useful idiots and did not event realize that they are selling out.
> Or consider the fact that over 91% of hedge fund managers can’t beat the market, despite the fact that the entire purpose of hedge funds is to explicitly create better returns than the market.
This isn't strictly speaking true. While some hedge funds have the goal of beating the market, most of them have different investment philosophy. Not that long ago most of them were meant for what the name implies - hedging. The idea being that hedge funds optimized for consistency, not higher returns. Market up 20%? Your hedge fund might yield something like a 10% return. Market down 20%? Your hedge fund might be down only like 5%.
The goal of a hedge fund is definitionally to hedge some risk. If you work in say AI then they should invest very little of your funds into AI (to hedge against a blow-up in AI eliminating your income and if you invested in ai also your savings). In the current environment they’d almost certainly have below market returns. It doesn’t make the hedge fund bad; the hedge is meant to counteract losses not double down on gains.
Thats said, a lot of hedge funds now operate as pod shops and that goal is to beat the market.
The hedging in hedge funds comes not because they are intended to hedge risks you have from elsewhere, it is because they (traditionally) hedge against market risk, to seek absolute returns rather than measuring against the market.
Intelligent people can be wrong. Massive revelation here.
What's interesting is that the author apparently never considers the possibility that some of the people he holds up as case studies didn't actually believe their "models" were right but had other motivations for their actions.
McNamara is the perfect example of this. It's pretty well established now that he knew the US was never going to "win" in Vietnam but he kept going for other reasons, such as a deep sense of loyalty to President Johnson.
From this perspective, the numbers (picking the "right" ones and manipulating them) were used to support a narrative. They weren't evidence that McNamara actually believed his "model" was working.
Agreed. Ehlrich as well. He was a butterfly specialist and applied population theories he used in his own research onto humans. His book was a surprise best seller and made him an intellectual celebrity. He also had a very large family despite his protests about overpopulation.
His article is heavy cherry picking and shows little curiosity beyond “you’re dumb I’m smart.”
>Intelligent people can be wrong. Massive revelation here.
Nope, megalomaniacs are wrong prepotently loud, most of the time just because they can (a piece of paper allows them to). Which makes them all but intelligent.
Intellectuals in soft sciences are fucking idiots.
In physics/engineering and similar real life instantly shows how wrong you are. You can't really go far in your career believing something that is not true and tested.
In something like "relationship studies" you can live in your ivory tower for decades. Your only feedback loop is your own students and disciples who just want to live in the same ivory tower.
You can have some crazy theory like "human relationship output is dependent on socioeconomic outputs". And discuss that theory for decades, get your phd and stuff like that and your only judges are the same people in the same field.
So what do you propose? We stop any research into anything that isnt math because it fails to adhere to the methods of math? Becasue biology and medicine clearly are soft sciences, and physics and chemistry are just applied math so why bother.
And well, math is just applied philosophy and suddenly we're back to the ancient Greeks i guess.
Biology and medicine clearly are not so soft because they can be tested by scientific methods.
Have you read the article? You have a science like "human behavior" where your experiments can't be reproduced. Simply because there will be so many variables or variation that your science is as good as a guess from somebody from the street.
Or again sciences where you just make models of some imaginary things like hidden meaning 10th century in literature. Your only test is another 10the century literature meaning searcher. You just clap each other on the shoulder and give each other phds.
One of the most famous one is the doctor who proved that it's better to wash your hands before an operation, and all the other existing doctors who never did that previously shunned him, because it would prove they "did their job poorly" before
Ironically this article itself is a model of "life in 2026" based on examples cherry-picked to support the author's viewpoint. I wonder if he as open to being proved wrong about this exact thesis as he encourages his audience to be?
This article kind of lost the plot after a little bit, it started descending into its own criticisms with flippant dismissals of climate change being a real concern, dismissal of people's motivations without evidence, assurances based on vague predictions that climate engineering will suddenly become viable.
Started to feel a little uncomfortable given the themes and the mention of pol pot at the beginning, almost like he is calling for more genocide of intellectuals so he can keep rolling coal or something.
'This one eccentric professor wrote a provocative engagement-bait ideological book on a topic outside his area of study 60 years ago. Expert opinions can therefore be safely ignored by people with common sense / exposure to reality'
The sources for the withering opening anecdote about the stupid leftist intellectual are pretty thin. Everyone involved is just guessing why this guy was killed.
It says more about the author than anything else; that he wants it to be true.
