I keep seeing versions of this post, which imply a bizarre misunderstanding of how we know the world.
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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?
Progress is a loaded term. In this case, it means him making money.
The point is not to debate science with some social media shadow of him, but to do science away from him.
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@coreyspowell
"As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message."- Ur-Fascism, Umberto Eco
@Rudicron @coreyspowell when talking about idea of "pure knowledge", it is very Platonian, and according to Karl Popper, Platon's ideal of ideal government could be considered as an archetypal fascist state (on the other hand, Platon had some basic ecological thinking ahead of his time).
So we somehow re-run the classical discussions of ancient Greek philosophers again and again. While the "pure knowledge" school invented almost nothing in the field of pure knowledge, the mathematics and natural science, which built on the work of Erastothenes, Archimedes or Euclides, gave us all the technical tools, using which Elon now wants to return... to search for "pure knowledge", again.
At some moment, what used to be practical research, can turn into blindly followed rituals, workshops into temples, and so. I am afraid, that science is not immune to this process (the large colliders may be actually temples, we just don't see it). But while science may fall into this trap, with all the grace and glory of huge, timeless, established religion, the AI already is thriving as kind of pagan cult worship, based on ritual sacrifices.
The brute search of possible state space works only for system, where the models are precise enough, which is never possible for non-linear systems.
Somehow, Elons reminds me of the famous 19th century patent office. Just because he ran out of creativity, is stuck in his singularity mindset and cannot imagine any new discovery or progress by anything else then his AI, it doesn't mean, that it makes any sense.
Still, the AI is somehow the ad-absurdum extrapolation of the "statistical" era of science, and there is about to be any new era, not AI based, it will have to be different.
The LHC is itself is based on the way of thinking and data processing, which somehow, when applied on other type of data, gave rise to LLMs... so if we consider LLM AI a dead end, so...
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@coreyspowell
Progress relies on understanding.
Science is built on hypothesis / observation / analysis and identification of the success or failure of the hypothesis.Elon Musk demonstrates clearly that he has no idea what science is. Much as he has demonstrated that he has no idea what software engineering is.
@TobyHaynes @coreyspowell and he has no clue, what hardware engineering is. Probably it is safe to assume, he has no clue at all.
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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 @andersgo@oslo.town So smart that you are actually stupid
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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
He's allergic to reality, so his claims make a lot of sense if you assume a predilection for malleable ignorance instead of quantifiable evidence. -
@coreyspowell
He's allergic to reality, so his claims make a lot of sense if you assume a predilection for malleable ignorance instead of quantifiable evidence.@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.
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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 Elon is an idiot. The sooner everyone realizes, the better.
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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 Musk is a snake oil salesman. I don't know why people listen to him.
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@coreyspowell Elon - This is impossible. AI's knowledge wil never become bigger, better, greater than the information that has been stolen on the net, AI itself does not research. Human thinking is the core element of scientific progress.
@coreyspowell Elon: Albert Einstein said: "A problem cannot be solved at the (thinking) level at which it is created."
AI stays with it's stolen data always on the same level. Only human beings are able to make the transition to the next level of problem solving.
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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 while this mother****r's starlink satellites are interfering with both optical and radio telescopy AND he thinks there should be a million orbiting data centre satellites.
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@TobyHaynes @coreyspowell and he has no clue, what hardware engineering is. Probably it is safe to assume, he has no clue at all.
@Reinald @TobyHaynes @coreyspowell really one of the only thing he does have a clue about is bullshitting.
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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.
