> During their simulation of Mallory’s Everest expedition, the data showed that on summit night, the average body temperature difference between the twin in modern down and the twin in complicated layers of silk, wool, and gabardine was a staggering 1.8°C.<p>The human body self-regulates, and is pretty sensitive to dramatic temperature swings. So, conditioned on the fact that they both survived the adventure, we should expect their temperature differences to be relatively small. This doesn't mean the clothing is great, it means [their body] + [their clothing] is adequate.<p>Additionally, I'm not a doctor but 1.8 C is not small compared to normal human variation! Normal body temperature ranges between 36 and 37 C, a "high fever" starts around 39 C [0], and hypothermia is anything below 35 C [1]. The comfortable range of human temperature is 1 deg C, and the "outside of this is concerning" range is only 4 C wide. 1.8 C is quite big from that perspective.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/treating-fever-in-adults" rel="nofollow">https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/treat...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hypothermia/symptoms-causes/syc-20352682" rel="nofollow">https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hypothermia/s...</a>
Right, the 1.8C difference is substantial in terms of human physiology and indicates a diminished level of comfort as the body fights to keep the temperature up.<p>I also found it funny how they mentioned that modern clothing keeps you warmer longer once you stop moving, then tried to minimize the significance of that. There's a reason "cotton kills" is a cliche. Modern fabrics, windbreaker shells, and engineered layers don't make a huge difference in warm, dry, active conditions - it's when things go sideways that they can be the difference between comfort and fatal hypothermia.
There are times when layering is not the way to go. One of them is heavy activity in extreme cold. Layers can cause moisture to freeze in bad places. Having lived in a place that often got down to -40, I was always most comfortable with a light synthetic shirt under a single winter coat. No complex layers. And waterproofing isn't needed as there isn't any water around.
I know someone who has three or four different thicknesses of pure lambswool jerseys for wearing while he's cycling, at different air temperatures. It never really gets all that cold down south here at 56°N and frankly I think spending ten minutes dicking about over which jumper you're wearing for optimal performance takes a lot of the fun out of it.<p>That said, I'm a fat 52-year-old, and I cycle in jeans and a T-shirt, and if I start to feel cold it's a sign I'm not pedalling hard enough and I should get the boot down a bit, burn some calories.<p>I'm still faster than many-jerseys-guy.
If you start doing longer rides you learn there are general temperature ranges and kit that's fine to commute in or ride an hour in traffic with a rucksack is very different from the kit you want on a 6 hour ride in the countryside. I generally have kit for 0-10, 10-15, 15-22, 22+°C. My 0-10 jersey will boil me alive after an hour cycling in 13°C but likewise my 10-15°C will risk hypothermia in 8°C. There's only so much layering you can do with cycling kit before it starts becoming restrictive.
I'm curious: I do cycle in jeans and a t-shirt while in the city. Up to 45 minutes I'm perfectly fine, but if I'm on the saddle for over one hour I really start to miss the chamois. What's your experience with that?
I didn't see more details in the article, but my guess is they were taking and averaging multiple temperature reads across the body. That is, core temp should only be within a narrow range like you say, but fingertip temp will vary much more widely.<p>All in all I found this to be a very strange article. If you just look at the data, I think a reasonable conclusion is that modern gear is <i>vastly</i> better at its function than old time Mallory gear. It's much lighter and keeps the wearer much warmer than old gear. But the whole tone of the article is about "myth busting" and how there haven't been really that many improvements in gear. I'm just looking at their charts and data and wondering what they're smoking.
It was 1.8 C difference in skin temperature, not core body temperature. As you note, 1.8 C would be massive for core temp.<p><i>Wearable thermometer patches attached to each man’s head, chest, hands, feet, and legs recorded body temperature at five-minute intervals, nonstop, for the entire 10 days of the expedition.</i>
I think both points can be true at once
Any theories or conclusions in the article especially with regards to science and medicine is best ignored as the article was written by an LLM.<p>The photographs and text within quotes are probably the only human things in there. We might go to the source of the data (the brothers instagram) for better conclusions, but for me this well is poisoned by slop.
"Normal body temperature", ok but these are two mountaineering nerds (not normal) so who knows.
Not to be a stickler (ok I like being a stickler) but temperature delta, especially deltas between degrees celsius, should be given in kelvin. A 1.8K difference makes sense. A 1.8C difference would be 274.8 kelvin!
