Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/opposition-to-galileo-was-scientific-not-just-religious <comment><USER2> There is no question that there was religious opposition to Galileo within the Catholic church. However, it was not unanimous, and there were some notable exceptions.

José de Calasanz (saint), the founder of the Piarist order, was a friend of Galileo, and had some of the teachers of his congregation study with Galileo, so that the science they learned could be taught in his schools.

Moreover, when Galileo fell in disgrace, Calasanz instructed members of his congregation to assist him. When Galileo lost his sight, Calasanz ordered the Piarist Clemente Settimi to serve as his secretary.

<comment><USER3> Also worth mentioning: geocentric view was based on Aristotle and not scriptures. My undergraduate was in Theology and graduate degree was Historical Theology. Back then the dominate foundations of Theology in the Church was Plato vs Aristotle and one would consider themselves to be in the camp of one or the other and well Aristotle kind of won the popular vote back in those times.

Here is the article on Artistole's thoughts on The Heavens. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Heavens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Heavens)

"Aristotelian geocentric view that the earth was the center of the universe..." [https://books.google.com/books?id=MHnwAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchw...](https://books.google.com/books?id=MHnwAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=Aristotelian+)

<comment><USER4> Aristotle was always such an obvious idiot ("women have fewer teeth than men" is my favorite nonsense) I have always+ wondered why anyone paid attention to him, ever.

\+ Well since I was a teenager anyway

<comment><USER5> Interestingly enough, while Aristotle's conclusion was in fact wrong, it was rather scientific for its time. That passage in particular gets mocked a lot, but if you look at the source, you'll note that the conclusion was based on physical observation, even though the accounts he relied upon were demonstrably false:

"Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and swine; in the case of other animals observations have not yet been made: but the more teeth they have the more long-lived are they, as a rule, while those are short-lived in proportion that have teeth fewer in number and thinly set."[0]

He got it wrong, but the way he went about getting it wrong is significant.

The Aristotelian method might not have been the scientific method as it's understood today, but there's little doubt that it was [i]a[/i] scientific method. Truthfully, it's difficult to overstate just how significant an impact Aristotle's writings, and other Greek philosophy (particularly metaphysics), had on the later development of empiricism and the scientific tradition. I doubt that there was a single early modern philosopher (those who birthed what we'd consider modern science) who wasn't extremely well-read of Aristotle.

Aristotle must be read within his historical context. Both in terms of what he was responding to (Plato, various pre-Socratric philosophers, and his contemporaries), as well as what came after. His shadow is a long one, felt even to this day. Early modern philosophers, medieval Islamic scientists, and the others who helped lay the groundwork for the scientific method were all influenced by the Greeks, even when they disagreed.

0\. Aristotle, History of Animals, Bk. II, Pt. 3. [http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.2.ii.html](http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.2.ii.html)

<comment><USER6> _He got it wrong, but the way he went about getting it wrong is significant._

I'm probably just dense - how did he go about getting it wrong?

<comment><USER7> Observation: counting teeth. This was before modern dentistry.

<comment><USER8> Ugh... isn't that what one is supposed to do before making such a claim?

<comment><USER9> Hell, why didn't he just Google it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Stupid question: given General Relativity, and in particular that _all reference frames are equally valid_ , including rotating and accelerating ones, in what sense is heliocentrism more 'true' than geocentrism?

E.g. you can pick a geocentric reference frame and all the math works out (albeit you'd need to define large fictitious forces, etc., but again, they are only 'fictitious' from the perspective of a different reference frame; in the chosen frame they look quite real!).

Isn't the choice between geocentrism and heliocentrism purely one of convenience, and we can simply pick and choose whichever reference frame is most convenient for calculation purposes?

For example, if I'm interested in things happening in daily life, I pick a reference frame at rest with respect to the ground beneath my feet. If I am figuring out satellite orbits, I use a geocentric frame. If I'm calculating a trip to Mars, I use a heliocentric frame (perhaps a rotating one).

If so, why do we still define heliocentrism to be more correct? Is the argument really an implicit throwback to Newtonian absolute space and time, which Relativity rejected?

<comment><USER11> I think the answer is precisely the realization that heliocentrism is a convenient framework for specifying the correct relationships. If one formulated their geocentrism-with-epicycles model to be precisely equivalent to heliocentrism in all physically observable details, just with Earth as the origin to their coordinate system, and acknowledged this equivalence, then that would be perfectly correct as well, albeit unduly cumbersomely framed. But the useful thing is that insight, that what happens is equivalent to the clean heliocentric model, whatever coordinates you might prefer to think of it in terms of.

<comment><USER12> Is it possible for a geocentric, epicyclic model to get the 3D positions of the solar system bodies approximately correct, as opposed to just their angular motion with respect to Earth?

<comment><USER12> I cannot edit my post any more , but I can still reply to it, and it seems the answer is yes:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVuU2YCwHjw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVuU2YCwHjw)

\- but you need eccentricity to get the speeds right: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHmjGUxWRAI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHmjGUxWRAI) (10 minutes in.)

Furthermore, the result is not equivalent to the heliocentric model because it has many more parameters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Earth-Centric model was actually scientifically better at that time. With Occam's razor you would prefer it.

\- Even church agreed that Earth is not static, but is rotating.

\- Nobody observed star parallax, major proof for Copernican model was missing until 19th century.

\- Ptolemaic model with its epicycles provided better predictions.

\- Copernican model is also wrong, planets are orbiting around center of gravity, which is outside of sun..

<comment><USER14> >planets are orbiting around center of gravity, which is outside of sun..

The only planet with a barycenter with the sun outside it's radius is Jupiter. And that only slightly. (with an altitude of 0.07 of the sun's radius)

The earth-sun barycenter is 0.0006 times the sun's radius from it's _center_

<comment><USER15> Even then the definition of the surface is different than the definition of the surface of, say, the Earth, so I'm not sure what "outside" the Sun means precisely.

<comment><USER16> The sun is roughly a sphere of a fixed size. What is there not to understand ?

<comment><USER17> I believe he's referring to the "fixed size" part of it, really only an argument a true pedant would make.

<comment><USER15> Pedant? Or maybe just making conversation about the interesting differences between human experience and understanding of terms and what definitions astronomers use. Why do so many people on HN react as if every comment is a competition?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is basically the thesis of Paul Feyerabend who used it as his main argument against there being a scientific method. His book "Against Method" is one of the best works on Philosophy of Science I've read during my university education.

<comment><USER19> For quite a while I've suspected that you might be able to support Feyerabend's argument using modern learning theory. In particular I suspect that this is relevant:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_op...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization)

Science is essentially a learning process. Since every learning method has a performance envelope and fares better against some fitness landscapes than others, restricting science to a singular method effectively prohibits learning over fitness landscapes whose structures lie outside that method's envelope.

In layman's terms: a single scientific method will be unable to learn certain things, or at least unable to learn them in a reasonable amount of time.

This is also why I am eternally skeptical of all business and management "methodologies." If there were a closed-form methodology that always yielded successful businesses there would be no entrepreneurs. Large companies and investment funds would simply execute this closed-form method deterministically and reliably pump out successes while retaining 100% ownership. Entrepreneurs exist because creating successful companies is an "AI complete problem" that requires the full multi-approach multi-paradigm multi- methodology capabilities of a human intellect... and even then it's hard.

(E.g. I put down Lean Startup when I realized I was just reading a description of gradient descent in the business domain. Gradient descent only works over very regular fitness landscapes with clear peaks and well-connected paths to those peaks. In a rocky fitness landscape you will get stuck at a local maximum almost instantly and never go any further.)

<comment><USER20> >(E.g. I put down Lean Startup when I realized I was just reading a description of gradient descent in the business domain. Gradient descent only works over very regular fitness landscapes with clear peaks and well-connected paths to those peaks. In a rocky fitness landscape you will get stuck at a local maximum almost instantly and never go any further.)

Funny, that's exactly how I interpreted the book, but I didn't see that as a bad thing. Of course, a naive gradient descent won't solve everything, but will help on a lot of things satisfactorily. Maybe LS won't help you build the next Airbnb, but not all business must reach Unicorn Status. Pretty clever on Ries' part

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I tl;dr'ed the article (sorry), but I wanted to say one thing about epicycles. They are not wrong and certainly can be used to explain motion, but the problem with them is that you can keep adding epicycles to fit any continuous orbit at all (this actually is because a Fourier series can converge to any continuous periodic function). This is my favourite visualisation of this fact:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVuU2YCwHjw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVuU2YCwHjw)

<comment><USER22> Exactly. From a geocentric perspective, it's not wrong as long as you're explaining past events (which, as you noted, can be done by adding epicycles).

The reason the model is not so useful (to paraphrase my college physics professor) is that you can't use it to predict things in advance with reasonable certainty (i.e. you don't know what epicycles you need until after you've observed it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It was also personal and political, not just scientific _or_ religious. There were, of course, people that were opposed to Galileo publishing _because_ of his models (whether for religious or scientific reasons), but there were also (and perhaps more critically) people that were against his model being published _because_ of Galileo.

<comment><USER24> Also I think it's important to keep in mind that it's a bit anachronistic to draw such a strong distinction between science and religion. In those days they were much more strongly related. Science and understanding the universe was likened to developing a better understanding of God. Therefore religious logic and "internal logic" (rational and empirical) would hold similar weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The opposition to Galileo was not really religious or scientific. More than anything, it was political. You can't understand what happened outside the context of the religious wars of the time. His findings undermined the authority of the Catholic Church.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion)

There are plenty of examples of political suppression of science in our own time. The Nazis and Communists were two extreme examples.

