• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

News Look at this black hole... look at it.

Page 3 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
woolfe9998 said:
Not really that overstated in the articles I read. Typical:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/10/us/katie-bouman-mit-black-hole-algorithm-sci-trnd/index.html

This article describes her contributions as "crucial," as do many of her co-workers. Yet the article also describes her as "a major part of one of the imaging subteams." And it closes with a quote of her saying it was a collaborative effort.

I don't know about "not used." NYT says that, but at least 5 other articles say the opposite. It's possible that this is so technical that the writers don't fully understand what they're being told about the process. But suppose she did write an algorithm which went unused. Evidently she made important contributions to the project. Numerous co-workers are quoted saying as much.

She is obviously being showcased here because she is female and a little because of her youth as people always like stories about young people who make an impact. As I've said in other threads, our society discourages women from certain STEM fields. I see no harm in holding up a successful woman in STEM as a role model.

What I do not understand is why people feel the need to tear her down. It isn't about fairness to others on the project. These trolls picked one particular white guy to turn into the mastermind, and they over-exaggerated his role, according to him.
Click to expand...

As it turns out she’s friends with another woman whose a sister in my wife’s (women’s engineering) sorority. She reposted the words Dr Bouman had on the subject to the sorority Facebook page a few days before the story.

Dr Bouman did say she wanted to try and make sure people understood this was a collaborative effort by a diverse group of people and not some single herculean effort.

I have my own thoughts on why, but will leave the interpretation of why some felt the need to spin this story a certain way up to the reader.
 
woolfe9998 said:
Not really that overstated in the articles I read. Typical:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/10/us/katie-bouman-mit-black-hole-algorithm-sci-trnd/index.html

This article describes her contributions as "crucial," as do many of her co-workers. Yet the article also describes her as "a major part of one of the imaging subteams." And it closes with a quote of her saying it was a collaborative effort.

I don't know about "not used." NYT says that, but at least 5 other articles say the opposite. It's possible that this is so technical that the writers don't fully understand what they're being told about the process. But suppose she did write an algorithm which went unused. Evidently she made important contributions to the project. Numerous co-workers are quoted saying as much.

She is obviously being showcased here because she is female and a little because of her youth as people always like stories about young people who make an impact. As I've said in other threads, our society discourages women from certain STEM fields. I see no harm in holding up a successful woman in STEM as a role model.

What I do not understand is why people feel the need to tear her down. It isn't about fairness to others on the project. These trolls picked one particular white guy to turn into the mastermind, and they over-exaggerated his role, according to him.
Click to expand...

What it looks like, is that she came up with an amazing method that ultimately was not used. It does not mean she was not important to the project. What I think many are getting wrong is making it seem like she was the main reason this was a success. Her facebook post seems to push back against that.

I think what happened here was that people saw a woman that had come up with an amazing method to see black holes, and then just assumed that it was used here. Then, when some trolls found out that the method was not used, it fueled their bias to attack her as a fraud when she is clearly not.
 
ch33zw1z said:
Nope, you're lending the nonsense legitimacy. Who gives a shit? Do you really care she was on the team but they may have not used her algorithm? Please.
Click to expand...

Reread my post to wolf. I'm not trying to take anything away from her that she did. I did not insult her at all.
 
55 million light years would take a lot longer than impeachment or the next election. Damn.

Thinking to turn lemons into lemonade, I had considered the possibility of re-purposing Trump's Space Force. We would build a terminal on Mars -- something like a massive Greyhound station. Trumpies could then collect themselves on Mars and wait for the big Space Bus. The Space Bus would arrive, and they could all go back to their home galaxy.

After that -- Great Again!
 
Blackholio

CBdGdDM.png
 
realibrad said:
What nonsense? I responded to one post by saying her algorithm was not used. What is political about that?
Click to expand...

It wasn't a problem since you had a credible source. But you're ignoring the fact that other credible media sources are saying opposite, including WaPo and CNN, which suggests to me that there is a lack of understanding of the division of labor on this highly technical project where multiple algorithms were used. After now reading at least 15 articles about this, even I can't fully understand what she did and did not do on the project.

The best clue was an article I read which said her algorithm was "modified" by another team of engineers or mathematicians, which might explain the confusion since that would technically mean they didn't use "her algorithm" in the final project but rather, a version that someone else had modified.

It's worth mentioning that she has been the public face of this project since 2016 when she presented her algorithm to an academic forum (can't remember which one) and did this Ted Talk on the project. Which is another reason the media seems to have fixated on her as the front person for the project, because she was already familiar.
 
woolfe9998 said:
It wasn't a problem since you had a credible source. But you're ignoring the fact that other credible media sources are saying opposite, including WaPo and CNN, which suggests to me that there is a lack of understanding of the division of labor on this highly technical project where multiple algorithms were used. After now reading at least 15 articles about this, even I can't fully understand what she did and did not do on the project.

The best clue was an article I read which said her algorithm was "modified" by another team of engineers or mathematicians, which might explain the confusion since that would technically mean they didn't use "her algorithm" in the final project but rather, a version that someone else had modified.

It's worth mentioning that she has been the public face of this project since 2016 when she presented her algorithm to an academic forum (can't remember which one) and did this Ted Talk on the project. Which is another reason the media seems to have fixated on her as the front person for the project, because she was already familiar.
Click to expand...

I imagine that she was made the face for a multitude of reasons, one of which was the fact that she is incredibly smart and good at what she does. But, in terms of her being the leading figure in creating the algorithms, I think my comment was fair and not political. I don't see it as a troll comment or degrading her in any way.

Do you agree?
 
From the responses looks like the quibbler is still quibbling. So much quibbling, can this thread make it to page 10 with the quibbling? Will we soon begin to argue what the meaning of quibble is and what it meets to be the quibbler?
 
Was science, then news, now politics.

Anyway this is cool because until seen we had strong inference of black holes but that's not the same thing at all. Now we're no longer dealing with what should be but is, which makes some problems also real like what happens to information that crosses into a region cut off from us. Hawking radiation doesn't do it, holographic solutions likewise have problems.

What this observation does is provide a concrete example of something that creates automatic paradoxes that we haven't the means to deal with. This is discovery and that drives people to explore further than they might.
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
Was science, then news, now politics.

Anyway this is cool because until seen we had strong inference of black holes but that's not the same thing at all. Now we're no longer dealing with what should be but is, which makes some problems also real like what happens to information that crosses into a region cut off from us. Hawking radiation doesn't do it, holographic solutions likewise have problems.

What this observation does is provide a concrete example of something that creates automatic paradoxes that we haven't the means to deal with. This is discovery and that drives people to explore further than they might.
Click to expand...

Have you heard if we are going to focus more resources toward this now? I'm hoping that we build some specialized equipment and keep it pointed at this singularity.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top