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gabriel_laddel: 10:37 - who is that with Thiel, could it be the evil racist Charles Murray?
gabriel_laddel: asciilifeform: if he was spewing trendisms he'd be /supporting/ the MOOCs
gabriel_laddel: Youtube doesn't have grep, and I'm not going to troll through all these videos to find the one I'm thinking of. In any case, in one of them he states that "scientists have been replaced with baccarats" and that "MOOCs are not going anywhere"
gabriel_laddel: it remains to be seen if he'll grok bitcoin. if he does, he'll probably end up funding interesting things.
gabriel_laddel: if you watch thiels videos in particular you can see that he wants to fund interesting things but doesn't know how
gabriel_laddel: 4) perhaps the fault lies with those attempting to peruse basic science, for not giving him a heuristic
gabriel_laddel: A summary of my points. 1) there are some people attempting to fund basic science 2) I don't agree with all of their funding decisions 3) this isn't the first instance of this occuring in history
gabriel_laddel: asciilifeform: well, in Chris's case, some research on neural networks
gabriel_laddel: I'm not saying that I beneficiary agree with Thiel's funding decisions, but I am pointing out that there are people attempting to fund basic science, and that there are two specific people I've cited who can be vetted for their contributions.
gabriel_laddel: they will exist in the future, assuming we don't end up glassing the whole planet
gabriel_laddel: Christopher Olah, Thiel fellow. Does research on conv. neural networks.
gabriel_laddel: Does this qualify? will she produce anything of interest? I don't yet know.
gabriel_laddel: ^ here is a blog I've not gotten around to reading yet
gabriel_laddel: (conceptually basic, atoms and the like, or basic in the sense of a starting point that is eventually abandoned, e.g., alchemy)
gabriel_laddel: "it's admittedly the case that 'basic science' seems to be advanced mostly through 'dumb luck'"
gabriel_laddel: and sometimes it happens through e.g., MIT, Stanford, library of Alexandria, Manhattan Project
gabriel_laddel: we know sorta-kinda how it is going to function, but I expect to be pleasantly surprised
gabriel_laddel: can you predict exactly what a WoT enabled world will look like?
☟︎ gabriel_laddel: decimation: afaik, no one predicted leonardo, but there were three generations of masters preceding him. He learned from their works
gabriel_laddel: "measuring the fucking crystals" << "MPEX is just a bitcoin security exchange, just like any other bitoin security exchange"
☟︎ gabriel_laddel: From what I could tell, from reading his usenet posts, he continues to work at Occidental research corp.
gabriel_laddel: Ah. I'd like to point out that Al, unlike Mr. M has done useful work in the interim.
gabriel_laddel: asciilifeform: well, as the resident expert, would you mind expounding on these costs?
gabriel_laddel: mircea_popescu: well, I was asking Stan specifically becuase he could supply detailed information as to costs and political constraints
gabriel_laddel: mircea_popescu: I don't know the cost associated with calibrating these instruments and can't speak to the truth of that
gabriel_laddel: so as to demonstrate exactly why it isn't as easy as "just measure the thing"
gabriel_laddel: asciilifeform: would you mind explaining the exact logistics of the equipment you'd need to put together to run the experiment?
gabriel_laddel: Not as easy as it sounds. Life is finite, as exemplified by MP not reading Al's experiment spec, and Al not being MP
gabriel_laddel: the US is fucking nuts right now. you live in a bubble of sanity
gabriel_laddel: If you're not strong enough now, retreat, lick your wounds and then strike when the time is right.
gabriel_laddel: As far as I can tell, it comes down to the basic strategic necessity of killing your enemy when you indend to.
gabriel_laddel: "1) Search for experimental signs of quantum gravity that violate Einstein's Equivalence Principle and/or the Newtonian inverse-square law."
gabriel_laddel: mircea_popescu: but this is not germane to the issue. << Oh, but it is. These people are prepared to lie at every turn. See the stack overflow post, or the output of the Eot-wash group. If Al or Stan were make a mistake in the run, they'd never be able to test it again.
gabriel_laddel: left and right handed machine screws != chirality !11!
gabriel_laddel: The Eot-wash group won't test this. And the string theorist in that stackoverflow question is more than happy to state that because a large construction of molecules falls at the speed we expect it to, it couldn't possibly happen on a small scale.
gabriel_laddel: What Al would like to test is pretty simple. Is gravity mirror-symmetric? If it is, then you can drop two stereoisomers in a vacuum, and they'll fall at the same rate. We don't know that this is the case, and the universe actually violates mirror-symmetry on many scales. Perhaps a violation will be observable.
gabriel_laddel: lemme finish making this burrito and I'll write up something on the game being played
gabriel_laddel: mircea_popescu: did you read the stackoverflow post linked above?
gabriel_laddel: mircea_popescu: the opposition lie through their teeth at every given moment, you don't want to give them anything to work with
gabriel_laddel: he isn't giving up, as far as I know, but biding his time
gabriel_laddel: iirc, it was an even bet whether the effect - if real - is even large enough to measure with current instrumentation at all << this makes a great deal of sense
gabriel_laddel hand-cranked systematization is exactly what I had in mind
gabriel_laddel: well, I've not looked at cyc yet, but thanks for the pointer.