In our own society, religion doesn't have this kind of power any more. But there are still political pressures on researchers to be PC. I'll let you think up some examples yourself.

</comment><comment><USER26> > But seen from Earth, stars appear as dots of certain sizes or magnitudes. > The only way stars could be so incredibly distant and have such sizes was if > they were all incredibly huge, every last one dwarfing the Sun.

What?? Oh, Wikipedia fills in some crucially missing info in this hypothesis.

> However, early telescopes produced a spurious disk-like image of a star > (known today as an Airy disk) that was larger for brighter stars and smaller > for fainter ones. Astronomers from Galileo to Jaques Cassini mistook these > spurious disks for the physical bodies of stars, and thus into the > eighteenth century continued to think of magnitude in terms of the physical > size of a star. > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitude_(astronomy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitude_\(astronomy\))

<comment><USER27> Thank you so much for this. I was wondering about this so much and it really gnawed on me that the article didn't bother explaining further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Mike Flynn has a very long and detailed story of Galileo and more generally geocentrism vs. heliocentrism at [http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the- great-ptolemaic-smac...](http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great- ptolemaic-smackdown-table-of.html)

Among the things I learned:

* The Copernican model had _more_ epicycles than the Ptolemaic

* Galileo thought tides were caused by those same epicycles.

</comment><comment><USER9> The idea that science and religion are distinct spheres, or even things that might be in opposition to each other, has been so thoroughly established in our modern consciousnesses that it's easy to forget that in the past they didn't really make such a distinction.

<comment><USER29> Science and Religion aren't at odds with each other, they never have been.

What has been at odds is religion and scientific discoveries that contradict or disprove the religious story. Heliocentric system flew in the face of the bible, and that created the problem.

Bruno was burned alive for holding fast to the idea that there are more solar systems than just our own, and that the universe is basically infinite, both ideas that contradict the church's story

To say that religion is anti-science would be disingenuous, but to say that religion isn't often at odds with science or that it hasn't stifled scientific progress in the name of maintaining the myths of its teachings would be equally so...

<comment><USER30> _Heliocentric system flew in the face of the bible, and that created the problem._

Rather, in the face of a specific interpretation of the Bible. There are other literal interpretations of the Bible that are much more in tune with scientific knowledge of astronomy and origins, but they are not well- understood among less educated religious folk that follow the Bible. Likewise, certain interpretations of the Koran lead to terrorism, while other interpretations don't. It's interpretation that matters, especially if believers insist on literal interpretations. Sadly, few people are willing to be open-minded enough to consider the possibilities, and that often goes for all sides of a debate.

<comment><USER31> Belief virtually requires a closed mind, since an open mind would allow observation that contradicts the belief. It's not sad, it's a feature.

<comment><USER30> Let's say that blind belief requires a closed mind. Everyone at the end of the day relies on faith at some level or other. Even scientists believe in their hypotheses until their hypotheses are proven wrong. Then they change their beliefs. The fact of the matter is that everyone still believes in something at all times. I have yet to meet a scientist who precludes his everyday thoughts with, "well, then again, it's also possible that we're in the Matrix and this is all a computer simulation, or that I'm not real at all, even though I appear to have agency, etc, etc, but barring all of that, which requires a higher burden of proof, here's what I currently think and believe..."

<comment><USER32> > I have yet to meet a scientist who [...]

And yet you've also never met a scientist who says: "This is my current hypothesis so I've vanquished all possibility of doubt. I'm going to publish it without even testing because it MUST be right."

You should entertain the notion that the word means something entirely different to religious people than to others.

> The fact of the matter is that everyone still believes in something at all > times.

Even if that were true, the only reason you're saying it is to show that even scientists make that mistake. You're trying to drag them down to your level, hoping the equivalence lends weight to your unsupported ideas.

The difference, to the degree that belief isn't just an empty word to a scientist, is that it's not seen as a good thing in the scientific community. You might believe that god ensures your slippers remain under the bed where you left them but if you use that in an argument nobody will take you seriously and there's no social pressure to do so.

<comment><USER30> _You should entertain the notion that the word means something entirely different to religious people than to others._

You have a very narrow definition and/or experience of what religious people are like. You should entertain the possibility that there are religious people who are more open-minded than you think.

 _Even if that were true, the only reason you 're saying it is to show that even scientists make that mistake. You're trying to drag them down to your level, hoping the equivalence lends weight to your unsupported ideas._

I don't say this lightly: you have issues, man. We should not propose that we know what's going on in other people's minds. It leads us to become spiteful, frustrated, unhappy people.

<comment><USER32> > Everyone at the end of the day relies on faith

> We should not propose that we know what's going on in other people's minds.

Both are you, and incompatible with each other. It seems that you think you should tell other people what's in their minds, but that nobody should tell you what you think...

And yes, we should not under normal circumstances. But when someone tries to tell us something crazy, such as that we are belief focused, we should examine their motives and see if they have a reason to want us to think we do... You obviously do because you're trying to normalize the idea of belief.

> I don't say this lightly: you have issues, man.

Yes, apparently you do. You don't even read the thread again before saying it, to see if you were the one throwing stones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Of course there was scientific opposition to Galileo. Scientific ideas get hammered out through debate and disagreement. New ideas in science often take decades or even centuries to fully develop and reach broad acceptance.

That is why it is important that new ideas can be discussed freely, which wasn't the case in Galileo's time.

<comment><USER34> They are now, but the uninformed reader can't assume that that's static throughout history. There will have been some point where that became fully true, some point where it wasn't, and some continuous function of time defining the extent to which that's true in between. Can you define any of the latter two things on the list?

<comment><USER35> > They are now, but the uninformed reader can't assume that that's static > throughout history.

Scientific ideas _are not_ discussed freely. They are driven by funding, which is disproportionally awarded to novel results. Non-novel results or failures to reproduce are overly ignored and under-funded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Many persons who were very serious about religious faith in that time period, e.g. Catholic priests, also had great enthusiasm for rigorous mathematics and scientific advancement.

For example, Fr. Paul Gudin, a Jesuit priest, was a mathematician and astronomer. He was interested in and supportive of the work of Johannes Kepler and provided him with a telescope when Kepler was experiencing financial difficulties[+].

[+] [http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/sj/scientists/guldin.h...](http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/sj/scientists/guldin.htm)

<comment><USER28> In fact, Kepler, a Lutheran, was named Imperial Mathematician of the Holy Roman (i.e., Catholic) Empire.

<comment><USER37> After the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the HRE effectively sanctioned the ability of princes to choose between Catholicism and Lutheranism. It should be noted, though, that the Emperors tended to be fanatical Catholics, which leads to the Thirty Years' War (tl;dr: Protestant King of Bohemia dies, gets inherited by Catholic Emperor, Bohemia rebels). At the end of that war, the Peace of Westphalia effectively guarantees freedom of religious worship for Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, independent of the religious beliefs of rulers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This article serves as quite a fascinating reminder of the problems of new scientific paradigms (see quote pulled out below). All the argumentation about the history of the churrch seems a lot less relevant to me than how if YOU were an astronomer at the time, how sceptical would you have been at this weird thing?

Excerpt: "Copernicus proposed that certain oddities observed in the movements of planets through the constellations were due to the fact that Earth itself was moving. Stars show no such oddities, so Copernicus had to theorise that, rather than being just beyond the planets as astronomers had traditionally supposed, stars were so incredibly distant that Earth's motion was insignificant by comparison. But seen from Earth, stars appear as dots of certain sizes or magnitudes. The only way stars could be so incredibly distant and have such sizes was if they were all incredibly huge, every last one dwarfing the Sun. Tycho Brahe, the most prominent astronomer of the era and a favourite of the Establishm"ent, thought this was absurd, while Peter Crüger, a leading Polish mathematician, wondered how the Copernican system could ever survive in the face of the star-size problem.

</comment><comment><USER39> This may either calm or further motivate people concerned about the issues with replicability in science, the current "reproduction crisis" in biology and psychology. Scientific progress today is certainly messy, slow, filled with political drama, and lacking a good philosophical footing, but it would be a mistake to think it was ever the noble act of discovery we sometimes get nostalgic about.

The whole metaphor of "discovery" in science is incorrect. You don't suddenly "see" the truth once you get better telescopes or a new imaging method. Everything you see is an accurate depiction of universal laws, as filtered through the distorting layers of our own internal models. Every new "discovery" in science must be slowly generated, models emerging and feuding for generations, before future scientists have enough research to look back on the past and deem some visionaries and others crackpots.

</comment><comment><USER40> By far the best writing on this subject I have found is over at the fantastic Renaissance Mathematicus blog.

