Why We Don't Believe in Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/brain-experiments-why-we-dont-believe-science.html <comment><USER2> So, I /am/ a scientist (computer, but still: I was in the PhD program for a long time, and am mainly interested in theoretical issues in parsing and type systems) and most of my friends are as well (everything from chemists and physicists to public health researchers), and even I don't "believe in science" (to mean, if someone sais to me "science claims X", and even shows me a bibliography with quotes from the authors, that I now believe X). If it weren't for my background and experience knowing that science could actually work, or having not spent the time to look into and learn the individual arguments being made and seeing that some of them actually are sound, I could easily see myself discounting something like evolution as a passing fad.

The problem is that 99% of your average person's interaction with "science" is by way of newspaper articles claiming "scientists say red meat is bad" and then three years later "scientists say red meat may be good". Another three years go by, and they see "scientists say red meat is bad for you after all". In reality, some scientists demonstrated an interesting correlation with a single marker (and often later studies are talking about correlations to something else entirely) that may or may not actually be causative, and either the media is spinning it into "a story" or some public health bureau is playing a numbers game that leads to the behavior "if it has any effect at all we should recommend it".

But, what the public sees is: "scientists say X" followed by "scientists say Y, previous scientists were somehow wrong", followed by "scientists claim that second scientists were wrong and they were right the whole time". We are actively training the public so that when we hear "scientist say X" the response is "engh: they're probably wrong". Hell, this article and my reading it is an interesting example: it's chock full of references to published journal papers and actual psychologists, but I honestly don't even care anymore as every time I've gone and pulled the research articles like this are based on I've come up with tenuous conclusions based on flawed experiments that are being trumpeted as the new truth.

Worse, much of the "science" being cited isn't really science at all: a cohort study, for example, has no controlled experiment and can't really be used to show anything definitive; it is, at best, a way to come up with interesting hypotheses on which to later run actual experiments. However, a good number of the "scientists say X" that people hear are from health research, where controlled experiments in humans are sufficiently rare and tied up in ethical conundrums that many of the statements being made (and almost all of the ones involving diets) come from new cohort studies or meta-analyses of previous cohort studies. It is no wonder, then, that every three years we hear something different. ;P

Now, with that in mind, imagine the average person hearing "scientists claim evolution is true". They often respond with things like "it's just a theory: one of many". I will contend that they do that because to them "scientists claim evolution is true" only has as much evidence behind it as "scientists claim red meat is bad for you" or "scientists now claim salt may not be bad for you after all" (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4069613>) and the result is now that they don't trust us: we can tell them anything we want, but they have no reason to believe us anymore, as we were continually wrong to them every time it mattered to them before.

I will then claim that if we want to be credible, we need to stop reporting every paper that comes out to the public as "scientists say X" and even further be careful about what we call "science" in the first place. It should be that when we claim that something is true, it is because we have sufficiently strong theoretical models and experimental evidence that can really claim "this is knowledge that may be imprecise, but is not inaccurate" in the way that newtonian mechanics is a little imprecise (it doesn't take into account relativistic or quantum effects), but isn't so wildly inaccurate that we should ever expect to see a newspaper headline "scientists report we were wrong all along: objects of greater mass actually repel each other".

<comment><USER3> Let me summarize this: <http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif> :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the key things that gets lost in this that the piece tends to assume that unscientific beliefs are somehow bad and we'd be better off without them. I am not convinced that's the case.

There are two reasons I think so. The first is that, as P. W. Anderson pointed out in his essay "More is Different" (published in Science magazine in 1972) reductionism doesn't work. With added complexity comes fundamentally new patterns. Just as chemistry is not just applied physics and biology is not just applied chemistry, I don't think life is just applied science and the real epistemological limits to what science can tell us are very real barriers. Heisenberg does a great job of mapping out these problems in his look at the history of scientific thought ("Physics and Philosophy").

When you look at verbomotor cultures and how they look a the world, their ideas of magic and religion aren't really filling the same roles as science today (see Ong, Walter "Orality and Literacy" and Eliade, Mircea, "Myth and Reality" See also Turner, Victor. "The Ritual Process" and Grimes ed., Ronald "Readings in Ritual Studies"). Instead, in a culture based on spoken discourse instead of writing, everything is based on re-usable patterns that can be flexibly applied. This is something greatly missing in religious thought today. The mystery of a story is not whether it happened in the past but rather how it happens today. From this perspective a story like the Fall from Eden isn't so much about the origins of sin as it is the model of leaving one's parents' house, getting married, having kids, and becoming an adult.

I think these sorts of patterns are likely deeply ingrained in us and it's better for us to accept and use it than fight it in the quest to conform to science. For example, in the article, you have the idea that people naturally think of heat as a substance. This works fine for many applications. One can think of heat exchangers as not being fundamentally different than the system of oxygen exchange in the body or vice versa. They do work the same way on a metaphorical level and these metaphors as Heisenberg shows (again "Physics and Philosophy") are also at the core of the formation of scientific theories. I therefore wonder if we'd have any scientific progress if our scientists had no unscientific beliefs.

Additionally you have issues with the quest to be more scientific often eating the tail of, well, science. For example, it is worth noting that countries in Western Europe who use midwives as the routine primary care for childbirth have better outcomes than Western European countries that do not. Yet there is a fear that by doing this in, say, the US, we will be backing away from our commitment to science. Why is following emperical data seen this way though? Is it that we really worship technology in the guise of science?

</comment><comment><USER5> Preface: I'm an Atheist

The problem that I see is the way we frame these discussions. Does the question "do you believe God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years" preclude you from believing in science on any level?? In these discussions we throw everyone into one bin or another - you either believe in evolution or you believe God waves his/her magical hand for everything.

I'd bet if you asked those same people the question "Do you believe God cooked your pop tarts this morning or do you believe the toaster cooked your pop tart through principles of electricity and heat" you'd get a much more interesting set of answers. (No doubt that you'd still get many that answer the former.)

The problem with these questions is that what you are really asking people of faith is "Are you completely faithful to a religion that guides your daily life?" Most people use and come to religion to guide their day to day human interactions rather than using it as a tool to explore the principles of the universe. If we as humans want to make progress we have to stop pushing on the evolution lever - it just causes divisions. What we should be doing is approaching the topic of science for people of faith from a more artificial level meaning "if X causes Y then Z" sort of stuff. In other words we can approach and teach scientific principles without going down the rabbit hole. Some people will say this isn't possible but I just don't think thats true.

<comment><USER6> I don't see how "do you believe god created humans 10k years ago" can be answered affirmatively while simultaneously believing in evolution, unless you're thinking of a God unlike any of the generally known concepts. A _yes_ carries the weight of rejecting enormous amounts of empirical evidence for evolution of the species and historical accounts.

<comment><USER7> I have learned never to underestimate the human ability for rationalization. Usually the smarter and more intelligent the person, the crazier and more convoluted the self rationalization goes. So believing god created humans and believing in evolution is, I think, quite common.

"God guided the evolution". "God used the evolution to build the physical form then imbued the bodies with human souls". I could go on, but you get the gist.

People are very irrational, and quite easily believe contradictory things.

<comment><USER8> I'm not inclined to argue too hard in favor of God guided evolution, but I don't think you've demonstrated that such a belief is "very irrational". At worst, it's not provable, but it's not disprovable.

<comment><USER9> > At worst, it's not provable, but it's not disprovable.

And the next step is to realize that things that are neither provable nor disprovable do not have any effect on the universe we live in, and thus can safely be ignored and forgotten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Full disclosure: I firmly believe in evolution and have faith that God created our souls.

How could I answer this survey with those ridiculous answers that either pigon-hole me a as scientific illiterate, or someone who thinks that the entire universe is deterministic.

There's a middle ground that I feel is wise: Trust the evidence you see, but remain hopeful that there's more to this world than a fleeting life, death, and permeant non-existance.

<comment><USER11> Your view is the same as mine. Chemical engineer here with an interest in quantum physics. A lot of people take the view that God directly created "stuff", as in He literally created the earth or literally put together the universe. My view is a little different -- I think he created the _laws_ of physics (and math itself essentially) in such a way to form everything exactly the way it is now.

