thebestaquaman @ thebestaquaman @lemmy.world

Posts

11

Comments

578

Joined

2 yr. ago

If you make any edits that contradict the physical evidence, you've outed yourself.

We're talking about people that contradict both themselves and physical reality on a daily basis without their supporters batting an eye.

Export to jpeg. Compress.

Can decent edits still be reliably detected?

Great, it seems like we agree on the major points here! I'm not denying any of the major issues of the Afghan war, nor any of the glaring problems with how the whole "nation building" attempt went about. I'm very well aware of the history of the Afghan war, and have seen several of the documentaries you refer to that point out that it was largely known that the Afghan army would likely desert once the coalition left.

I'm not saying we don't care.

That is quite literally what you said in your first comment, and is literally the only thing I've disagreed with you on so far ("the world simply doesn't care"). If you didn't mean that, then I don't see anything I disagree with you on.

Many individual people did earnestly care, and tried their best.

This is literally the point I've been trying to make, but it seems like you keep misinterpreting me as saying the whole invasion was a misunderstood humanitarian operation. I'm not saying that.

It differs per community.

Good point, I'll moderate myself and just state that I've never experienced it being a hard requirement in my field.

No it's not. I have both published in a variety of scientific journals, reviewed for a couple journals, and turned down reviews for a couple journals.

No journal checks your "review history" before allowing you to publish. However, if you consistently turn down reviews from a journal, the editor is likely going to get annoyed and you will probably have a harder time publishing in that journal in the future.

Yep. At that point, why even bother taking the review? You're not forced to do reviews. Never taking any is likely to negatively impact your career, but still... just decline the review if you're going to use a LLM for it anyway. Have some dignity.

I don't really understand what you're trying to say here?

My point is that, while flimsy and flawed, there was in fact an education system and a humanitarian system in place that was propped up by coalition forces. This system did fall apart, leaving no system at all when the forces left. And yes, a bunch of Afghanis have every right to feel betrayed. I never said otherwise.

It's not like Afghanistan is the only place where schools, hospitals and infrastructure has been financed by western countries. By and large, we spend a lot of money on these things because a significant portion of the population sees it as the right thing to do. Because we care, and want to help people.

What became very clear in Afghanistan was that you can't force a population to be a liberal democracy. They have to be willing to fight for it themselves. The Afghan army (on paper) had several hundred thousand men, loads of heavy equipment, and several years to train and prepare for coalition forces leaving. There was a government structure in place. These things instantly folded when the coalition left because, clearly, enough people preferred Taliban to what the outsiders had forced upon them.

I guess I'm saying it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If you stay, you're an oppressive occupier. If you leave, you're a traitor that permits a humanitarian crisis to occur.

The OP here asked "why doesn't anybody do anything about NK", and my answer is that we (seem to) have learned that you can't force democracy and human rights on a country. Chalking it up to "we don't care" is reductionist.

I've always carried my balls in one big unisack that holds them all. However, I do think the idea of splitting my eggs between different baskets sounds interesting.

ball sacks

You guys have several?

I've never heard of this "mass gap" in black holes before, does anyone here know anything about why it exists? I also didn't really get why they think it's unlikely that these two black holes were simply formed from a series of previous mergers?

It didn't go to shit when we left, it was shit from the beginning.

It seems like you didn't observe the thousands of people swarming the airport in Kabul trying to get out with the last planes. It also seems like you haven't picked up on the people crying about how people are being brutally punished for getting an education or listening to music now.

I'm not denying that shit was really bad while coalition forces were there, but acting like it didn't get worse for a lot of people when the left is just closing your eyes.

Regardless, it's ludicrous to claim that western countries "aren't doing anything because they don't care". It's not like we've spent truckloads of money and thousands of lives over 20 years of trying to get a functioning system in place while preventing a humanitarian crisis because we "didn't care". People saw it as immoral to just turn our backs on Afghanistan and let them solve their own problems. The result was largely that we learned that you can't force democracy and human rights onto someone else, as proven by the almost complete absence of people willing to fight for just that once the coalition left.

