Amazing that a mere lawyer can figure all this out when the NYT could not. And make the presentation so interesting. This newsletter is a national asset.
To borrow a line, there is nothing "mere" about that lawyer.
Agreed with your last sentence.
Plus my default assumption is that anything remotely science related, even if it has no particular political valence (assuming that there *are* any topics left that are not politically charged - probably a few things in astronomy, geology, etc.), will be completely garbled by the NYT. Not that I know of a better general circulation newspaper for science topics - I'm not picking on the NYT in particular.
My priors are that most traditional publications, including NYT, tend to get many aspects of a story wrong, and so you sort of have to develop an feel for what aspects of the story you can trust (usually the factual stuff that's easy to verify) and which you must take with a grain of salt (usually everything else).
For example, my father owned a pretty popular and historic restaurant in my city. The newspaper reported that it closed down, and my father said, with a tear in his eye, how much he's going to miss the community here. Factual and easy to verify: the restaurant did indeed close down. Everything else: My dad is extremely stoic to the point of often taken to be autistic and would never have shed a tear over this. I don't know what words he precisely uttered, but "missing the community" is also pretty sus.
I'd argue the real issue is the inability to identify part of the civil service we trust to make judgements about the *desierability* of achieving various environmental goals.
Whether or not two population groups are the same species is largely an arbitrary distinction. No sane person who was making this decision would allow whether or not you edged over the species line to decide when it's worthwhile to stop a project for conservation. Yes, they would take into account genetic diversity and weigh a host of other cost/benefits and make a judgement.
However, in the US our system makes it very difficult to meaningfully delegate judgement because a new president can just fire senior officers to get whatever outcome they want. Congress can't trust judgement of an executive agency so they instead pin the law to a kinda arbitrary science term.
Amazing that a mere lawyer can figure all this out when the NYT could not. And make the presentation so interesting. This newsletter is a national asset.
To borrow a line, there is nothing "mere" about that lawyer.
Agreed with your last sentence.
Plus my default assumption is that anything remotely science related, even if it has no particular political valence (assuming that there *are* any topics left that are not politically charged - probably a few things in astronomy, geology, etc.), will be completely garbled by the NYT. Not that I know of a better general circulation newspaper for science topics - I'm not picking on the NYT in particular.
I mean Adam Unikowsky is pretty exceptional as far as lawyers go.
My priors are that most traditional publications, including NYT, tend to get many aspects of a story wrong, and so you sort of have to develop an feel for what aspects of the story you can trust (usually the factual stuff that's easy to verify) and which you must take with a grain of salt (usually everything else).
Whenever I have first hand knowledge of a story, I inevitably find all sorts of flaws in its reporting. See also https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
For example, my father owned a pretty popular and historic restaurant in my city. The newspaper reported that it closed down, and my father said, with a tear in his eye, how much he's going to miss the community here. Factual and easy to verify: the restaurant did indeed close down. Everything else: My dad is extremely stoic to the point of often taken to be autistic and would never have shed a tear over this. I don't know what words he precisely uttered, but "missing the community" is also pretty sus.
I'd argue the real issue is the inability to identify part of the civil service we trust to make judgements about the *desierability* of achieving various environmental goals.
Whether or not two population groups are the same species is largely an arbitrary distinction. No sane person who was making this decision would allow whether or not you edged over the species line to decide when it's worthwhile to stop a project for conservation. Yes, they would take into account genetic diversity and weigh a host of other cost/benefits and make a judgement.
However, in the US our system makes it very difficult to meaningfully delegate judgement because a new president can just fire senior officers to get whatever outcome they want. Congress can't trust judgement of an executive agency so they instead pin the law to a kinda arbitrary science term.
Very well written and interesting. This is a newsletter I genuinely enjoy.
Unsubscribe? Articles like this are WHY I subscribe.
Fantastic article-thanks!
Great overview. Thank you for correcting the NYT article.