It's a much deeper level of creation than most people consider, partly because the laws of physics are generally taken for granted as simply existing on their own.

<comment><USER12> God as a Chaos Theorist is a nice thought.

<comment><USER11> See, that's what makes it intriguing. Simple systems can become incredibly complicated over a few iterations very quickly. It is one area that humans are (currently) horrible at predicting -- thus it's barely science if you can only barely predict it.

God, almost by definition, would know the results for any chaotic system and can set up the defining parameters to produce a particular output. (Note that this is different than a fine-tuned universe as I am referring to fine-tuned laws rather than natural constants).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is not about "is there a God or not". It's about the question of why rational beliefs are so easily overridden by 'common sense' or religion.

As a counter-point: why does _America_ , a liberal western democracy, still believe in God so fervently?

Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Europe have all experience a significant decline in religion over the last 100 years. Why not in the US?

<comment><USER14> > Why not in the US?

There are many reasons but the most important one, IIRC, is existential insecurity. The more one fears for one's wealth, health, and life, the stronger and widespread religious beliefs. The thesis goes back to Gregory S. Paul [1] and has been confirmed by others; for instance, by Inglehart and Norris (2004) [2].

See also the summery by Thomas Rees. [3]

[1] <http://www.gspaulscienceofreligion.com/> [2] [http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Books/Sacred_and_secul...](http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Books/Sacred_and_secular.htm) [3] [http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2009/07/why-some- countri...](http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2009/07/why-some-countries- are-more-religious.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm agnostic, and I'm interested in Physics.

I believe in science, and the belief itself is nothing different from the beliefs in god for some people. Science theories are all about proving older theories wrong, and humans naturally regard those older theories as "intuition".

I don't think it has anything to do with being naive or not. Aristotle thought that bigger object falls faster, force is required to maintain motion, and air is made with one element. These are all great discoveries that hold for over one thousand years. They are science. And I don't think they are naive at all. Aristotle is one of the most intelligent people at his time, and so is Issac Newton, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Yet today we regard the views of the elites as "truths" and all the rest as "naive intuition".

These scientists all did the same thing: prove something wrong by discovering something that explains more things more accurately in more circumstances. The fundamental way they achieved this is empirical observations, which are simply endless. Therefore, there's nothing stopping us from proving Newton's laws or Relativity wrong.

The way we come up with scientific conclusions has very similar characteristics with the way we know God. In school, we can reach conclusions by drawing a graph with 7 data points and observing some linear relationship with an imaginary straight line that somehow connects them. Boom! A conclusion of "truth". One major difference of scientific discoveries is that they involve mathematics, which is a priori by nature, and this makes "science" consistent and stable.

It's perfectly understandable that not many people believe in evolution. It's a fact that evolution theories have more evidence than creationist beliefs, but it's never a human nature to chase the "more evidence". We make irrational and hence suboptimal decisions everyday, yet we humans as a whole are not necessarily disadvantaged by irrationalities. "More evidence" doesn't mean it's right and "less evidence" doesn't mean it's wrong. "More probable" doesn't mean it will happen, and "less probable" doesn't mean it won't happen. You get the idea.

Or is it true that elites (minority of people) have more tenancy to believe in theories with more evidence, accept explanation that covers more circumstances and do things that have more probabilities of success? And everyone else is stuck with emotions, "naive intuition" and irrationalities?

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder why people hate on believing that the sun revolves around the earth. It would make for more complicated equations of motion, but is not unscientific or wrong to believe that to be the case. It just turns out that the math is easier when you believe that the sun is at the center.

<comment><USER17> I heard once that the circles-on-circles construction of the motion of the bodies of solar system when Earth is taken as its center is merely the Fourier transform of the ellipses that describe the solar system with the Sun as its center.

Unfortunately, I never saw the actual derivation, so that idea is basically hearsay.

<comment><USER18> I think you misheard. The epicycle system is, in essence, an n-termed complex Fourier _series_ (not transform). The point that the person who told you this was trying to make was that any path can be represented using enough terms in a complex Fourier series, so it's a fairly bad system for deriving physical laws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've always been interested in the definition of 'science'. What makes one belief 'scientific' as opposed to non-scientific.

In order to approach science, we must assume that nature is lawful, deterministic and understandable. Of course, we all know that there are certain 'laws' of nature that exist and have been proven beyond doubt, but the majority of science consists of findings that result from studies that rely on an arbitrary probability of 95%+.

<comment><USER20> Science is not a belief system, it is a knowledge system and the distinction is quite precise and necessary. Science is a method for developing predictive models based on material observation and nothing else.

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't limit the goal of science to developing predictive models, to completely understand a behaviour we must also be able to describe, explain and control the behaviour.

<comment><USER20> I would suggest that describing and explaining a behavior is the same as constructing a predictive model of that behavior, and that controlling it is in the realm of engineering, not science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _[in regards to the Big Bang] Why are some scientific ideas hard to believe in?_

I hate to wade into Intelligent Design but I'm feeling grumpy tonight so what the hell.

First, I do not believe in some mythical deity who created the world 7 thousand years ago. Or even last week. I'm agnostic. Those things I do not know about, I do not know about. It is not logical to waste energy either believing or disbelieving in them.

Having said that, we had a great piece on HN a year or two ago from a mathematician showing that we are most likely living in a simulated universe. I don't have the academic chops to comment on it, but I know that it's entirely possible that all of our sensory inputs are being manipulated in ways that mimic the universe we think we live in. When you think of billions of years of intelligence evolving all over the place, we're fairly simple creatures. Just like we could fool an ant into thinking his queen lives somewhere else, I don't think it'd be very difficult at all for some external entity to control us. Maybe as a game. Who knows.

The point is: the idea that our sensory perceptions are fabricated and false in some way is a perfectly self-consistent and logical thing to believe in. Of course, it's a really stupid thing to believe in if you're a scientist, because if you can't trust empirical evidence, science kind of goes out the window. So yes, scientists can't believe that and have any kind of career at all, but there's nothing wrong with Joe SixPack believing it.

I bring that up because of something good the author mentions: _This means that science education is not simply a matter of learning new theories. Rather, it also requires that students unlearn their instincts_

This is true. Much like pilots have to learn not to trust their inner ear when flying, students _of science_ have to unlearn many things they may consider "common sense".

But you end up coming full circle. Even accepting science as the only light mankind has in the darkness, eventually you end back up wondering if the models we have are not just more fancy versions of the Ptolemy's Celestial Spheres[1]. You can take models that don't fit and do all sorts of magic with them to make them work. For a long time.

I am concerned that we are "diagnosing" people as somehow in need of re- education, medication, or intervention simply because they think in a different manner from the rest of us. If my neighbor wants to believe he's living in a Matrix, more power to him. He's not going to be a rocket scientist any time soon. And even if he is, plenty of people manage to have deeply trans-rational beliefs about the way things work and they function just fine in the world in all sorts of intricate, complicated scientific endeavors. We are drawing distinctions where none may be needed.

Science is provisional. In my opinion we should always approach it with humility. What I am seeing more and more is people who somehow feel elevated by science to be better than their peers. That's pretty cool when you're 20 and figure out how awesome it is that calculus and physics go together, but it's a really screwed up way to live your life or influence public policy.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres>

<comment><USER22> I was thinking about this a bit recently. Now, as a disclaimer, I am not particularly well-versed in philosophy or anything, so chances are I'm either categorically mistaken or echoing a well-known idea.

My thought was this: something that is fundamentally unknowable is also fundamentally irrelevant. Particularly, something only matters if it has some effect. This leads to two cases: it either has an effect, and is therefore measurable, or it does not have an effect and therefore does not matter.

Now, this only applies to problems that are _fundamentally_ undecidable--if it's just practical limitations (say technological shortcomings) then they could have an effect that we just can't reasonably trace.

But the idea of living in a perfect simulation that behaves _just like the universe_? From our perspective, that is not different from the just living in the universe _at all_. Now, if we could measure a difference, it could be important, but lets take the premise that we can't: now thinking about the universe as is or as a simulation of the universe as is is equivalent. So in _either_ case the simpler model--no simulation--is, in essence, correct.