Galileo, the Church and Heliocentricity: A Rough Guide. [https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/galileo-the- church-a...](https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/galileo-the-church-and- heliocentricity-a-rough-guide/)

Galileo, Foscarini, The Catholic Church, and heliocentricity in 1615 Part 1 – the occurrences: A Rough Guide. [https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/galileo-foscarini- th...](https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/galileo-foscarini-the-catholic- church-and-heliocentricity-in-1615-part-1-the-occurrences-a-rough-guide/)

And part 2 [https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/galileo-foscarini- th...](https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/galileo-foscarini-the-catholic- church-and-heliocentricity-in-1615-part-2-the-consequences-a-rough-guide/)

Acceptance, rejection and indifference to heliocentricity before 1610. [https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/acceptance- rejection...](https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/acceptance-rejection- and-indifference-to-heliocentricity-before-1610/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Strangely, the article omits a reference to the preferred model of the time, namely the Tychonic system [1]. In the Tychonic system, all the planets revolve around the Sun, but the Sun and moon revolve around the Earth. It was seen to be a very tidy theory that took advantage of the best aspects of the Copernican theory, but resolved the problem of the lack of observed parallax.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tychonic_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tychonic_system)

<comment><USER42> The article does mention it:

 _Brahe had theorised that all planets circled the Sun, while it circled Earth. Locher noted that Brahe might be right, but what was clear was that the telescope supported Ptolemy._

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> A somewhat better article on this is here: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/lq6/the_galileo_affair_who_was_on_th...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/lq6/the_galileo_affair_who_was_on_the_side_of/)

There were also politics involved. Galileo insulted the pope and did some other controversial stuff. He wasn't persecuted for his scientific beliefs.

</comment><comment><USER44> What about the Orthodox?

"The Church" is really an anachronism. You are speaking of the Roman church which is about only half of Christianity at the time: Western Europe.

What about the other half of the Church? Eastern Europe, Russia, Asian, Norther Africa, the Middle East, Greece?

How did they receive Galileo?

I've always been fascinated by this total amnesia over the Orthodox Church as if it didn't exist or was only a few percent.

<comment><USER37> Actually, given the time frame, focusing on the Catholic church is already meaningless in Western Europe. The Reformation was already well underway, indeed Galileo was outspoken during the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

The Lutheran church was very anti-Copernican; Martin Luther himself condemned it as heresy 80 years before the Galileo affair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I watched a course on Coursera and it made similar argument regarding opposition to Galileo by Church. I think it makes very important point and is noticeable everyday where deeply political arguments are passed off as scientific or logical.

<comment><USER46> Not just where arguments are deeply political, but when we seek to punish people for simply saying or thinking things we don't agree with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The amazing thing about the entire discussion is how it really was a scientific discussion that evolved over time.

There are clearly scientific ideas that we take as simple truths now that will be disproved in the future. They are clearly going to be a little more nuanced than planetary motion but it's great to see how the scientific community has and will evolve.

</comment><comment><USER48> Ultimately, the argument for the helio-centric model is aesthetic. It _is_ more elegant than the geo-centric when describing the dance of the stars.

So, are both systems equally right and equally wrong?

\- Ultimately we're talking about a change in reference frame, which is a vector subtraction. They're mathematically transformations of each other.

\- Since the Sun doesn't have infinite mass it, in fact, also orbits the Earth

\- Neither system is an inertial reference frame. If we assume the Earth is infinitesimal, at the very least the Sun orbits the Jupiter-Sun barycenter (which is almost outside the Sun proper). So if anything we should speak of a "J-S centric model"

\- Both are useful. The geo-centric model is quite useful and still used in astronomy (Never-mind tracking satellites, try understand your coordinates in the heliocentric reference frame.)

\- The "corrections" of the geo-centric model are higher order harmonics, and can fit any motion and it's an early application of harmonic analysis. In fact, they're not actually corrections to the model, they are motions that naturally arise when describing circular motion wrt a point outside its axis.

\- What's wrong with non-inertial reference frames anyway? Consider them "fictitious" or consider them real, we can calculate and consider the non- inertial forces.

</comment><comment><USER49> The comments here are very good and I'm glad people care about the real story and its nuances. For too long people have been taught that Galileo dared to contradict the bible, the church threw him in prison, and that's that.

</comment><comment><USER50> The problem with saying that there was scientific in addition to religious opposition to Galileo kind of misses the point. That would like saying there was scientific in addition to ideological opposition to genetics in the Soviet Union in the Lysenko years. The reason while both Galileo and Soviet biologists were put on trial was because the power structure at the time opposed them, not because of legitimate scientific concerns.

</comment><comment><USER51> Oh, please. First, the article quotes the opposition of only one person, and from that it doesn't follow its title at all. The realistic title would be "The Opposition to Galileo also at least once appeared as scientific, not just religious."

Now why I say "appeared" there? Because the arguments quoted in the text "looking through the telescopes it appeared that epicycles existed" isn't "scientifically" meaningful argument. As soon as we accept the relativity of motion, it's clear how meaningless the statement "it looks so from here" is.

Moreover, "scientific opposition" doesn't result in the house arrest by the church.

Both the Bible and that-other-newer-book- which-is-not-politically-correct-to- be-named have the verses that reflect the false understanding of the nature, and that is indisputable. It's true that there are today enough people that don't take these verses seriously, but in fact, the reasonable people did so, like seen in the article, already at least some 400 years ago.

Good for us, because otherwise most of us would be peasants today.

</comment><comment><USER52> This reminds me of the story of Hippasus, who was sentenced to death by his fellow Pythagorean philosophers because he discovered irrational numbers.

</comment><comment><USER53> The ironic thing in this debate is that almost all arguments in Galileo "Dialog" were wrong. [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/galileo-big- mistake.html](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/galileo-big-mistake.html)

Do 2 wrongs make a right?

</comment><comment><USER54> Totally related:

[http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/bro- science](http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/bro-science)

[http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/cardio- arrest](http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/cardio-arrest)

</comment><comment><USER55> So, here's the funny thing. The Church has been vilified over this for centuries, but as it turns out they weren't actually wrong to believe in geocentrism; in a relativistic worldview either belief is equally correct.

</comment><comment><USER56> Anyone who is interested in Astronomy and development of historical models of the heavens should check out this season of the Scientific Odyssey podcast ([http://thescientificodyssey.typepad.com/](http://thescientificodyssey.typepad.com/)). I found it through HN and Chad Davies does a fantastic job of creating a narrative from early civilization, and we are just now discussing Galileo. It's very niche but fairly accessible, and one of my favorites.

</comment><comment><USER57> Do you have to believe that the sun orbits the earth in order to believe that the earth is the center of the universe? Is it possible that the Earth _is_ the center of the universe given all light in the universe points in the direction of Earth.

</comment><comment><USER58> I found the book "Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love" by Dava Sobel fascinating, really clarifies many misconceptions about Galileo.

</comment><comment><USER59> Scientific opposition is a good thing. Religious is not.

</comment><comment><USER60> The opposition was not scientific. Read the book "The War on Science" and keep thr enlightenment from slipping away.

</comment><comment><USER61> The importance of this article for our current times is in the last two paragraphs.

</comment><comment><USER62> I am tired of the Catholics trying to rewrite history. I got deep into this issue several times.

First, go to the source. We have the documents from Galileo trials, so first, read what was actually said. [http://www.tc.umn.edu/~allch001/galileo/library/1616docs.htm](http://www.tc.umn.edu/~allch001/galileo/library/1616docs.htm) Here is the most relevant part:

      Proposition to be assessed:

        (1) The sun is the center of the world and completely
      devoid of local motion.

        Assessement: All said that this proposition is foolish
      and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it
      explicitly contradicts many places the sense of Holy
      Scripture, according to the literal meaning of the words
      and according to the common interpretation and
      understanding of the Holy Fathers and the doctors of
      theology.

        (2) The earth is not the center of the world, nor
      motionless, but it moves as a whole and also with diurnal
      motion.

        Assessment: All said that this proposition receives the
      same judgement in philosophy and that in regard to
      theological truth it is at least errouneous in faith.

Here, "philosophy" more or less means science. So, yes, Galileo was criticized on scientific grounds, which is totally fine as indeed, there were some problems with his theory (like the lack of movement of stars).

But Galileo was called an heretic because he contradicted the literal meaning of the bible. _" formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts many places the sense of Holy Scripture, according to the literal meaning of the words and according to the common interpretation and understanding of the Holy Fathers and the doctors of theology"_ : this is your regular creationist saying that the bible has to be interpreted literally and that you are a heretic if you don't. Problem: said creationist can throw you in jail if you don't abide to his worldview.

That's why from this time (from a bit earlier actually) universities found it primordial to gain independence from the clergy and that science and religion diverged from each other.

Is this religious assessment coherent with others? Of course not! Religion is not much about coherency. Copernicus heliocentrism was well accepted by the church as he was less confrontational, richer and more religious.

Did Galileo act like an asshole? Maybe, though church did need some trolling at this time. Was his condemnation political? Most certainly! But the salient point is that the motivation may have been political, the justification was religious. And that was unacceptable to scientists that you could justify dogmatism and rewrite science books for political motives. The refusal of this is what gave us modern science.

</comment><comment><USER35> > What were those problems? A big one was the size of stars in the Copernican > universe. Copernicus proposed that certain oddities observed in the > movements of planets through the constellations were due to the fact that > Earth itself was moving. Stars show no such oddities, so Copernicus had to > theorise that, rather than being just beyond the planets as astronomers had > traditionally supposed, stars were so incredibly distant that Earth's motion > was insignificant by comparison. But seen from Earth, stars appear as dots > of certain sizes or magnitudes. The only way stars could be so incredibly > distant and have such sizes was if they were all incredibly huge, every last > one dwarfing the Sun. Tycho Brahe, the most prominent astronomer of the era > and a favourite of the Establishment, thought this was absurd, while Peter > Crüger, a leading Polish mathematician, wondered how the Copernican system > could ever survive in the face of the star-size problem.

