News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by Lionga on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:05PM (#41673767)
Don't hate the player hate the game. Governments made scientist only survive if they show results and specifically the results they want to see. Otherwise no anymore grants and you are done. Whether the results are fake or true does not matter

"Science" nowadays is mostly BS, while the scientific method (hardly ever used in "science" nowadays) is still gold.

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by MetaWhirledPeas on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:11PM (#41673846)
Do hate the player. People are taught ethics for a reason: no set of rules and laws are sufficient to ensure integrity of the system. We rely on personal integrity. This is why we teach it to our children.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by dhruvkar on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:14PM (#41673873)
When everything is a commodity (nothing runs outside of the market economy), the incentives are skewed to this type of behavior.

'Hate' the player' and 'hate' the game.

Some things shouldn't be part of the market economy - education, health and food.

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by hacksoi on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:17PM (#41673905)
If people can get away with it, they will do it. Rules and punishments for breaking them exist for a reason.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by testfoobar on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:35PM (#41674074)
> If people can get away with it, they will do it.

This is not universally true and individuals and societies don't have to be organized this way.

Why are streets in some countries filled with trash when others are clean? My community does not have anyone policing littering - yet our streets, parks and public areas are litter free.

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by Chris2048 on Saturday September 28, 2024 @11:13AM (#41680760)
You are kind of begging the question - Do all members of your community take mandatory ethics classes?
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by throwawayofcour on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:28PM (#41674009)
> If people can get away with it, they will do it.

This isn't true of everyone, but assuming it is increases the likelihood that it will become so. Because if everyone is trying to get away with it, why shouldn't I? That sort of breakdown in trust is high up on my list of worrying societal failure modes.

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by thfuran on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:34PM (#41674068)
If they can get away with it, some people will do it.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by pmarreck on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:26PM (#41673993)
My sole rational argument for Christianity is that it has made the societies that it is, or was, infused with, more honest than the ones that were not.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by projektfu on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:56PM (#41674303)
That sounds like it is loaded with a lot of "no true Scotsman" caveats including, perhaps, Scotland, which has crime like any other country.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by pmarreck on Saturday September 28, 2024 @09:38PM (#41684159)
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by ksenzee on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:38PM (#41674105)
I’m not sure there are any rational arguments for Christianity. I say that as a practicing Christian. Either it meets a spiritual need in you, or it’s not very valuable. I imagine that belief in a God who punishes evildoers has kept some people honest throughout history, but the value of that is surely outweighed by the evil done in the name of that God.

I also don’t believe Christian societies are more honest than others. Every religion I know of teaches honesty, as does every non-religious ethical framework I can think of.

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by pmarreck on Saturday September 28, 2024 @09:37PM (#41684157)
I unfortunately cannot track down the prior research that I did on this in the time I have available as a new father but I am as skeptical as they come and I seemed to have found some solid data suggesting that nations with Christian values are simply broadly more honest and trustworthy. This includes countries such as Iceland because even though it is technically atheist, there's inertia there still from the influence of Christianity on its culture.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by ksenzee on Sunday September 29, 2024 @02:43AM (#41685367)
Congratulations! I hope you're getting some sleep. If you do ever happen across that data I'd be interested.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by regus on Friday September 27, 2024 @03:20PM (#41674521)
People doing bad things, including Christians, is completely in line with the Christian teachings of original sin, the fall and concupiscence. It is human nature to do bad things and it is very difficult to over come this behavior.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by inglor_cz on Friday September 27, 2024 @03:43PM (#41674761)
If I read pagan Roman observations about life and people, they strike me as way, way more honest (sometimes brutally honest) than anything that we are used to for the last 1000 years, perhaps with exceptions like Machiavelli and some verbal jokes of the "unprintable" character.

In Christian theory, everyone is a sinner, but in a real Christian society, people try to cover up their particular sins all the time, at least against other laypeople (not the priest), which leads to the opposite of honesty - hypocrisy.

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by pmarreck on Saturday September 28, 2024 @09:38PM (#41684163)
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by Lionga on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:36PM (#41674079)
We should really do some more honest crusades to export our honest values to the non believers to make the world a better, more honest place.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by pmarreck on Sunday September 29, 2024 @07:51AM (#41686701)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41684157

also the crusades were in significant part a competitive reaction to Islamic "proselytization via violence" so you're placing the blame on the wrong religion, there

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by artificialLimbs on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:17PM (#41673913)
How did those teachings work out for the fraudsters?
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by MetaWhirledPeas on Friday September 27, 2024 @03:38PM (#41674709)
This is exactly what personal integrity is about. You make the right choices specifically and only because they are right. And they are hard choices because you are forgoing immediate gain.