The same applies to a religious straw man--the god who does not affect the world at all. If the god just makes the world behave exactly the way it behaves, it may as well be taken out of the picture, mathematically cancelled (in a sense).

Anyhow, just a thought.

<comment><USER23> I think we'd need to distinguish "scientifically irrelevant" from "humanly irrelevant".

Scientifically, discovering that a god created the universe and let it be (the disinterested watchmaker) has no bearing on any future experiments.

Psychologically/sociologically, discovering that some god exists would change humanity forever. Even if the god couldn't be interacted with, the level of religious fervor would rise to unimaginable heights.

Discovering we are simulations living in a matrix [every neutrino has a serial number on it!] might drive people to drastically different behavior (suicide, risk taking, etc.) even there may not be a measurable difference in the simulated and virtual reality.

Basically,

human society with irrelevant knowledge of universe != human society sans knowledge

<comment><USER22> But if we _could_ discover that we live in the matrix or at the whim of some deity, it would mean that that fact had _some_ effect on the world. Even a tiny non-zero effect could be amplified, like you explained, to have gigantic repercussions.

However, I was only really thinking of fundamentally unknowable things. That is, my argument is basically (in mathy notation) `∀x: ¬disoverable(x) → ¬matters(x)`. That is, if you _can_ know x, I've said nothing about it. All I'm saying is that if you _cannot_ discover something to be true, it cannot have any effect on you.

The contrapositive is also very important: `∀x: matters(x) → disoverable(x)`. That is, if something _could_ have an effect (like your examples) then it _has to be_ discoverable.

Since your main premise is that disoverable(x) is true--e.g. we _can_ somehow find this out--my statement does not apply (or, rather, thanks to the way implication works, it's true regardless of what effect x does or does not have).

Now, if we fundamentally can't prove whether we're living in a simulation or not, somebody could still convince the human population that we _are_ and cause the same effects you're mentioning. However, the beautiful thing here is that this could happen _regardless_ of whether we actually are in a simulation or not (since the premise is that we can't tell), so the truth of the fact doesn't actually matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The findings here seem fairly spurious. Intuitively true things are given more immediate access in the brain because the neural pathways are strong for them. Non-intuitive things take longer because the pathways are weaker. Equating this with instincts seems unreliable at best. Really the problem is people have a hard time grasping the unintuitive so long as it is not brought into alignment with more intuitive concepts. This is much more fundamental than "bad instincts" - it's really more that the vast majority of learning takes place outside of conscious perception and is not conceptual in nature.

</comment><comment><USER25> Sad to see no mention of Hume (in the article or comments). He figured out the limitations of science 300-ish years ago.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume#Hume.27s_.22Science_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume#Hume.27s_.22Science_of_man.22)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction>

<comment><USER26> I find the problem of induction interesting. I've long had this strange doubt whether, for example, the natural numbers actually correspond to a natural phenomenon—or whether classical logic is anything more than an approximate model of whatever logic actually underlies the universe.

Humans mostly understand counting intuitively, logic perhaps less so. But how can we make inductive statements about natural numbers if they're merely a by- product of how our brains work? How could we use the "pure" language of mathematics to communicate with extraterrestrials if our understanding of mathematics is based on entirely different principles?

As a pragmatist, I mostly just keep my head down and say "numbers and Booleans may not _be_ anything, but we can use them to do things, and that's good enough".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I found myself wincing at "pressure produces heat". For the purpose and context of this article, that is probably close enough. Because the subtlety of energy spent _increasing_ pressure being converted to thermal energy is too finicky. But it's also more correct.

And this relates to a problem I've run into whenever you try to talk to an expert about something. People come up to me with fanciful ideas about physics and you have to stop them every five seconds to clear up what they mean by "power" or "energy". Or (as a favor) just listen all the way through and see if you can get a notion of what they mean so you can discuss their idea.

Same thing happens when I try to ask lawyers about something. I'm always getting asked, "Do you mean a law, or a _statute_?" or having things like "well, that's a legal term-of-art" given back to me.

The point being that it's hard to jump into thinking about anything that others have spent a long time considering and carefully defining.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't believe I would have to suppress theory that Sun revolves around Earth because I never had such theory because when I became curious why this bright dot on the sky appears on different places it was explained to me what revolves around what and how it is possible.

I think I might have more trouble with the question "does the sun move across the sky" because when I look up I don't see any movement.

It's not about the intuitiveness of a belief. It's about whether the right or wrong theory got to the child first. You internalize first good enough theory you hear not the one that's most intuitive or the one that explains all the data best.

<comment><USER29> I don't think it's that simple. Look at our language: the sun _rises_ in the east and _sets_ in the west. Noon is when the sun is straight above us. All this basic language implies the sun is moving and the earth is stationary. Language is incredibly important to how we form thoughts.

<comment><USER28> "Sun rises" implicates only movement. Sun apparently moving does not imply that I'm stationary. It's easy to tell that the sun moves same way as trees move seen through a window of a train.

You could explain it to a 4 year old. But for that you have to know and believe that it's the Earth that actually moves. Otherwise you'll plant false idea and intuition into member of next generation.

<comment><USER29> That point wasn't whether or not you could explain it or believe it; obviously everyone knows the earth revolves around the sun. The point is that somewhere deep in our brains the sun moving around the earth is fundamental. The fact that our language implicates movement of the sun might just be the cause.

<comment><USER28> I don't think our brains have built in even the concept of the Earth having any around for the Sun to move.

Many religions have concept of sun being born at dawn, travel through the sky and die at dusk and stay dead through the night.

Our brains surely have the idea that Earth is flat built in. But I don't think that anyone has to suppress that ingrained theory when answering "is the Earth round or flat?"

This is because we all as children, when we were for the first time curious what shape the world has, were told that it's round and were shown pictures. That's first sensible theory we got and that's the one we internalized.

<comment><USER29> > But I don't think that anyone has to suppress that ingrained theory when > answering "is the Earth round or flat?"

That's an unfounded assumption; perhaps we pause at that question as much as we pause about questions about the movement of the sun. Certainly the character of the question is the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This:

"In 1982, forty-four per cent of Americans held strictly creationist views, a statistically insignificant difference from 2012."

Incorrect use of the term "statistically insignificant" and other stat terms needs to stop.

<comment><USER31> For real. I stopped reading the article once the author used "Begging the question" incorrectly. Not sure how I'm supposed to take any journalism seriously if the reporter can't even use simple English phrases correctly.

<comment><USER32> That's a very pervasive mistake, to the point where one could question if it may be simply snobbery to insist on it being a mistake (although I am strongly in favor of correct usage, the nature of language is such that people use terms which they believe others will interpret as they do, and the people who associate the "wrong" meaning already appear in the majority). On another note, I think it's generally nothing to be proud of when you "stop reading something", and I wish people would stop announcing it in this complaining manner--if you didn't read the article, there's not much to discuss so you might as well not make this known at all. There are lots of other informative points to be gleaned from the article if you look past these rather superficial errors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > What makes the human mind so resistant to certain kinds of facts, even when > these facts are buttressed by vast amounts of evidence?

It's not human thing. It's USA thing: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Views_on_Evolution.svg>

If you don't know Tim Minchin you might enjoy his take on this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9uIMR8yCPg>

</comment><comment><USER33> There are plenty of people outside the US, religious or not, who have no problems with science. Religion only seems to be anti-science in the USA and amongst a tiny minority in the Islamic world.

I wonder if religion is really the issue. Is there some political imperative that is served by keeping the voting population ignorant about science? Perhaps business, politics and media have worked to create a society turned away from science and then those people turn to religion to fill the gaps.

<comment><USER34> > Is there some political imperative that is served by keeping the voting > population ignorant about science?

Certainly there is. Maybe not in an evil way like "hey! let's keep all the people ignorant so we can control the world", but mainly to keep the status quo.

Consider this: Science teaches to question everything, so you can understand the rationale about how and why something happens the way it does.