This is a fascinating observation, and given the information they had at the time, I can see where Locher is coming from. Given two possibilities, one involving absolutely enormous stars and one involving a earth that circled the sun, both extraordinary claims, and no sure way (yet) to evaluate which was true, it's human that he supported the more comfortable hypothesis, and he wasn't provably wrong given the information they had.

> That is unfortunate for science, because today the opponents of science make > use of that caricature. Those who insist that the Apollo missions were > faked, that vaccines are harmful, or even that the world is flat – whose > voices are now loud enough for the 'War on Science' to be a National > Geographic cover story and for the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to > address even their most bizarre claims – do not reject the scientific > process per se. Rather, they wrap themselves in the mantle of Galileo, > standing (supposedly) against a (supposedly) corrupted science produced by > the 'Scientific Establishment'.

The problem with this is that it conflates the public social debate with an internal scientific debate. Galileo vs. Pope Paul V is not the same debate as Galileo vs. Locher. The former is a debate driven by social needs that tries to drive opinion starting from what the pope wanted rather than observation (which is in fact a rejection of scientific process). The latter is two competing scientific hypotheses.

Likewise, picking one of the example debates (do vaccines cause autism?) there are two possible debates. The public debate is driven by social needs--mostly people trying to find meaning in the suffering caused by their child's autism, and people trying to take advantage of that need. This is absolutely a rejection of scientific process: scientific process attempts to explain phenomena, not find explanations that make people feel better. The internal scientific debate is largely not a debate, because the evidence that vaccines don't cause autism is, at this point, so overwhelming.

"Wrapping oneself in the mantle of Galileo" IS inherently an unscientific position: being pro- or anti-establishment is irrelevant to scientific process. The fact that Galileo happened to be anti-establishment at the time is irrelevant to the fact that ultimately his hypotheses were proven correct.

The real problem here is that a large part of the scientific community doesn't recognize that the social debate and the scientific debate are two different debates. Scientific evidence which is persuasive in a scientific context (studies have shown no correlation between vaccines and autism) does not persuade everyone in a public social context. Emotional approaches are also necessary (would you rather your child died of whooping cough? Or as one person with autism said, "It's painful that some people would rather have a dead child than a child like me.").

</comment><comment><USER63> An amazingly reasonable thread for what could be just ignorant mud-slinging.

<comment><USER64> Agreed. Came here hoping to see a good discussion, was not disappointed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Let's not dilute the term "scientific". Scentific method is relatively recent, and consists of very specific sets of steps. So no, Galileo's opposition was not scientific.

<comment><USER66> Definitely not true. Please study the work of Johannes Kepler on planetary motion, he lived in the same period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Scientific opposition is expected, that is the method in which science works. Scientist want proof for a claim, the church didn't want to be wrong.

<comment><USER68> That's not true at all. In fact, the church was okay with Galileo's models, but they were not okay with how he was slandering the leadership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> To be fair, the Church's influence in what we would call science back then was incredibly powerful. I think its unrealistic to see 17th century science as this secular institution like we have today. Of course the 'scientists' of the age followed a church friendly narrative. It was in their interests to do so. I think we will never really understand the chill on speech and research the Church had during the medieval and later periods. I would say its significant considering that the ancient Greeks (Aristarchus of Samos) were able to figure out the heliocentric model, arguably because they didn't have a large Christian Church structure working against them.

I find that modern revisionism to make religion seem less villainous is fairly common nowadays. I don't know where this is coming from or why its on social media so frequently, but its concerning. I think splitting hairs to make the Church look good is a questionable narrative and a form of feel good politics for certain religious people and certain types of habitual contrarians the internet is so fond of. I imagine we're witnessesing a pendulum shift towards more religiosity considering how the west has swung the other way for so long.

Regardless, its still wrong and the hundreds years of fighting to secularize science and to progress past religiously acceptable models wasn't done because Locher was a bad guy, but because the Pope and and the religious establishment was, regardless of the individual merits of the many monks and priests, who ultimately had to tow the party line regardless of their own findings, mathematical skills, or opinions. Blasphemy was certainly a serious charge back then. The wonderful thing about secular science is that there's no serious punishment for being wrong or going against the grain, flawed as it may be. The worst you can expect is being punched by Buzz Aldrin and even then you really have to earn that.

<comment><USER36> That's really a lot of nonsense, though I'll grant you that "progress- stifling, working-against-science church" is a long-entrenched meme[+].

[+] [https://www.quora.com/Why-did-science-make-little-real- progr...](https://www.quora.com/Why-did-science-make-little-real-progress-in- Europe-in-the-Middle-Ages-3/answer/Tim-ONeill-1)

<comment><USER70> Would also add that much of the Dark Age myth originated from the renaissance humanists.

I've always found it funny that so much of the movement was examining original sources instead of what someone wrote about them, yet so many people read the renaissance works and don't look back to the original sources just before them.

<comment><USER64> A lot of the myth of the "Dark Ages" has been exaggerated to show how the Reformation "saved" us from them. A lot of this historical revisionism comes from the Enlightenment era.

The Renaissance itself didn't occur ex nihilo in a benighted world of ignorant superstition either; it was a wholly organic evolution of the great learning and development that occurred before it, especially in the 12th and 13th centuries. The period we call the "Dark Ages" were certainly more chaotic than the era of classical antiquity, etc., but by no means did culture and learning stagnate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Given Tablets but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/506466/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/ <comment><USER2> "If they can learn to read, then they can read to learn,"</comment>


Ask HN: The Fediverse looks promising. Do you agree? - <AUTHOR> I really like how the fediverse is coming along, and is evolving. Started mostly by driven FOSS developers sharing a vision of a future decentralized internet, who created niche applications based on cool but incomplete standards, and who are now bundling forces to knit them together.
A lot of this development is a bit off the radar, because communications occur mostly on the fediverse itself, i.e. via dogfooding.
Unlike W3C (standards-first) standardization takes a practical-application-first approach, which is interesting.
Check e.g. https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks
Some cool apps to be discovered: Mastodon, Pleroma (Twitter alternative), PeerTube (YouTube alternative), PixelFed (Insta alternative), ForgeFed (federated git) and many others in development (Medium, Meetup alternatives, etc.)
Look here for a large list of AP projects: https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-activitypub-apps
Seems to me the fediverse has a bright future. Do you agree? <comment><USER2> I agree, but I do wonder if the developers ideology will make it unsustainable.

I currently maintain two federated services - [https://pixelfed.uk](https://pixelfed.uk), which hasn't yet grown beyond a few people but costs next to nothing to host, and [https://peertube.co.uk](https://peertube.co.uk), which has a bit of a tendency for exponential growth. While it's not especially expensive right now, I'll only be able to allow it to grow so far before hosting costs will make it unsustainable.

I don't want to include any advertising, primarily because I don't want to deviate from the standard PeerTube experience, but because the developers provide no way for instance administrators to cover their hosting costs, the size of any one instance is self limiting. That may be a good or a bad thing depending on your position, but either way, I think the Fediverse will have difficulty becoming mainstream while running an instance can only really be viewed as a hobby rather than a potential income stream.

</comment><comment><USER3> I very much agree ;) But I think a lot of hosting is still provided via commodity cloud architecture. Whether its truly decentralized under stress remains to be tested.

There was a flurry of articles in Summer 2018 about how FOSTA was encouraging sex workers to use Switter and Bitcoin. I think they are probably still using Twitter / Instagram / CashApp instead. In lieu of outside oppressive pressure, most folks won't have a compelling reason other than ethics.

And therein lies the rub. These platforms need to get easier for regular people to use. You could even imagine a broker service, where you just hit submit on a piece of digital content, its data type is detected automatically, and its stored on the appropriate service. You are returned a persistent URL that can be embedded anywhere. And you earn revenue for content consumed and / or compute resources provided. Like providing liquidity to an exchange.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think its too early to tell if it will be sustainable economically.

I believe it will be sustainable, due to cloud hosting costs going down every year. If the trend continues federation/self-hosting might become the default way to operate software services (even non-social stuff). However, another trend that needs to continue is automation of monitoring and security updates.

In the meantime, if you want to take the fediverse for a spin. I am working on a few aggregator projects to help you explore the fediverse with minimal friction.

[https://mastodonia.club](https://mastodonia.club)

[https://pixelfed.club](https://pixelfed.club)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

\- ActivityPub Rocks discussion forum: [https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks](https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks)

\- Watchlist for ActivityPub apps: [https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist- fo...](https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for- activitypub-apps)</comment>


Moderna Phase 1 results show coronavirus vaccine safe, induces immune response - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-moderna/moderna-phase-one-results-show-coronavirus-vaccine-safe-induces-immune-response-idUSKCN24F2SW <comment><USER2> Link to the actual NEJM publication for those interested: [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483)

Some interesting snippets:

"one participant in the 25-μg group was withdrawn because of an unsolicited adverse event, transient urticaria, judged to be related to the first vaccination."

Also probably more important than antibodies: "The 25-μg and 100-μg doses elicited CD4 T-cell responses (Figs. S9 and S10) that on stimulation by S-specific peptide pools were strongly biased toward expression of Th1 cytokines (tumor necrosis factor α > interleukin 2 > interferon γ), with minimal type 2 helper T-cell (Th2) cytokine expression (interleukin 4 and interleukin 13). CD8 T-cell responses to S-2P were detected at low levels after the second vaccination in the 100-μg dose group (Fig. S11)."