This is probably the most ridiculous comment I've read in the history of this website.<p>There is no difference in the amount of energy 1 degree Celsius delta and 1 degree Kelvin delta represents.<p>The only (and I really mean only) difference is how zero energy is defined. It is not possible to have negative energy, and that zero Celsius represents the freezing point of water is an artifact of convenience, not of absolute definition.
Also, the way Kelvin is defined necessitates that both degrees are identical. If 10 degrees Celcius defined the boiling point of water at 1 atmosphere (or whatever the actual definition is) then Kelvin would be smaller by a factor of 10. And this applies to both negative and positive K values.
Ranking, Celsius, Centigrade have the degrees. Kelvin is a base unit, absolute and no degree!
Taking differences between degrees Celsius values is absolutely fine.<p>Ratios are undefined because the Celsius scale has no absolute zero while the Kelvin scale has.<p>See: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement</a>
Celsius is not an absolute scale, but that isn't a problem for deltas: (10C - 5C)=5C, (10K-5K)=5K. Celsius is only problematic when multiplying or dividing. 10C is not twice as hot as 5C.
> A 1.8K difference makes sense. A 1.8C difference would be 274.8 kelvin!<p>I think there was some insight here that went off on a bad tangent leading to a math word-problem mistake, confusing these two:<p>1. A difference... between [X] and [Y], which is a delta of 1.8°C<p>2. A difference... between [0°K] and a reading of [1.8°C], which is a delta 274.95°K.
That makes no sense. A difference between a read of 37C and 38.8C is still 1.8C.
[flagged]
Dude, you are just completely making shit up, and it makes no sense.<p>So what if Celsius and Kelvin have different 0 points - they are still valid scales and you can talk about differences between 2 measurements.<p>According to your logic it would be impossible to state that two Fahrenheit measurements differ by some number of degrees F - why, I have no idea.
I'm not entirely sure what point you are trying to make, but this is absolutely false from a scientific perspective.<p>If you believe otherwise, please provide some citations to your beliefs so we can understand what you are trying to say.
Saying something is false and then asking for citations doesn't seem that helpful to me.<p>To support your argument, take the following example:<p>Lets take some water at 273.15 Kelvin and add 1 Kelvin of energy to it. The water is now at 274.15 Kelvin. The difference is of 1 Kelvin.<p>If we had the same amount of water at 0 degrees Celsius and added 1 Celsius of energy, the water would now be at 1 Celcius.<p>Converting these values leave us with 273.15 Kelvin and 274.15 Kelvin respectively.<p>You can repeat this experiment (ignoring latent heat) for any value of Kelvin or Celsius, therefore Kevlin and Celsius are interchangeable in reference to temperature comparasion.
Kelvin and Celsius use the same unit magnitudes. It would be a 1.8* difference either way.
To be a stickler, communication requires respect for your audience. The vast majority of everyone understands a 1.8 degree C delta. I would argue that very few people anywhere would understand a temperature delta given in kelvin.
You're just confused by terminology. While 1 C is 273 K, 1 <i>degree</i> Celsius is 1 <i>degree</i> Kelvin.<p>See, a degree is not an absolute unit of measure like a Celsius or a Kelvin, it's a relative difference between two absolute units of measure. When discussing the difference between two separate temperature readings measured in Celsius, degrees Celsius is entirely appropriate.<p>Think of it like time: there is a difference between meeting at 2:00 and meeting two hours from now.
"A 1.8C difference" expands as "A difference of 1.8C" expands as, and here's the ambiguity, <i>either</i>:<p>"An absolute difference of 1.8C, or 274.8K, measured between A and B"<p>or<p>"A relative difference of 1.8C, or 1.8K, is added/subtracted to A/B in order to reach B/A"<p>I don't think the context-free variant with K will improve understanding and decrease confusability in <i>this</i> discussion context, but I appreciate the pointer about it in general. I'll take a lot more care around it in a future thread about <i>space</i> apparel!
>A 1.8C difference would be 274.8 kelvin!<p>Categorically and factually incorrect.<p>A 1.8 degree C different would be 1.8 kelvin. The two degrees have different zero points but one degree Celsius and one degree Kelvin are identical in magnitude.
For really low temperatures some of the traditional materials work really well. For example, at -30 °C you don't need a waterproof shell but you want something that's very windproof and breathable. So at the British Antarctic Survey in the late 90s we were still using cotton Ventile[0], it's tough and effective.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventile" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventile</a>
So other than being easier to use, cheaper to buy, lighter, and warmer: modern apparel isn't any better than old apparel.