Time favors integrity, and a lack of integrity is usually punished. Sometimes at the individual level, as you age and see the error of your ways. Sometimes at the group level, as you watch your community suffer.

"You reap what you sow."

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by indymike on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:47PM (#41674197)
Their parents taught them different ethics.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by SpaceManNabs on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:21PM (#41673944)
Most of them become distinguished in academia, and only a few get punished if they are too blatant or piss off too many people (see recent ivys losing their presidents over academic fraud).
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by greenavocado on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:33PM (#41674055)
A true scientist never says, "trust me" or even worse, "trust the science."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnPFL0Dr34c

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by vostrocity on Friday September 27, 2024 @04:16PM (#41675089)
Reminds me of this tweet that calls out the problem of the popular position "science is real"

"Science isn’t real - that’s terrible epistemology. It’s a process or method to generate and verify hypotheses and provisional knowledge, using replicable experiments and measurements. We don’t really know the real - we just have some current non-falsified theories and explanations that fit data decently, till we get better ones. The “science is real” crowd generally haven’t done much science and take it on faith."

[1] https://x.com/rao_hacker_one/status/1811295722760982939

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by dekhn on Friday September 27, 2024 @06:26PM (#41676136)
It's probably better to say that engineering based on science is usually real. Engineering cares a lot less about falsifying theories and more on what existing theories seem to have general predictive value, and can be used to do stuff, including things where human lives are at risk (tall buildings, fire reduction materials, airplanes). And if there are failures out in the field, they're inspected, and those results are fed back to update both the practices, and the theories.

Personally I believe we live in an objective universe that can be understood by human brains (possibly using AI augmentation) and that our currently most advanced experimentally verified theories correspond to some actual true aspect of our universe. In that sense, science is real when the current theories match those aspects well enough to make generalizable predictions (general relativity and quantum mechanics).

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by greenavocado on Friday September 27, 2024 @07:23PM (#41676521)
I think you've hit on an important point. Science isn't about finding absolute truth, but rather about generating testable hypotheses that can be validated through experimentation and observation. This is why it's so crucial for scientists to follow the scientific method - they need to be willing to revise their theories based on new evidence. Your comparison between science and engineering is a good one. Engineering is often more focused on practical application, whereas science is more about understanding the underlying mechanisms that govern our world.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by dekhn on Friday September 27, 2024 @07:54PM (#41676680)
The intent of science is to find absolute truth. It's just that the mechanism by which we do so typically involves demonstrating that a finding isn't absolutely true. And we also lack the epistemological confidence to say that what we're observing represents the absolute truth, or that the idea of absolute truth is meaningful.
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by ljosifov on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:28PM (#41674008)
You have agency. Yes - the system provides incentives. However, you are not some pass-through nothingness to just accept any incentives. You can chose to not accept the incentives. You can leave the system. You're lucky - it's not a totalitarian system. There will be another area of life and work where the incentives align with your personal morals.

Once you bend your spine and kneel to bad incentives - you can never walk completely upright again. You may think and convince yourself that you can stay in the system with bad incentives, play the game, but still somehow you the player remain platonically unaffected. This is a delusion, and at some level you know it too.

Who knows? If everyone left the system with bad incentives, it maybe that the bad system collapses even. It's a problem of collective action. The chances are against a collapse, that it will continue to go on for some time. So don't count on collapse. And even if one was to happen in your time, it will be scorched earth post collapse for some time. Think as an individual - it's best to leave if you possibly can.

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by vanderZwan on Friday September 27, 2024 @03:38PM (#41674720)
> Don't hate the player hate the game.

When the game is designed by the most succesful players you absolutely should hate the players for creating a shitty game.

Re:Fraud, so much fraud by BobaFloutist on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:38PM (#41674104)
"Nobody is ever responsible for their own actions. Economics predicting the existence of bad actors makes them not actually bad."
Re:Fraud, so much fraud by Spivak on Friday September 27, 2024 @02:15PM (#41673879)
You are clearly deeply disconnected from the actual practice of research.

The best you can really say is that the statistics chops of most researchers is lacking and that someone researching say caterpillars is likely to not really understand the maths behind the tests they're performing. It's not an ideal solution by any means but universities are starting to hire stats and cs department grads to handle that part.