<comment><USER3> Could you explain the snippet in plain English? Thanks!

<comment><USER4> They stopped the treatment for one person in the experiment group treated with 25 microgram dosage, because they showed a side-effect of itchy skin.

There is a bunch of white blood cells that produce things called cytokines which act as messengers on immune response. When you want to kill a pathogen you produce Th1. When you produce too much of it you risk killing your own tissue to cancel that you produce Th2. A balance between Th1 and Th2 is needed so that you don't kill yourself while trying to kill pathogens.

P.S.: not an immunologist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oxford is set to publish its results in The Lancet on Jul 20[0]. Would be interesting to see the differences and how these two compare (there must be something based on which we could say one is better than the other?)

[0] [https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health- news/covid-19-vaccine-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health- news/covid-19-vaccine-early-oxford-trial-data-be-published-next-n1233919)</comment>


Bootstrap Example - <AUTHOR> http://google.com <comment><USER2> Not sure what this is supposed to be, it is just a link to Google...</comment>


A GPU-Accelerated Quantum Computer Simulator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/QCGPU/qcgpu-rust <comment><USER2> Since the project literally has "Rust" in the title, I'm curious - do the authors view Rust as being particularly suited to this kind of project?

From a quick glance it looks like the heavy computational work is done in OpenCL kernels. Typically, such projects are either written in Python / some other flexible high level language for the easy metaprogramming or C++ if a high performance CPU fallback or tight CUDA integration is desired. I've tried out Rust in the past, but decided against using it for my own computational projects because it didn't seem to offer any significant advantages for this type of work and I didn't enjoy the extra hurdles it imposed. It'd be interesting to hear an opposing view from other computational scientists.

<comment><USER3> Well the author seems to have written a similar program in Python prior to this Rust version: [https://github.com/adamisntdead/QuSimPy](https://github.com/adamisntdead/QuSimPy)

<comment><USER4> There's also an archived C++ version of the project [https://github.com/QCGPU/qcgpu-cpp](https://github.com/QCGPU/qcgpu-cpp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dis-sys this is like writing a PS4 emulator for Gameboy.</comment>


Are you a Swift Developer? iOS Blog are paying for screencast authors. - <AUTHOR> http://iosblog.co.uk/write-for-us

<comment><USER2> The English from the site itself (not the guest writers) doesn't look too good. If I were a blogger / screencaster, I would feel repelled.</comment>


A Practical Talk On Regenerating Our Bodies - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/alan_russell_on_regenerating_our_bodies.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sorry this is a video, but it is the most amazing video I have ever seen. I highly recommend it to anyone reading this to see the pictures and his explanation of what's going on and how far we have to go.

That said and done. Tissue regeneration has a long way to go and the most pressing problem right now is how do you give the organs their intricate structure? How do you make a scaffold, or lay some kind of foundation for everything to come together? That has to be one of the most fascinating problems I have ever encountered.

I would give my arm to work on this. :)

<comment><USER2> _Tissue regeneration has a long way to go and the most pressing problem right now is how do you give the organs their intricate structure? How do you make a scaffold, or lay some kind of foundation for everything to come together?_

The body already has that information. It's called DNA. I've had a hole in my left lung close and decades-old scars itch like new scars and visibly shrink. The body can regenerate itself if you clean it up adequately and give it sufficient resources to rebuild (nutritionally).

Thank you for the video. It's highly relevant to my interests.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not denying that it does. What I am trying to say is that when you are trying to grow an entire organ for a person then how can you tell it where the intricate structures should be? A heart has chambers, valves and a structure that responds dynamically to pressure. How do you make that? From essentially nothing.

An embryo does it, somehow, by magic that no one truly understands. That's a puzzle we need to solve. I've spent some time reading about it, but I have no clue whatsoever what lies beyond the surface.

<comment><USER2> No, I understand what you are trying to say. But perhaps you don't understand what I am trying to say. I am saying that I was diagnosed in 2001 with "atypical cystic fibrosis" -- a degenerative "disease" where the typical course is that infection eats away the lungs until they eventually drop below some critical percentage (I think 50%) of normal functioning and the person gets listed for transplant (if they are lucky/haven't engaged in behaviors that disqualify them). I had a hole in my lung from repeated infections. This is something conventional medicine claims does not heal. You just live with it and watch the holes grow larger until they replace the organ. According to my most recent x-rays and how I feel (because the damn thing was quite painful), I no longer have a hole in my left lung. My fingernails are also much stronger and prettier than they have ever been. Fingertip health is strongly influenced by lung health and I always had extremely crappy fingernails. As I healed, my fingernails improved -- a strong indicator that my lungs are healthier than they have ever been in my life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow.

Have you kept track of environmental factors? Like your diet in that time frame as well as the air quality etc.? It would be just awesome to compile that and see the correlations with other people's datasets. Perhaps, that might lead to better strategies with dealing with atypical cystic fibrosis before we can actually find a way to replicate this 100% of time.

By the way, does the percentage of damage matter? How damaged were your lungs? Clearly, there has to be a threshold beyond which healing is nigh impossible, but has anyone ever tried to define it outside of ballparks?

<comment><USER2> I didn't track things on paper in the way you suggest. I have tried to share my best understanding of the process here: <http://healthgazelle.com/> I would like to learn a programming language and write a game (simulation) to try to more effectively teach the process to others.

Of course the amount of damage matters. My 23 year old son has the same diagnosis I have but was never anywhere near as sick as I was. Where he is at provides clues to what may be possible for me. I don't know anyone else who was as sick as I was and came back the way I have, so I don't have answers to some of your questions.

My lungs were not deemed to be very damaged. I don't have a percentage. I have been working on this for more than 9 years, but I had to figure it out as I went. Presumably, if I can find the right means to share the mental model, it should take less time for others to heal. Of course, the best hope is to prevent damage in the first place, as was done for my son. It takes a lot of resources to come back, though far less than conventional medicine currently puts into this population with a result of basically dying slower. I think it is great that some folks get a second chance at life by getting new lungs. But I think it is horrifying and immoral that improving lung transplants is a much higher priority for the medical community than keeping these people well in the first place and keeping the lungs they were born with healthy and functional.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Calling out Jason Fried for bad business advice - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scottolsen.net/?p=144

<comment><USER2> This poster has missed the point of Jason Fried's post by a cosmic distance.

He talked to a CEO last week who fell ass-backwards into a huge deal that he can't win without recruiting 2-3 "enterprise SAS sales persons" "ASAP". Why, if he followed Fried's advice, he'd never close those deals!

You want to take the advice of people like Scott Olson if this is the situation you'd like to find yourself in: bouncing from make-or-break high-6-figures enterprise deals dogfighting with 3 other companies doing exactly the same thing you do. There is indeed a playbook that most direct sales enterprise software companies run from, and if you don't mind quietly crying into your hands for 5 minutes every day when you start your day sitting in the lobby of a telecom company you're pitching in Jackson Mississippi, you are well served by its plays[1].

I can't read Fried's mind, but here is the sense I get from how he writes --- and this may be my own bias here --- he would rather gnaw off and consume raw his own big toes than run this kind of company. He's writing his own playbook for his company. And in that playbook, he doesn't "staff up". He's unlikely to wind up in a situation where he has to delude himself that he can ramp up 2 sales reps so that they can close a _single deal_ whose window is _days to close_.

Instead, the point of Fried's model appears to be: grow headcount as slowly as possible, and instead of posting job reqs, leave yourself maximally exposed to motivated talent. Exposed: running a company that people love, and that people are inclined to ping for openings. Motivated: people who are seeking out the opportunity to work with you. Talent: people who can prove themselves with something other than a sheet of paper that looks identical to everyone else's paper.

Scott Olson's friend can't do that. He runs an enterprise software company that needs "Enterprise SAS Salespersons". Guessing, regardless of the "deep technical rocket science" involved, that top talent isn't beating down the doors to get an interview at that company --- unless it's attached to a monstrous 1099 consulting rate.

But, I mean, what do I know? All I can say for reasonably sure is that Fried is crying his way to the bank because of this mean post.

By the way: I've lived in Chicago all my life, started 2 companies here, one of which I'm at now, and I don't know anyone who (a) works for the park district or (b) is hiring people with UofC MBA's. Scott might just have needed a better social circle here, and some different career choices. As someone who has spent a couple years in the valley, I will attest to the fact that it is easier to find people talking about the "rocket ride days at Netscape" there. That wasn't enough of a win for me to stay, but hey, if "heady stuff" like that does it for you, mazel tov! You be a mensch in the valley, I'll keep growing a business in Chicago.

[1] This playbook is also the reason every VC-funded enterprise software company with less than 10MM revs has products with pilot pricing at $70,000, and why they all have the exact same 3-person VP/Marketing, Dir/Marketing, and Marketing Communications Manager marketing team, solely responsible for giving the CEO a "marketing plan" that in no way influences the sole product the whole company develops. It is also the playbook that recruits 3 "sales engineers" so that there are enough people staffing the pointless industry conferences the playbook dictates they must spend $200,000 on every year. And it's the reason you're getting fucking obnoxious phone calls from "inside sales" people every other day.

And since nobody who actually knew what they were doing would ever go out of their way to subject themselves to this kabuki startup built out of PowerPoint "lego" slides and strip club visits, you _do indeed need resumes_ to execute this plan.

