The issue with this argument is that it’s trying to assert that “science says” something isn’t true (generally one of the most valuable things laypeople derive from science, but not the spirit of reasoning that is responsible for its original determinations) rather than observing the actual phenomena and creating falsifiable hypotheses which may be tested.
As a thought experiment, this line of reasoning appears akin to past epochs of scientific understanding that were not enriched with more nuanced understandings developed by looking carefully into the threshholds of prior understanding. I.e. “it’s absurd to say that a particle can be both a wave and a particle, since science says nothing about this” or for that matter suggestig that light may be be quantized at all.
I actually think the “placebo effect” is actually quite fascinating and worthy of deeper understanding, yet in conversations like this the phrase appears as a dismissal like “just the placebo effect”. Which is rather a lot like saying “just this small corner of our medical understanding which, due to its apparently small scope, can have no significant impact on our broader theory but rather will be reduced to 0 at some point”. Which of course was the same response to black body radiation at the onset of early development in the theory of quantum mechanics.
The placebo effect is of course a grouping of unknown mechanisms of healing, and at the very least is the very standard against which new pharmaceuticals are tested (and which is often only barely exceeded by trials of medecine that go to market).
Pethaps a more relevant example is the assertion that it’s absurd to believe non-ionizing radiation at the levels produced by cellphones could be harmful. Dismissed by the same line of reasoning, but now an assertion increasingly being taken as a serious matter worthy of research in Europe.
I’d say it’s both: GPS are great but you should be well practiced in wayfinding with a compass in case the GPS fails. I’ve never taken a GPS on long hikes anyhow seems overkill as long as you have a good topo.
> At press time, representatives from the world’s leading economies had signaled that they would continue to heavily rely on fossil fuels until they had something more than an overwhelming scientific consensus to go on.
What a lovely article and piece. Tremendous. I don’t think I will make such a commitment to this film as did the author, but in a way I feel it is perhaps the only way to understand it: at the speed of undilated time.
The police exhumed the body because the 22-year old man who helped bury the body made a police report. The police didn't seek the Facebook search warrant until after they exhumed the body and found evidence the body was burned.
Given she is underage and pregnant, who made her pregnant? Why are they so desperate to conceal the evidence of the miscarriage, to the point where they burned the body, was it to prevent DNA testing?
That's just the tip of the iceberg here. It needs to be understood why they took this course of action.
> The idea that all of those instances require an investigation
Only the ones where the woman who is pregnant is underage and someone decides to burn the body. Her mother not taking her to the hospital is neglect at a minimum. A miscarriage at that point could easily result in death.
It's wild what people on HN will write from a position of privilege. Because everyone has the money to just go to the hospital.
Plus everything you just wrote is a deterrent for women to seek care. If you know you'll be criminally investigated for a miscarriage even if you did nothing wrong you'll think twice before seeking care. Which of course means more women will die. But by all means continue with your "investigations".
A teenager getting pregnant from another teenager is extremely common, and likely more common than the alternative. Burning a body is also an extremely traditional, something like 60% of Americans are cremated. Suggesting the police need to be involved in totally ordinary circumstances seems silly to me.
You do if you reasonably fear you're going to be criminalized for seeking medical attention. Here's an example from a few years ago (so reporting is not shaped by current events), and you can find many more recent examples.
In any case, such nuance is likely beyond the grasp of a 17 year old. I think you are well aware that this doesn't always yield simple seeming edge cases and that you are capable of looking into other examples but chose not to. Here's some more.
Oh. Well that fetus at that point knew the sound of it's mothers voice. It had a preference for a dominant hand. It could taste the difference across foods mom was eating. It felt pain, the same way you and I felt pain.
If you wouldn't inject a kitten or a puppy with meth just for fun, you probably shouldn't do it to a fetus either.
Sure, whatever you say - I think your claims are realistic. For example, your bit about a fetus (one floating in amniotic fluid) breathing was 100% believable. And the part where it was seeing light though the woman's body was down-right amazing "science".
Actually I never mentioned sight - even once born babies have very blurry and rough eyesight (it might be near monochromatic but we aren't sure).
They do breathe in the womb - both by getting oxygenated blood through the umbilical cord and by inhaling and exhaling amniotic fluid. This starts at 10 weeks. (Also why you see doctors flip babies after birth - to clear amniotic fluid from their respiratory system)
> That felt it's lungs fail to process air and that slowly choked and felt pain everywhere in it's body until the lights dimmed
You said this. You literally claimed that the fetus was breathing air. I will grant that the lights dimming might have been a metaphor, but in the context of a sentence suggesting the fetus was breathing air, I strongly doubt it wasn't literal.
I deeply apologize for saying the dying baby full of meth breathed air and not amniotic fluid. I will aspire to do better next time when discussing the painful deaths of babies.
Correct terminology is important. Things like "heartbeat laws" that apply to embryos that don't actually even have hearts yet are the result of playing fast and loose with terms.
I agree. Especially given the recent development of consiousness theory bestowing the likelihood of consiousness upon all animals and even perhaps inanimate objects. I.e., if you can answer the question “what would it be like to exist as...” a tree, a dog, a river, a GAN? Then the case may be made that existence as such a thing must involve consiousness. If consiousness is a product of (or a phenomena within) material reality, why not say computers and computer programs are conscious?
Perhaps the question here is whether it’s conscious in a similar way to the experince of human consciousness, and that would explain why the issue is contentious.
Wow yeah I missed this. Read through most if it and was looking to see if anyone else had already commented my thinking:
“And the new design is WAY worse in every way!”
Honestly it’s hard to tell what it even is with the new design: SaaS product? Contract agency? Flight tracker?
I found the first design to be significantly clearer. I wonder how the author distinguished between revenue increase coming from natural growth vs. the redesign.
As a thought experiment, this line of reasoning appears akin to past epochs of scientific understanding that were not enriched with more nuanced understandings developed by looking carefully into the threshholds of prior understanding. I.e. “it’s absurd to say that a particle can be both a wave and a particle, since science says nothing about this” or for that matter suggestig that light may be be quantized at all.
I actually think the “placebo effect” is actually quite fascinating and worthy of deeper understanding, yet in conversations like this the phrase appears as a dismissal like “just the placebo effect”. Which is rather a lot like saying “just this small corner of our medical understanding which, due to its apparently small scope, can have no significant impact on our broader theory but rather will be reduced to 0 at some point”. Which of course was the same response to black body radiation at the onset of early development in the theory of quantum mechanics.
The placebo effect is of course a grouping of unknown mechanisms of healing, and at the very least is the very standard against which new pharmaceuticals are tested (and which is often only barely exceeded by trials of medecine that go to market).