This essay is fab and I will do a tweet thread on it tomorrow!
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Would it be easy to add a slider for the density of dead nodes? I treat to dig into the js to adjust it, but React spaghettified the code.
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Replying to @Meaningness @calcsam
There's an "Immunity" percentage slider on a few of the widgets, which controls the overall density of dead nodes (see e.g. attached). I left it off of some simulations (for simplicity), but could add it back. Is that what you're referring to? Or something else?pic.twitter.com/ocacUEdzBc
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Replying to @KevinSimler @calcsam
I meant the last one—I don’t see a slider for the % careerists? (possibly one of my 73 security plugins has screwed it up?)
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Replying to @Meaningness @calcsam
OK updated! (It wasn't the fault of your plugins... at least not this time ;)
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Replying to @KevinSimler @calcsam
Thank you! There’s now “careerists” sliders on two of the earlier simulations, which might not be what you wanted? (if adding the careerist sliders to the last one adds it automagically to the others due to code modularity, then maybe better on none…)
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Ofc your sims aren’t meant to be quantitative… but fwiw I’d estimate >80% of scientists are dead weight (<= 0 value). Somehow some science gets done anyway! In practice I think this is because the competent people have informal networks that route around the damage.
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Replying to @Meaningness @calcsam
"Somehow some science gets done anyway!" — well the degree is much higher IRL. In the sims, each scientist can only talk to 4 others! "Informal networks" — I've heard this called the "invisible college" and I _love_ that term.
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Replying to @KevinSimler @Meaningness
Btw, David, I think you'd really like this essay (which I excerpted for you a couple weeks ago): https://thestoryofscience.blogspot.com/?m=0 I would also love to hear your thoughts on it! It talks about invisible colleges and systemic problems with science and many other things.
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Replying to @KevinSimler
Thank, I enjoyed this! Its description of the pathologies of institutional science are mostly correct I think. They’ve been clear to the clueful for decades, have gotten progressively worse, and are now so bad that even the MSM are writing about the problems.
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The question is what to do about it. Charlton is nostalgic for “the systematic mode” or “high modernism” or “the golden age of rationalism,” which ended in the late 60s. What he’d really like to do is to restore that, which gives him a cranky reactionary tone, but >
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Replying to @Meaningness @KevinSimler
> he recognizes that this is impossible, and suggests a return to amateur science instead. His valorized examples are the Manhattan Project and Apollo, which … are the antithesis of amateur science. (As he also notes.) They are, rather, peak achievements of high modernism.
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Replying to @Meaningness @KevinSimler
Since we’re no longer capable of Apollo, we’ll have to go back in history to the Lunar Society of aristocratic amateurs. I fit that profile, after a fashion, so I find it emotionally attractive, but it’s unrealistic for numerous reasons and can’t be taken seriously.
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