But hey. Little stress balls with your company's name on it. Don't forget the perks.

<comment><USER3> I think fundamentally Jason's advice works for the business of selling web apps. And scott's got it all mixed up with general business practices of large corporations.

Jason is a romantic when it comes to what worked for him and he is preaching it to the world. Scott just can't handle the fact that preaching still works.

<comment><USER2> I really think this has more to do with the way that insta- 50-person post-A- round enterprise software startups work. They really do start with a small pouch of powder, which, when sprinkled over water, blossoms into a company with a 1/10 shot of getting acquired for 2x investment dollars in a couple years.

It's probably really frustrating that all you have control over is the flavor of that powder. Maybe that's why Olson is so angry. Or maybe something bad happened to him in the Chicago parks. Some of them do get pretty iffy at night.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No advice is universal and the limited application of the 37signals crews' advice is apparent.

This article is unnecessary.

And it reads like it was written by an MBA-type who is upset that successful people are ignoring the gospel truth he was presented in college. There are very few hard-and-fast rules in any profession.

<comment><USER5> They lost me at Stanford vs State school, I had to stop there.

Cover letters are an excellent way to judge the intent and character of an applicant. Sounds like Scott is the one with a chip on his shoulder there...

<comment><USER2> It doesn't help that the rampant secondhand info we have about Google's hiring practices (for generalist devs out of school) suggests that they preference top schools; I wouldn't be surprised if that's where this guy drew that comparison from.

Not sure why I'm meant to be influenced by how an MBA stumbles through hiring tech people, though.

<comment><USER6> Uh what? I like how everyone in this thread is complaining about judging an applicant by where their degree came from while simultaneously singling out people who are 'MBA types'. Double standard much?

<comment><USER2> No, it's not a double standard. Just like saying 'grellas is more qualified to give legal advice because he graduated from law school is not a validation of the law school pecking order.

<comment><USER6> Yeah it's still a double standard because you're discounting people's experience for a 'category' whether that category is 'lawyer' or 'MBA' or 'state school grad'. For example:

"Not sure why I'm meant to be influenced by how an MBA stumbles through hiring tech people, though."

What if this MBA has 20 years of experience hiring tech people, both for small and large companies, and who is also an active programmer in their spare time. Don't you think their hiring advice might be important to consider? And yet your statement jumbles him in with all those other pointy-haired 'MBA types'. That is the same problem with only looking at an applicants alma mater is it not?

Edit: And grellas' comments are awesome not just because he is a lawyer, but because of his rich experience working with startups and tech companies.

<comment><USER2> Here you go:

<http://blog.scottolsen.net/?page_id=2>

Do you think he's had 20 years experience hiring tech people? It's possible he has. And you're right. I know lots of smart MBA's --- though most of them also have engineering degrees, unlike Olsen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a lot of 37Signals-fanatical-defence and unnecessary MBA bashing.

I'm a huge fan of the _business_ 37Signals has built however Scott Olsen hit it on the head with his critique of their _advice_.

37Signals do indeed suffer from a "Pernicious Lack of Perspective" and from "Strident Insistence". If you read Rework (which frankly will only take you an hour), it is a series of chapters that could each be retitled "And another thing I really like about what we do at 37Signals".

Their advice doesn't work in all cases and they seldom if ever draw examples of other companies where it does. This doesn't take from what they have achieved but it does mean they're often far too far out of their boat when shouting advice at others.

Kudos to Scott for not only making this point but also being a very good writer.

<comment><USER2> It's like you want them to write a book that says "And another thing I really like about what they do at Boeing...". I'll let Jim Collins write that book, and then wait for Boeing to go out of business like Circuit City.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've thought for a while that people need to take hiring advice given by 37Signals and Fog Creek (Joel on Software) in perspective. It's a very different experience hiring when there are thousands of programmers who would die to work on your stuff than when you're an upcoming startup that nobody's heard of. That's not to say that their advice is wrong - Smart and Gets Things Done has lots of great advice. Keep in mind when reading these books/blogs that people aren't going to launch websites, Twitter campaigns, or rearrange their lives to get your attention like they do for 37signals and Joel.

<comment><USER9> I totally agree. Unless you're a business with an established coolness-factor, you're stuck with contacts and trawling through resumes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "You'd ignore this [information about schools and previous jobs], and go straight to the cover letter? Really? ... Really?"

Yes, really. That's the point. Merely being incredulous doesn't form a coherent argument against it. My angle on this is a little personal, which would probably automatically strip my it of any validity, but let me explain why. Perhaps it would make a compelling case to someone.

I'm originally from Bulgaria and graduated high school there. For obvious political reasons I hadn't traveled at all and I wanted to study in the US. I got into private and public schools, but the difference in the standard of living at the time was such that even with substantial financial aid I could only afford to go to a state school. Still, I'd get to see the US (New York in particular) and the draw of the adventure was enough to get me to go.

After school, like most international students, I took advantage of a program that is essentially an extended internship (OPT). There were hard time constraints, so I needed to find a job quickly. I ended up working at a consulting firm you never would have heard of doing mostly Java with a bit of Rails. It was a great place to work and I learned a lot. If the respect and trust of the people you work with counts for something, I'm fairly confident I got good.

None of this is something I could convey in a resume. Worse, Mr. Olsen would dismiss me outright because I have gone to a state school (because I was poor) and done Java (because I couldn't afford to sift through the market). Feel free to attribute this to cognitive dissonance, but I find his views arrogant, ineffective, and lacking a human approach. His argument is a pernicious over- simplification of a complex, human problem.

<comment><USER11> _Worse, Mr. Olsen would dismiss me outright because I have gone to a state school ... and done Java_

Mr Olsen makes no judgement in his post as to which of the two candidates is 'better'. He just asks the question "You'd ignore this information, and go straight to the cover letter?"

<comment><USER10> You're correct that he doesn't make an explicit judgement, but there are two things to note: (1) he used the rhetorical question to prove a point (he meant something by it), and (2) the obvious answer to the rhetorical question is "No." Therefore, it's fair to ponder what the equivalent statement would be if it weren't written in the form of a question.

The way I interpreted it was "No one could rationally ignore this information. Clearly one should factor it when making a decision about which cover letter to read first, which candidate to interview first, etc." I don't think that's an unfair way to read this, and it clearly implies something about the qualities of former candidate with respect to the latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> SvN, Getting Real, and Rework are an indirect marketing campaign for Basecamp. Sensationalized, aggressive, and confrontational articles attract more readers and more Basecamp signups. I love 37signals, but sometimes I wonder if they are providing me with good radical business advice or if they are raising controversy to attract attention.

<comment><USER2> Both, of course.

<comment><USER13> Based on a conversation I had with Jason Fried, I'd say neither.

They publish this stuff primarily just for the sake of writing it. It's an outlet for a company that purposefully avoids adding features to their products if at all possible. It's a deliberate practice to keep themselves creative — the megalomaniacal marketing is just added ego-gravy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That "guy doing IT at law firm" might be the best programmer for your project. Using life circumstances to judge talent is equally as stupid as looking for bullet points (Stanford, Facebook) on a resume. Maybe his/her family needed the money, the health benefits, or some other event prevented him/her from pursuing their dream job/education. Hire a person, not a list.

<comment><USER15> Sure. You could have a PhD grad from Caltech A and a community college grad B such that B is more skilled for the job than A.

But if you have a very small amount of information and time to make a decision, where would you place a bet? It's certainly very unfair for the many talented graduates from lesser known universities. However, I find the idea of recruiting based partially on these bullet points valid from a expected proficiency optimizing perspective.

The talented guy doing IT at a law firm has some options to signal his talent. For example, he can create or become a top contributor in an open source project. I am sure many talented people who feel unfulfilled in their jobs do this.

<comment><USER2> If you're in the jam where you have very little time to make a decision between two people based on their school and their job application, you may have screwed the whole process up several steps earlier.

Try to avoid getting in this jam; make that an explicit goal of your recruiting (and, more importantly, business planning) process. You may find that Fried's "chuck the resumes" advice starts making a whole hell of a lot more sense.

<comment><USER15> I disagree. A recruiter that uses resumes effectively frees up time that lets him carefully inspect only those candidates that made it through this coarse filtering process.

I've helped my friend do recruiting at his startup (albeit, not in the US). There are hundreds and hundreds of applications, and the constraint I pointed out becomes evident. Is it really cost-effective to personally interview and understand the context of every single resume-submitter, including those with absolutely no experience? How about someone without even a compsci degree and no experience to make up for it?

<comment><USER2> You're not following. If you have a job req you need to fill right now, you're right. But the fact that you're hiring that way suggests you've made some decisions that are making life less pleasant.

To be in a position to blow off resumes, you need to run a company like 37signals does. You need to chill out, do excellent work, collect fans, and be open to interesting people who go out of their way to bug you for jobs.

The very best people in the industry don't give a shit about your job reqs. The minute they actually get on the market, they're snatched up, because their friends track their every motion and are alert to the slightest sign of unhappiness in their current job. You think Mark Dowd, Zed Shaw, or Tom Preston-Werner are going to fill out job reqs and send out resumes? That's naive.

By running extremely lean, rocking out the business, and building stuff people like in an environment that builders like, 37signals can drag in A+ players when they become available, because they aren't clogging up the decks with people they fished out of a pile of resumes. Your friend, maybe not so much?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This guy seems to have precisely the problem he accuses Fried of demonstrating: He doesn't do things a certain way, so he assumes they just aren't done like that.

