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The fraction of science that can ever be applied to engineering is vanishingly small though. How will you ever get to that kind of standard for things like astr
by phreeza 5y ago
The fraction of science that can ever be applied to engineering is vanishingly small though. How will you ever get to that kind of standard for things like astrophysics, particle physics, mathematics, most of biology? Do you really think the big bang, evolution, Fermat's theorem etc are bogus because they haven't been proven by "real world engineering"?
I completely agree that there is a lot of bogus stuff coming out, like the perennial "hyper efficient solar cell developed in a lab" press release that bubbles up on HN every now and then. But that is just a tiny piece of science if you ask me. Also blaming 'cancel culture' for this seems lazy , there are misaligned incentives but they are more subtle.
- native_samples 5y agoParticle physics has to a large extent become engineering: particle accelerators, nuclear reactors, radiotherapy for cancer. Evolution has been applied many times, most famously, to create SARS-CoV-2 right before it escaped from a lab ;) As for the rest - well, who knows? Do I trust big bang theory? No, not really. I seem to recall it's inconsistent with various other measurements, hence the need for the enigmatic dark matter. But it doesn't matter or affect my life at all so I can easily choose not to trust it and who cares. Where the problems start is when activists/politicians force me to "trust" self-proclaimed science that has never been through rigorous market-based mechanisms to weed out the crap. Epidemiology. Climatology. Virology. Standards in these fields are rock bottom low because nobody is at risk of losing their jobs if they're wrong, yet, I cannot simply evaluate this "science" and opt out.