> the data showed that on summit night, the average body temperature difference between the twin in modern down and the twin in complicated layers of silk, wool, and gabardine was a staggering 1.8°C.
> “In a hundred years, you’ve gained—arguably—one degree of efficiency per 50 years,” Ross reveals.<p>Depending on where the baseline is, 1.8 degrees could be huge! But more importantly, heat dissapation is a non-linear function. The warmer you are relative to your environment, the more energy is lost. While Shackleton's kit forms a lower baseline, it probably makes sense to imagine how some imaginary perfect vacuum insulated sleeping bag would perform.
Is that really core body temperature?<p>Normal core body temperature is around 37C.<p>Hypothermia starts around 35C, only 2C less.<p>If they're actually measuring body temperature (using that swallowed pill they mention?) then 1.8C is a huge difference.<p>This whole article does feel like they started with a conclusion and they were going to report that conclusion regardless of what they measured or experienced. Content that claims to debunk things is hot right now.
Also the body will increase metabolic rate in the cold to maintain body temperate which is an externality they aren’t measuring. The user of the worse clothing is very likely burning more calories and still not as warm. This would mean increased fatigue and greater food weight on expeditions.
> Normal core body temperature is around 37C.<p>Traditionally, yes.<p>In practice, modern people are a bit colder than that. The 37C value is old enough that it's out of date, but the reasons why aren't well understood.
This whole article is kind of a straw man anyway.<p>Warmth of clothing isn't actually what people care about. What people care about, and what the article does not mention, is warmth per unit weight.
I disagree. People also <i>may</i> care about the cognitive load of thermal management. As the article notes:<p>> <i>the gear of the past is capable, but it has a narrower operating window. If you stop moving in Mallory’s kit at 8,000 meters, you will freeze quickly. Modern gear buys you a safety margin if you become static.</i><p>In modern terms, this means that stopping to take a photo — whether Ansel or selfie — would carry a material risk of harm in the classic gear that is addressed by modern gear. The example of a selfie is perhaps too easily dismissed unconsidered, but the cognitive load <i>is</i> real for casual hikers, and <i>is</i> a benefit to modern gear that deserves the mention it gets. If I had to choose between a cap that has perfect heat management and a cap that weighs 10g less but requires me to constantly take it off and put it on every five minutes to allow evaporation, <i>I</i> would choose the heavier and lower annoyance cap. Each person’s preferences and skills apply; if one seeks to minmax weight/thermal then that’s a negligible price to pay to improve — but only <i>some</i> truly do strive for the limit of lowest mass without regards to complexity.<p>There was an enviro-scifi book from the eighties that noted that a few people will pursue ‘one piece of apparel serves all functions’ skinsuit to the exclusion of all other concerns (such as natural fabrics or apparel design), at which point we would plausibly expect to see at one extreme the folks who make a discount-ultralight vented bodysuit out of FedEx envelopes. I am taking for granted that someone has tried this, because of <i>course</i> someone has tried this! And that starts to verge on why, in a different enviro-scifi book of that same relative era, the stillsuit existed: the <i>lightest</i> way to have <i>convenient</i> purified water in an absurd climates. Even the stillsuit as we see it described prioritizes convenience, the sip tube, over a more efficient system that doesn’t expend calories on pumping water up. That’s purely because human beings have a cognitive annoyance limit; and we do variably prioritize convenience when assessing the weight-complexity tradeoff.
I go mushroom picking in the Oregon forest every year.
The only real dangerous moment I ever had was getting soaking wet, and when the storm cleared, I stopped like a fool to eat lunch in a sunny for breezing opening. I finished lunch, and realized I was shockingly cold. Like, dangerously cold. I did jumping jacks as long as I could and then started walking uphill even though that wasn't where I wanted to go really. Weird moment.
I used to lead hiking trips and being wet (and/or exposed to rain a bit above freezing is generally more dangerous than being mostly dry in colder temperatures
I didn’t wear my rain gear hiking uphill in a quarter inch per 4 hours downpour and started feeling sleepy by degrees until I caught myself looking for a place to lie down for a nap. At that point I realized I’d better turn around posthaste.
It must just be that the way the stillsuit functions is because of the limits of Herbert as a engineer and designer had been reached and he did not think or realize that there was a more efficient system than the sip tube possible.
