I think it's sad that there are so many people doing back of the envelope calculations and wasting time typing them into Hacker News. There are 100s of millions of dollars involved people. Someone qualified will check the figures.
I think it's sad that you think that. One of the fundamental qualities of science is that it can be independently verified, and one of the fundamental qualities of hackers is that they don't typically trust "someone qualified" with "100s of millions of dollars" to do the verification when they can get a rough idea themselves. Hackers aren't here to let the "qualified" people just do their thing. We're here to learn, inspect, disassemble, discover, and most importantly, to create.
You're absolutely correct and I should have chosen my words more carefully.
So I'll change my words to say: I think it's sad that there are so many educated and capable people doing back of the envelope calculations on Hacker News. Half of us are capable of hunting down the original papers on solar towers and running the numbers through the proper calculations.
Also why are we just typing out the equations using text. It's the 21st century! We need a better way to discuss technical matters.
That is fair. I think you missed his subtle point though. For the person giving the millions it matters a lot if the numbers stuck up. For the hacker news bak of the envelope calculater estimates, round ups, even guesses suffice.
I think it is fair to say that while of course one should do the things you mentioned, one also would be wise to trust slightly more the "qulified" person, unless of course they want to go full blow on the matter and engage in thorough deep analysis.
I think it's sad that you think that. One of the fundamental qualities of science is that it can be independently verified, and one of the fundamental qualities of hackers is that they don't typically trust "someone qualified" with "100s of millions of dollars" to do the verification when they can get a rough idea themselves. Hackers aren't here to let the "qualified" people just do their thing. We're here to learn, inspect, disassemble, discover, and most importantly, to create.