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I'm curious about all the hate for computational science in this topic; of all the places on the internet. By all means critique the model and the simulation, b

I'm curious about all the hate for computational science in this topic; of all the places on the internet. By all means critique the model and the simulation, but the idea of simulation itself as a scientific process?

thatguy0900 4y ago
There a lot of hate because the people here know how easily biased and misleading these models are. Simulation is fine, simulation with no ability to do it in real life or prove it and then claiming it as evidence for anything is probably very silly.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  > There a lot of hate because the people here know how easily biased and misleading these models are...simulation with no ability to do it in real life or prove it and then claiming it as evidence for anything is probably very silly... ... unless it's climate science, then you gotta believe it.
- vgatherps 4y ago
  > There a lot of hate because the people here know how easily biased and misleading these models are If only they had thought to ask HN whether it was useful. People doing this are EXCEPTIONALLY aware of the drawbacks and limitations of what they're doing. Nobody in the scientific world is under the impression that a simulation on a large approximation of molecules could be used to say "hey so water actually does behave exactly this way". If you go read the actually paper and not the press release the abstract pretty much says "This phase transition is observed in a few distinct models of water, so it's probably useful to try and understand this further" The self aggrandising press release and statements from the scientists are pretty silly, sure, but the actual publication is not making claims about demonstrating that water does anything. And if you look at statements quoted in the press release, most statements are talking about how the work might provide direction on where to look later: It's just like the string theory or dark energy threads where all the software engineers who've read a pop science book pontificate about how all the physicists are just so obviously wrong and you need to do it in so-and-so way, bonus points if you get some sort of "maybe lambda calculus is the true representation of the universe"
  - kortilla 4y ago
    Calm down, you’re attacking some kind of strawman representation of who is on HN. Has it occurred to you that a non-trivial subset of the HN commenters are scientists?
    - SantalBlush 4y ago
      I believe it was a response to the comment, "...the people here know how easily biased and misleading these models are." That looks like a suggestion that HN by-and-large understands how this research is flawed.
    - vgatherps 4y ago
      > Calm down, you’re attacking some kind of strawman representation of who is on HN. Has it occurred to you that a non-trivial subset of the HN commenters are scientists? Read literally any thread about science here, and it's stuffed full of people who will say "now I'm not a scientist but it's clear they're all doing it wrong". I'm not an idiot and yes, it has occurred to me that there might a some scientists here, but there's a much larger subset of arrogant software engineers who think if anybody would just listen to them all the world's problems would be solved. This isn't specific to software engineers, at this point it's a running joke where a physicist decides "oh, if only <some other field> knew <some advanced math/physics concept> all of their problems would be solved
      - kortilla 4y ago
        > Read literally any thread about science here, and it's stuffed full of people who will say "now I'm not a scientist but it's clear they're all doing it wrong". This happens on literally any thread regarding computer science or programming in general as well. Perhaps you just don’t notice on topics you don’t care about? This website isn’t moderated for wrongthink so you need to use your brain to parse what people are saying and contextualize it.
- DoctorOetker 4y ago
  user "sidlls" posted the link to the actual Nature article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544794 The abstract makes it very clear the contribution explains the empirically observed anomalous behavior of water.
ddingus 4y ago
https://youtu.be/OL6-x0modwY https://youtu.be/OL6-x0modwY That is the scientific method. And it is presented by one of our best ever thinkers. Simulation fits right up front in the, "First we guess it" part of the method. That is what happened here. Now don't get me wrong. It is a good guess, but that is all it is. Next step is to compute the consequences. Simulation applies here too. We can arrive at something we could compare to nature, the authority. That has not happened. Until it does, words like "evidence" are well out of reasonable bounds. Simulation as an input to the time tested, production proven scientific method is hardly controversial. Saying that any kind of science has happened yet is and should be controversial! No science has been done, yet we see words like "evidence" and "shows" I do not know what "scientific process" means. Feels a bit more like a P.T. Barnum style upsell for potential money getting than it does science when the sim work is framed this way. If you ask me, the people doing that are jumping the gun. The upsell is unnecessary. Simulation suggests water may seperate into two different liquids when in these conditions... The differences are small, but really important. Stuff line this tends to add right up and suddenly we will have a generation of people who are not well trained skeptics able to do solid science. Given the rapid pace of change, and how compelling this stuff can be, I feel it is important to hold the line on solid science.
- nautilius 4y ago
  By your logic, your “best ever thinker” did not do any science, ever, period - because he was a theoretical physicist. > “I do not know what scientific process means”. Maybe that’s the problem right there.
  - ddingus 4y ago