But... having a bunch of people questioning everything, even the very fabric of our society, is usually not something very amusing to the ones that happen to be the current rulers. That's why, from the ancient world to this days, the higher studies where reserved to the elites... the less likely part of the population that would turn against the current structure of society. For example, during the Dark Ages, the church saw science as the works of the devil (and sadly, some of them still do [ _1]).... or more specifically, something that would make people question about their doings, their position it society, and so on...

And usually, things doesn't go so nice to the people in power, when more and more people starts questioning their world. Look at what happened to Luis XVI, Nicholas II, or more recently in the Middle East. Or looking even closer... the anti-globalist movements and the environmental movements, as (not-so- extreme) examples of people questioning the status quo.

Finally, in some countries it's very public that some politicians think and say that is much easier to handle an ignorant population, than a well educated one.

[Edit: Added] [_1] A few years ago, when I asked a very religious fellow student about the existence of fossils, his answer was that some where the remains of the animals that lived before the great flood, and the older ones where there just to "test our faith".

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > _"Why are some scientific ideas hard to believe in?"_

Because some scientific ideas are constantly derided and publicly ridiculed by moral, cultural and political leaders and institutions. If the church and half the country (still) held that heliocentricity were preposterous, it may still be as 'hard to believe in' as evolution is, decades after science considered it 'settled'.

<comment><USER19> See my comment below - is there such a thing as a scientific 'idea'?

<comment><USER35> Yes. An idea formed on a basis of scientific study. "Idea" is just shorthand to cover what we colloquially know as theories, natural laws, hypotheses that haven't yet been directly tested, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > At the present rate, the Darwinian revolution, at least in America, will > take just as long.

I would say that it's exclusively an American problem :) I get rather annoyed stumbling on the creationist articles. It's like reading on flat earth in 2012. What's even more entertaining is that people try to explain it in A.C.C. and D.L.P.F.C. terms. Just "get your shit together", folks :)

</comment><comment><USER36> Daniel Kahneman gave a good informal talk about these different reasoning systems and why both are useful: [http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/daniel- kahneman...](http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/daniel-kahneman-on- the-trap-of-thinking-that-we-know/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Why?

Because humans reason inductively and not deductively. We use short cuts, quick heuristics, analogies and similes. We anthropomorphize, we look for direct causes and effects over linear time scales. That's just the tip of the ice berg.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases> \- That's a pretty comprehensive list. Memorize and comprehend all of those, and even then you won't get a handle around how badly humans reason - because you are human yourself!

It's also why humans find programming difficult (logic is very unnatural to a inductive reasoner). All swans are white programmers will quickly smash into the error caused by unpredictbale black swans coming into the system. Hence that's why you need exceptions, conditionals and containers to deal with the most absurd inputs ([http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/04/working-with- the-ch...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/04/working-with-the-chaos- monkey.html)).

Humans are animals, with a bunch of neurons in their heads that look for and extract statistically significant patterns from correlated data over short term linear time scales. We mistake correlation for causation thanks to all the mental shortcuts that were used to keep us alive in a less complex world.

Why don't we believe in science? The same reason we eat food, drink water and socialize with our peers - to stay alive. Science is deduction from first principles (backed by evidence of course). And that is very, very unnatural.

Note: Proud reductionist here!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction>

</comment><comment><USER38> I am irritated by the use of the word "we" in the title, "Why We Don't Believe in Science".

The article begins with three paragraphs discussing the widespread belief in creationism. It appears to the reader (that is to say, me--I clarify just whom I'm speaking for, unlike the author) that this is intended at least as a prominent example of "us not believing in science". In fact, this appears to be the focus of the article.

However, the author talks as though he sees creationism as obviously false, calling the 46% statistic "a stark blow to high-school science teachers everywhere", and asking, "What makes the human mind so resistant to [...] facts [...] buttressed by vast amounts of evidence?" Furthermore, the author does not provide any arguments against creationism, instead proceeding as though it were obviously false to his audience as well.

Well, if neither the author nor his intended audience is a creationist (when evolutionary alternatives to creationism appear to be the "Science" that "We Don't Believe In"), then just who is "we"? The word seems quite inappropriate.

All the article manages to establish about "we" is that, when we're processing and reasoning about physical systems, if they don't map well to visceral intuition, then we use an extra part of our brains; and that this appears to cost some kind of effort and slow us down. I expect even that last effect could be mitigated with practice or by developing a certain mindset; but ignoring that, all it would establish is "We Think More Slowly About [Certain Kinds of] Science", not "We Don't Believe In [Certain Kinds of] Science". Just learn to think slowly and carefully in certain situations; I think I, for one, have that reflex built into my bones. Anyway, it being difficult to think about something is clearly insufficient explanation by itself--how many people "don't believe in integral calculus"?

If you actually want to know why the people who believe in creationism believe in creationism, then you should probably investigate them. Let's see. We have idea A (creationism--really this refers to a category of many specific beliefs), and competing idea B (human evolutionary theory). Both ideas are sufficiently complex and detailed that it is unlikely that many of the people we're interested in came up with it on their own. So let's see when and how they're exposed to both ideas, and how they reason about the ideas on their own after exposure.

At this point, for a journalistic article worth publishing, you would probably want to present some research. Find some creationists, ask them some questions about their background, figure out some patterns, do some large-scale sampling to see if you've found all the common patterns, and do detailed interviews of a few representative people from each pattern.

(Probably the biggest pattern is "grows up in a religious, creationist family; is exposed to human evolutionary theory either not at all, or just a little in high school, and is told by parents and priests or other authorities that it's all bunk, and accepts this; takes a career path that doesn't involve studying human genetics or biology in detail; and doesn't find a need to seriously question creationism at any point in the rest of their life."

If evolution were easier to reason about, it might increase the rate at which people decided on their own--after having been exposed to evolutionary theory --that humans evolved. But... I find evolution easy to understand and reason about--at least in simple cases of obvious improvements to an organism; the evolution of behaviors that are useful only in a group or in a family with certain structure is much more difficult, because it's hard to know what hominid societies were like; but most of the obvious changes between humans and more primitive mammals--getting taller and more dexterous and brainy--are easy to at least decide to be plausible. I think it really just doesn't come up often in these people's lives, except as something like "Another godless rant from a misguided intellectual", which is easily dismissed. I conclude that the scientific content of this article--the studies involving observing how people and their brains respond to "nonintuitive" physical situations--is probably in fact irrelevant to the stuff about creationists.)

Once you've learned why creationists are the way they are, then you might learn what might be good ideas for how to change them. But! Any moral principle that justifies you using any means to try to change _them_ can justify them using the same means to try to change _you_. Anyone who advocates compulsory, tax-funded public schooling, and then complains about the fact that they're being forced to send their kids to be taught anti-science and to pay for the same disservice to be done to _other_ kids--I consider you to have brought your problems upon yourself and I have no sympathy for you. (Nor do I sympathize with creationists in favor of compulsory public education. A plague on all your houses, dammit!) If you feel the need, then put your efforts into civil, reasoned argument, hopefully in a not-annoying way.

This result about people apparently having to "push back against their instincts" is an interesting thing. I'd be interested to hear more detailed and careful investigation on the subject: can you establish exactly what things are hard to reason about? does it vary from person to person? can you improve by thinking about such situations more, and would this make it hard to do repeated measurements with the same people? etc. This would have been good as a standalone science article. Unfortunately, it was cast as an article about evolution vs creationism, with an annoyingly incorrect (and possibly condescending) title and a probably misleading conclusion.

On the other hand, it'll probably attract a lot of traffic. If that is the author's job, he's probably done it well. I want to go live in a private little world now...

Well, I don't know. Maybe backlash from people like me can have _some_ effect. There's probably a reason they don't put up even more linkbait-y stuff. Some people would decide to read other stuff. Even those who eat up the linkbait, they're probably not discriminating, and they could easily switch to another linkbait source that might happen to give them better content once, or be more convenient once. I guess maybe I can hope for competition and a race to the bottom to wipe out stuff like this. (Come to think of it, that is happening. But this newspaper probably has some highbrow content as well, neh? Hmm... It's possible that an editor (with detailed observation of readers), or the author, might figure out that linkbait eventually loses readers and reputation, and eliminate the column from the paper, or the technique from his writing repertoire. Possible. For now, I'm still going to my private little world.)