What does Ansel mean?
Their bar graph showed that in almost every category except for accessories, the weights were pretty much identical.
Isn’t there a chart showing weight by body part midway through the article?
Yeah, it shows the old gear is about two kilograms heavier than the new gear, which is huge.<p>Considering that someone carrying 2 extra kilos will also be generating more body heat etc, the focus on heat over the rest of the article is in question.
To clarify slightly: it shows the old gear is significantly heavier in three areas: head, hands, and ‘accessories’. I think that suggests where investment in technical fabric has been most successful at improving the burden of <i>mass</i> in surviving extreme cold.
Wool, down, silk and leather are still commonly used in technical apparel and compete on weight.<p>2 big new innovations that matter are Gore-tex and Nylon fabrics that are very durable and wind resistance for their weight.
Tech fabrics were a prerequisite to the widespread use of down in adventure clothing. Earlier fabrics were either too heavy, like leather, and would collapse the down and negate its insulating properties, or would get wet like cotton/linen and saturate the down.
Small temperature difference, potentially large difference in watts
This is a massive oversimplification.<p>The challenges of technical gear are:<p>1. managing active body temperature by radiating heat effectively<p>2. managing passive body temperature by retaining heat effectively<p>3. managing internally generated moisture by allowing evaporation<p>4. managing externally generated moisture by preventing absorption<p>5. minimising weight<p>6. maximising toughness<p>This article talks about point 1 as though it's the entire story, but maintaining a comfortable active body temperature is by far the easiest point. You can do it with a tshirt under most circumstances. Wools do have an advantage with regard to point 3, which is why a lot of technical gear is now made of merino wool. The entire selling point of goretex is that it provides a reasonable degree of 3 whilst giving an excellent degree of 4, which is simply not possible with antique gear.<p>Modern technical gear is genuinely incredible stuff, it's possible to pack something that will keep you warm and dry down to 8°C in a space less than a large cup of coffee and a weight less than a glossy magazine.<p>Not to mention that from a scientific perspective, experimenting on a single pair of twins adds essentially zero statistical power to the results. This is theatre.
Important-- when they say "cotton" in the article they're talking about gabardine cotton as a water repellent layer.<p>Neither one of these dudes is wearing cotton base layers, midlayers, socks, etc. It's too slow to evaporate moisture which can cause blisters on feet and rapid drop of body temperature drop in cool/cold weather.
If I look at the Wikipedia article for gabardine, it's supposed to be tightly woven wool, which makes more sense to me since the exterior of the fibers are supposed to be hydrophobic. Kind of confused at the existence of gabardine made of cotton which is hydrophilic... Polyester seems like it would be cheaper and more effective... Maybe in the past it was the economical choice, but cotton gabardine is still sold today. Seems like the worst material choice for gabardine of today, but maybe I'm wrong.
Identical twins is a neat idea, but it still feels like a very small sample size for drawing broader conclusions about "a century of innovation"
> “We had a midlife crisis at 17,” Ross explains. “Life got put in perspective.”<p>> They needed to live and test their limits. They started by rowing the Atlantic to raise funds for Spinal Research, a UK-based charity they’ve worked with for years.<p>Going to guess the sample size for identical twins who never needed to work is even lower.
Awful llm writing for what it seems to be some sort of ad but I can't quite figure out what's the ad for...
Yep:<p><i>Now, here’s the fun bit for gear geeks like us: it’s not cosplay; it’s rigorous historical reconstruction. … Their rule is strict: materials must be 100% natural—wool, silk, cotton, fur, and leather.</i><p>No rule against LLMs, or for rigorous human writing.
Key paragraph:<p>> The data proves that the gear of the past is capable, but it has a narrower operating window. If you stop moving in Mallory’s kit at 8,000 meters, you will freeze quickly. Modern gear buys you a safety margin if you become static.
We’ve had the ability to make water/wind-proof garments long before Gore-Tex. The crucial thing is that Gore-Tex is water vapor permeable. So it has a way better ability to shed excess heat without needing to take off a layer.<p>Traditional materials still have a place though. Material science has not beaten down feathers or wool yet, for the most part.
> Gore-Tex is water vapor permeable. So it has a way better ability to shed excess heat without needing to take off a layer.<p>It's a way to shed water: Wearing waterproof, non-breathable layers often is worse than not, because the moisture your body releases and that gets trapped soaks you from the inside as surely and rapidly as the rain. (Maybe it's a bit warmer.)