When Fried warns against growing your business too fast based on pipe dreams rather than actual, quantifiable needs, this guy says, "Oh, come on, who does that? He's arguing against cartoon characters!" But a lot of people really do get caught up in the ideas of what they should be doing to grow their business according to some blueprint and don't stop to consider whether it's best for the business at this stage. I think Paul Graham has written about this too, where too much venture capital will put pressure on startups to become big business-y in a hurry, to their detriment.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have mixed feelings about this.

I sure as hell don't think just because Person 1 went to Stanford and Person 2 went to State School that one is better than another.

Maybe part of it is that I'm from Pennsylvania and we happen to have some fairly good state schools like Penn State.

Or the fact that when it comes down to writing code, where you went to school means absolutely DICK. Hooray, you spent 4 years learning Java at exorbinate cost. So what?

What does matter to me - and shows in the resume, incidentally - is what you did after school ( or instead of it, in my case ).

</comment><comment><USER18> This article could easy be titled:

No-name Blowhard Slams Accomplished Internet Entrepreneur in Half-Assed Effort to Validate Gigantic Ego

I've known Jason Fried since 1998 or so and he's a stand-up guy. Over the years he has built his own successful empire by carefully hiring the right people and nurturing them in the proper ways. While his advice is unconventional, it is by no means bad advice. What works for him and 37 Signals will likely work for others.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was always taught that saying "In my opinion" was bad form. You're making a statement, of course it's your opinion! To say so is just repeating yourself.

So when I read REWORK, I see it as "Here's how I built my business. You could do the same." When I read Crush It, I hear "This is how I, @garyvee, built my business. You could do the same." I don't hear, "This is always the way that it works in every business ever." Maybe that's just me.

<comment><USER20> In my opinion, I think you're wrong.

In some cases (like mine above) it is unnecessary to specify that it's your opinion, because it's truly and obviously an opinion. But not every statement made is someone's opinion [1]. For example:

       "In my opinion, the earth revolves around the Sun."
       "In my opinion, Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States."
       etc.

Because some statements are clear and simple facts, it can sometimes be useful to delineate opinion from fact, especially in cases where it's not explicitly clear which type of statement is being made. In _most_ cases, I think that it's pretty clear from the context that 37signals' is writing from their own experience and sharing their opinions, and thus littering their writing with "weasel words" would diminish the quality of the writing.

However, in many cases (including some by 37signals), writers intentionally leave out the "weasel words" not because their statements are obviously opinion, but because they know it will get people riled up and serve as good linkbait. Ironically, they often fall back to this whole idea of "of course it's only my opinion, weasel words are bad writing, etc", which strikes me as kind of a reverse-weasel. Write as if you're stating absolute truth (in order to get links), even when you aren't, and then hide behind "good writing" when people complain.

[1] I'm really not interested in the greater philosophical questions of whether it's opinion that the earth revolves around the sun. If you are, be my guest, but I'm fully prepared to just accept some things as fact. The earth revolving around the sun is one of them :)

EDIT: I might have been using "heliocentricism" wrong, so I removed it to prevent ambiguity.

<comment><USER21> Reverse-weasel is my new favourite concept.

<comment><USER22> Quite related, I think, is preterition: the act of mentioning something by saying you won't mention it. I seem to encounter it from computer/math people a lot, it's nice to have a name for the action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 37 hires from across the country. They've talked about telecommuting often. They don't have just resumes/job candidates from Chicago. That weakens his hypothesis.

<comment><USER24> Not at all. Whether they hire from around the world, Jason is still from a technological podunk town. He ain't from the big city, and he's presumptuous enough to believe he knows it all anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reading through the comments there's a lot of defending 37signals. I think the poster is absolutely right though.

There was an interview with Marissa Meyer on The Charlie Rose show where they talked about recruiting talent for Google and Marissa was asked what her experience was. Since it's Google they had obviously tried to do all sorts of predictions on how well a new employee would turn out based on cover letters, interviews, resumes, etc. What she said was interesting. The only predictor of how well a new employee would do his job was his resume. Nothing else gave a statistically significant prediction.

So Marissa and I think the poster is right and Fried is wrong :-)

<comment><USER11> Here's a link to the video (from 41m25s): <http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10129>

<comment><USER26> Thanks. I took the liberty of transcribing the latter part of that section.

"We basically found that their background and references are the best predictor. You can't use them exclusively, but it's true: The best predictor of future performance is past performance. And that's what we really found out through the regression models. We also found that there were a few interviewers in the company who were very, very good. They were several standard deviations off, meaning that they could tell in an interview where or not someone was going to be good or not. In some cases, they would be aberrant and reach a different conclusion from the other interviewers, but they would be correct."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd like a feature where I can hit one button to grant a +1 vote to everything said by a particular user within a given thread, without even necessarily reading it beforehand. It would save me a lot of time regarding tptacek today. :)

</comment><comment><USER28> Jason's point was a great one - historically people focused too much on resumes, and that is often a mistake today because their work speaks for itself.

You're probably objecting to the all encompassing way it was said, which I could understand. I think Jason would agree that resumes aren't 100% useless in every case.

But writing from a "lets tell both sides of the story" perspective is boring and accomplishes nothing (everyone knows there are two sides to every story). If you think the pendulum has swung too far in one direction, then writing to push it the other direction is all you can do.

<comment><USER29> _Jason's point was a great one - historically people focused too much on resumes, and that is often a mistake today because their work speaks for itself._

Except, that's not a great point-- it's a pretty trivial point, and one that was hammered to death by Spolsky, t al., a decade ago.

And, it's not a matter "let's tell both sides of the story", as much as "pay attention to the context."

Fried has found something that works for 37signals. That's good, as far as it goes. To try to generalize from that into "This is the way everybody should do things" is not only arrogant, it's crazy.

If Fried were really interested in doing his readers a service, he'd examine _why_ his system works at 37signals, and outline the context which makes it appropriate-- so that if the reader's context is similar, he can adjust the advice accordingly.

<comment><USER2> Wait, which of these points were made by Spolsky a decade ago? I have a near- fannish devotion to both of these people's writing, and I think you're either misremembering or have misread Fried's bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I really hate to resort to name calling, as I realize it reduces the name caller's credibility... fuck it. Am I the only one that thinks this guy reads like a douche bag? "Mr. Fried", "The Pernicious Lack of Perspective (PLP) is metastasized through the entire corpus of their "business advice" work.".... or maybe it's this guy's writing style? Maybe, I'm use to reading so many informal blogs that have a conversational tone? I don't know.

Help me out.

</comment><comment><USER31> This guy reminds me of Stephen Fowler: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzIDaRY82fU>

<comment><USER32> Good point. I forgot how much of a slime bag that guy was.

<comment><USER33> Mr. Olsen's essay is what we commonly call a rant. Though he doesn't fully reveal in his tirade why he perceives Jason Fried as a dangerous enemy who must be defeated, we can deduce the real reason for his seemingly bottomless anger: oxytocine poisoning.

Oxytocine is the love/hate hormone; it binds a cohort together and simultaneously creates aggression towards outsiders. Oxytocine is responsible for the condition known as The Fanboy Syndrome. Whether by design, or by instinct, each utterance from the lips of Jason Fried and Davie Heinemeier Hansson carries a payload of powerful semiotic messages that alter the target's brain chemistry. Sometimes the target will become a Fanboy, and sometimes the target will feel a threat to a pre-existing Fanboy alliance--- then comes the rage.

As members of the tech community, we endure constant oxytocine bombardment by masters of manipulation. With each new version of Android, with every semi- annual dose Steve Jobs charisma, with every shift in the Facebook security policy, in the Ruby vs Python vs Java flame wars, we are exposed to massive, and sometimes fatal, doses of harmful hormones. It's important to remember that we are not animals; we can take defensive measures. When next you feel your Fanboy or your Hateboy urge rising from the depths, do not resist it. Resistance is futile. The path to freedom from oxytocine slavery is to acknowledge it, to embrace, and then, to let it go.

<comment><USER34> What a beautiful and informative post. Thank you, sir.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> 37Signals' philosophy and their business practices ARE different to a 'normal' business or startup's - their advice goes against the conventional wisdom. That's what makes what they have to say worthwhile and valuable for discussion.

I Googled around a little bit for an example here, here goes.

Nobody is gathered around arguing the soundness of the approach or the appropriateness of the attitude of Ben Angel, founder of Nationwide Networking, what seems at a glance to be a somewhat successful business consulting and entrepreneur coaching business.

Why?

Presumably because Ben's advice is conventional, safe and mostly like everyone else's. It may be more likely to be suited to your business, but it's not new and it's not interesting, is it?

37Signals built a very different, opinionated business. It worked because either they got all their opinions exactly right (not likely...), or because building a business that way makes people like you - and makes you successful.

<comment><USER36> Have you ever explored EOS, the Entrpreneurial Operating System? If you haven't read TRACTION by Gino Wickman, I stongly recommend it for anyone trying to grow an entrepreneurial business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I see a lot of hate towards this article, but there are definitely nuggets of truth here. Yes his tone might be a bit defensive, and yes he might sound like an "mba-type" with a "chip on his shoulder". However, the basic point that we should consider all available information when looking for a new hire is a good one. The resume contains many useful data points, and it is ludicrous not to take it into account. Should I base me entire decision on it, or even a large part of it? Maybe not. But to completely disregard it? That makes little sense.