    First, a bit of housekeeping: I did not say best ever thinker. I did say one of our best ever thinkers. The difference is significant! Now, back to our discussion: He [Feynman] would say the same! My logic speaks to the value and importance of the scientific method. My take on that is influenced by Feynman, who is careful to make the difference between theory and the scientific method clear. Here the method is very well presented by Feynman. His thoughts on the matter are clear and align well with this discussion. In this case, the method has not yet been applied. Until it is, we really do not have a basis for "evidence" and "shows" being used as they are here. That is my objection. "Scientific process" needs some context to be useful. Also as written, it resembles "cheese food" rather than "cheeze." And yes, I mean "scientific process" rather than "science." The cheese food people really want others to think it is cheese, but it just isn't. The scientific process people seem to really want others to think science, or "scientific method" but it just isn't. Do you have some context to share, perhaps clarify where I have it wrong? I will say the same thing here, "this is the don't get me wrong" part of my comment above. The simulation results are intriguing and warrant the application of the scientific method. Let us query the authority properly and arrive at some understanding! Once we have that, we may well be able to move the simulation from suggestive to predictive!
blix 4y ago
It's the tone of the press release. The title style "Evidence shows water does X" tends to make people think "there is concrete evidence that physical water does X", rather than "an abstracted model of spheres intended to mimic some aspect of water predicts that water might do X." When people read the article and find out the methods within don't support the conclusions they feel are presented in the title, they understandably become somewhat hostile. As other comments note, the actual people doing this work are typically ~very~ aware the limitations of their models and that all results are best interesting fictions, but this typically does not make it into public-facing science communications. Why the press release would be designed to encourage readers to inuit stronger conclusions that actually supported by the work is left as an exercise to the reader. How might this impact public trust in scientific institutions?
- Steko 4y ago
  This place has lots of world class thinkers but is heavily overburdened with title janitors and tone police. This is an actually interesting development but there’s zero discussion of it and 50 comments that want to split hairs about whether conclusions reached by simulations count as evidence or not.
  - blix 4y ago
    Science discussion here is often lacking. I'm not sure where the right forum is for that :P I think the topological bond analysis is actually really cool, and I think it might have wide-reaching implications in the study of liquids. I wonder if you looked closely at liquid phases without "long-range order", if you might occasioanlly see something resembling order if you looked through this lens rather than through the radial density function.
  - Chris2048 4y ago
    Your own comment also fails to discuss the topic, instead adding yet another opinion to the meta-topic "evidence" debate (that it is "splitting hairs").
  - spiralx 4y ago
    Maybe this is evidence this place does not in fact have "lots of world class thinkers"? It's classic bike-shedding.
kortilla 4y ago
Simulation is a way to form a solid hypothesis. It’s not evidence though.
DoreenMichele 4y ago
HN can be a tough crowd, for some very good reasons. It's got a fair number of people with PhDs and real world accomplishments etc.
nautilius 4y ago
Mostly a combination of Ultracrepidarianism and Dunning-Kruger, I would guess. Without doubt there are many very smart people here who know a lot about their respective fields and who have lots of opinions about other fields they may not know so much about. See also the recurrent discussion of how “current hypersonics is nothing new”, or “a machine cannot learn, it is the programmer who gives the structure “, etc.
pdonis 4y ago
The problem is the use of the word "evidence" to describe the output of a computer simulation. That's wrong. Computer simulation outputs are not evidence. They can be good guides on how to proceed to get evidence, but that's not the same as being evidence.
- simonh 4y ago
  I’d say it’s just a different kind of evidence. It’s obviously not on the same level as direct observation, but it can provide useful information we can use to refine our theories and home in on specific behaviours we can look for in direct observations and experiments. Saying that this information is not evidence, of any kind, seems to me to be terminological points scoring. It’s evidence for what to look for next experimentally. I’m also annoyed by people saying things like simulation “isn’t science”. We’ll obviously it’s not all of science, we can’t run a simulation and say all right, job done, we’ve finished the science. Nobody is claiming that, it’s a complete straw man. Simulations can absolutely be part of the scientific process. I just don’t see the point in these “well actually” rebuttals of claims never actually made by these researchers, or the author of the article. It’s the same old story every time any science news gets posted here.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    It's evidence if it can be used to falsify theories, imo. That is true of some computational science, i.e. if you use a computer to make predictions from a theory to compare the predictions with observations.
    - morelandjs 4y ago
      Exactly, if you can falsify theories subject to the assumptions of the simulation, that’s still evidence.
      - pdonis 4y ago
        > if you can falsify theories subject to the assumptions of the simulation, that’s still evidence. No, the falsification itself is not evidence; it's a falsification. Evidence is what you compare the predictions of the simulation to, and then you call the theory falsified if the two don't match.
lm28469 4y ago
> of all the places on the internet. Well of all the places I always expect HN to be the hardest on these topics, especially because being in the industry means you know 80% of press releases are buzzword riddled PR bullshit

thatguy0900 4y ago

There a lot of hate because the people here know how easily biased and misleading these models are. Simulation is fine, simulation with no ability to do it in real life or prove it and then claiming it as evidence for anything is probably very silly.

