I've got a bunch of friends that are interested in starting their own enterprises but are having a hard time finding mentors. Right now the main sources of mentorship seem to be ondeck and y combinator, but these are for people who are interested in build tech stacks and apps - what if you want to start a spacetech company? or an online publishing company? or an online fitness co? All things...
Title says it all - curious to know if all scientific research has gotten more expensive over time, or if that kind of price tag creep is only for particle physics
History is littered with examples of science being used to cause enormous harm - eugenics, phrenology, lobotomies, MKUltra, The four pests campaign, lysenkoism, introduction of cane toads into Australia, etc, etc, etc.What are the best counterexamples? The unsung victories that go beyond taking lead out of paint and gasoline, and the closing of the ozone hole?
There's more thinkpieces than you can count out there about why humans are incapable of interpreting risk, of the cognitive biases that inform our thinking, of the ways in which we underprepare for everything from asteroid impacts to stock market crashes.What it comes down to is the fact that humans are emotional, intuitive creatures that like to do the kinds of things that FEEL right, even if...
In 1887, Michaelson & Morley did their famous interferometer experiment, which demonstrated there was no such thing as the luminiferous aether. Which, fine. The idea that there's a stationary substance through which everything transits seems a little absurd.But things like entanglement and vacuum energy seem to suggest that there IS some kind of connection between atoms. So if the...
For a longer exposition on the difficulties of demarcation problem outlined below: https://youtu.be/bQP-7xgo1uUIn the modern world, there’s a sense that there’s only one way to evaluate your perspective on the world - and that’s application of an empirical scientific method. Can you show it through a double blind controlled study? No? Well then you might be a pseudoscientific crank!But then,...