</comment><comment><USER39> Maybe the numbers are stable because people who reject the theory of evolution have lots of kids that they homeschool.</comment>


Why is Clean Code suggesting avoiding protected variables? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables <comment><USER2> I just learned about the existence of this book a few minutes before seeing this post (what's the name of the phenomena whereby after discovering something once, you immediately observe it again?), and the M.O. of the book resonates with me; I do lots of refactoring, as well as a fair amount of API design, and I've always put a lot of thought into the "best" way to write code. E.g. while I personally enjoy writing clever code, such code is usually a detriment in a team environment. I also get irritated when others don't put time & effort into writing clean code (or at least putting a minimal amount of thought and effort into it).

But I see that there's some pushback against this book, and so I'm not sure if it's all that it's cracked up to be. Anyone have any opinions?

<comment><USER3> I think you mean the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon[1], which I always find funny, since I learned about it the day after I watched the movie.

[1]: Listed on <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases>

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's it! Oddly enough, I can never remember the name of it. I'm going to attempt to commit it to long-term memory by classifying it as a cognitive bias; hope it sticks this time...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Actually the perspective of languages like objective C and Python about variable privacy or accessibility is pretty flexible.</comment>


Petition to Pardon Edward Snowden - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD <comment><USER2> I don't mean to be cynical, but a mere petition is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is a government agency that is commiting widespread breach of privacy. A petition will not be respected. It's an OK start, but it will be essentially meaningless.

If you want results, riot in the streets. Civil disobeience. Historical actions and movements that achieve some measure of peace.

The _ease_ of an action corresponds to what it can _achieve._ Do you want change? Show the government how badly you want it. Fight for your rights. Don't just click a link.

They've demonstrated they don't care for the voice of the people. So change the domain to something they _do_ care about.

<comment><USER3> _If you want results, riot in the streets. Civil disobeience. Historical actions and movements that achieve some measure of peace._

Do you have any backups for that? I mean, any historical proof that rioting will make change?

You know, Tunisia went on a relatively peaceful revolution and now we have less freedom and more problems/unemployment. It's even worse for countries where the revolution is violent.

Having lived that experience, I'll be against rioting/civil disobedience any time and for any cause.

Want to make change? Educate people. nothing else.

<comment><USER4> Revolution in France in 1789. We don't learn history in school for nothing I hope.

<comment><USER5> Wasn't that the one that introduced Robespierre and the Reign of Terror, and then later another despot? Sure, Napoleon was talented and introduced the civil code, but it was still another example of the guy with the biggest stick making the rules.

<comment><USER4> They were uneducated people who went through a system that only valued rich and well connected people. What did you expect?

Take lessons from the past, and APPLY them to your context.

I'm not saying that rioting and killing Obama is the solution. I'm saying that using the government's tools (petitioning) against them is ridiculous. You have to show people you're angry, you have to show your entire country you're angry and you want things to change, laws to change, the system to change. You have to take a real stand.

EDIT : As I mentioned in some other comment. The revolution brought us Democracy, which later spread across all Europe, and brought us the beautiful Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which is used everywhere in the world as standards (not always respected though). I believe the revolution was the most beautiful part of France history. Napoleon was our anger which was still resonating years after the Monarchy. We're calm people now.

<comment><USER5> You can take a stand without violence.

You can take a stand without destruction.

Hell, ask Snowden if he would rather have organized online action to protest, or people in the street beating other people...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have to put your full name in to sign (I did). Ominous captcha: [http://i.imgur.com/P0Ff5Kd.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/P0Ff5Kd.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER7> You need to have been convicted to receive a pardon, the petition should be not to prosecute.

Despite the semantics, this is a good idea to let the administration know that a lot of citizens do not consider what Snowden did to be a crime and support his actions.

<comment><USER8> Nixon received a "full, free, and absolute pardon" from Gerald Ford [0], despite not actually having even stood trial, let alone having been convicted.

[0]: [http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26847.html](http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26847.html)

<comment><USER9> It's not clear if this would have stood up in court, since Nixon was never prosecuted.

<comment><USER8> However, when the president of the United States issues a pardon, even one that is of questionable legality, it's still a powerful statement: Ford placed the power and influence of the Oval Office in between Nixon and any prosecutor.

This petition suggests a similar maneuver with Obama and Snowden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This won't do any good. White House policy is to not comment directly on pardons, but to direct such petitioners to the Office of the Pardon Attorney ([http://www.justice.gov/pardon/](http://www.justice.gov/pardon/)).

See eg. [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/grant-full- pardon-...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/grant-full-pardon-chris- williams-man-facing-80-years-prison-legally-growing-medical- marijuana/PgtWfvFg), a past pardon petition.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's a lot of negativity in this thread, so I'll simply say two things.

1) If you do nothing, nothing will change. Protesting might not be the best choice, but it's better than no action at all. This petition will change absolutely nothing, especially if it only reaches the minimum required signatures. There are 311,000,000 people in the United States which means a menial 100,000 signatures accounts for 0.0003215434% of the total population. Not even 0.01%.

2) Martin Luther King Jr changed the course of a nation with civil disobedience. To say it can't be done again is ignorant and foolish.

</comment><comment><USER12> It is the government that should be petitioning the public and the planet for a pardon.

<comment><USER13> That would be an interesting world to live in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The sole purpose of these petitions is to collect mailing lists for people concerned about specific issues. Here is an example where I may not want to be associated with... though I guess they probably have access to my bank accounts, and taxes, and can see I donate to the EFF every year...

on a separate note, I really do worry about the well being of this guy.

<comment><USER15> No, it isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm still making my mind up about what I think about the activities of Edward Snowden. (I was just reading some of the press coverage about him, especially the extensive story about him in The Guardian.) And I am on record here on HN sharing information about mass popular movements to fight tyranny

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840000)

and commenting on cases I have personally observed and participated in of turning a country from dictatorship with a secret police including political assassins into a representative democracy with a free press, fair elections, and independent judiciary, and constitutionally protected civil liberties.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5844864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5844864)

That said, I am also on record somewhere on HN expressing the general opinion that it is pointless for us to submit White House petitions here as new stories. That's not really on-topic for HN, and it's not clear to me (in light of my knowledge of what kind of protest movements have worked in the past to overcome dictatorships) that posting a White House petition here does any good in the real world. Your opinion may differ, but I offer the thought that we have better means

[http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html](http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html)

of tackling your concern about government data-gathering programs than posting White House petitions. If you like the petitions, share them in your social networks in which you see your friends, but discuss the real, powerful democracy hacker tools here.

</comment><comment><USER17> It may as well read:

Sign here to admit you are treasonous terrorist-loving scum who should be under constant surveillance by the NSA for the protection of all fine, upstanding, _compliant_ 'merican citizens.

<comment><USER18> They apparently already think that about us, so why not put it on the line.

When we say "put your John Hancock" on it, there's a reason...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thanks for creating this. Signed.

How many others dare to let the administration know your opinion about transparency?

<comment><USER20> Should submit it with many public figures public email address: firstname.lastname@example.com etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Please sign this petition now.

Upvoting and discussion on HN is important, but if 50% of the people who read this take 30 seconds to sign the petition, it could truly help.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why can't I login with my Google or Facebook accounts? :-)

<comment><USER23> lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We're going to have to go to the streets to do this. This is something where a government needs to see physical people to be swayed.

</comment><comment><USER25> A trial would be FAR better for everyone, at least if it happened openly (which it wouldn't)

Imagine the US Government having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this disclosure caused "exceptionally grave damage to US national security."

<comment><USER26> If it got that far I wouldn't be surprised if they claimed to have strong and compelling evidence of grave harm ... But cannot reveal it due to security concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Show support and solidarity. I submitted this about changing GitHub avatars: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5850659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5850659)

</comment><comment><USER13> Isn't it a bit soon for this? We don't even know if he's released anything of substantial value. As I understand it Glenn Greenwald is retaining the "best" for later.