fsckboy 4y ago
> There a lot of hate because the people here know how easily biased and misleading these models are...simulation with no ability to do it in real life or prove it and then claiming it as evidence for anything is probably very silly... ... unless it's climate science, then you gotta believe it.
vgatherps 4y ago
> There a lot of hate because the people here know how easily biased and misleading these models are If only they had thought to ask HN whether it was useful. People doing this are EXCEPTIONALLY aware of the drawbacks and limitations of what they're doing. Nobody in the scientific world is under the impression that a simulation on a large approximation of molecules could be used to say "hey so water actually does behave exactly this way". If you go read the actually paper and not the press release the abstract pretty much says "This phase transition is observed in a few distinct models of water, so it's probably useful to try and understand this further" The self aggrandising press release and statements from the scientists are pretty silly, sure, but the actual publication is not making claims about demonstrating that water does anything. And if you look at statements quoted in the press release, most statements are talking about how the work might provide direction on where to look later: It's just like the string theory or dark energy threads where all the software engineers who've read a pop science book pontificate about how all the physicists are just so obviously wrong and you need to do it in so-and-so way, bonus points if you get some sort of "maybe lambda calculus is the true representation of the universe"
- kortilla 4y ago
  Calm down, you’re attacking some kind of strawman representation of who is on HN. Has it occurred to you that a non-trivial subset of the HN commenters are scientists?
  - SantalBlush 4y ago
    I believe it was a response to the comment, "...the people here know how easily biased and misleading these models are." That looks like a suggestion that HN by-and-large understands how this research is flawed.
  - vgatherps 4y ago
    > Calm down, you’re attacking some kind of strawman representation of who is on HN. Has it occurred to you that a non-trivial subset of the HN commenters are scientists? Read literally any thread about science here, and it's stuffed full of people who will say "now I'm not a scientist but it's clear they're all doing it wrong". I'm not an idiot and yes, it has occurred to me that there might a some scientists here, but there's a much larger subset of arrogant software engineers who think if anybody would just listen to them all the world's problems would be solved. This isn't specific to software engineers, at this point it's a running joke where a physicist decides "oh, if only <some other field> knew <some advanced math/physics concept> all of their problems would be solved
    - kortilla 4y ago
      > Read literally any thread about science here, and it's stuffed full of people who will say "now I'm not a scientist but it's clear they're all doing it wrong". This happens on literally any thread regarding computer science or programming in general as well. Perhaps you just don’t notice on topics you don’t care about? This website isn’t moderated for wrongthink so you need to use your brain to parse what people are saying and contextualize it.
DoctorOetker 4y ago
user "sidlls" posted the link to the actual Nature article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544794 The abstract makes it very clear the contribution explains the empirically observed anomalous behavior of water.

ddingus 4y ago

https://youtu.be/OL6-x0modwY https://youtu.be/OL6-x0modwY That is the scientific method. And it is presented by one of our best ever thinkers. Simulation fits right up front in the, "First we guess it" part of the method. That is what happened here. Now don't get me wrong. It is a good guess, but that is all it is. Next step is to compute the consequences. Simulation applies here too. We can arrive at something we could compare to nature, the authority. That has not happened. Until it does, words like "evidence" are well out of reasonable bounds. Simulation as an input to the time tested, production proven scientific method is hardly controversial. Saying that any kind of science has happened yet is and should be controversial! No science has been done, yet we see words like "evidence" and "shows" I do not know what "scientific process" means. Feels a bit more like a P.T. Barnum style upsell for potential money getting than it does science when the sim work is framed this way. If you ask me, the people doing that are jumping the gun. The upsell is unnecessary. Simulation suggests water may seperate into two different liquids when in these conditions... The differences are small, but really important. Stuff line this tends to add right up and suddenly we will have a generation of people who are not well trained skeptics able to do solid science. Given the rapid pace of change, and how compelling this stuff can be, I feel it is important to hold the line on solid science.

