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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Wait, so you think nuclear reactors spew out uranium?

    While coal powerplants don’t spew out radioactive coal ash??

    Lets just say only one of these is true… and it is not the former.

    They are not explodey, because they are by design not. The non RBMK (i.e. not cheap Russian, lied-about-safety-by-government) reactors are designed to literally cool off without any power or control, if all went to shit. You can try with all your expertise to make it explode, and short of rebuilding it you will fail. Even if you were to add explosives. At that point, just making your own nuclear bomb is cheaper and faster.

    I think it is quite optimistic to think they will even recycle 5% of a solar powerplant. The silicon is not useful, hard to dismantle from metal. Additives make it unusable without special centrifuge processes. Take the easy metals, scrap the rest, use easy, cheap raw materials for controlled process. Most of the NPP can be recycled if you cared, apart from the irradiated reactor, which is a very tiny part of it. It’s all wires, steel and other useful electric constructions. Nobody cares to recycle concrete.

    I wont talk about storing waste, because I dont know why it is marketed as prohibitively expensive. Apart from it just being lead lined barrels in say an empty mineshaft (which there are an exceptional volume of everywhere). Literally enough space for forever, no need to put anything in the air.









  • It’s a (large) language model. It’s good at language tasks. Helps to have hundreds of Gigs of written “knowledge” in ram. Differing success rates on how that knowledge is connected.

    It’s autocorrect so turbocharged, it can write math, and a full essay without constantly clicking the buttons on top of the iphone keyboard.

    You want to keep a pizza together? Ah yes my amazing concepts of sticking stuff together tells me you should add 1/2 spoons of glue (preferably something strong like gorilla glue).

    How to find enjoyment with rock? Ah, you can try making it as a pet, and having a pet rock. Having a pet brings many enjoyments such as walking it.



  • The goal posts were not moved at any point. It was a discussion of the situation, as it is.

    Please look at the paper you refer to: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)60175-4/abstract It was only retracted because of “In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were “consecutively referred” and that investigations were “approved” by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.” It was retracted due to fraud. I don’t think it’s in any way wise to blame the possibility of fraud on the peer review process. Just as fraud can happen in any field because some people decide to pathologically lie.

    However, besides the fraudulent ethics, the paper is fine, and as always previously reiterated multiple times. All it says are a bunch of maybes. It makes no extraordinary claims, it holds no conclusive proof, just a lot of “this maybe hints to something”. The paper is publishable.

    The actual scandal was caused by the Wakefield lying profusely in media.

    These are two different things: what Wakefield said in media, and what Wakefield said in the paper. You should separate them.


  • In just the same way you can get away from taxes by lying vehemently… he lost his job and reputation in less than three years.

    Since the paper itself was okay, but the data was falsified, obviously it was hard to prove the data was false until other studies not only showed it, but also his reputation was discredited and (presumably) investigations finished.

    Incorrect data can happen even to a good paper in good faith due to instrument error.

    The paper in question, again, was lots of “maybes” and no direct conclusions. The earth shattering conclusions were reached in press conferences where the guy lied vehemently, and the journalists ate it up like coke.