> I think his use of "it has been argued", "have been credited to", and "purportedly" in this context are not weaselly, and are fine in reference to unsubstantiated arguments that people have made.
No, it IS weaselly. Unless there is any substance to the argument at all, it's like saying "it has been argued that the earth is flat."
Maybe say "it has been argued without evidence" like journalists do /s
On its own, "it has been argued that the earth is flat" is simply a factually correct statement. There is nothing weaselly about it. What would make it weaselly would be the context that it is used in, and the deceptive intent of the person saying it.
Similarly, in this article the author simply mentions - almost as an aside - that "a black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago, and influenced the development of Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations". It is a factually correct statement (in that it has indeed been argued) [1].
There are no other mentions of this theory in the article, no attempts made to substantiate or repudiate it, or build on it, and it's only tangentially related to the main point of the article.
Furthermore, in his closing the paragraph, the author says something that makes me believe he's skeptical about many of the alternative claims that he brings up:
> No definitive conclusions can be reached. Too many claims are, for lack of hard evidence, based on speculation. Theories about the true origin of the name are ultimately historical fictions, whose authors are inclined to impose their own political, cultural, or national agendas on the name and its origin.
Why do you say that the author is being "weaselly" here? What is his ulterior motive? And what other contextual evidence do you have that the author intends for us to take the statement at anything more than face value - that it's an alternative version of history that some people believe to be true?
There are lots of other opinions in this thread that it's a false thing to say. It implies that the theory is respectable just by listing it. The fact that someone said something ridiculous is not worth mentioning.
I don't know what other arguments would make an impression on you, so why don't we just drop it?
Ok - I was hoping to get you to engage with the actual content of the article, but I'll just get to the point:
* Mentioning that a belief exists is not the same thing as endorsing it. And arguing that they are the same is an affront to open and rational discourse.
* A major point of the article is that many historical claims are fiction that are based more on speculation, and political, cultural, or national agendas than hard evidence. So it goes double that mentioning a historical claim in this context is not an endorsement of its accuracy.
* The fact that people are so hung up that they would call the author a weasel based on the mere mention that "a black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago" - regardless of the context in which it is used - says a whole lot more about their own beliefs and biases than the author's. They are basically reinforcing the whole point of the article.
Or, to quote the article one last time:
> To hear Americus in the name; to hear the Amerrique Mountains and their perpetual wind; to hear the African in the Mayan iq' amaq'el; to hear the Scandinavian Ommerike, as well as Amteric, and the Algonquin Em-erika; to hear Saint Emeric of Hungary; to hear Amalrich, the Gothic lord of the work ethic; to hear Armorica, the ancient Gaulish name meaning place by the sea; and to hear the English official, Amerike — to hear such echoes in the name of our hemisphere is to hear ourselves.
OP is saying the opposite: the TCR required huge investment, and was massively speculative, with a huge bubble ensuing. But rail travel did revolutionize the world, and few people sat around asking whether or not it was worth it.
TCR could have been justified by everyone having massive faith in the future, as OP is suggesting happened with roads. But you're quite wrong that "few people sat around asking whether or not it was worth it", as Iron Empires details:
I don't happen to know about roads, since that wasn't one single thing. But I doubt they happened because of blind faith in the future, either -- it was probably more businesses demanding roads NOW. So the argument that no one questioned them is dubious at best.
What I meant to say was that the AI bubble is feels different in that there seems to be relatively more skeptics versus railroad mania or the dot com bubble (but this could just be skewed by my own experiences).
Whether or not this suggests a flawed value prop for AI is another story.
Classic cry of the people who want to regulate and control everything.
Maybe if the certificate is worthless, the students will figure it out? Maybe by doing a little research before they invest their money and time.
I know that for a course to be eligible for government reimbursement under any program (job training, GI Bill, etc.) the government has to investigate it. So presumably the bad ones are either already ineligible, or someone's not doing their job.
In the spinoff, the part that became Agilent should have stayed "Hewlett-Packard." Because you're right, Agilent and its spinoffs are the true inheritors of what Dave and Bill built.
The part that stayed HP should have been renamed "HP Computing" or some BS corporate acronym ("HPC"??)
Right but what you’re paying for is still not a random grad student of unknown reputation for whom teaching the class is a way to build favor with the professor
Aside from the fact that you've got your negatives confused:
Grad students' assistantships often require them to teach classes. It's not "a way to build favor with the professor," it's required for them to stay in grad school.
As for whether they're "random" or not: how would you know how they assign classes? I doubt it's by lottery.
>It doesn't claim that Anja Lee has anything to do with Stanford, except for teaching this class.
I'm not sure what more people would expect, being hired to teach a class or classes is how a decent percentage of the people that how have anything to do with Stanford have to do with Stanford.
