#throwing your fellow marginalized people under the bus in most cases

[astraltrickster]

I'm going to say one thing, just one very serious thing, before I put myself on lockdown from saying anything more about this on main for a while for the sake of my blood pressure:

"They're trying to give my creative job to a COLD, UNFEELING, SOULLESS ROBOT!"

No the fuck they're not.

They're trying to give your creative job to anyone they can dump it on for cheap, from the unpaid intern they can convince they're BASICALLY making into a SHOWRUNNER, to an underpaid guy working 12-16 hour shifts in a cubicle farm in the global south, OPERATING a robot to EXPRESS A REAL PERSON'S ideas.

Is that good for anyone involved? Fuck no it's not! It's a shit deal for BOTH of you and for EVERYONE else in the process of creating a finished product! The only people it's good for are the CEOs and shareholders!

But dehumanizing the guy desperate enough to take $1.50/hour or less to wrangle the robot into making something cohesive enough to sell, and/or who has to edit it into something passable, in what is likely to be their second or third language, and erasing their input, is NOT going to save you from corporate greed.

If the rhetoric you're using to resist the corporate use of tech to maximize output at the workers' expense boils down to "DIRTY UNQUALIFIED BROWN PEOPLE ARE TAKING MY JOB!!", you're doing it wrong.

[mathematicianadda]

The Overwhelming Historical Evidence that Galileo was a Hack

Not long ago, Discover magazine ranked the ten greatest scientists of all time. Galileo came in at #6. That’s pretty standard: Albert Einstein (who earned #1), dubbed him “the father of modern science.” An Italian contemporary declared that “God and Nature have joined hands and created the intellect of Galileo.”

If only they’d heard my new favorite podcast, they’d know better.

In the shade-throwing first season of Opinionated History of Mathematics, historian of mathematics Viktor Blåsjö gives an anti-Galilean polemic of genuine scholarship and unblinking savagery. His arguments range from the speculative to the devastating, and from the sassy to the hilariously sassy.

Embrace even a fraction of what he says, and you’ll find your image of Galileo shattered. I suggest you listen to the whole thing, but here’s an episode-by-episode teaser:

  Episode #1: Galileo Bad, Archimedes Good

A classic math problem is to find the area of the cycloid. Blåsjö lays out what happened when Galileo attempted it: he floundered, failed, turned to crude trial-and-error, and still got the answer wrong. (Several of his contemporaries, meanwhile, calculated the precise answer.)

This, Blåsjö says, is typical of the fellow from Galilei:

He was not a pioneer of scientific method. He was not the father of modern science. He was not a heroic knight defeating dogmas and superstitions with the light of empirical truth…. Galileo was, first and foremost, a failed mathematician….

Galileo’s contribution to the history of thought is to cut off mathematical reasoning at the training-wheels stage; to air in public what true mathematicians considered unworthy scratch work at best. He experiments because he cannot think.

Episode #2: Mathematics Versus Philosophy, Then and Now

Galileo’s major works are, in effect, refutations of Aristotle. They’re dialogues between a foolish Aristotelian and a wise Galilean.

But according to Blåsjö, Aristotle was a straw man, whose shortcomings serious mathematicians had always known. Refuting Aristotle is shooting fish in a barrel, and impresses only those who don’t know any better.

Galileo’s books are “Science for Dummies”. He drones on and on about elementary principles of scientific method….

Galileo needs us to assume that… no one had ever heard of Archimedes. Only then do his so-called accomplishments come off looking any good.

Ask yourself: Who is inclined to go along with such an assumption? I’ll tell you who: Someone who doesn’t know any Archimedes but is very comfortable with Aristotle and other philosophers. People from the humanities, in other words.

So Galileo is in luck…. Modern academia is set up in his favour.

Episode #3: Galilean Science in Antiquity?

Millennia before Galileo, were “Galilean” ideas already in circulation? Blåsjö’s says yes.

Either you are a cultural relativist and you think Galileo was a revolutionary… or you think mathematical thought is the same for you, me and everybody who ever lived, and then you think Galileo was just doing common-sense stuff.

(A possible counterargument: shouldn’t we credit Galileo for bringing these “common-sense” ideas to wider audiences? In my view, Blåsjö is too dismissive of popularization. But if the argument turns from “Galileo is the father of modern science” to “Galileo had a big impact as a popularizer,” then I think Blåsjö has already won.)