>Do you think this is really about climate change? No, these are empty human beings, desperate for their lives to mean something. And their apocalyptic climate change model has done that for them. It has nothing to do with science. They probably don’t realize that the marginal rate of energy cost is fast approaching zero. That technological innovation is exponential and carbon capture can likely be made economical relatively soon. Hell, they probably aren’t even pro-nuclear.
From a BBC explainer of what these protestors want:
"Just Stop Oil (JSO) wants the UK to stop approving new fossil fuel projects, which are a major cause of climate change."
That's a narrow goal and they stopped when they thought they'd achieved it.
So their allegedly "apocalyptic" climate change model doesn't even stretch as far as stopping producing from existing oil fields, just new ones before they become sunk costs. Which makes sense because as this rant says, we have new and better tech to replace it.
They are advocating the reasonsable compromise position. This guy is the "intellectual" who isn't letting facts get in the way of his rant about smart people.
I'm guessing he's also missed the irony of citing Pol Pot killing all the educated folk as the intro to his "smart people are the problem" rant.
THE POWER PROCESS
33. Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something that we will call the “power process.” This is closely related to the need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it autonomy and will discuss it later (paragraphs 42-44).
34. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will develop serious psychological problems. At first he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized. Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History shows that leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power. But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must have goals toward which to exercise one’s power.
Pol Pot's ideology was essentially led by educated people, Communism historically spread through academia riling up the poor masses, in the most direct version of Peter Turchin's theory of Elite Overproduction.
I don't believe in anti-intellectualism, but it's arguably the Elite Aspirants which are well educated, who often have the most to gain against Intellectuals.
See Stewart Rhodes, the Yale Law School Grad who started the Oath Keepers. Pol Pot himself studied at Elite schools in Cambodia, and even went on an academic trip to Paris to study radio electronics.
Indeed they are a militant group trying to get to one goal, which, if reached, is already quite big. So of course they don't solve everything, but it's already a huge goal
Meanwhile the author of the post says that "capture carbon technology is around the corner" while 99.9% of scientists say it won't work... so I let readers figure out who the clown is
70 comments
[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 41.9 ms ] threadInteresting that it's called silver tower in your language. What's your native language? Is the word for silver and ivory the same? Probably not, but just curious.
Ivory -> Ivoire
Silver -> argent
Often, I don't know or do the wrong translation of culture/language specific idioms.
> The more time you spend with real people out in the world, the less you will emotionally rely upon abstract intellectual models to infuse your life with a sense of connection and purpose.
> Hold all of your opinions lightly. Be proud of your ability to change your mind. Actively seek out evidence of your own ignorance and failings.
Amen, brother.
Academia itself also functions as a kind of subculture, with its own customs, traditions and quirks. I'm not just thinking of the strange fraternities, processions and whatnot in old universities, but the way academic papers are worded or even titled.
Stopped reading at this point. The point about not updating views as new evidence trickles in is fair - it's a problem with self-proclaimed intellectuals across the political spectrum, from the most terminally online tankie to the most vicious neoliberal who sold their mother on the free market to profit from her organs).
However, immediately going on to glaze over the fossil fuel industry's non-existent technology that's supposedly going to save us all illustrates the point of the article remarkably well. Congrats, I guess?
Look at the EU central bank and their rising on interest rates despite rising prices not proving rising demand....but they live by their model...
You get a war as external shock that makes oil scarcer while the economy is already contracting...so they hike rates, what will not create oil but crushes demand on top of a supply collapse...
Surprisingly, this system was created by bankers and politicians, rather than economists /s
There are also many sources of 'cost of living' which are not related to money supply and therefore not directly related to monetary policy.
Central banks don’t take the cause of inflation into account when they adjust borrowing rates. This is a feature, not a bug.
What do Economists do?: Raise interest rates!
Excellent. How many barrels of oil did that create? Zero.
It takes a remarkable level of abstraction to look at a physical shortage and conclude that the real problem is that people still have too much money.
They are worst than a fraud...Economist are criminals...
The book is actually more interesting than you'd think from the title, but (IMHO) the profanity still distracts from the message, and like most self-improvement books you could probably condense the 200+ pages into 10.
Born on 3rd and thinks he hit a triple. He wrote a rant once saying that your shouldn't worry about STDs/STIs because he doesn't know anyone with one.
His own book falls apart if you think too much. He's insecure that not everyone agrees with his advice.
He never stops to think that most people can't up and quit the only job they've ever had after 6 weeks.
And if you read one, you read at least 80% of all the content of the others. Some are good and you get 20% of novelty, but that's rare
They all knew the difference and the details of sievert and gray... But holy shit they were gullible idiots. They were without backbone and 0 real life experience. Most of them were the kind that got into school and they just stayed there after their PDHs.
