bbvnvlt

I expected this to be higher up. I used pinboard for years, but finally decided it's not worth the money. Self-hosting this requires very little resources and knowledge. Super happy with it, use it daily.

> Technological advances sometimes happen with blind trial and error rather than any theory.

Not with blind trials, but technology has historically advanced (way) ahead of theory most of the time.

See, for instance, Clifford D. Connor's "A People's History of Science" or the authoratitive (in philosophy of technology circles) "What Engineers Know and How They Know It" by Walter Vincenti. One of the convincing cases Vincenti describes is the development of wing profiles. Structured, intelligent trial and error (parameter variation) to get to shapes that work, but no theory to speak of (nothing that helps the development, in any case).

The rules can be different because science and engineering are different. Linked, but separate.

And I've never gotten the relativism charge against Kuhn. In my reading, he doesn't claim one paradigm isn't "really" better than another. He claims that when paradigms compete, there is at that time not an objective test to select between them. That's why belief is required. But again, the proponents of a new paradigm believe (and do their best to argue, rationally) that it is better in some sense. More true.

There are many directions in which to move away from ignorance. That competing paradigms take such different routes away from falsity, that they're not both on one dimension, and that one is not incontrovertibly and obviously superior to the other in every way with reference to some imagined objective standard, does not mean that it isn't a step towards a more true and accurate representation of the world.

You’re right, sorry, I jumped on your second paragraph a bit too eagerly. Pet peeve against the “technology is applied science” view.

That said, Kuhn definitely does not ask that we dispense with the notion of science making progress. New paradigms are accepted because they’re better, after all.

Science and engineeing may be intimately intertwined, but technology does not "depend on" science in any straightforward way. People were reliably producing alloys before metallurgy, flight happened well before any meaningful understanding of aerodynamics, and most famously, steam engines led to the development of thermodynamic science, not the other way round.

There are both subsidies and loan programs.

As far as I know (I am not a farmer, nor do I know any greenhouse farmers very well), lots of it is private capital though.

One of the biggest banks in the Netherlands (Rabobank) has a (positive) reputation for financing farmers and other agricultural firms. (also a negative one due to the LIBOR scandal, incidentally)

I only scrolled through TFA (added to read later list). I am Dutch though.

A lot of these systems require enormous (and growing) up-front investments, not feasible for small independent operations. There are a lot of family business in Westland, but they require massive mortgages and/or loans to keep up with the times (and the investments that they require). There are fewer and fewer small farms and more and more 'mega-barns'.

Little space is needed, but a lot of it is high carbon and high capital.

Yes.