Episode #4: The Case Against Galileo on the Law of Fall

Among Galileo’s finest achievements: debunking Aristotle’s claim that heavier objects fall faster. (He may have done this by dropping stones from the Tower of Pisa.)

But was it really such an accomplishment? Aristotle makes the claim only once, in a paragraph-long aside; it does not seem central to his thinking. And isn’t the experimental verification a pretty straightforward idea?

Of course one can drop some rocks and see if it works…. In fact, Philoponus—an unoriginal commentator—had clearly and explicitly rejected Aristotle’s law of fall by precisely such an experiment more than a thousand years before Galileo…

So wow, what a hero, the great Galileo. He managed to improve on a two-thousand-year-old claim, made by a non-mathematician, which not a single mathematician ever believed.

Episode #5: Galileo’s Errors on Projectile Motion and Inertia

Galileo gets a lot of credit for articulating a law of inertia that’s halfway to Newton’s. But he made several big errors; for example, he applied the rule only to objects whose initial motion was horizontal, waffling on whether it applied more broadly.

Calling this “halfway to Newton” is too generous, Blåsjö argues. Even poor, benighted Aristotle articulated a similar idea!

So take your pick. Here are the [two] options:

Option 1. Galileo’s understanding of inertia was very poor.

Option 2. Galileo’s understanding of inertia was pretty good, but so was Aristotle’s….

I, of course, advocate the first solution: throw Galileo under the bus. He and Aristotle were both stupid. Problem solved.

Episode #6: Why Galileo is Like Nostradamus

Galileo made a lot of striking errors. His gravitational constant is way off, because he inexplicably used made-up data. His theory of planetary speeds (that the planets “fell” into the solar system from a tremendous distance) fails the most basic mathematical test. And his “proof” that objects could never fly off the spinning earth is totally wrong (because if the earth spun fast enough, they absolutely could). He even tries to pass off one of his miscalculations as a “joke”!

Why so many mistakes? Blåsjö pulls no punches:

Galileo is another Nostradamus. He too threw a thousand guesses out there and hoped that one or two would stick. Like Nostradamus, Galileo’s reputation rests on his admirers having selective amnesia, and remembering only the rare occasions when he got something right.

Episode #7: Galileo’s Theory of Tides

Galileo rejected the true explanation of tides (which his contemporaries embraced) as “childish” and “occult.” His alternative theory contradicted all the data, as well as Galileo’s own scientific principles. Blåsjö explains:

Galileo’s theory implies that high and low [tides] should be twelve hours apart rather than six… The fact that everyone could observe two high and two low tides per day Galileo thus wrote off as purely coincidental….

Galileo even has some fake data to prove his erroneous point: namely that tides twelve hours apart are “daily observed in Lisbon,” he believes, even though that is completely false.

Episode #8: Heliocentrism in Antiquity

Galileo doesn’t just refute Aristotle. He also refutes the geocentric astronomy of Ptolemy.

But did Ptolemy really speak for all Greeks? Blåsjö argues otherwise, speculating that Archimedes’ pal Aristarchus had a well-reasoned heliocentric model.

Nowadays we are stuck with Ptolemy as the canonical source for Greek astronomy. But Ptolemy lived hundreds of years after the golden age of Greek science. It is likely that he was not the pinnacle of Greek astronomy, but rather a regressive later author who perhaps took astronomy backwards more than anything else.

Episode #9: Heliocentrism Before the Telescope

Galileo is remembered today as the greatest champion of Copernicus. But while other scientists filled the margins of Copernicus’s book with calculations and annotations, Galileo’s copy is bizarrely blank, as if he had not given the text a serious reading at all.

Blåsjö quotes another historian:

“…when I saw the copy in Florence, my reaction was one of scepticism that it was actually Galileo’s copy, since there were so few annotations in it. … This copy had no technical marginalia, in fact, no penned evidence that Galileo had actually read any substantial part of it. … Eventually, … I realized that my scepticism was unfounded and that it really was Galileo’s copy.”

There is no need for surprise, of course. Galileo was a poor mathematician. He had neither the patience nor the ability to understand serious mathematical astronomy, let alone make any contribution to it.

***

More episodes are coming. (In an email, Blåsjö told me he’s barely halfway through his Galileo material!) I’m especially eager to hear the next one, which will tackle the discoveries Galileo made with his telescope.

