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Cake day: December 4th, 2024

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  • The loss of skill requirements within trades and crafts is likely a major factor in the cascades of ineptitude we experience in our society. The barriers to entry also directly benefitted the quality of those spaces, and naturally flagged the incompetent (if you are incompetent and lack spell check, your mis-spellings served as a demonstration that you are not a skilled writer. Same for driving, musical recognition, engineering as well).

    We’ve seen a clear decline in the general quality of all products, and I can’t help but feel that the automation of skill is directly connected to that decline. This tweet seems to mirror that sentiment in its mockery. You don’t have to think anymore about pretty much any of the process, you just get an output you can ship immediately. So it goes without saying that you can be without any skill and still have a footprint within spaces you have no merit to be in.







  • Not so. There are those that believe objectivism is the true way of viewing the world. They view that we are on the way to understanding the universe as it truly is, that human perception will not pose an obstacle to that pursuit, and that there will eventually be one true method of viewing the universe in its entirety that is yet to be discovered. Constructivist beliefs directly oppose that idea, since all science is a man-made construct that can only approximate reality in their view. Constructivism also, then, leaves room for multiple theories coexisting because they provide better utility and insights in different circumstances. In the example of Einstein’s Relativity vs Newton’s Physics, we are talking about an older theory and the theory which usurped it because it was more accurate, and the general expectation is that another theory will be accepted down the line which will be better than both. That expectation is fairly objectivist, since it assumes there is a true model which we just haven’t discovered yet. Constructivism does not make that assumption, since the universe likely does not fit neatly into our constructions in its image.

    The other thing, is that constructivism challenges scientific realism to some extent, in that it challenges the existence of many things which we cannot directly observe, such as quarks, proteins, particles, etc… because “how can we actually confirm these things exist, when we physically can’t observe them, and the things we’re using to show their existence are constructs made up by us?”

    This topic is still very much in a state of debate that has very strong implications around the philosophy of how science works and how it should be conducted. That’s also just talking about constructivism’s implications in the physical sciences. Things get much hairier when you start looking at the social sciences, where biases and perception are extremely influential on what we discover. Constructivism directly challenges the attainability of scientific objectivity, which has serious implications across all fields of science.



  • This guy should learn to view science more like a constructivist. Pretty much everything in science is just something we made up that mostly aligns with the natural world, and just because one model is less accurate than another does not mean it’s no longer useful.

    We didn’t abandon Newtonion physics when Einstein’s model was accepted for instance, since Newtonian physics is still very useful, and much easier to use compared to others.

    Edit: changed language from ‘proven’ to ‘accepted’.