My thoughts exactly. I live in Florida, and have for 30 years. I’ve never personally used my insurance, and my parents had to use theirs once when the neighbor’s tree randomly fell in our yard, and they also had their insurance pay for most of their roof-a lot of people do. I paid for my own roof fully out of pocket.
If you are near water or below ground then there is a near certain risk of flood, and I realize I subsidize those areas while I chose to stay away from water. But the entire national conversation is focused on saying that climate change has doomed Florida
I’m terrible at picking words. Can’t stand the popular notion of “debate,” internet or in person; so much uncharitable interpretation, obtuseness and deflection, and being held to a standard of angelic impeccable speech when trying to express something.
Intellectual consistency can be vastly overrated. I don’t pretend to have answers, I still have convictions that can’t be proven. I get by to a fair extent on vibes and faith—and the faith that if I continue re-examining myself, I might hope to approach truth, and might be a better person.
I'd argue that most useful non-trivial things we have figured out how to do have required thinking precisely about complex truths, language is a big part of that.
Sure of course, vibes are enough for operating decently as a human, which is all we need most of the time. But that's a very low bar, we are trying to do much harder things in science, engineering and business.
I agree that there tends to be a lot of pointless discussion on semantics in debate, which is why we tend to rely more on structured languages like maths notation or programming languages to make it practical to operate on really complex ideas. But natural language is all we have for many fields of thought, so some discipline is required to use it properly if you are trying to figure out something serious.
You made an important point though. If we want to do philosophy more seriously we reach for formal logic, at which point it becomes maths, or we do experiments, which is science. To an extent what call philosophy is the attempt to figure out complex truths using ill-defined language and no experimental verification, which is a loosing battle and quite annoying indeed.
It is still inspiring for someone like me who wouldn’t even know where to start for something like this—-that is can be done by an individual nobody.The author knew a few important things, but more, did their research, asked questions, and pushed forward. I myself would love to move beyond web apps to a physical product.
I’m glad to hear mention of roofing claims finally. I live in Florida, my insurance shot up. No claims, I live away from the water. I paid for my own roof. But a lot of people around me got free roofs, and I remember getting constant calls for “free roof inspections.”
To be honest, even 18 years ago, long before this editor in chief, I found Scientific American rather ideological. Maybe it got more obvious over time, but I don’t see its recent tone categorically different.
From my own impression back then, it was less political but more subtly ideological. Truth be told, I have my own ideology as well. Some things that I remember were an article that used a trolley problem of throwing someone in the way to save five as the “obvious rational” choice; and how the covers would often try to link entanglement or dark matter to consciousness. It was numerous little things like that.
Bias might emerge as much in choice of topics to cover as in the tone of the coverage. On X, someone mentioned that Wired’s coverage in the past 5-10 years is striking for how little it discusses SpaceX, for example.
I agree. This editor may well have been a current-day culmination of a trend that started some time ago. I stopped my own print subscription to SciAm once the articles started to ostensibly push certain sociopolitical viewpoints in the guise of science journalism. This was well before the editor being discussed was editor enough so I never knew this person existed.
While this editor may have crossed some redlines, I am doubtful this change in represents a genuine philosophical shift at the magazine.
SciAm was transformative to my life, I think. My father brought home a stack of them, maybe a couple year's worth, for me when I was twelve or so. I read them over and over again during my teens, slowly puzzling understanding out of the articles that were initially so far beyond me. Learned more from that stack of magazines than some years of high school.
But that was in the 80s. For the last couple of decades, Scientific American just makes me sad. Crap I wouldn't bother reading.
Back when I was 11 or 12, in the early '70s, one of my father's friends who was training for medical school left a box of Scientific Americans in our loft. I discovered them and would spent hours and hours poring over them trying to understand the articles and soaking up the air of unbounded optimism which I now realise was derived from the Moon landings. This was a major factor in pulling me towards science and maths. Later, at university, I came to realise that all SciAm articles are to some extent oversimplifications and that you should really go to original sources for true understanding. However, at that age they were just what I needed.
In the early 70's I loved The Amateur Scientist, "conducted" by C. L. Stong. Great articles, with real technical details, giving you a real chance to build real equipment. To pick one article at random, from February 1972: "A Simple Laser Interferometer, an Inexpensive Infrared Viewer and Simulated Chromatograms". Very, very cool.
The problem is >40 years old. I was a subscriber in the early 1980's (when SciAm was still quite good), and recall them publishing one of Carl Sagan's articles on the dangers of nuclear winter.
Whatever the correctness of Carl's science, he was an astronomer. Not a subject-matter expert. And the the article was very clearly ideological. In an era when the political winds in Washington were blowing hard in the other direction.
I was rather younger then, but still recall thinking that SciAm's approach had thrown away any chance of appealing to the Washington decision-makers, controlling the nuclear weapons, for the feel-good (& maybe profit) of appealing to the left. Which seemed hard to reconcile with them actually believing the results they published, saying that humanity could be wiped out.
Yup, I don't like the trend of publishing more and more articles written by journalists instead of by the very researchers working on the subject. There is a huge difference in quality between the two type of articles. Ones can be quickly skimmed, the others must be read.
SciAm's approach had thrown away any chance of appealing to the Washington decision-makers, controlling the nuclear weapons
It seems to have worked, though - the biggest nuclear war skeptic in that administration was Ronald Reagan and he's one of the world's most successful nuclear arms controllers and disarmers, whatever one may think of the rest of his politics and policies.
Did it? Or did Reagan have clear memories of WWII - when he was 30-ish years old - and the horrific level of death and devastation which even conventional bombing had inflicted upon Europe and Japan? "I don't want any American city to end up like Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, or Hiroshima" was a perfectly acceptable right-wing value.
My read is that Reagan understood the difference between talking big & tough, and actually starting a war. He obviously had a taste for proxy wars, but conflicts with direct US involvement were very few and small on his watch.
Did it? Or did Reagan have clear memories of WWII - when he was 30-ish years old - and the horrific level of death and devastation which even conventional bombing had inflicted upon Europe and Japan?
Yes it did. The influence of media and popular depictions of nuclear war on Reagan is very well documented. His experience of WWII was working on propaganda materials, not exposure to the devastation of war. He was convinced nuclear war was likely civilization-ending, an actual Armageddon. In this he was at odds with the bulk of his administration and US nuclear doctrine. His attitudes and interactions with Gorbachov on these issues are also surprisingly well documented.
I am still mad at the introduction for “The Idiot” for spoiling as much as possible and analyzing every plot point or emotional moment and then bringing up the author’s life on top of that. I could only imagine anyone who willfully puts these before a work wishes that no one should feel joy from reading. I still overall liked the book, but it could have been so different. I’ve also decided to wait a while to digest books before looking deeper into others’ opinions, including the author’s.