That was the key takeaway for me as well and is very consistent with articles I've read in the past about mountaineers with gear that was adequate except when it was not - and that can make the difference between life and death.
I was wondering if they’ve taken into account that one of the test subjects had a prior fractured vertebrae (and the other not). I know a lot of time has passed, but I expect that it would probably never be possible to fully recover from an injury like this? And therefore there would be differences in overall fitness between them?<p>For example … skeletal and muscular compensation. Nerve damage. Damage to lymph system due to surgeries.
Did anyone else feel like something is off with this content? Like it was written as an ad or something?
It's such an interesting premise that I was especially disappointed to start reading and see all the usual signs of it being written by ChatGPT.
It's utter LLM shite. You can always tell, amongst other things, by the clunky headings. Eg, "The Catalyst: A Broken Neck".
> On the vast, blinding expanse of the Greenland Ice Cap<p>But not double-blinding. If I were the twin in the retro gear, I'd subconsciously be trying harder to try to make a point.
<i>”[The twins] realized they possessed the ultimate scientific tool: a perfect control subject and a perfect variable. Ross wore modern kit while Hugo wore historic replicas. Any difference in performance could be attributed solely to the gear, not genetics.”</i><p>It’s a great idea and these men are undoubtedly incredible athletes, but I’m not sure “ultimate” and “perfect” are the right words here.<p>A killjoy would bring up double-blinding or n>1 and I don’t want to sap the fun out of this being about an interesting people-centric piece.<p>There’s no mention though of a more basic trick: having them alternate clothes every expedition or season! Pfizer it ain’t, but it would still take it up a notch on the scale of interesting/fun to “ultimate/perfect”.
I thought weight would be where the modern wear performed best.<p>More surprisingly, the footwear of yore was apparently lighter
> Today, their biometrics are tracked by ingestible sensor pills that monitor core temperature from the inside out<p>I wonder if those are pills they've developed themselves, or if it's an existing product available to consumer?
nice pics, nice font, pity the text went through translopification
I remember sleeping in old canvas tents - in the heavy rain - on boyscout camping trips around seattle as a kid. I remember waking up in a puddle, cotton lined bag soaked through, not being dry even after 12 hours of laying it out after the rain stopped.<p>By comparison my RIE UL2 is 100x, no 1000x better in every single way. Same for my 15 degree duck down mummy.<p>Are sweaters better now than then?? I don't know, maybe. But seriously, get out of here with the general notion that 19** is within a hundred miles of good modern backpacking gear.<p>About boots, unless you are in snow, boots are scam. Period full stop with whatever expansive definition you want to use. Comfy $30 sneakers from Big 5 are great. I do have some trail running shoes I use personally that cost me about $100. I'm sure they had great options 100 years ago.
I find sneakers uncomfortable on rocks. The heavy sole of boots is worth the trade off if n anything rocky.
Higher boots can prevent twisting your ankle when you're tired at the end of a long day.
> $30 sneakers from Big 5<p>Big 5 seems to be a western US sporting goods chain. I wonder if there's an equivalent in other parts of the country?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_5_Sporting_Goods" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_5_Sporting_Goods</a>
This video on the subject of testing old vs. new camping gear is pretty interesting: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Us6AVVkx_8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Us6AVVkx_8</a>
If you like this stuff, have a look at the Vikings and their logistical problems.<p><a href="https://www.quora.com/While-at-the-sea-what-did-Vikings-do-for-protection-from-the-weather" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/While-at-the-sea-what-did-Vikings-do-f...</a>
I feel like downplaying 1.8 degrees C of performance is a weird choice in the article.<p>1.8 degrees C is a <i>huge</i> temperature change in biology. Human bodies keep thermal equilibrium in a margin smaller then that.
I didn't quite clock what they meant in that paragraph. I'm pretty sure that a 1.8 degree drop in body temp is approaching hypothermia.
Also weird phrasing: "a staggering 1.8 degrees" begs the reader to think of it as a large number (which in fact it is, as you point out) yet their intent seems to be, ironically and paradoxically, to diminish it.
Also: Freezing right away when you stop moving at 8k altitude? I was just skiing at 11k and it never even crossed my mind.
8k meters. There is no place at 11k where you can ski.
Yes. They were talking about 8,000 <i>metres</i> of altitude. (Talking about Mallory should have been a clue too.)