Was Galileo a great scientist? A skilled popularizer? A talentless hack? I don’t honestly know. But the fact that we’re asking the question feels pretty darn radical to me.

from Math with Bad Drawings https://ift.tt/2U0BC5w from Blogger https://ift.tt/2HxdVfd

[itsworn]

Dangerous Social Media Practices in Racing

Promoters are watching, and you probably aren’t helping your case

Now that we’re approaching crunch time of the race season, it isn’t hard for racers to find themselves on the edge. You’ve been grinding away all season trying to pick up wins and points to put yourself in the Championship hunt. You don’t even want to look at your checkbook to see how much money you’ve spent so far.

Whether something goes wrong now, on the last night of the year, or the first night of the year, I’m here again to warn you about the dangers of venting your frustrations on social med Facebook and Twitter are like a bonfire full of kindling and lighter fluid—just waiting for you to throw the match. You may think it’s a harmless release, or just a way to voice your frustrations, but it’s really just a damaging practice that causes hurt egos and cause animosity.

When I say this, I’m not asking you to subscribe to the negative-social-media-is-killing-racing narrative. In all honesty, I’ve yet to see any conclusive evidence to suggest that when you post something nasty about your track on Facebook people stay away. Is it a smart practice that benefits racing? That’s highly doubtful. But is your post about a lousy call in the tech barn going to keep someone from enjoying their weekly Budweiser while watching Street Stocks on a Saturday night? Also highly doubtful.

What I can say is this—and it’s a narrative you probably haven’t heard yet. You’re hurting yourself when you post negatively on social media. How? Because we’re watching you, and we don’t forget.

When I say “we” I’m not wearing my Circle Track Editor hat. I’m wearing my promoter/announcer/flagman/tech inspector/pit steward/etc. hat. I’m speaking for those who are usually on the wrong end of the Facebook complaining. (As an aside, the airing of a beef between two racers isn’t necessarily healthy either—but sometimes it is entertaining. Just make sure you don’t come off as a whiner. No one likes a whiner).

You may ask: “How can I do damage to myself by throwing the race promoter under the bus? He’s the bad guy who sleeps on a bed of money after every race night. (He really doesn’t, by the way.) I’m just calling him out. Besides, when I post something, no one argues with me, so I must be right.”

Well, hold on to that thought. As a promoter/track worker, I have seen outright lies posted about series and tracks on Facebook. Some are the most uniformed trash that one could only dream up with too much free time. Have I or my co-workers ever engaged? Absolutely not. The most you will ever get out of us is, “If you would like to discuss, feel free to contact me directly.” Why? Because in the court of public opinion—for whatever reason—the official is always wrong. Don’t believe me? Think about watching any sport that has refs. You sure don’t like those guys, and they’re mostly wrong. (I’m guilty of these thoughts, too. Ryan Kessler was interfering with Cam Talbot in Game 5 of the Western Conference Semis. The Edmonton Oilers should have won that game. But I digress…)

I’ll admit it. When you post something negative on Facebook, as a promoter or track worker, my hands are tied. I know that’s an argument I can’t win, or one that is going to be a serious uphill climb. Most other promoters and track workers will agree with me. Engaging in the post is just a waste of time, and a good way for racers, crewmembers, and their fans to come at you in numbers.

With that being said, I want to pass along this caveat that most likely no promoter, flag man, race director, or tech inspector will ever tell you. We take pride in what we do at the racetrack. And just like you remember when someone drives you dirty on the track, officials remember seeing posts on Facebook.

I’ve seen two instances of this so far this season. One was about a call being made and a racer who decided to air it out on Facebook. The other was by a group of racers about rules at a different track, also aired out on Facebook. As these posts were live, I was in contact with track workers. You can probably guess that they weren’t too pleased.

One racer decided to not attend the track where they disagreed with the call. The promoter let them know that if they would like to come back, they could, but the posts must be addressed. As for the other one, there was some animosity, and really no solution.

Now, I know what I’ve said here might make you think that you don’t care if you hurt the promoter’s or the track worker’s feelings. But maybe you should worry about bruising their egos. It’s only human nature to want to level the playing field—an eye for an eye, right? Does that mean next time a marginal call doesn’t go your way? Does it mean you get torn apart in the tech shed? Does it mean you get chewed out next time you see the promoter? Are you not welcomed back at the track?

Honestly, I can’t say I (or any of my fellow track workers promoters in this area) are guilty of this behavior. But I can tell you that frustration levels get very high when watching these posts on Facebook.

It’s up to you to know which buttons you can and can’t push. But for the sake of working with your promoter, you may want to hold off on pushing the one that reads “post.”

The post Dangerous Social Media Practices in Racing appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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