<comment><USER28> If his leak was not of particular value, then he is more deserving of punishment?

This would have a chilling effect on leaking, to say the least. Miscalculating the public's capacity to care should not increase your sentence.

<comment><USER13> You're right that there is a certain paradox in what I wrote.

"If he has leaked something of value to America and the world then he should not be punished. But if he has leaked nothing of value then there was no need for it to be secret, and he should not be punished!"

I dunno. At the very least it would be nice to have the evidence out in full before jumping to conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I find it an oxymoron that you have to sign up for an account to a government website to sign a petition asking for them to stop invading my privacy. Maybe I'm just being cynical.

</comment><comment><USER30> Web tools finally able to tip the balance of government more towards direct democracy rather than representative. Signed. eventually, these networked tools will threaten to snowball into actual political change, and their makers will shut them down. but it's pretty easy to make a clone once people have an expectation that _this is how government_ should work.

</comment><comment><USER31> There is no way this petition can succeed. The powers that be speak realpolitik, and you don't. It's just that, with easier worldwide media outlets, their secrecy is occasionally exposed for a brief while until we forget. Go home. Get on with your life. If you're not already playing in the big leagues, there is literally nothing you can do.

</comment><comment><USER32> To everyone saying the petition is useless:

It's a good start. If enough people sign, it will force the administration to answer the petition. Even if it doesn't push the administration to give a positive answer, it can help fuel more protests and actions.

<comment><USER33> It doesn't force anything. The petition can be completely ignored, some bullshit answer given, etc., etc. How many more ineffective petitions will you people piss away your time with before you understand it's just a distraction?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> In the West Wing, a US TV Show that is no longer on air after 8 seasons, the White House communications director leaked to the press that the US had a military space shuttle. He leaked this so that astronauts on board a disabled shuttle could be rescued. In the TV show, the public generally agreed with what he did and treated him as a hero.

(This is where the relevant part comes into play)

Before the communications director was unceremoniously fired by the President, the President told the communications director:

"When you walk out of here, there'll be people out there, perhaps a great many, who'll think of you as a hero. I just don't for a moment want you thinking I'll be one of them."

(disclaimer/spoiler: The communications director was pardoned by the President after much deliberation on the President's part. This was mainly due to his very close friendship, and the fact that the communications director had a family on the way)

</comment><comment><USER35> I would sign the petition to pardon Edward Snowden but to create an account they require an email address and I didn't want that to be tracked.

<comment><USER10> www.hushmail.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I see signatures growing at steady clip, I am happy. This witch hunt where rapist are walking and decent people get locked up is not right.

</comment><comment><USER37> Mark Zuckerberg should apologize for calling the press reports stemming from Snowden's actions "outrageous".

</comment><comment><USER38> This seems like a bit much. Why not a petition not to prosecute him, or not to extradite him?

A blanket free-ride for any and all crimes just won't ever happen. What if he murdered several people along the way, let's say they weren't government employees or involved in PRISM at all, does that mean he should be pardoned for that? The language on this petition needs serious work to get real support, or to have a reasonable chance of being addressed.

<comment><USER28> "Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed _related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs._ "

If Edward Snowden murdered people that were not government employees or involved in PRISM, then that plainly would not be crimes _related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs_. If it was at all ambiguous, it could be argued in court.

<comment><USER38> Not necessarily, also, I was using an extreme example to make a point, I can imagine many scenarios where he killed a civilian "related to blowing the whistle," but since that obvious exaggeration failed to get my point across I'll move along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is the perfect distillation of everything that is right and hopeful and beautiful about the internet.

</comment><comment><USER40> This petition has less of a chance than the one about building a death star.

</comment><comment><USER41> It's a trap by the NSA!

</comment><comment><USER42> A pardon implies that someone broke the law. This isn't the case here.

</comment><comment><USER43> Don't you have to be convicted first before you can be pardoned?

</comment><comment><USER44> Why would it be only a one day partition. One day to reach 100,000.

<comment><USER45> One month.

<comment><USER44> My mistake, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If you sign the petition, your name goes on another list, too. ;)

</comment><comment><USER47> Firefox can't find the server at petitions.whitehouse.gov.

</comment><comment><USER48> Like I'm actually going to sign that...

</comment><comment><USER49> Please fix the typo "a a full"...

</comment><comment><USER50> women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children why won't someone think of the women and children women and children WOMEN AND CHILDREN women and children why aren't you crying yet

(referred to this thread -> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5846391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5846391))

(i'll keep posting this, enjoy)

<comment><USER18> Don't worry, this means an awful lot to many out here, even in America

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This should be read as an indictment of what the site has become, not just an example of it.

"Where's the petition to NOT pardon him!!"

I will do it. I will ragequit. This site is turning into a libertarian silicon valley version of freerepublic.

When you've found civilisation, America, in 1000 years or so you'll realise that autoritarianism works and that's why you've got it.

If we had a fascist government, everyone would be in prison except me. I'm sick of the police failing to do their job because they don't know that it IS: to provide a level playing field, that I can see, so I have no need or temptation to cheat in the first place. As an average HN reader, you know this is correct. Ever been pulled over for speeding on a road where everyone else gets away with worse? Until the state STOPS the bad guys having all the fun, you, the state, down to every beat cop, haven't done this. More government now. Much much much much more. Make 50% of the population into prison officers and cops if necessary. There'll be zero unemployment.

Well whaddya know. The great recession _has_ caused Europeans to return to fascism. Way to go Dick Fuld(!)

@pg : either ban all politics from the site or deal with the fires of hell that start in 5 4 3 2 1

Hi there NSA readers, keep it up.

<comment><USER52> Why not just stand up and cool off? The focus of the story is privacy on the internet, and predictably it gets huge play on this website.

<comment><USER53> You'd think that the crowd who reads hacker news would understand that the data on Twitter, Facebook, and Google is not their own property.

You are not entitled to outrage over data you freely gave away.

And the NSA has had domestic phone metadata since the 1970's, the only thing different is the speed and scale.

The real focus should be on the guy who gave up state secrets and then defected to China. Did he make some kind of deal? There were a dozen better ways to handle the abuse he perceived at the NSA - he chose what was most convenient for him.

He does not get my respect, and he is certainly not a hero.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: GitHub repository finder for beginners - <AUTHOR> http://searchgit.johnmarinelli.me

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really simple Angular app that is really a glorified frontend for the Github API. The goal was to find open source projects that are still in early stages of development, so beginners could get used to the workflow of actually contributing to repositories. I know this was (and to an extent, still is) a problem for me when I first started with git; I could make and manipulate my own repos, but when it came to actually socializing/working together with other programmers via Github I had no idea where to start, and most repositories I found were dead or were too advanced for me.

The app simply takes in a keyword and a language; by default it will only search for repositories that were last updated two weeks ago (so you know it's still alive), with less than 10 stars and 3 forks (so you know that there's still some room for contributers). Of course, you can edit these parameters yourself.

Anyway, it was firstly a playground for Angular. As far as that goes, I really like it so far but I'm afraid I'll have to put it aside for now because of work/school.</comment>


Get release updates from your favorite open source projects to your email - <AUTHOR> https://releasly.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, Releasly is a new side project I created to notify me on new open- source version releases. You can decide the release type you want, and the notification interval.

Looking to hear your thoughts :)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you find interesting companies to apply to? - <AUTHOR> I monitor StackOverflow Jobs, HN Who's Hiring and a few language-specific sites already, but I'm aware that a lot of the most interesting jobs never go up on aggregators. I'm wondering if there's a good list of interesting small-to-mid-size tech companies that I could use to pick out some places I want to periodically check.<p>I'm primarily looking in London so ideally the site in question would have the ability to filter by location, but it might be worthwhile even without. <comment><USER2> Don't wait for companies to advertise. Contact them directly if they do something you think is interesting and you have some in-demand skills they might need.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good suggestion, but runs into the same problem - how do you find interesting companies to contact directly?</comment></comment>


900 Children Test Positive for H.I.V. in Pakistani city of Ratodero - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/world/asia/hiv-aids-pakistan-ratodero.html <comment><USER2> What's (not) shocking is how stigmatized the HIV-positive population is. Authorities are literally segregating the HIV-positive children into a different side of the room from the rest.