"The west" isn't really a cohesive unit regarding Israel/Iran. You have some western countries supporting a genocide and committing blatant violations of international law, while others condemn them for it and try to pressure them to stop.

Sadly, one rogue state can cause a lot of damage, and countries typically have a very high bar for using military force against their closest allies in defence of a third party.

I'll definitely agree that we have a problem with boatloads of crap science being published every day. Also, I'm under no illusion that the articles I've rejected were never published. They were likely just published in some predatory journal with no peer review instead. I've actually hear of people coming across articles they've rejected published verbatim in some obscure journal they'd never heard of before.

Luckily, most people working in a field know what journals are trustworthy, and are themselves capable of recognising bullshit when they come across it. Unluckily, very few journalists and laypeople have the same insight.

I've fantasised about a model where governments go together to finance a series of open-access journals. This could finally end the chokehold that modern reputable journals have on academia, and serve to provide broader access to quality science to journalists and the population at large.

Every journal I've submitted to has passed my paper through at least one round of review with three or four reviewers. It's more common than not to need several rounds of review before getting published. I've rejected papers for publishing myself.

Not to say bad stuff can't get through, but a lot of crap science is filtered out of the serious journals by the review process.

I know there are some vetted lists you can search to check if a journal is trustworthy or not, but don't remember what the site was.

Journals I've published in (for reference):

• Fluid phase equilibria
• Journal of chemical physics
• International journal of heat and mass transfer
• Entropy
• Journal of physical and chemical reference data

It's not that people "don't care". We've tried intervening with force in e.g. Afghanistan, where the oppressive regime was forcibly removed, and military power was used to ensure that elections were held and the results were respected.

We have observed, several times, that everything goes to shit when we leave. Not only that, but people generally don't seem like it when outsiders take over and tell them how to run their country, who should be allowed an education, and that

<insert group>

Western countries "aren't doing anything" because we've both learned from experience that military intervention doesn't really work, and been repeatedly told by the rest of the world to mind our own business.

In my country we have a flat 25 % tax on anything sold to an end consumer (there are some exceptions). It's often mentioned as the most important tax we have to equalise the economy and finance the welfare state.

The point is that, because it's a flat rate, you end up paying more the more money you have. If you only buy cheap groceries, that 25 % isn't a huge amount of cash, while if you buy an expensive boat or car, it becomes quite a bit. This turns out to be a great way of ensuring that anyone who wants to "live rich" pays a decent amount for it.

We have a "complicated" relationship to the EU. There was a vote in the '90s where we decided not to join, and now we're connected through the EEA (which another comment treats in detail). Today, the EU debate is rising again, largely because of the war in Ukraine. However, it seems like public opinion is still marginally opposed to membership due to our somewhat special situation regarding oil, hydropower, and (lack of) agricultural land.

What do you mean by "little other support"? I don't get any other "support" from my job as a phd than my salary?

Norway here: This is kind of how it works, but not quite.

While studying, you get a student loan. 40 % of that loan is automatically "forgiven" (turned into a stipend) as you complete your courses. In order to remain eligible for the loan, you need to maintain a certain progression in your studies, and there's also a limit to how many years you can receive the stipend for (I think it's eight years now). As long as you're studying, the loan doesn't accrue interest, and you don't need to make down payments.

Throughout five years, I received very roughly 200k NOK (≈20k USD) in stipend, and 300k NOK in loans.

Also, a PhD is treated as an ordinary job here. I'm paid about 600k NOK (≈60k USD) per year, which is a bit less than my peers from engineering studies in industry jobs (they get around 700-800), but it's by no means a bad pay. I've been able to afford a small apartment together with my SO on that pay. Hearing about places where people have to take up loans in order to finance taking a phd makes my head spin.

A cue to whether someone is educated is how hard they try to fight experts in a field they know nothing about.

People with expertise in one field tend to respect those with expertise in another.