Thanks for this. I've grown tired of discussions with these HN armchair skeptics, who typically have no publications in the area and a shallow science background relative to the complexity of the issues they raise.
As you say, there is no way to refute the claims advanced by the comment. It's just an abstract argument about forces and tendencies.
The scientific motivations leading to this calibration to eliminate systematic effects have a lot more internal checks than the comment acknowledges.
This is sadly the general vein of HN, and of all online communities - no matter what you try, September comes.
I used to come to HN to learn things. Now I come here to try to defend any worldview other than "TV said so". The only thing I'm really learning is that the technocratic class cannot be trusted with questions of nuance, politics, or morality.
There's an example from history in the early Soviet Union, and the effects of technocratic management on their economy - and in a later regime I won't name how my great uncle found himself shipped to Stalingrad. "Siegfried, we are not here to discuss whether we should be using forced labour, we are here to discuss how to use it." He was a hydrological engineer, they had him designing power plants that could be installed by unskilled forced labour. He objected, got sent to Stalingrad, and escaped with his life because he got hepatitis and was airlifted out under a dead man's name. The vast majority just complied because it was an interesting problem and "not their place" to pass judgment, or think.
I digress, but I do worry about where this "discourse" is headed, and i had honestly deluded myself into thinking we could be better.
As you say, there is no way to refute the claims advanced by the comment. It's just an abstract argument about forces and tendencies.
The scientific motivations leading to this calibration to eliminate systematic effects have a lot more internal checks than the comment acknowledges.