An obvious effect of this is that people will be terrified to get tested at all, as it's all downside with the possible upside of treatment being a distant dream. And that makes it both harder to evaluate the spread of the disease, and also harder to prevent further transmission of it.

As a selfish aside, I will never get a shave from a barber who doesn't have an autoclave.

<comment><USER3> Quarantining infected people who have an incurable disease is not really that illogical when you have no medication capable of treating them.

Can you imagine if the US had done mandatory testing and quarantine all those years ago? Obviously many people would have had their rights violated to do that, but it might have stopped the disease a long time ago.

Voluntary self-quarantine clearly doesn't work.

> will be terrified to get tested at all

Or the opposite: Anyone not tested will be assumed to be infected.

> And that makes it both harder to evaluate the spread of the disease, and > also harder to prevent further transmission of it.

Not if you have mandatory testing.

<comment><USER4> Yikessss the 1980's US government quarantining a huge percentage of the gay community... That ain't it.

HIV is not easy to communicate to other people. Education and PrEP have reduced the problem immensely.

<comment><USER5> HIV is much more prominent in homosexual men, not sure what your point is.

<comment><USER6> What is your point?

<comment><USER5> That engaging in a known risky activity is dangerous, and people shouldn't be surprised if they get affected if they willingly put themselves in such a situation.

<comment><USER6> Who are you talking about? It sounds as if you are saying that people with HIV deserve to be quarantined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >Health officials now say that Mr. Ghanghro is unlikely to be the sole cause of the outbreak. Visiting health workers saw many cases of doctors reusing syringes and I.V. needles. Barbers take the same razor to the faces of multiple customers, they said, and roadside dentists crack away at patients' teeth on sidewalks with unsterilized tools.

<comment><USER8> Even here in Melbourne the barber offers to use a cutthroat razor to give the neck a clean shave after a haircut.

He's always a little puzzled when I'm "no thanks" to the razor.

<comment><USER9> Woah, I never thought about this possibility.

<comment><USER8> Even if you don't get HIV from the razor you could still get one of the forms of hepatitis.

I've never seen a barber with an autoclave for cleaning his equipment.

<comment><USER10> Barbicide kills HIV and hepatitis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is sad. They spend like 20% of their budget on their army and the army runs so much of their economy, and is on the stock market and owns stocks.

Not to mention all the F-16s and Mirage fighters etc costing like $20 million each

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Army#Corporate_and_bu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Army#Corporate_and_business_activities)

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/21/poor-nation-rich- army/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/21/poor-nation-rich-army/)

<comment><USER12> Geography! Pakistan is screwed, India is a neighbor and can always outspend Pakistan [https://akm-img-a- in.tosshub.com/indiatoday/images/bodyedito...](https://akm-img-a- in.tosshub.com/indiatoday/images/bodyeditor/201906/India_pak_budget_graphic-01-1200x3806.jpg?6paYKFwTTA22sA4fVrkXZxF91FHauLz0) . Don't spend on the military is cute and all, until you get invaded or Findlandized.

<comment><USER13> That might not be the worst thing that could happen to Pakistan, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If 900 children have HIV then how many thousands of other children have blood born infectious diseases related to this guy?

</comment><comment><USER15> In some jurisdictions, auto-disposable needles are now required to be used to prevent things like this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_syringe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_syringe)

<comment><USER16> One of my dad's first jobs out of college was designing needle-grinding machines for BD. they have a relatively complex 3-facet cutting edge, but the plastic hub allows you to accurately orient them on the grinder. I can imagine collecting, cleaning, sterilizing, and resurfacing needles could be a cottage industry in the developing world. 23G 1.5" becomes 23G 1.25", and so on.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=micrograph+of+hypodermic+nee...](https://www.google.com/search?q=micrograph+of+hypodermic+needle)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2773053](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2773053)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Dreadful. I wonder how this could be avoided.

A single individual from a developed country could help pay for some as basic as discardable syringes for a whole town.

<comment><USER18> Are they educated enough to understand why to use them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This news report makes my mind boggle. Reuse of syringes? In this century?

The doctor says he was too poor to afford syringes! So reuse of syringes is the solution? Bill the cost of the syringe to the patient. Ask for donations. Do whatever it takes but never reuse a syringe. How can a doctor find reuse of syringes remotely acceptable?

<comment><USER20> The doctor says the parents of the patient were too poor to afford syringes; and the family was already starving in order to pay for the medicine.

Wouldn't it be nice if patients could afford anything. Reality doesn't work that way though, and some first world people just can't imagine what real poverty is like (I can't either).

> When Mr. Jalbani protested, he said, Mr. Ghanghro snapped at him and told > him he was using an old syringe because Mr. Jalbani was too poor to pay for > a new one.

> "He said, 'If you don't want my treatment, go to another doctor.'" Mr. > Jalbani said. "My wife and I had to starve ourselves to pay for the > medicine."

<comment><USER21> I still for the life of me can't understand how anyone with any medical training at all could reuse a syringe. Some other shortcuts I could imagine, but reusing a syringe is like eventually guaranteeing this kind of outbreak.

<comment><USER22> Because you don't know what real poverty is like (neither do I)? I remember a story from one of Atul Gawande's books (was it Complications?) about how rural Indian surgeons operate. As he described it, they were missing many kinds of equipment that western surgeons consider absolutely indispensable in doing their work. They replaced it with whatever was available, stuff like plastic piping from the nearest plumbing store, which then comes into contact with the entrails of the patient, so to speak.

<comment><USER23> That was in the book "Better". They found surgical tubing at a nearby market (not a plumbing store, presumably some sort of medical resale), and sterilized it with a steam autoclave before implanting it in a patient suffering from ... some form of meningitis, I believe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We will possibly end up with nearly 1000 children killed by a single man.

A sobering reminder that our problems are, almost always, nothing in comparison.

<comment><USER2> Likely many more than 1000 children were infected.

That said, hopefully the government of Pakistan is embarrassed enough to fund free treatment for this population. With treatment and compliance, HIV- positive people usually lead long, healthy lives.

<comment><USER25> I don't know if Pakistan really has the resources. Last I checked, they were a very young country in terms of average age of the citizens. Poverty is pretty widespread, from what I gather.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Pakistan is under developed in my opinion and only because their priorities are not focused towards making the country better but rather on political and Kashmir issues

<comment><USER27> Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Abhorable. Root cause may indeed be poverty and greed but also the uncontrolled population growth that in itself is the cause and effect of poverty.

Pakistani government (read military for all intents and purposes) is focused on concentrating wealth, power and land in the hands of generals, their children and a few land owners while the population at large is fed a steady diet of lies about enemies at the border and beyond.

This fear of others (india, isreal, america even) is used to spend and therefore siphon the resources into the pockets of powerful few. The stage is different, the story not so much.

</comment><comment><USER29> I mean not exactly surprising. We literally just had a measles outbreak in Brooklyn last year. Vaccination rates are basically a prediction market on events like this happening.

<comment><USER30> What does measles vaccination in Brooklyn have to do with syringe reuse in Ratodero?

<comment><USER31> Lack of proper understanding of healthcare science?

<comment><USER3> Seems like the issue here is poverty, not lack of understanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can Bill Gates Foundation help these kids?

<comment><USER33> This isn't the Bill Gates Foundation help forums. Go send them a message yourself?</comment></comment>


Imagine the problems they will encounter with software that can't do non-BMP [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://unicode.org/wg2/docs/n4678-UT-CUS-UNC.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Character is U+2E014 in Unicode BTW. Another link: [http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15114-chinese- unc.pdf](http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15114-chinese-unc.pdf)</comment>


Reinforcement Learning Resources, Models and Code - <AUTHOR> https://modelzoo.co/blog/reinforcement-learning-resources-models-and-code <comment><USER2> Unlike normal models with clear inputs and outputs with numerous methods of validating robustness of results, reinforcement learning requires a _lot_ more dedication for a _chance_ at the model converging and actually learning, with _substantially_ more training time/cost needed.