Not right away. But a lot depends on the wind.
The article says meters, not feet.
Fun experiment, but it doesn’t really prove anything. On a good day, elite runners like Tyler Andrews can run up Mera and more difficult peaks with minimal gear. Next time, try testing them on a cold, windy, and wet ridgeline traverse.
Is that an iPad?
That's pretty cool. They talk about how getting period clothes basically required custom work.<p>Must be pricey.
My wife studied costume design with a focus on historical European garments a few years back. Fascinating field!<p>And yes, when you can't mass produce clothing it goes up in price massively. Most mass produced clothing costs slightly more than the fabric, but even a very fast couturier will spend hours on a single piece. On top of that, it's one of those industries where price sensitivity inverts at the upper end.
<p><pre><code> > Must be pricey
</code></pre>
Suppliers will often sponsor/partner with high-profile athletes, providing kit for free and treating it as an advertising expense. Still "pricey", but accounted in a different way.<p>The Turner Twins website has sections on their – fairly significant – PR/Media work and Brand Partnerships.
There was a time not all that long ago that the most expensive thing most people owned was clothing.
really interesting - except the charts are impossible to read for colour blind people.
> it’s not cosplay; it’s rigorous historical reconstruction<p>...<p>Taking it at face value, this is more theatre than science for a few reasons:<p>- twins don't magically mean two identical bodies<p>- food intake has a much greater effect from thermogenesis than most laymen realize; I don't see that the two men consumed the same diet at the same meal times each day, nor does the article mention what they ate at all?<p>- no control for their own body quirks, they should swap gear every so often<p>- the focus seems to be on warmth and moisture management, but in a weird way. Was the historical gear twin actually cold on summit day, or are we just assuming warmer=better? Warmth alone is useless. In my circles, good gear performs well at the intersection of performance(warmth per weight for insulation, as high moisture vapor transmission rate with as low cubic feet per minute airflow per weight for windshells, ability to shed external moisture while avoiding internal moisture buildup per weight for outer weather layers, breathability and speed of drying per weight for base layers) crossed with durability and your price point.<p>>Modern gear allows for a “set and forget” mentality<p>No the heck it doesn't!!! Every climber, long distance backpacker, and mountaineer reading this article surely got hit with a blast of Gell-Mann Amnesia just like I did. Layering for active and static usage and frequent adjustments to clothing/gear according to changes in body temperature and weather are still very much part of the game!<p>If you're comparing the pinnacle of gear tech 100 years ago to today, you can't compare to generic off the shelf Patagonia and Arcteryx clothing. A more apt comparison would be a modern ultralight kit with bespoke gear made by cottage companies like Timmermade.<p>I posit the primary function of modern gear is not that it performs <i>better</i> as a rule, rather it weighs less while performing the same or better. Other commenters have minimized the weight savings of 2kg with modern gear. As someone who regularly backpacks in winter conditions, I must say 2 kilos is a LOT of weight to shrug your shoulders at. It's over two full days of food at 4,000 calories per day. It's more than my snowshoes and spikes weigh combined!<p>I think this may sound smart and counterfactual to common knowledge as a layman, but to anyone who regularly goes outdoors in extreme conditions, this article and experiment is horseshit.
> <i>I think this may sound smart and counterfactual to common knowledge as a layman, but to anyone who regularly goes outdoors in extreme conditions, this article and experiment is horseshit.</i><p>LLM slop in a nutshell.
The idea that full grown identical twins are identical humans for purposes of analysis is also fundamentally flawed. Just because they share DNA and look the same doesn’t mean anything about their relative health, fitness, metabolic rates, etc.
On the one hand I think critical assessment & deep review is vital.<p>But this feels so not far from anti-Wayland pro-X11/Xorg grumblers. You'll hook 15% of people by being against the modern world. Theres a niche demanding rejection of modernity, current offering. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448328">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448328</a><p>There are some valid areas of investigation. I want deep critique. But mostly it's just noise, is filler, to give people their outlet against reasonability. Mostly it's not serious. It doesn't have to be: these marks want to believe. And alas alas, that 15% of fans you have against modernity: they are hot to go be loudly obnoxious against any and everything new or popular. They will be unreasonably loud for you.<p>How humanity copes with basically anti-informed vice-signalling is our most outstanding problem of the 21st century, is our noospheric challenge.
absolutely terrible writing.