[p2p-research] Drone hacking

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 4:38 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Once we get beneath the rhetoric and into the substance of the argument, an
> awful lot comes to hinge on what is "materially" relevant, or "means" the
> same thing, or is "good enough".  The tightly woven scientific certainty
> falls apart and is shown to depend completely on value judgements about
> whether or not grossly imperfect results are sufficient.  Terms like
> "determine", "predict", "control", "certain" turn out to be weasel-words
> which are used in a technical sense which is a long way from their everyday
> usage, but which is assumed to be close enough to continue using these
> words.  And the evidence comes down to a mixture of an appeal to a technical
> specialism too complicated to explain and an appeal to facts which are
> conveniently non-verifiable and non-replicable.


If you want certainty, talk to a priest. Where I live, "tightly woven
scientific certainty" is presumed to not exist.

What it boils down to is that you are too lazy to even attempt to
learn the math and you are also dissatisfied with my attempt to dumb
it down to the point where you might be able to pretend to understand
it. We were already at the point where almost every statement came
with a list of implied theoretical caveats the length of my arm. I
could pretend all that lost context doesn't exist but I don't think I
would be helping anyone.


The deep-seated and pathological need for the security blanket of
simple certainty is one of the less endearing traits of the human
species.


-- 
J. Andrew Rogers
realityminer.blogspot.com