Fishin' in the stream of consciousness (all-purpose, no topic chat thread)

Moving over here from out of context quotes because it’s really part of this conversation anyway,

Amazing! I thought the section on bullies was particularly interesting.

Yes!! This is exactly it.

I know a statistically insignificant number of people in science who are angry about "bullies", by which they mean critics. Nevertheless, as I am not a scientist, I persist in drawing conclusions from limited data and conjecture.

Because that’s exactly why they’re angry. The point they were making was weak and they already knew it, at least on some level. It’s then a matter of furiously fending off other people who might make you admit as much to yourself, your peers, your god(s) if applicable, your funding sources, and yourself again.

People get attached to their ideas, and the ideas of people they admire or depend upon. They get invested, in several senses of the word.

Maybe these are still people who really do want to demand meaning from the universe. To pull order out of chaos. Maybe that’s what they’re really all about, at the heart of everything.

Can you imagine having to then admit that there was no meaning to your data after all? Not "a different meaning than we thought" or "challenging yet suggestive results" but nothing. Noise in a vast uncaring signal.

Chaos.

It doesn’t mean you’ve refined your understanding. It means you never understood in the first place. It means you still don’t understand now.

It means you’ve got nothing. You never had anything. It was all a waste.

At least, you know, from a certain perspective.

It makes for bad science, which is maybe what you get if you expect that scientists, the overwhelming majority of whom have never, to my knowledge, been scientifically proven to be nonhuman, will not act like human beings while doing science. You can’t just stop being human for a few hours until your lunch break for scientific purposes, whether or not you would agree this was a good idea.

This is not an accusation I’m leveling at the author of this excellent article, just to be clear. It’s the culture of science in general. Or at least my limited exposure to it.

 

Yep. The human bits don't just stop being human bits that have biases and wants and desires and feelings. I want to find something meaningful, and it will be painful if I don't. The time I've put in, the thought I've put in, the hours trying to understand why I've gotten errors and fix them, all of the work that goes into designing an experiment and doing it.... It's a lot. I want it to be worth it. (Which is why there really probably needs to be a conversation about "negative" results and how they're viewed by the community and by journals. A "negative" result can be useful! It's also disappointing, but you have learned something. Or you should be able to.)

Mostly I'm just glad I'm not in something like food science. That seems like a field particularly fraught with the impetus to do things like this in order to make a conclusion that appeals to people and maybe gets you more funding or attention.

 

Since I ended up on that article while reading up on the Brian Wansink drama I was talking about last page, that is in fact exactly (one of) the field(s) this was about.

 

Yeah. You publish accurate data (and the journal actually accepts your results even if they’re negative), maybe you don’t hamstring Copernicus. But I’m thinking that’s cold comfort if you dream of being Copernicus.

 

Why are all representations of werewolves so damn ugly?

Wolves are pretty as hell, despite being badass. Why aren't there slick, pretty, scary werewolves?

 

Because when you make them too pretty, the furries come, and everyone gets their undies in a knot about Furries Existing for some reason.

 

I wish to claim credit for the phrase 'the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with someone else'.

 

-scrapes PVA glue onto a pallette with fingertip
-distracted adhd brain: L I C K
-
--should not have licked

 

I typo the letter e as 3 on my phone keyboard so often its almost a homestuck quirk

 

I am *still* laughing at this.

 

My dad bought me presents for my birthday and I’m a little afraid to open them. He’s not the best judge of what I like, and I’m a little worried they’ll be books about how great trump is or something.

 

Elon musk has stepped down as chairman of Tesla. https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/29/technology/business/elon-musk-tesla-sec-settlement/index.html

 

i've made some bad tweets but none of them have cost me twenty million dollars

 

I’m not sure what happened??

 

In short, securities fraud because of misleading tweets.

In long, here's the SEC brief on it. The relevant quote is here:

The CNN article mentions it, but this is very much a 'make CEOs think before they tweet' kind of deal, because this is market manipulation. They frown on that sort of thing.

 

This guy just never ceases to be... attention-getting, does he?

 

fun with bitmoji

Spoiler

 

I make heat with my body apparently everywhere but my feet which are two exquisitely sculpted ice blocks

 

Hard same.

People look at me like I’m insane when I say my feet are just sorta half numb all winter but it’s like. I hate the feeling of socks and slippers and my circulation is dumb, this is just how it be.

 

Surprise night shift was appreciated by my colleagues with chocolates and this evening by a bouquet of flowers from my bosses :D