In short it was like a group of lamb ready for the slaughter by Politicians and other industrialists.
They were all basically researchers for hire. Pay to Play. The worst of all was that they were really useful idiots and did not event realize that they are selling out.
I have so many scary stories....
Sounds like the other predictions that were wrong.
> Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye
This isn't strictly speaking true. While some hedge funds have the goal of beating the market, most of them have different investment philosophy. Not that long ago most of them were meant for what the name implies - hedging. The idea being that hedge funds optimized for consistency, not higher returns. Market up 20%? Your hedge fund might yield something like a 10% return. Market down 20%? Your hedge fund might be down only like 5%.
The goal of a hedge fund is definitionally to hedge some risk. If you work in say AI then they should invest very little of your funds into AI (to hedge against a blow-up in AI eliminating your income and if you invested in ai also your savings). In the current environment they’d almost certainly have below market returns. It doesn’t make the hedge fund bad; the hedge is meant to counteract losses not double down on gains.
Thats said, a lot of hedge funds now operate as pod shops and that goal is to beat the market.
What's interesting is that the author apparently never considers the possibility that some of the people he holds up as case studies didn't actually believe their "models" were right but had other motivations for their actions.
McNamara is the perfect example of this. It's pretty well established now that he knew the US was never going to "win" in Vietnam but he kept going for other reasons, such as a deep sense of loyalty to President Johnson.
From this perspective, the numbers (picking the "right" ones and manipulating them) were used to support a narrative. They weren't evidence that McNamara actually believed his "model" was working.
His article is heavy cherry picking and shows little curiosity beyond “you’re dumb I’m smart.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich
Nope, megalomaniacs are wrong prepotently loud, most of the time just because they can (a piece of paper allows them to). Which makes them all but intelligent.
In physics/engineering and similar real life instantly shows how wrong you are. You can't really go far in your career believing something that is not true and tested.
In something like "relationship studies" you can live in your ivory tower for decades. Your only feedback loop is your own students and disciples who just want to live in the same ivory tower.
You can have some crazy theory like "human relationship output is dependent on socioeconomic outputs". And discuss that theory for decades, get your phd and stuff like that and your only judges are the same people in the same field.
And well, math is just applied philosophy and suddenly we're back to the ancient Greeks i guess.
Have you read the article? You have a science like "human behavior" where your experiments can't be reproduced. Simply because there will be so many variables or variation that your science is as good as a guess from somebody from the street.
Or again sciences where you just make models of some imaginary things like hidden meaning 10th century in literature. Your only test is another 10the century literature meaning searcher. You just clap each other on the shoulder and give each other phds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
Started to feel a little uncomfortable given the themes and the mention of pol pot at the beginning, almost like he is calling for more genocide of intellectuals so he can keep rolling coal or something.
I found it a ironic to make such a confident psychological diagnosis built on zero contact with the people involved
It says more about the author than anything else; that he wants it to be true.
>Do you think this is really about climate change? No, these are empty human beings, desperate for their lives to mean something. And their apocalyptic climate change model has done that for them. It has nothing to do with science. They probably don’t realize that the marginal rate of energy cost is fast approaching zero. That technological innovation is exponential and carbon capture can likely be made economical relatively soon. Hell, they probably aren’t even pro-nuclear.
From a BBC explainer of what these protestors want:
"Just Stop Oil (JSO) wants the UK to stop approving new fossil fuel projects, which are a major cause of climate change."
That's a narrow goal and they stopped when they thought they'd achieved it.
So their allegedly "apocalyptic" climate change model doesn't even stretch as far as stopping producing from existing oil fields, just new ones before they become sunk costs. Which makes sense because as this rant says, we have new and better tech to replace it.
They are advocating the reasonsable compromise position. This guy is the "intellectual" who isn't letting facts get in the way of his rant about smart people.
I'm guessing he's also missed the irony of citing Pol Pot killing all the educated folk as the intro to his "smart people are the problem" rant.
I don't believe in anti-intellectualism, but it's arguably the Elite Aspirants which are well educated, who often have the most to gain against Intellectuals.
See Stewart Rhodes, the Yale Law School Grad who started the Oath Keepers. Pol Pot himself studied at Elite schools in Cambodia, and even went on an academic trip to Paris to study radio electronics.
Meanwhile the author of the post says that "capture carbon technology is around the corner" while 99.9% of scientists say it won't work... so I let readers figure out who the clown is