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> Reminds me of how certain South American indigenous tribes have this very complicated ritual to prepare Cassava. They didn't know it, but it removes cyanide a
by throwawaygh 5y ago
> Reminds me of how certain South American indigenous tribes have this very complicated ritual to prepare Cassava. They didn't know it, but it removes cyanide and makes Cassava way safer to consume.
This is basically how a lot of modern experimental science still works. Sort of black/grey box scientific reasoning.
We have better theories, and better instruments for verifying those theories, but in the end? A bunch of people have high failure rates, but one guy's thing always works. You go over and ask that guy why his always works. He shows you his process and you are hopefully able to ape him. This knowledge is crystallized and handed down. Perhaps even formalized and written up if it's important enough, but often not.
There's a word in tech for people who are good at this sort of "grey/black box observe the world and make it work without really knowing why" skillset. That word is hacking.
- agumonkey 5y agoYeah, I'm a bit confused about modern time versus the (unscientific) past. Because people trying stuff and keeping what works is not far from scientific process. It's blind and primitive but structurally too similar to ignore. There's also something nicer about the past, they could only focus on important ideas to share and save. People had direct interactions with life critical knowledge. I find that better than the current system where science is a far away field that people only see materialize as shiny devices.
- throwawaygh 5y agoThe cost of progress is specialization. I can't even keep up with everything in my own subfield. There are enormous scientific enterprises dedicated to diseases that will never touch my life and mean nothing to me, but constitute actual miracles to another community.
- Gravityloss 5y agoYes, there was a great podcast with the Electrochemical Society's Doron Aurbach. A very senior scientist, who has been working with lithium batteries. Basically the labs all over the world need to test all the possible combinations. And there are so many of them. That's why sharing your results is so important. Too bad it was in Soundcloud and it's been removed: https://www.electrochem.org/ecsnews/doron-aurbach-commercial-li-ion-batteries/ https://www.electrochem.org/ecsnews/doron-aurbach-commercial...