Even with a higher-level library, it's not plug-and-play on new games (although tools like OpenAI Gym make it substantially easier), and you'll still need to do a _lot_ of tuning.

</comment><comment><USER3> Machine learning seems especially prone to attracting "aggregators" \- resources whose sole purpose is to enthusiastically collect, promote and/or promulgate _other_ resources for learning about the subject (or one of its sub-disciplines). I think we're starting to get at least one of these a week.

That observation aside, this isn't the first time this has been submitted by the author. That's not a problem in of itself, but I'd like to repeat part of my original critique [1] of this website when it was submitted a few months ago.

The author is pretty transparent about the way in which these resources are collected - they're automatically scraped from GitHub. I don't think that's intrinsically _bad_ , but it does mean that due diligence is somewhat lacking. For example, consider the "model" page for Chess Reinforcement Learning: [https://modelzoo.co/model/chess-reinforcement- learning](https://modelzoo.co/model/chess-reinforcement-learning). That lists the README for the corresponding GitHub repository [2] verbatim. But the README specifically states that work on the model has been discontinued in favor of a new, better model's repository [3]. Additionally, the authors mention that they had difficulty with some of the implementation related to Self-Play.

Now I feel a philosophical point is in order. Ostensibly, an aggregator for resources should helpfully do all or most of the heavy lifting in 1) finding the resources, 2) vetting their completeness as advertised, and 3) maintaining up to date references for the resources it lists. There was no way to distinguish the limitations or obsolescence of the aforementioned model in first looking at it. Rather I had to open the page, click "Get Model" and read through the GitHub README on my own. I see substantially little difference between this activity and simply searching GitHub, considering that every single model I can find is listed on GitHub.

This is not to say that this project is _bad_ , I just don't think it's particularly useful in its current form. I understand that's harsh feedback. But in my opinion the author would need to perform far more due diligence on the included models, the implementation artifacts of included models, the people implementing the models themselves and the methodology for model inclusion. As it stands this is presently a collection of models which are in varying states of completeness, developed by people who may or may not be authors of the papers they're implementing (or even have much implementation experience at all), and with varying levels of "out of the box" utility.

___________________

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17311346](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17311346)

2\. [https://github.com/Zeta36/chess-alpha- zero](https://github.com/Zeta36/chess-alpha-zero)

3\. [https://github.com/glinscott/leela- chess](https://github.com/glinscott/leela-chess)</comment>


Learning Reinforcement Learning, with Code, Exercises, and Solutions - <AUTHOR> http://www.wildml.com/2016/10/learning-reinforcement-learning/ <comment><USER2> I remember reading a comment sometime ago on this site where people on HN seem to have a positive bias towards topics on machine learning and would always upvote it. ML seems to be such a tech buzzword these days. This blog post is at the top of this site, yet there is not a single comment of discussion. I am not trying to sound negative, but rather was wondering if other people shared the same opinion.

Regarding the post: This seems like a useful resource. When I read many of these papers, a code supplement makes understanding it so much better. I do a lot of research with RNNs with respect to language modeling and implementing various models when I started researching this field was very useful to get a better understanding. I got great feedback on my implementations where people said it helped them understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another reason may be that this is a pure "resource" post that doesn't make an argument or represents personal opinions that people could easily comment on. It's not a good basis to start a discussion, unlike many other HN posts.

However, I'd appreciate more comments of course ;)

<comment><USER2> I guess you raise a good point since it is only a "resource" post. My comment was geared toward all ML related posts in general.

I do research in ML so I love seeing these posts, but the fact that words like neural networks has become such a buzzword is somewhat disappointing. I remember all the buzz when Swiftkey released their "neural network" keyboard simply because of the name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's great to see more hacker-friendly introductions to reinforcement learning. Like most facets of machine learning, there are so many interesting applications of reinforcement learning (e.g., we're using RL to optimize email marketing campaigns at Optimail), and we'll only find more as more non- academic hackers discover it.

<comment><USER4> ... still, I think it does people disservice to not make it clear that ml is math and that it can only really be done well if you understand what is happening, ie, if you take the time to understand the maths, which is not that hard btw.

Calling something cool/hacking because you don't want to take the time to understand the maths is something Trump would do if he was a programmer

<comment><USER5> Can you expand on what math you're talking about that is both necessary and not that hard? "Not that hard", to me, indicates that a reasonably intelligent person could teach themselves without university instructors (present or past).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find the python code very clear, but I would prefer to see a real life interesting application that doesn't require a lot of computation. In a post in wildml there is an example of using NLP and deep learning for a simple task but after 22 hours of computation the final result is a little disappointing to say the least.

I like to read wildml.com and fastml.com blogs, but I would like to find more simple applications that shows real value without using lots of resources. Perhaps there is a subfield of RL where using some kind of proper human intelligence one can hope to beat those giants provided of unlimited computational and financial resources

<comment><USER7> I gave a talk a PyConSG this year[1], which included a demonstration of training a Reinforcement Learning model on a 'Bubble Breaker' game. There's also more detail available[2].

The Jupyter notebook is included in the GitHub repo[3], and includes a 'scaled down version' that takes ~5mins to train on a MacBook's CPU. There's also a downloadable 'full scale' model that was trained in ~7hours on a Titan X. It plays the game (on average) better than me...

[1] [http://blog.mdda.net/ai/2016/06/23/workshop-at-pycon- sg-2016](http://blog.mdda.net/ai/2016/06/23/workshop-at-pycon-sg-2016) (has slides, and YouTube link) [2] [http://redcatlabs.com/2016-07-30_FifthElephant- DeepLearning-...](http://redcatlabs.com/2016-07-30_FifthElephant-DeepLearning- Workshop/#/46) [3] [https://github.com/mdda/deep-learning- workshop](https://github.com/mdda/deep-learning-workshop) : have a look at notebooks/7-Reinforcement-Learning.ipynb

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > but RL is also widely used in Robotics, Image Processing and Natural > Language Processing

RL for NLP? I would love to know about counter examples, but I'm not aware of a serious project using RL for NLP, let alone 'widely used.' However I do believe RL makes sense for a number of NLP problems.

Either way, well done. I appreciate a collection of the algos from Sutton's book (great book), and in Python.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of recent research uses RL to "fine-tune" NLP models. A practical example would be Google's recently announced Machine Translation System ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.08144](https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.08144)). It uses RL to directly optimize BLEU scores on translated sentences.

You'll find similar applications in state-of-the art models for chatbots for example. Though I agree, "widely used" may be somewhat of an overstatement. But it's becoming more common.

On a side note, I actually think RL makes a lot of sense for many NLP problems and it would be super interesting to build a pure RL approach to language modeling or translation. Nobody has managed to do that quite yet.

<comment><USER8> I agree, I would love to see or even work on pure RL approaches in NLP. I would also like to see HMMs explored more, which I think also make a lot of sense for NLP, if you think of the problem as sequences of hidden states represented by semantic frames or other hand crafted language features producing phrases and sentences.</comment></comment></comment>


SpaceX to attempt second landing on autonomous drone ship at 2:50pm PST [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/spacex_presskit.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to Web Cast: [http://www.spacex.com/webcast/](http://www.spacex.com/webcast/)

CSR-5 link is still up, flagging webcast as dup.</comment>


Google Invested with CIA? - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorded_Future This is interesting in that Google top execs say the government coerced them into giving up data.But looking upon their investments into companies that are funded to analyze and discover trends it paints a far different picture. Is there any more evidence of Google's backing into government funded social media analytics? <comment><USER2> > Both Google (on May 3, 2010)[3] and the CIA have invested in the company, > through their investment arms, Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel, respectively.

In-Q-Tel = CIA; Google Ventures = Google

</comment><comment><USER3> Haha. Yes, that's not actually what it says.

</comment><comment><USER4> old news anyway</comment>