While "Stanford vs. State School" might not be the best argument, the point still holds. It is useful information, and all else being equal the Stanford kid probably has a track record of a harder work ethic. Make a decision solely based upon it? Absolutely not. But it would be poor business sense not to take it into account.

</comment><comment><USER38> I write quite well and could indeed craft an excellent custom cover letter but I refuse to include cover letters when applying for jobs and I've never had problems landing great interviews and jobs. Letting my experience and educational background speak for me has never let me down, and I'm no rocket scientist. If an employer ignored my resume, its probably better that I don't work for them, its the first sign of arrogance and disregard to throw away the intellectual capital of time honored industry practices as an employer as a blanket statement backed by faulty reasoning unless you're hiring someone for a writing job. I don't include cover letters because it leaves room for discussion when I'm called in for an interview.

<comment><USER39> Wait so, why don't you write a cover letter again?

on right because...

 _its the first sign of arrogance and disregard to throw away the intellectual capital of time honored industry practice_

cover letter is industry standard too, yo, but you disregarded it

<comment><USER38> Having a cover letter is an extra, your resume is the center piece. You can have a resume without a cover letter, but you can't have a cover letter without a resume. Not including a cover letter helps me to get in the door, if a potential employer is serious about hiring me, I have no problems preparing or giving them past writing samples. I am an individual , and I'm not bound by EEOE rules, that's another reason I can disregard time honored industry practices, and how its a bigger deal if a company ignores resumes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I feel divided. The articles feel like two different articles mixed together. One extremely insightful about workings of the Enterprise world. And the other - bashing of Jason Fried on the grounds of awfully picked examples. Now I believe that Mr Olson is the one suffering the PLP.

As far as I perceive Jason Fried he's extremely self confident and may come across as arrogant to some. But personally I'm fine with that. I like people who know they're good and are not ashamed to feel good about it. And I like when they talk about it. I also like how this particular kind of people know better than talk about stuff they know nothing of.

</comment><comment><USER41> Blogs get attention by being on one side of the fence instead of straddling the fence.

Obviously Jason Fried doesn't want to write "Resume's work sometimes, other times pay attention to the cover letter," That's just boring.

</comment><comment><USER27> All advice should be taken with a grain of salt. Interpreted and adapted to a particular set of circumstances. Anything 37Signals says is no different.

Personally, I've found a lot of wisdom in what JF/DHH have said. Does everything they say apply, literally, in 100% of situations? Of course not. But there is/was a whole lot of traditional/oldskool advice out there that is too extreme in the other direction, and what they advocate is a refreshing alternative that DOES work for them, and DOES work for other folks.

As always, YMMV and caveat emptor.

</comment><comment><USER27> Here's the deal: 37Signals is a so-called lifestyle business. Except it gives them a pretty damn good lifestyle. So if someone wants to lead the same kind of lifestyle, listening to them provides a model for how one might achieve that. If you want something different, or if you're going after a radically different kind of customer, their stuff might not apply.

<comment><USER42> ", listening to them provides a model for how one might achieve that"

As long as you've built up a massive blog readership and are selling them koolaid about how totally awesome you are. Oh and if you create rails.

<comment><USER2> Yes, axod! Building things people want is indeed a prerequisite of 37signals- style success, and it is indeed worth noting that it is _not_ a prerequisite of enterprise software success.

It is so weird to me, this "critique" of 37signals that says "but, they did all these awesome things, _of course_ they're successful". This isn't a get- rich-quick scheme.

<comment><USER42> So you're saying it's completely possible for anyone to create the next rails?

The issue isn't that I disbelieve they did awesome things so they're successful. Sure - they did good stuff, and got some luck. The question is, can it be replicated by others, and is their advice useful to people looking to build companies.

Their advice is _SO_ narrow. It's basically "how to build 37signals". So for me, it's not really very useful unless I invent a time machine, and decide I want to build 37signals before they do.

<comment><USER2> People created frameworks before Rails. They continue to create frameworks now. Someone will be the Rails of Node.js, for instance. But calling 37s a successful "framework company" seems sort of inept; their customers, by and large, do not seems like Rails users. Indeed, Rails users seem like exactly the kinds of people who think that Basecamp and Campfire are trivially reproduced and not worth the money.

All I'm saying is, if you think that having a popular blog is the key to 37signals success, then go start a popular blog. Nobody is stopping you. God did not reach out from the heavens and give SvN to 37signals.

Meanwhile, how many people work for Github? 4? What parts of 37signals' advice _clearly don't apply to them_? Are there no other examples of small companies with strong revenue that we can come up with?

<comment><USER42> FWIW, I run a small business with strong revenue, haven't taken funding, etc. I just disagree with most things 37Signals say :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I really like Rework and 37signals in general, so I might be biased. Having said that, I'll have to join the feeling that their opinions aren't that radical, just different, and that you can take it with a grain of salt and still get several golden nuggets.

For all I saw, the OP missed the point.

</comment><comment><USER43> Advice is advice. You're free to take it or leave it.

</comment><comment><USER44> no mention of Groupon Chicago based?

</comment><comment><USER45> The fun part about advice is you don't always have to take it

</comment><comment><USER46> I think both the original article author and the rebuttal get it wrong..

Hiring is process and much like any engineering adventure you are attempting to find tools and sub-processes that control this human adventure for a desired outcome.

There is no one magical one right way to combine those subprocesses and tools into one magical hiring process.

Its like any engineering process, you measure, verify and measure again and than make changes on those inputs.</comment>


Changing temperature powers sensors in hard-to-reach places - <AUTHOR> http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/09/03/changing-temperature-powers-sensors-in-hard-to-reach-places/

<comment><USER2> For those getting parse errors when reading the title:

> Changes in temperature can be used to power sensors located in hard-to-reach > places

</comment><comment><USER3> Enocean has been doing this for years, [http://www.enocean.com/en/edk350/](http://www.enocean.com/en/edk350/)

<comment><USER4> The UW research is actually using a device from enocean, it seems.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it does. [http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~chzhao/AmbientPowerHarvester...](http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~chzhao/AmbientPowerHarvester/TemperaturePowerHarvester.html):

 _Bill of materials_

Atoms Bellows: We purchased it as an Atmos Clock's spare part. You can buy it from eBay

 _EnOcean ECO 200 Linear motion harvester_ : Description | Order here>

3D-printed parts You can download the design files from here.

MSP 430 Launch Pad for demo.

Segmented E-ink Display for demo.

5 x 74HC595 for driving the E-ink display.

RFM DR3000 Wireless Module

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if something similar could be done with the volume expanding wax used in the hydraulic cylinders of green house vents?</comment>


Making the world's fastest VP8 decoder  - <AUTHOR> http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=499 <comment><USER2> I have no plans to ever program video encoders or decoders, but this blog is always fascinating reading, and satisfies a lot of the curiosity I and, I assume, others have regarding just how video compression really works. (It's not as straightforward as GIF or JPEG, that's for sure!)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is exactly why I think it's crazy for browsers to be forcing users to use the codecs that they embed in their program, rather than letting the user use their own codecs. It's fine to bundle codecs so you know the user can watch things, but when I have a better codec installed on my system - I should be able to use it.

<comment><USER4> What's crazy is expecting the user to manage codecs. Do you really want to have to explain to your parents the performance, compatibility, and most of all security implications of various codecs websites ask them to install? Let the browser developers do that work. Users can have ffvp8 in 6 weeks when Chrome's new release process cycles again; I think that's plenty fast.

<comment><USER5> So what happens when your parents want to watch a video that they downloaded, as opposed to watching it streaming in the browser?

Or a video that they received via email instead of over the web?

Building a codec into the browser doesn't get you out of having to explain to your parents how to get codecs on their system. Furthermore, once you then do that, and get the codec installed on the system, then you have to explain to them why video doesn't look the same in the browser, or why the controls are different.

All codecs in browsers do is make MORE work for you, not less.

<comment><USER4> > Building a codec into the browser doesn't get you out of having to explain > to your parents how to get codecs on their system.

Yes it does; I don't have to explain how to install codecs because my parents don't download videos, because all the videos they want to watch are embedded in web pages (today via Flash, tomorrow HTML5).

Supposing they did want to download a video file for some reason, then ideally the browser's video player would be just as nice as the OS one, and the browser would take over that duty. That hasn't happened yet, but it will, and the end of that road is Chrome OS. The desktop OS with trusted native apps installed on a local filesystem is becoming obsolete. The future is sandboxed apps cached via HTTP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That sounds really cool, but I have a hard time understanding it!</comment>


Steve Jobs: How to live before you die - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die.html <comment><USER2> You can get this video directly from iTunes as well:

[http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/itunes.s...](http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/itunes.stanford.edu.1292029264.01292029270.1292047512?i=1314990017)

</comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic presentation. This actually made me see Steve in a new, better, light.</comment>


Ask HN: Investment tips for EU residents - <AUTHOR> A lot of investment advice I see points to the US firm Vanguard. Is there an equivalent for those of us living in the EU? I'm in Germany if that makes any difference. <comment><USER2> I follow the German blog [https://www.finanzwesir.com/blog/etf-laufende- kosten](https://www.finanzwesir.com/blog/etf-laufende-kosten) for such topics, he has a podcast, too.</comment>