As a layperson who doesn't understand psychology but is interested in science and peace, I felt that Ferguson's article (this HN post) was much less directed at a person (as opposed to the person's work or theories put forward) and more professional, versus the linked blog post -- so I tend to believe the former.
Even a simple sentence like, "Ferguson did both of these things and his findings thus do not “undermine” our causal claims; he failed to accurately test our causal claims," comes across as scathing compared to the paper.
Humans commonly engage in deceptive rhetoric, and tone is one of the methods they use. Often, the individual may not even be doing it with substantial intention.
Wordplay is another, and there is plenty of it in this HN thread.
The scientific argument originates from a human, and science has well demonstrated that human perception is untrustworthy (this thread offers plenty of evidence, but that tends to be categorized as "just X", so the ubiquitousness of the problem can never be realized...aka: there "is no evidence" that what I say is true).
Science uses a watered down but more ~practical form of epistemology, for example equating the knowledge of scientists with all of reality (There is no evidence [that I know of]). Some disciplines (military) use special language to circumvent this problem, at least sometimes.
There is what is true, and then there is the human experience of it, and scientists like most other humans mix the two up regularly. Doing otherwise is "pedantic", and is strongly culturally discouraged.
That's an interesting point, doesn't this depend on the expertise of the audience? I'm not a psych expert, so if I'm unwilling to go back to school to interpret both sides "perfectly" then I'd be unsuccessful judging both sides on their factual/scientific merit. I only have other tools to choose from, ie. my personal experience, reading skills, being a (hopefully good) judge of character, etc.
I argue it's relatively scathing, because Haidt's wording is much more dramatic, negative, and more aimed at a person than Ferguson's wording is. By "facts" I assume you mean claims, no?
I'm not sure how tone would be irrelevant; similar to what a sibling commenter said, tone conveys quite a bit of information. It seems unwise or "dumb" to ignore that, because we're still humans talking to each other, even if it's bits over a wire, and we're working together in good faith to learn and solve problems, aren't we?
Sorry what exactly does his tone, whatever it may be, convey about whether or not the study in question was done well? I know it's difficult for some people but if you want to do science you have to focus on the facts. This tactic of mentioning the tone ("scathing") has only one purpose in a scientific discussion and that is to throw chaff into the air and derail the conversation with nonsense. Other examples of this are: you pronounced a name wrong! that's not my pronoun! "othering"! racisnogynism!
It's a huge space, so I wouldn't say it's easy. Also several ideas will just not be interesting to you at first, and many others will only be revealed as uninteresting after a while (ie you hit a problem you aren't interested in solving).
One idea might be to learn something new, if you don't have a project. Think about a textbook or a class, or online texts, or just some interesting popsci at the local bookstore/library for example. any might work depending on your style.
For one person's anecdotes on the culture, read Exit Interview by Kristi Coulter. Amazing read IMO, and it explained a lot of how I've felt at Microsoft and Google.
I would add a couple games that moved me (Hindsight, A Memoir Blue). but I also have to mention not all of their titles are smash hits IMO -- I disliked Florence, Last Stop, If Found, and Open Roads.
That said, I agree that their good games have made me a fan, and I hope the original staff keeps going in some form.
As usual from Microsoft, the answer to the Visual Studio issue is, "Fuck you." Not a surprise, but I'm grateful for the Dolphin devs working through all this.
It's not a "fuck you". What the Dolphin devs want/expect is simply mutually exclusive with how app dev on Windows works. This is a case of Chesterton's Fence, as those decisions have obvious reasons if you think about them outside of the narrow-minded constraints of an open-source emulator project.
I mean I ship commercial non-game software on Windows, and the easy solution is just static linkage. Microsoft's preferred solution is that everyone should have an enormous installer which includes their entire redistributable. It's not great.
Many "senior engineers" are BS and are just posturing. To be honest, this idea alone has been really, really hard for me to understand personally. I learn a lot by watching other people work, and I spent way too much time seeing people posturing when I really should've been watching kind, responsible, vulnerable, open-minded people with values.
Also, candos are trying to flag potential "warzones" and avoid them. Meaning, they don't want the job to become a constant battle with anxiety, users, other stakeholders' pressure, things like that. They just want a job, or worstcase scenario they want to coast and do less time.
That said, the right tradeoffs can make it totally worth it. I think I joined one by accident, personally, but I feel that I have the best people, career growth and tech here (always wanted to do some networking work), so it still feels right to me.
> They just want a job, or worstcase scenario they want to coast and do less time.
I'm not seeing how this is a bad thing? If companies are looking for signals to hire me, I can look for signals that indicate mismanagement, incompetence or toxicity in the workplace (or all of the previous).
Which part is bad, the worstcase part? I'm sleepy. I guess I meant a dishonest person giving positive status updates but basically lying about the progress or stealing credit. Coasting isn't the bad part i guess, it's the explicit dishonesty to other people around them.
Even a simple sentence like, "Ferguson did both of these things and his findings thus do not “undermine” our causal claims; he failed to accurately test our causal claims," comes across as scathing compared to the paper.