[HN Gopher] In the dead of night, a deafening war
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       In the dead of night, a deafening war
        
       Author : meanie
       Score  : 34 points
       Date   : 2023-06-09 23:27 UTC (23 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (atmos.earth)
 (TXT) w3m dump (atmos.earth)
        
       | beebeepka wrote:
       | "We know so little. We oftentimes as human beings tend to focus
       | on things that we can see or perceive directly, and we have to
       | remember that the world is not necessarily designed for us." -
       | Dr. Akito Kawahara, Entomologist
       | 
       | Ha, I like this guy already.
       | 
       | "Stupid fly can't get out because of the glass" - yes, the window
       | was not designed with flies in mind.
       | 
       | "Look at this great Li-Fi bulb. It's perfectly safe for humans" -
       | ah yes, because only humans exist in the house
       | 
       | "Look at our amazing new seafloor beacons!" - zero consideration
       | for aquatic life
       | 
       | There are countless examples like that. It's almost as if making
       | things harder for everyone else is the point
        
       | morninglight wrote:
       | * If War Means Everything, It Means Nothing *
       | 
       | If we cannot define war, it is difficult to recognise the
       | differences between war, conflict, and competition.
       | 
       | Australian Army Research Centre (AARC)
       | 
       | https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/land-power-forum/...
        
         | tgv wrote:
         | The article is interesting, but indeed falls in the category of
         | journalistic hyperinflation. It's not a war, if only because
         | winning would mean dying, but it is a form of struggle.
         | 
         | About the article: the mechanisms moths have at their disposal
         | are nicely described, but there's little to nothing about the
         | bats' side. The title is word inflation at its finest, not only
         | because it uses "war", but also "deafening", which isn't
         | justified in the article. Worse, if it were deafening, the echo
         | location would probably not work. The writing is simply bad:
         | 
         | > Their age-old conflict, albeit gruesome and lethal,
         | 
         | Albeit? Is there really a contrast between conflict and
         | gruesome and lethal? And what about this gem:
         | 
         | > With sensitive enough hearing organs, a moth can detect an
         | echolocation click from far away and escape before a bat has
         | the time and capacity to perceive its own echo.
         | 
         | The reading "the moth escapes with its ears" should have been
         | caught and removed. Worse is that it takes only a fraction of a
         | second for an echo to return, as sound travels at 300m/s. Moths
         | are sluggish in flight, so they can't really escape in that
         | time. The sentence should probably have been written as: "A
         | moth can detect a click from far away with its sensitive ears,
         | and escape before the bat is close enough to perceive the
         | echo."
        
       | gwern wrote:
       | Out of curiosity: how long did it take you to realize there were
       | links in the article? For me, it took 3 screens.
        
         | ulchar wrote:
         | I didn't realize either. I'm kind of glad, I think links in
         | articles are an anti-pattern.
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-10 23:02 UTC)