I keep seeing versions of this post, which imply a bizarre misunderstanding of how we know the world.
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@ewen @coreyspowell or he knows exactly what he's saying and why. By claiming telescopes are becoming irrelevant he wants to prime the broader public to be silent when his satellites pollute the sky for good either by numbers or the Kessler Syndrome. He knows very well that his billionaire voice holds so much power that he can sway the broad public and especially politics to not protest and block his one million satellite plan. When he says we don't need telesopes anymore then it must be true.
@DrJLecter @coreyspowell
His lust for power and profit obscures any real awareness of Kessler Syndrome. He doesn't understand boundaries because they infer reality.
He thinks he'll make a motza with his satellites and control global communication.
I don't think this story ends well. -
I keep seeing versions of this post, which imply a bizarre misunderstanding of how we know the world.
Do people imagine that if we'd never observed galaxies or neutrinos or exoplanets or the cosmic microwave background, we could have *imagined* these things & that would be just as real?
Or that we've magically reached the point, just now, where we no longer need to observe the world?
@coreyspowell The train of thoughts, that everything observable has already been seen and it’s more efficient only to scroll through the old scriptures (as current LLMs do) and deduce from there (as future AI might perhaps do) is at the basis of classic SciFi literature, like Asimov‘s Foundation. There it always predates the downfall of civilization itself, for obvious reasons.
Until now that appeared to me as an unrealistic projection, so it‘s really scary to see that idiocy play out for real. -
I keep seeing versions of this post, which imply a bizarre misunderstanding of how we know the world.
Do people imagine that if we'd never observed galaxies or neutrinos or exoplanets or the cosmic microwave background, we could have *imagined* these things & that would be just as real?
Or that we've magically reached the point, just now, where we no longer need to observe the world?
@coreyspowell Vibe physics
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I keep seeing versions of this post, which imply a bizarre misunderstanding of how we know the world.
Do people imagine that if we'd never observed galaxies or neutrinos or exoplanets or the cosmic microwave background, we could have *imagined* these things & that would be just as real?
Or that we've magically reached the point, just now, where we no longer need to observe the world?
@coreyspowell Oh no, the physical reality slows down the discovery of the physical reality.
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@DrJLecter @coreyspowell
His lust for power and profit obscures any real awareness of Kessler Syndrome. He doesn't understand boundaries because they infer reality.
He thinks he'll make a motza with his satellites and control global communication.
I don't think this story ends well.@ewen yeah, it definitely won't end well. I just hope at some point in the future he'll be held accountable for all the damage he has done to our society and the planet. And since that's unlikely I desperately hope that Karma will kick his ass. @coreyspowell
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@coreyspowell The train of thoughts, that everything observable has already been seen and it’s more efficient only to scroll through the old scriptures (as current LLMs do) and deduce from there (as future AI might perhaps do) is at the basis of classic SciFi literature, like Asimov‘s Foundation. There it always predates the downfall of civilization itself, for obvious reasons.
Until now that appeared to me as an unrealistic projection, so it‘s really scary to see that idiocy play out for real.@Gernotti @coreyspowell No observation needed for creationism.
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@Reinald @TobyHaynes @coreyspowell really one of the only thing he does have a clue about is bullshitting.
@alanthecampbell @Reinald @TobyHaynes @coreyspowell We are being people, led by identities rather than facts, again
Even though this realisation was what prompted the scientific method to be established in the first place, the systematic erosion of university education’s humanistic side as ”woke” has caused, even pretty smart people, to lose sight of that
What we have is ”speed” and ”intuition” being preferred, classic nazi traits i’m afraid
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I've also seen smart people tie themselves into knots trying to defend the original claim.
"He just means big science is expensive."
"He just means that AI can help with data analysis."
"He just means that string theory is a dead end."But that is not the claim, and the efforts to justify it only make the argument even stranger.
Well said.
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@coreyspowell well, for analysis of ever increasing amount of astronomical data, some kind of automation is needed anyway. So maybe it would be better use of AI, than all this chatbot nonsense.
The huge colliders are special case, that now there is AFAIK no special prediction in physics, which can be confirmed or falsified at higher energies. Somehow it is probably not the direction to find any new physics (which would be cool). Also the dark matter detectors are somehow infamous as spending huge amount of money for (predictably) finding nothing.
The situation in astronomy is very different and of course we need new telescopes and new ideas for telescopes. Lot of them would have to be placed in space, probably.
So, somehow the discussion "what next in science" makes sense, and I would not probably bet on particle colliders to be the right answer. Still, over-relying on LLM-líke AIs si ridiculous. Of course, science needs new (not necesarily "more") empirical data and also, for huge amounts of data, some automation to process them.
@xChaos @coreyspowell Astronomers have been using automated data systems for years and these work very well at finding patterns in data. These are not general programs but finally honed analysis software. The issue is, and always has been, to work out what you want to look for. This always needs human intervention and I doubt very much whether any LLM would contribute anything beyond what we put into it.
As you say new telescopes are needed but I would not rule out the wish for a new larger collider. There is still a lot of good science to be done at higher energies even without any new major findings. Although I suspect there are some things lurking out there....
In all cases the cost will be high but relative to the cost of all the weapons expanded in the last few weeks it's not that big.
What's next in science is always a problem when the question tries to pit one side of science against another. You simply have no idea where the next breakthrough comes from. My bet is somewhere in biology and brain science.
If it were me and here we are talking physics I would scrap all manned spaceflight and put that money into science missions and telescopes as well as basic science.
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I also have to point out that the most expensive space telescope (JWST) cost about $500 million/year. We spent 1000x that much on AI development in 2025.
Data collection is essential for discovery...and it's remarkably cheap compared to many other things we do routinely.
@coreyspowell The richest person in the world, finding justifications to why he should be even richer. That’s the only thing happening here.
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I keep seeing versions of this post, which imply a bizarre misunderstanding of how we know the world.
Do people imagine that if we'd never observed galaxies or neutrinos or exoplanets or the cosmic microwave background, we could have *imagined* these things & that would be just as real?
Or that we've magically reached the point, just now, where we no longer need to observe the world?
-
I keep seeing versions of this post, which imply a bizarre misunderstanding of how we know the world.
Do people imagine that if we'd never observed galaxies or neutrinos or exoplanets or the cosmic microwave background, we could have *imagined* these things & that would be just as real?
Or that we've magically reached the point, just now, where we no longer need to observe the world?
@coreyspowell well, tons of philosophers tried to balance the power of mind and its attachment
to what we call reality, emphasizing that just speculative thinking produces only worthless imaginations, and that truth can only be found when reason is applied to reality. Kant even made it a rule. And Hegel, who wanted to abolish Kants Thing in Itself, still wanted reason to be tied to something that, ultimately, provides what could be called truth - a thing that physics has, while math doesn’t. -
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
