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Read "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" by John Mearsheimer.
Lets take it one step further.
You start out thinking everything is tooling. As you grow more experienced you realize that everything is process. As you grow more experienced still, you realize that the world is really messy and rarely ever anything is everything.
... unless people from SV are involved, in which case HN is flooded with gossip and drama.
> Only on HN will you see a recounting of a massive achievement of humankind dismissed offhandedly like this.
I'm not dismissing an achievement of humankind. I'm dismissing the PR piece they put out about it.
Do you struggle to see the distinction?
If a person likes soap operas, they could enjoy the movie.
I've noticed the same thing. At least since the BYD investment they do.
And it's not just not criticizing, some times they actually praise him. For example, I remember an interview where Charlie Munger was asked what he thought about bitcoin (he hates it) and he went out of his way to say that Xi Jinping was much smarter than American leadership in banning it.
Now I agree it should be banned, but could he not have made such point without bringing Xi Jinping into it? It was really weird.
These people are hype merchants.
> > For the great majority of people, believing in the truths of science is unavoidably an act of faith.
I largely agree with the statement you quote.
I have a PhD in physics; I understand science well. I believe that man went to the moon. I understand one of the proofs - they left a reflector which you can aim at with a laser.
But.... I've never pointed at laser at it myself. I would probably struggle to obtain such a laser and would definitely struggle to aim it and detect the reflection (by reading up on engineering I probably could do it if I dedicated to it very significant effort). So, on what basis do I hold this belief?
The truthful answer is that I believe I'm good at evaluating other more indirect sources of information. For example, if a scientist claims that they have such a laser and made the measurement, I believe I am knowledgeable enough to read their publication and spot a large class of inconsistencies that could expose their frauds. But.... I haven't even done that. And this is me, who (probably) has the intellectual tools to explore these questions. Imagine someone who doesn't even understand the scientific process.
EDIT: I'm now reading the article and I see that they've made the same points already much better.
Would/could this be seen from google's financial statements? My naive understanding is that if the answer is no, then google must've made a conscious effort in financial engineering to hide it.
Shocking.