nautilius 4y ago
By your logic, your “best ever thinker” did not do any science, ever, period - because he was a theoretical physicist. > “I do not know what scientific process means”. Maybe that’s the problem right there.
- ddingus 4y ago
  First, a bit of housekeeping: I did not say best ever thinker. I did say one of our best ever thinkers. The difference is significant! Now, back to our discussion: He [Feynman] would say the same! My logic speaks to the value and importance of the scientific method. My take on that is influenced by Feynman, who is careful to make the difference between theory and the scientific method clear. Here the method is very well presented by Feynman. His thoughts on the matter are clear and align well with this discussion. In this case, the method has not yet been applied. Until it is, we really do not have a basis for "evidence" and "shows" being used as they are here. That is my objection. "Scientific process" needs some context to be useful. Also as written, it resembles "cheese food" rather than "cheeze." And yes, I mean "scientific process" rather than "science." The cheese food people really want others to think it is cheese, but it just isn't. The scientific process people seem to really want others to think science, or "scientific method" but it just isn't. Do you have some context to share, perhaps clarify where I have it wrong? I will say the same thing here, "this is the don't get me wrong" part of my comment above. The simulation results are intriguing and warrant the application of the scientific method. Let us query the authority properly and arrive at some understanding! Once we have that, we may well be able to move the simulation from suggestive to predictive!

blix 4y ago

It's the tone of the press release. The title style "Evidence shows water does X" tends to make people think "there is concrete evidence that physical water does X", rather than "an abstracted model of spheres intended to mimic some aspect of water predicts that water might do X." When people read the article and find out the methods within don't support the conclusions they feel are presented in the title, they understandably become somewhat hostile. As other comments note, the actual people doing this work are typically ~very~ aware the limitations of their models and that all results are best interesting fictions, but this typically does not make it into public-facing science communications. Why the press release would be designed to encourage readers to inuit stronger conclusions that actually supported by the work is left as an exercise to the reader. How might this impact public trust in scientific institutions?

Steko 4y ago
This place has lots of world class thinkers but is heavily overburdened with title janitors and tone police. This is an actually interesting development but there’s zero discussion of it and 50 comments that want to split hairs about whether conclusions reached by simulations count as evidence or not.
- blix 4y ago
  Science discussion here is often lacking. I'm not sure where the right forum is for that :P I think the topological bond analysis is actually really cool, and I think it might have wide-reaching implications in the study of liquids. I wonder if you looked closely at liquid phases without "long-range order", if you might occasioanlly see something resembling order if you looked through this lens rather than through the radial density function.
- Chris2048 4y ago
  Your own comment also fails to discuss the topic, instead adding yet another opinion to the meta-topic "evidence" debate (that it is "splitting hairs").
- spiralx 4y ago
  Maybe this is evidence this place does not in fact have "lots of world class thinkers"? It's classic bike-shedding.

kortilla 4y ago

Simulation is a way to form a solid hypothesis. It’s not evidence though.

DoreenMichele 4y ago

HN can be a tough crowd, for some very good reasons. It's got a fair number of people with PhDs and real world accomplishments etc.

nautilius 4y ago

Mostly a combination of Ultracrepidarianism and Dunning-Kruger, I would guess. Without doubt there are many very smart people here who know a lot about their respective fields and who have lots of opinions about other fields they may not know so much about. See also the recurrent discussion of how “current hypersonics is nothing new”, or “a machine cannot learn, it is the programmer who gives the structure “, etc.

pdonis 4y ago

The problem is the use of the word "evidence" to describe the output of a computer simulation. That's wrong. Computer simulation outputs are not evidence. They can be good guides on how to proceed to get evidence, but that's not the same as being evidence.

simonh 4y ago
I’d say it’s just a different kind of evidence. It’s obviously not on the same level as direct observation, but it can provide useful information we can use to refine our theories and home in on specific behaviours we can look for in direct observations and experiments. Saying that this information is not evidence, of any kind, seems to me to be terminological points scoring. It’s evidence for what to look for next experimentally. I’m also annoyed by people saying things like simulation “isn’t science”. We’ll obviously it’s not all of science, we can’t run a simulation and say all right, job done, we’ve finished the science. Nobody is claiming that, it’s a complete straw man. Simulations can absolutely be part of the scientific process. I just don’t see the point in these “well actually” rebuttals of claims never actually made by these researchers, or the author of the article. It’s the same old story every time any science news gets posted here.
- adrianN 4y ago
  It's evidence if it can be used to falsify theories, imo. That is true of some computational science, i.e. if you use a computer to make predictions from a theory to compare the predictions with observations.
  - morelandjs 4y ago
    Exactly, if you can falsify theories subject to the assumptions of the simulation, that’s still evidence.
    - pdonis 4y ago
      > if you can falsify theories subject to the assumptions of the simulation, that’s still evidence. No, the falsification itself is not evidence; it's a falsification. Evidence is what you compare the predictions of the simulation to, and then you call the theory falsified if the two don't match.

lm28469 4y ago

> of all the places on the internet. Well of all the places I always expect HN to be the hardest on these topics, especially because being in the industry means you know 80% of press releases are buzzword riddled PR bullshit